"General... please allow me a few days of rest."
Jia Chong stood before Sima Zhao, his face exceedingly pale.
This was partly because of Cao Mao and partly because of matters at home.
In the study, documents covered the space before Sima Zhao. His days were clearly no easier. During his elder brother's absence from Luoyang, he had finally seen the true faces of the ministers who normally seemed harmless to man and beast.
Looking at Jia Chong before him, Sima Zhao had evidently heard about what had happened at his home as well. He shook his head and sighed. "My condolences, Lord Jia."
Jia Chong's only son, Jia Limin, had died.
The cause of his death was simple enough. After his wet nurse was killed, the child had suffered a terrible fright, refused to eat or drink, and followed his wet nurse into death.
Perhaps there had been some other reason involved as well.
But neither Sima Zhao nor Jia Chong was evidently willing to investigate the matter any further.
All because Jia Chong's wife bore the surname Guo.
To say Jia Chong felt no grief at all would have been a lie, but to say his son's death left him unable to keep working was not necessarily true either.
Jia Chong truly did not want to continue supervising Cao Mao.
When Sima Zhao first assigned him this task, Jia Chong had been quite pleased, believing it was a good path toward drawing closer to the Sima Family and continuing his climb upward.
Doing ten good deeds for the general was worth less than doing one bad deed for him.
The problem was that Cao Mao was by no means a kind soul.
Ever since he had begun supervising him, Jia Chong had drifted farther and farther from his