Chen Weiwan walked forward holding the pit, her eyes smiling, the jade pendant on her waist swaying with her steps: "Your Excellency, it's boring to compete with each other for eloquence. Why not compete to see who can make Mr. Wang on the street willingly give us the candied haws?"
The messenger was stunned, his goat beard twitching. "What do you mean?"
"It's very simple," Shen Weiwan took out "Memoirs of My Forefathers Who Scammed Memoirs" and shook it. A dried croton leaf fell out from between the pages. "I'll let my son 'borrow' it, and you let your counselor 'buy' it. Whoever gets it first wins."
Kenkeng immediately ran to Uncle Wang's stall on his short legs, his sunburned face tilted up, his nose speckled with mud. "Grandpa, my mother says your candied haws are the sweetest in the capital, but it's a pity I don't have the money to buy them. But I heard a secret—" He lowered his voice deliberately, pointing at the red-robed strategist behind the messenger, "that uncle in red said your candy tastes like snot, and he even wants to steal your recipe for candied chestnuts!"
The envoy's counselor also stepped forward, took out a gold ingot, and said in a haughty voice: "Old man, I will buy all your candied haws and give you another ten taels of gold."
Uncle Wang gave the biggest bunch of candied haws to Kangkang, and also grabbed a handful of sugar-roasted chestnuts. "Have some, dear! That one in red looks so mean and sharp, how can she compare to your sweet little mouth!"
The whole hall erupted in laughter. The messenger's face turned from red to blue, and he waved his sleeves, saying, "This is child's play, it doesn't count!"
"Why not?" Chen Weiwan raised an eyebrow and handed the book to the messenger. The cover gleamed faintly in the sunlight. "My family's ancestral art of deceiving people is to make people willingly be deceived. Unlike some people who only use gold to make people's teeth ache."
The messenger left angrily, leaving behind a sentence: "Da Sheng has no one, and it relies on women and children!"
Chen Weiwan shouted at his back: "Messenger, take care! Next time I come, I'll give you a complete set of "The Secret of Tricking People", with a sample of croton powder included!"
On the way back home, Xiao Yu saw Shen Weiwan flipping through the book again and couldn't help but say, "Madam, although this trick is interesting, it can't always be used at state banquets. What will it look like if it gets out?"
"Your Highness, this is wrong." Shen Weiwan closed the book, her eyes gleaming as she pointed at the illustrations. "Look at our ancestors, which one of them didn't use sand sculptures to protect their country? This is called intangible cultural heritage! Look at this 'wetting your pants to scare the enemy' method, our ancestors used this trick to scare off bandits..."
Kengkeng and Wawa immediately hugged their books and shouted, "Mom, teach us the 'wetting your pants to scare the enemy' method tomorrow!"
Xiao Yu held his forehead and sighed, watching the street scene passing by outside the car window: "Forget it, forget it, as long as you are happy, just don't let me get into this trouble."
That night, Chen Weiwan fell asleep with the book as her pillow, moonlight streaming through the window lattice onto the pages. Suddenly, she noticed a line of tiny cinnabar characters on the last page, as if carved with a fingernail: "My son, remember this: you can't be without the heart to deceive others, and you can't be without the effort to deceive others, but there must always be a limit to your deception. Don't be like your father, who deceived the enemy country and then his wife, and is still kneeling on the washboard..."
"Hahaha!" Shen Weiwan laughed so hard that she rolled into Xiao Yu's arms, handed him the book, and brushed his chin with her hair. "Look, Your Highness! It turns out that the eunuch is also a fellow traveler!"
Xiao Yu looked at the words and pinched her cheek, feeling both amused and helpless. "It seems that this skill of kneeling on the washboard is also a family tradition passed down from the Shen family."
Moonlight streamed through the window through the leaves of the sycamore trees. Laughter from the prince's mansion startled the nightingales perched under the eaves. Shen Weiwan knew that this "Memoirs of a Swindling Ancestor" was not only a family heirloom, but also the perfect footnote to her whimsical life. In this life, she would not only defraud every villain but also carry forward the Shen family's witty wisdom, so that every corner of the Dasheng Dynasty would be filled with the joy of deceiving others!
The next morning, Chen Weiwan brought Kengkeng and Wawa to the General's ancestral hall. On the incense table sat Chen Lie's tablet, a portrait of the general sporting a sly smile. She lit three incense sticks and, amidst the swirling incense, said with a smile, "Father, thank you for your 'Eternal Foundation.' Your love for you was not in vain! I will never let this secret art of deceiving people be lost!"
Kenkeng and Wawa imitated him, kowtow- ing rudely, their little heads banging against the cushions, their foreheads stained with incense ash. "Don't worry, Grandpa! We're going to rip off the bad guys all over the place and make them drink croton tea until they're completely paralyzed!"
Xiao Yu stood at the entrance to the ancestral hall, looking at the mother and her two children, shaking his head helplessly. Sunlight streamed through the carved window lattices, dancing on the osmanthus blossoms in Shen Weiwan's hair. He knew that the Dasheng Dynasty's "era of deception" would reach its peak under the Shen family. And he, willingly, was the happiest "victim" of this deceitful family—as long as they stopped sprinkling croton powder in his morning tea.
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