Chapter 1199: The Meal Replacement Lady is Not Likeable (14)

"Yuan Shichu, I realize that you really don't care about me at all. After all, I am your husband. What happened last night can only be regarded as an affair between us. How can you understand that I took advantage of my drunkenness to deliberately take revenge on you?" Zhan Shulin looked at Yuan Shichu helplessly and sighed, "You really don't understand romance?"

Yuan Shichu was stunned when he heard what he said. He stared at him in doubt and said, "Zhan Shulin, are you crazy? Why are you suddenly talking to me about love between husband and wife? Is there such a thing between us? If you don't know, you would think that you and I are in love."

Zhan Shulin looked at the heartless woman in front of him who had no feelings for him, and felt a little depressed for a moment. It's not that he didn't feel that even though she was married to him, she didn't have any feelings for him. When they were just married, she had been talking about divorce. He didn't care at that time. After all, getting married was just a goal in his life journey. He followed the routine, and he really didn't care who to marry.

But after spending a long time with this heartless woman, he couldn't help being attracted to her. It was obvious that she was not virtuous or gentle at all, and she never had a good face towards him. She never took him, her husband, seriously. But he just felt that this woman had some kind of strange magic that made him unable to help but keep his eyes on her.

She was lazy and enjoyed life. She spent all day thinking about how to make her life more comfortable and would never compromise herself in the slightest. Of course, as her husband, he also enjoyed a lot. However, he had forced himself to have it, and Yuan Shichu did not give it to him voluntarily, so he had always been brooding over it.

Although she has so many shortcomings, she is lively, independent and strong inside. Zhan Shulin sees another way of life for women in her.

Many women of this era are like her mother and sister-in-law. The focus of their lives is always their husbands and children. In order to show their virtue, they have to swallow and endure even if they suffer many grievances, for fear of being accused of being unvirtuous and ungenerous. Even if they have any private preferences, they cannot express them openly. They have to be reserved and restrained, for fear of being accused of this preference being inappropriate for their status, or that preference being petty and unworthy of being in a refined place...

In short, most women of this era are tolerant, restrained, and bound by secular ethics. They are like models imprisoned in a frame, and their every move cannot go beyond that frame. Over time, after being suppressed for so long, people will gradually become disciplined, without any vitality or spirit.

Why did Zhan Shulin admire Yuan Shiwan before? It was because she had a kind of innocence, liveliness and freedom that were rare in women. She was different and naturally attracted attention.

Of course, now Zhan Shulin admires his wife, and gradually realizes that Yuan Shiwan's liveliness at the beginning was due to her innocence and vitality that came from being ignorant of the world and well-protected, but Yuan Shichu's vitality came from the fact that he had already understood the affairs of the world and only cared about the open-mindedness and freedom in his heart.

Zhan Shulin was curious about why she had seen through the world at such a young age, so he became curious about her. With this curiosity, he was naturally attracted to her unconsciously, and his heart slowly fell for her - of course, he has not realized this yet, he is just dissatisfied that his wife does not care about him, and has not thought about it more deeply.

"Yuan Shichu, you always have something to challenge me with. Forget it, I can't argue with you, you win." Zhan Shulin said helplessly, but he was not a pushover, so he added meaningfully, "Next time you kick me out of the room and make me spend the night outside, I will definitely drag you out with me and share the joys and sorrows with me..."

Yuan Shichu's eyes widened. He never expected that he would be so shameless. He was so angry that he laughed: "Zhan Shulin! You are really promising!"

"Thank you for the compliment, madam." Zhan Shulin grinned at her, then sat opposite her and ate her breakfast without any hesitation.

"Don't steal my breakfast. This is what I want to eat. Can't you ask someone to prepare it yourself?" Yuan Shichu said very dissatisfiedly.

"What belongs to my wife is mine. There's no need to make such a clear distinction between husband and wife." Zhan Shulin smiled at her gently, picked up the small crab roe buns in the basket in front of Yuan Shichu with his chopsticks quickly and fiercely. In a short while, two of the four buns were already in his stomach.

Yuan Shichu was so angry that she called him shameless, and she even hurriedly picked up the remaining two and put them into her own bowl, for she was afraid that if she was any later there would be none left.

Maybe food tastes especially good when you snatch it from others. Zhan Shulin felt that he had a very satisfying breakfast. After eating, he went to the Hanlin Academy to report for duty with a refreshed mind, leaving Yuan Shichu who looked angry.

If these little fights between Yuan Shichu and Zhan Shulin can be regarded as marital affection, then the disagreements between Yuan Shiwan and the third prince Ji Xinbai really hurt the relationship between the couple.

The reason was very simple. Ji Xinbai had recently been schemed against by his brothers in political affairs, which caused him to mess up his job and be severely reprimanded by the emperor. Those brothers with ill intentions took advantage of his misfortune in the court and accused him of many crimes, which made the emperor even more dissatisfied with him. So the emperor took away his job and asked him to reflect on his mistakes in seclusion in the mansion. He would come out when he had reflected well.

This sad news dealt a heavy blow to the Third Prince's faction. Some of those with weak wills had even begun looking for other ways out. Even those who had not yet done so began to stand by and watch. There were only a few people who truly worked hard to help him turn things around.

After Concubine Xian found out, she scolded Ji Xinbai in private, saying that it was because he did not reassure the officials who followed him that they became hesitant and unwilling to work for him sincerely.

So, what is the most powerful and strongest bond between two people or two families? It is marriage! But in order to marry the woman he loves, Ji Xinbai refused marriage proposals from other high-ranking officials, and even refused to take concubines and maids. Did he sever his strong ties with his right-hand men in vain?

Of course, if Ji Xinbai was a man with enough courage, who could strategize, grasp the overall situation and reach the top by his own ability, then it would not matter if he did not have a marriage. Unfortunately, he was far from that level, and his ability was not enough to match his ambition. He needed a marriage to strengthen his own power, so his previous insistence on not having a marriage seemed beyond his ability.

Imperial Concubine Xian saw this and forced him to stop being so obsessed with the idea of ​​being together for the rest of his life, and to clear his head and get married when the time came.

(End of this chapter)