Chapter 323 The Devil Gets Up Early to Study
Tu Subo saw the worry between Gu Yuexuan's brows and softened his voice to coax her, "Cheng Jingen will be returning to Beijing to report on his work in the spring. How about I ask him to go to the Gu Mansion to find out the news?"
"Pei Ziyue might not be completely thorough. When Cheng Jingen arrives in the capital, have him find a reason to weigh in on your younger brother." He measured the air with his thumb, "to see if he's really grown taller as my mother-in-law said in her letter."
Gu Yuexuan had been feeling a lump in her throat, but after hearing the tone of this piglet, she couldn't help but burst into laughter: "My mother and younger brother have been living in the inner house for a long time. Cheng Jingen is an outsider, how can he get in?"
"What's so difficult about that?" Tu Subo blinked seriously, "Let him climb over the wall and steal the person out, then put him on the scale and you'll know." He spoke confidently, as if he was talking about picking a cabbage from his own vegetable garden.
Gu Yuexuan's eyes widened, with red at the corners of her eyes. "My brother is only eight years old! If he were to be tormented like this by a stranger, he would probably be scared and cry every night." She stretched out her hand to twist his arm, "You are such a frivolous person!"
Tu Subo was twisted so hard that it hurt, but he didn't get angry. He smiled and held her wrist. "Don't worry, everything in the capital is taken care of." His calloused palm rubbed against her delicate skin. "If anything goes wrong, our people will handle it."
The copper bells on the eaves were startled by the night wind and rang. Tu Subo looked at the swaying lanterns outside the window and suddenly whispered, "Xuanxuan, wait two more years."
"Then take my mother-in-law and younger brother out of the Gu Mansion and choose a quieter courtyard to settle them in." He traced the lines on her palm with his fingertips. "It's better than being bullied in that filthy backyard. What do you think?"
Gu Yuexuan's heart just warmed up, but then it turned into a mixture of laughter and tears: "My Lord, do you think the Gu family is a storytelling stall in the vegetable market?" She took out a handkerchief and wiped the non-existent sweat from his forehead, "My mother is a concubine who has been recorded in the imperial book. Even if she dies, she must be buried next to the Gu family tomb."
Tu Subo's eyes flashed sinisterly, but he still wore a smile on his face: "Everything depends on human effort." He changed the subject and talked about the game he was going to hunt tomorrow. "The hunter said the other day that there were muntjacs in the west mountains. How about I make you a fur collar?"
The candle wick popped and Gu Yuexuan yawned. Tu Subo tucked the quilt in for her and tiptoed out the door.
Under the moonlight, Tu Su Minfei sat on a stone bench in the courtyard, marking homework. The orange light illuminated the rice paper in his hand, where a few crooked lines of calligraphy appeared: "A spring outing, apricot blossoms blowing all over my head. On the street, whose young man is so charming..."
"Tu Su Minyang, what a bastard!" The veins on his forehead throbbed. "He was asked to write a policy paper on 'Salt and Iron Theory', but he dared to copy Huajian Ci to fool people!"
Tu Subo was about to discuss the spring plowing on the farm with him, but when he saw this, he turned around and tried to leave, but was caught by his sharp-eyed brother.
"Brother, you've arrived just in time!" Tu Suminfei shook the scrawled piece of homework, "Look at what the third brother has written!"
The pages rustled in the night wind. Tu Subo glanced at the line "I intend to marry you and spend my whole life with you." The corner of his mouth twitched. "It does rhyme?"
"What the hell is that rhyming!" Tu Sumin slammed his head and stood up. "Last month, I asked him to recite 'On the Qin Dynasty', and he recited 'Song of Everlasting Regret' to me. The day before yesterday, when I tested 'Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art', he drew a turtle on the paper!"
Tu Subo suppressed his laughter and advised: "Yang'er is still young..."
"Little?" Tu Suminfei shook out three sheets of ink-stained rice paper. "Last month, he said he wanted to learn military tactics. Who was it that inserted pornographic pictures into Sun Tzu's Art of War? And who was roasting sweet potatoes under the incense table in the ancestral hall yesterday?"
The night owl laughed strangely in the treetops. Tu Subo rubbed his throbbing temples and said, "Tomorrow I will teach him myself..."
"No need!" Tu Suminfei rolled up his sleeves and gritted his teeth. "Tonight I will let this bastard know what it means to be like a father to an elder brother!"
Suddenly, a loud "clang" sounded from the west wing, followed by the hoarse voice of a teenager in his voice change period: "Second brother, I was wrong! Don't use the ruler! Ouch! My "Youxianku" is still under my pillow..."
Tu Subo looked up at the starry sky and suddenly felt that the troubles on the farm were not so difficult.
Tu Subo felt a chill on the back of his neck, and heard Tu Suminfei's trembling voice behind him: "Brother, what do you think of Minyang...what will happen in the future?"
Cicadas chirped noisily outside the window, and Tu Suminfei's fingers, gripping the rice paper, trembled. "Three generations of our ancestors were soldiers, so even a commoner could read military manuals. But he..." The paper rustled, and the ink slanted like a worm crawling in the mud. "It's better for him not to be able to read!"
Tu Subo looked at the bamboo wind chimes swaying under the eaves, and thought of the third brother's feat last month of annotating the Analects into a guide to katydid breeding. The corners of his mouth twitched: "At least I can read the words clearly."
"Is this considered a character?!" Tu Suminfei shook out three pieces of scrawled characters. "The day before yesterday, when we were tested on the Thousand Character Classic, he wrote it in tadpole script! And yesterday, when we were reciting the Memorial to the Emperor on Leaving the Capital, he even managed to slip in a doggerel poem!"
The bamboo curtain was suddenly blown away by the wind, revealing the crooked "I was here" inscription on the wall. Tu Suminfei's forehead was throbbing with veins. "Look at the words he carved on the wall. My grandfather's purple bamboo ruler has broken three times!"
Tu Subo picked up the crumpled rice paper on the ground, the ink smeared all over it. "'When friends come from afar, isn't it nice to roast sweet potatoes?'... Doesn't that rhyme?"
"What the hell!" Tu Sumin slammed his fist on the table, shaking the teacup. "Last month, I asked him to recite The Art of War, and he drew a turtle on a bamboo slip! Yesterday, I tested him on The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art, and he found a pornographic picture hidden in the straw paper!"
Suddenly, there was a loud "bang" in the west wing, and the young man's hoarse voice penetrated the window paper: "Second brother, I was wrong! Don't pull my ears! Ouch! My "Jin Ping Mei" is still under the kang mat..."
Tu Suminfei picked up the ruler and was about to charge, but Tu Subo grabbed his sleeve and said, "The third child is only fourteen..."
"Fourteen?!" Tu Su Minfei shook out another stack of papers. "Four-year-old Min Xu was better than him!" On the snow-white rice paper, the childish handwriting neatly copied the "Three Character Classic": "If Min Yang had even a fraction of his intelligence..."
The cicadas suddenly fell silent. Tu Subo looked at the third brother's new creation from yesterday—a crooked poem paired with a picture of katydids fighting—and laughed so hard that his shoulders shook. "It's quite ingenious, isn't it?"
Tu Suminfei looked up in despair: "I started learning at the age of three and wrote a policy paper at the age of seven. How could this happen..." Before he finished speaking, a "splash" sound of falling into the water came from the west wing, mixed with Tu Suminyang's howling: "My "Youxianku" fell into the well!"
In the dim light of dawn, Tu Suminyang sat at his desk, tears streaming down his face. Gu Yuexuan passed by carrying a bamboo basket. Seeing his red nose, she chuckled and said, "The sun is rising from the west? Our devil is actually getting up early to study?"
“Sister-in-law…” the young man sobbed and wiped his eyes, “Second brother said that you are not allowed to go out until you finish reciting Mencius, and there will be a test at noon…” The ink on the rice paper was smudged into a mass, as if it had been scratched by a chicken.
Gu Yuexuan leaned over to look at the scroll he was holding. It was the key points she had highlighted the day before. She lowered her voice and said, "Didn't I tell you to memorize these few paragraphs?"
"I memorized it!" Tu Suminyang's tears fell into the inkstone. "I memorized it until three o'clock in the morning yesterday, but when I woke up this morning..." He pulled his hair in grievance, "I forgot everything!"
Suddenly, Tu Su Min Fei's roar came from the east wing: "Tu Su Min Yang! I asked you to copy the "Encouraging Learning" and you drew a turtle instead!"
The boy shuddered and scrambled to hide his graffiti under the table. Gu Yuexuan spotted the painting of "Master fighting katydids" and tried to suppress her laughter until her stomach ached. "How about...my sister-in-law teach you a trick?"
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