Chapter 40: CH 40

Once the last word came out of his mouth, silence swept through the courtyard.

Stunned out of his mind by what Xie Yu Zhi just said, Chen Miao Ping thought, kill someone? He couldn’t kill a person. He reflexively looked at Chun Qiao, but he was only greeted with the sight of her soul leaving her body from shock. Her eyes were dazed and it looked quite like she was already dead.

That golden dagger was lying quietly on the ground and it was glimmering under a beam of moonlight which gave it a bit of a bloodthirsty aura the more you look at it.

Seeing that Chen Miao Ping was not moving, Xie Yu Zhi questioned him,

“What, are you unwilling?”

Chen Miao Ping thought in his heart, not exactly, but he felt like this type of question presented the same dilemma as the question that asked ‘If your mother and your wife fell in the water at the same time, who would you save first?’

He hesitated as he reached out, but the moment he was about to touch the dagger, he withdrew his hand. Standing up under the heavy gaze on him, he said, 

“Today is our wedding night, a joyous celebration between you and me. It is not lucky to see any blood being spilled on this day. Second Master, if you do not mind, we should discuss this issue on another day and let her go instead.”

Ignoring his excuses, Xie Yu Zhi shifted his body and stared intensely at that elegant face, 

“I have been on the battlefield since my youth, and I can’t even remember the number of people that have died by my hands. There was never a time where I needed to pick a date to do it.”

Xie Yu Zhi had made a name for himself when he was young. His skills in calligraphy, poetry, fighting, everything was above that of the average man. At just sixteen years of age, he led the troops to conquer their barbarian neighbours and came back victorious. Since then, he had never lost a battle, which made him very admirable and desirable to many women. One could even say that there was no one in this generation better than him.

Yet while everyone thought that there was no stopping to his path to greatness, no one could have expected that an incident would occur and cause his downfall. With a seemingly bright future from his growing victories collected under his sword in the name of the emperor, he had a straight path upwards, towards the title of the greatest in the imperial court for authority and power, just below the emperor. 

But during the conquest of Dong Xia, Xie Yu Zhi would fall into an enemy’s trap. Because of this, his right leg has since been crippled. For two years he has never left the mansion and his mood became more volatile, changing at the drop of a hat.

If one looked at it closely, one could understand, but unfortunately, the focus was and always has been on the results, never the journey. It didn’t matter why his mood was always changing, his name was still associated with cruelty and evil because of the change in his personality after Dong Xia.

Chen Miao Ping had not moved as his brain was rapidly turning on its gears, trying to find a way to get out of this unscathed. However, Xie Yu Zhi’s patience seemed to come to an end. He interlaced his fingers and calmly threw out another landmine,

“And if I said, between the two of you, one must die today?”

His eyesight was like a snake slithering around Chun Qiao’s neck and slowly stopped on Chen Miao Ping. Each word was pronounced clearly and slowly as he said, 

“Will it be your death…… or will it be hers?”

Of course it would be hers.

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Chen Miao Ping stared at that dagger for a moment and then turned to look at Chun Qiao. His eyesight went back and forth between the two, as if wondering if he should do it.

He did not know that the way he looked at Chun Qiao was as if he was looking at someone who was already dead. His eyes were so emotionless that it was more terrifying and scarier than any eyes of hatred could ever be.

Chen Miao Ping was really a handsome man, a man with the kind of handsome looks that was rarely seen walking on this earth. In the presence of his face, the moon would feel as if it suddenly lost its luster. Yet at this moment in time, Chun Qiao could only see the hand hidden in his sleeve.

The hand had a very distinct bone structure, a hand that she could tell was very used to holding a calligraphy brush. It was a hand that made one wonder if holding a sharp knife would be as habitual as holding a brush.

This man was so ruthless, so heartless, with the ability to change his face faster than you could turn a book. One moment he was singing to her with promises of love that could encompass over every surface of this earth, with light praises of heart wrenching love, and in the next moment, he would become a stranger to protect himself. 

He would, in the next second, kill her. 

There seemed to be a moment where light was not reflecting in his eyes, but Chen Miao Ping could understand. For anyone who saw their partner on the night of their wedding fooling around with another woman, their heart was most likely more dead than ash.

Chun Qiao was quickly taken away and the surrounding servants had already left in the span of a breath. In no time, Qu Feng Courtyard was empty except the two and their closest personal aides. It was then that an elderly maid, a Mo-mo1, entered. She was followed by two younger maids, who looked like they were ranked fairly high amongst the servants. But that Momo bowed before Xie Yu Zhi and quietly said, 

“Gong-Ye2 is waiting at Dian Yun Pagoda for Second Master.”

Hearing this, Xie Yu Zhi nodded his head in acknowledgment. Chen Miao Ping felt a bit weirded out however, as the Momo had given him a deep look before leaving, and he couldn’t help but analyze what it meant……

Was it because the original host was too terrible that his father-in-law needed to kick this son-in-law out?

That can’t happen.

In the modern era, Chen Miao Ping was a useless piece of junk, only knowing to eat, drink and have fun. Here in the ancient times, he couldn’t do any of the fine arts and he definitely didn’t have any martial arts skills. If he was to be kicked out, the only thing he could do was starve to death.

Given that that’ll mean he’ll be on the bad side of Chang Guo Gong, he would not be able to get any footing as an imperial official, to be part of the imperial court. If it became like this, would he have to be a prostitute, selling his body to keep living? No no no no, that can’t happen.

Seeing Xie Yu Zhi stand up from the chair, as if to leave, Chen Miao Ping quickly climbed up from the ground clumsily, yelling out after him,

“Second Master! Second Master, wait wait!”

Notes:

*1 Mo-mo: a way to call an older/more elderly maid, or a female servant who is fairly old and works fairly high up in status in comparison to the other servants. To be called Mo-mo, they are mostly the ones that have been at their job for a very long long time and they are higher in status than the younger maids. Depending who their specific master/mistress is, the more higher tiered they can be (so if it was a Mo-mo of Chang Guo Gong, she would be higher in status than any other possible older Mo-mo from within the Chang Guo Gong estate for example). There’s also quite a bit of other factors, but you can think of it as by status and age (higher + older) as who gets determined to be a mo-mo.

*2 Gong-Ye: a way to call in response to Chang Guo Gong like Second Master. Can be used for any male head of the household, one that is the most respectable usually (-Ye as a suffix can be used by itself for a male who’s older)

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