Chapter 4: 4

The general’s mansion was not called the General’s Mansion, but Dingguo[1] Mansion, the house bestowed by Yan Mingting’s father when he was alive. But because the family had produced two famous generals, the common people were more accustomed to calling it the General’s Mansion.

Its master had fought on the battlefield all year round, and there were almost no people living there. Usually there were only some sweeping servants and the old housekeeper.

Housekeeper Qin had been working in the general’s mansion since he was a child. Perhaps he was getting old. He watched the little master follow the old general to kill the enemy since he was young, but before enjoying a day of blessing, he was given a legacy as an evil star by the people. Now he was twenty-seven. Other men at this age were already surrounded by children, and his family’s general was still alone.

As soon as the imperial decree of marriage was delivered to the mansion in these two days, he was overjoyed. But upon hearing that he was going to marry Zhao Yelan, he fainted from fright.

There was no telling what the general thought, but after receiving the news, he sent a letter to him instructing him to take charge of household affairs and wait for his return.

No matter what the masters were thinking, he always had to do his job well. He hastily ordered people to renovate the mansion, and it was really troublesome to tidy up this place that had not been inhabited for a long time.

When people told him that Zhao Yelan was coming, he was almost unresponsive and then fell down from the ladder. He patted his trouser legs, trotted to the main hall, and saw the powerful official who was rumored to do all kinds of evil. Black hair and snow-white skin, willowy posture. He didn’t look like a villain. He was clearly a fairy who went to the wrong place, right?

“Zhao, Zhao-daren?” Housekeeper Qin looked at him in astonishment. “You came to visit late at night, what is it?”

Zhao Yelan frowned and took a look at his body. Housekeeper Qin lowered his head and followed his gaze, and finding that his clothes were stained with dust, he patted them hurriedly.

“Stop patting.” Zhao Yelan raised his hand and waved it, then took a few steps back to get some distance from him and looked around. “Where is Yan Mingting?”

“Zhao-daren is here to find the general?” Housekeeper Qin was bewildered, and said aloud, “My lord, this is not in compliance with custom.”

“What custom?” 

“Before the wedding, newlyweds cannot meet.”

“Are you telling me the rules?” Zhao Yelan narrowed his eyes slightly, and when he saw him trembling, he turned his eyes away indifferently. “You take care of the affairs of the General’s Mansion?”

“Yes.” housekeeper Qin nodded obediently. “But don’t worry, my lord, when you pass through the door, the ledger will be handed over to you.”

“I’m not interested.” Zhao Yelan gave Xiao Gao a meaningful glance.

Xiao Gao immediately took out a thick booklet and handed it to housekeeper Qin. “These are the daily food and clothing expenses for our family, please prepare them. In case there are some things that my lord doesn’t need in the betrothal gift, in order to avoid waste, we will send the required betrothal gift list tomorrow. At that time, you can prepare accordingly and save yourself some effort.”

Housekeeper Qin held the thick booklet, opened it tremblingly and glanced twice. Just like Grandma Liu[2] entered the Grand View Garden, he said in amazement: “These……these are just daily necessities?”

“Naturally,” Xiao Gao said with a smile. “The bride price should not be neglected.”

“It’s a big matter, and this one is not the master, ah.” Housekeeper Qin cried with a thick face. “This is not a small sum. The General means for everything to be kept simple, just following formalities. After all, the General’s Mansion is not that rich……”

“Where’s Yan Mingting?” Zhao Yelan interrupted him to ask again. He turned his head to cough a few times, and the expression on his face was colder than when he first entered the door.

Xiao Gao immediately urged: “Our lord is not well due to the wind and the cold, and came all the way here. Why hasn’t the General come out to receive his guests?”

housekeeper Qin quickly explained: “The General went to drink with his subordinates. Rest assured, my lord, as soon as the general returns, I will tell him about this right away……”

Zhao Yelan turned and left before he finished speaking. He sighed deeply, thinking that this was not a good thing, and that the General’s Mansion would be very lively in the future.

As soon as Zhao Yelan departed, Yan Mingting returned. Housekeeper Qin quickly informed the other party about this matter, and Yan Minging took the booklet, saying in surprise: “He was just here?”

“Yes, he also said that he would send someone to send the betrothal gift list tomorrow.”

“Betrothal gifts?” Yan Mingting recalled the scene just now and suddenly smiled. “Then I bumped into them.”

“Really? You saw him?”

“No, it was too dark for me to see him.”

Just now when Yan Mingting walked out of an alley, he saw a sedan chair coming from the direction of the General’s Mansion.

Just when he was wondering, the sedan chair passed in front of him. As it swayed up and down, the corner of the curtain swung and a white neck could be seen by candlelight inside the sedan chair. Then a slightly annoyed voice could be heard: “Add a few more agates and emeralds to the betrothal gift! Does he not have a lot of fine horses? Ask for a few more horses……cough.”

“Oh, how can this be good, ah.” Housekeeper Qin was very worried. When he thought about the General marrying such a money-grubbing person, he wanted to kowtow in front of the old general’s tablet and cry.

It was said that good people were given good rewards, so how come the Yan mansion had always been sparsely populated, and now it was still in an unprecedented situation?

“Uncle Qin, don’t worry. You’ve worked hard these few days, so go take a good rest.” Yan Mingting patted him on the shoulder.

“The matter of the dowry……”

“Leave it to me.”

It rained that night, and before the sedan chair arrived at the house, the rain fell on the ground like beans. Xiao Gao rushed to protect Zhao Yelan and return him home, but he was still drenched by the rain. Even after soaking in hot water, he was still a little dizzy when he woke up the next day, so he had to send someone and continue to ask for leave.

He had punished the Minister of the Ministry of Officials in prison, and didn’t go to court for two consecutive days. In the entire court, only Zhao Yelan dared to be so confident.

There was a smell of medicine in the room. No matter how hard he tried to get rid of it, there would always be new medicine poured into his stomach.

No one knew how long this body could last. He had taken medicine and didn’t want to continue lying down, so he leaned against the window and watched the rain outside smashing a flower in the yard to pieces.

A servant girl ran over holding an umbrella and wanted to straighten the stem, but upon seeing it, Zhao Yelan stopped her and said, “Don’t touch it.”

The servant girl was puzzled: “My lord, this is the flower you planted yourself last time.”

“Leave it alone.” Zhao Yelan looked at the few petals that were about to fall from the stem. “Perhaps it deserves this fate, and it was lucky that it could survive until now.”

The servant girl had no choice but to clean elsewhere, and she had to tidy up the mansion as soon as possible. There was going to be a wedding in a few days, and she had to decorate everywhere.

Zhao Yelan sometimes looked at the rain, and sometimes glanced at the servants squatting under the eaves cutting paper, feeling a little irritable.

He was in a bad mood whenever it rained.

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After a while, Xiao Gao ran back with a basket in one hand and an umbrella in the other, put the fresh fruit he brought today in front of him, and then went to the General’s Mansion without stopping to hand in the betrothal gift list.

Zhao Yelan looked at the things in the basket. It was another basket of fresh pears, big in size, juicy and thirst-quenching. But he had no appetite, so he just reached out to pick and choose and finally selected a pear with rotten spots. He broke it in half and took out a bamboo tube from within. Pouring out the note inside, he unfolded it, and a line of beautiful characters was revealed before his eyes –

The news of Yan Mansion was reported a few days ago. There’s really nothing new, but I was lucky enough to meet General Yan yesterday. His appearance is quite different from the rumors. I only needed to pay a hundred taels of silver to get a portrait of the general made for myself.

After reading it, he threw the note into the charcoal basin.

Yan Mingting hadn’t lived in the capital for a long time, and there was indeed very little relevant information that could be inquired about, but as for his appearance……it had nothing to do with him. Not to mention that he had seen the other person’s appearance with his own eyes, and he was really difficult to look at.

The rain was getting louder just then, and his mood was even worse. He thought a little self-defeatingly – he might as well be dead.

But it was just a fleeting thought. He’d had this idea many times, but ultimately, he always propped himself up with stronger thoughts of survival.

“Someone come, ah!” Half an hour later, Xiao Gao ran in from outside, yelling, and the others rushed over immediately, chattering nonstop.

“What’s all the noise about?” It was raining less now, so Zhao Yelan walked to the door to take a look and saw Xiao Gao holding a chicken in his hands. “Where did you get it?”

“The General asked me to bring it back.” Xiao Gao lifted the chicken a bit farther away with a sad face, a little afraid of this thing, and handed it to the maid next to him. The servant girl lost her grip for a moment and the chicken flopped to the ground, cooed a few times, and ran away shaking its chubby buttocks.

“What are you still doing!” Zhao Yelan said sternly.

As if waking up from a dream, everyone rushed to catch the chicken, and in an instant, the courtyard was in chaos.

Zhao Yelan’s face was darker than the dark clouds outside. He stepped out the door, looked around, and heard a sound getting closer to him. He turned around, and before he could see it clearly, he felt a fleshy object hit him.

He looked down.

“Coo, coo, coo!”

An old servant stepped forward to grab the chicken quickly, but the chicken was quiet for a moment, and then its buttocks bulged.

“Is this chicken’s butt about to explode?” Xiao Gao looked terrified.

The maids stepped back in worry and stared at the chicken curiously.

“No, it should be laying an egg,” said the old servant.

Zhao Yelan stretched out his hand in the direction of the door: “Throw it out for me.”

As soon as the words fell, there was something warm on his slipper-clad foot. An egg had rolled onto it. It was warm.

Zhao Yelan looked at the egg, then at the unclean chicken butt, and his expression changed abruptly.

The others wanted to laugh, but they held back and quickly grabbed the chicken and egg to escape.

“A bath and a change of clothes!”

Zhao Yelan soaked in the bathtub for half an hour, and the hot water was constantly refreshed, but his anger was not reduced.

“Did Yan Mingting say something when he gave you the chicken?” After changing his clothes again, he came to Xiao Gao to question him. He thought of the meeting many years ago, where the other party also stuffed a chicken into his hands and then hid to watch the joke, and only got angrier.

“The General said that your health is too poor, so he would send you a chicken for nourishment.”

“Poor health?” Zhao Yelan sneered angrily. “Good, good, Yan Mingting. He’s insinuating that I don’t have the strength to restrain a chicken, right? Go and clean up the fallen flowers and willows in the yard and send them to that ugly, stingy old widower! Let him see what happens to things that die!”

In the lobby of the General’s Mansion, there was silence.

All the military leaders who were still discussing amongst themselves stared at the pile of dying flowers and willows on the table. Drops of water soaked the tabletop.

Yan Mingting: “What do these mean?”

He Cuizhang scratched his head: “Let me make a bold guess, could the fallen flowers and running water show his intention to be merciless?”

Yan Mingting: “Then what about these willow branches?”

“Broken willows……lovemaking?”

Everyone looked sideways at General Yan with complicated expressions.

General Yan stared at this pile of things for a long time, sighed, and worried: “This isn’t too good, ah. Could it be that a chicken made him secretly fall in love?”

– – – – – – 

The author has something to say:

Yan Mingting in Zhao Yelan’s eyes: Fat old pig spirit, ugly and picky old widower!

Zhao Yelan in Yan Mingting’s eyes: A strange man whose love was bought with a chicken.

 

 

T/N: The egg scene was supposed to result in the egg landing in his hand, but I could not for the life of me figure out how the egg was supposed to roll up and land there. So Zhao Yelan’s slippers were sacrificed.

[1] Dingguo (定国) means “to stabilize the country.” ⮐

[2] This is a reference to the famous novel, ‘A Dream of Red Mansions.’ Grandma Liu was a woman from a peasant family, and was ignorant to the ways of the elite, which is what the author is portraying here. ⮐

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