17 Chapter 17

◎Men actually know everything◎

It gets hotter as the Mid-Autumn Festival approaches, especially at night. It is completely different from Jizhou. Although Jizhou is hot during the day, it is still cool at night.

There were four ice basins in the room. Huiyin only felt a little cooler after drinking a bowl of ice cream.

The Huaiyin Palace had a special ice cellar. She stayed at home almost every day, except for taking a walk in the garden after dinner. Her life was really wonderful.

"Miss Xun must be given enough ice and sufficient allowance. I can't let others gossip about me." Huiyin said with a smile.

Fu Gui said, "Don't worry, we have sent enough things there. To be honest, you have been very good to her. Do you really think you are a princess? Her maid is really ignorant and wants a cousin from a distant place to be the housekeeper."

Huiyin sighed: "Regarding her case, I don't care what Concubine Wu promised her before, I definitely can't let her into the house. I don't even have a child yet, it's like taking a concubine in, it doesn't make sense."

After saying that, she looked at Fugui and the maids and asked, "Do you have enough ice in your room?"

Dong Shun and the others all laughed and said, "Thanks to the ice, we slept much more comfortably."

"That's good." Huiyin stood up and prepared to wash up.

Today is August 13th. I looked at the sky and saw that it was getting late. I thought that Li Cheng might not come back until tomorrow. Unexpectedly, the personal soldiers outside came in to say that Li Cheng had returned.

Huiyin immediately ran to the door and saw Li Cheng in armor appearing in front of her. Her eyes warmed up. She finally saw an acquaintance: "Young Prince, I pay my respects to you."

Li Cheng seldom came back before. It was boring for him to come back alone. Now seeing Huiyin flying towards him like a little bird, he quickly caught her: "I originally planned to come tomorrow, but I wanted to see you as soon as possible, so I came back early."

"Why haven't I seen you being so smooth-talking before? Are you hungry? Do you want the kitchen to make you some midnight snacks..."

Li Cheng felt warm at heart after hearing these words. After his parents passed away, his grandmother had been very kind to him, but this kindness had to be repaid. Every bit of her contribution had to be taken back, not in vain.

But the wife doesn't seem to be like this, she really treats him as her husband.

"I'm a little hungry. Just ask the kitchen to prepare some side dishes. Don't prepare those big meats. I can't eat them." Li Cheng said with a smile.

"Okay!"

There were two red candles on the high table, and there were exactly four side dishes and a bowl of soup on the table. Li Cheng picked up a large chicken leg from the bowl, and listened to Huiyin telling him everything that had happened in the past month.

When he heard Huiyin talking about Xun Rou, he was listening attentively.

"She came here alone, and I felt unsafe. Then she started to make a fuss about going out. I thought I should wait for you to come back and arrange for someone to accompany her. After all, she is getting married, and it's not right for her to walk around the streets so openly, or even go to someone's house without saying she received a visiting card."

Speaking of Xun Rou, Li Cheng said, "You did the right thing. She is a girl, and she can't be the same as before. She has been unconventional since she was a child. When she quarreled with her father as a child, she could hide in a box and come to our house in the carriage that her father brought gifts. She is very brave."

Huiyin smiled and said, "After all, I am only your cousin's wife, not your childhood sweetheart. If she comes to you for something, you should talk to her properly. Besides, she is the same age as me, and she is also a grown-up girl. The old concubine asked you to help her find a good husband, so you should also pay attention to it."

Li Cheng put down his chopsticks and said, "You have to do this. I train the army every day, so how can I have the time to find a husband? Besides, my subordinates, including the youngest Yuwen Dang, have both sons and daughters."

"Me? She can't find a good husband in a place like Jianye where all the elites gather. Xuzhou can't compare to Jianye, and I don't know anyone there." Huiyin was not willing to be a matchmaker, and she could see that Xun Rou didn't really want to marry outside her home.

Li Cheng thought so too. He took another mouthful of rice and drank a bowl of soup. Huiyin personally handed him a cup of tea for him to rinse his mouth.

Huiyin wanted to say something, but Li Cheng picked her up and said, "Let's go take a bath." She couldn't push him away, so she had to let him do it.

Li Cheng was so obsessed with her that after they were done, Huiyin couldn't help but say, "Tell me about yourself. The most frequent communication you have with me is in bed."

Li Cheng didn't know either, but he felt safe when he was buried in her body. "I didn't expect that I would want to see you so badly."

"So it's good that I stay with you. You wanted to drive me away at the beginning." Huiyin couldn't help but scold him.

Li Cheng also felt that he was blinded by lust. He really had no other explanation. In fact, Zheng was indeed beautiful, but he had seen women who were more beautiful than her.

He seemed to be a little addicted to the light-hearted feeling she had, that worldly yet otherworldly feeling.

"It's my fault, okay." Li Cheng smiled.

It was rare that he looked so relaxed, and Huiyin felt much better too.

Xun Rou didn't know her cousin had returned until the next day. She was afraid Huiyin would not let her meet and talk with her cousin, but she didn't expect Huiyin to have someone tell her that they would have dinner together in the evening.

Upon hearing this, Meixiang quickly opened her dressing box and said, "Girl, dress up before you go. It's rare that she is so kind. She usually ignores you."

Xun Rou glanced at the white jade hairpin on the dressing table and said with some understanding: "How could she be kind? She was doing it for my cousin to see."

…

Since Li Cheng came back, many people came to visit him, so he never stopped meeting them.

Most of the local nobles who came to visit him also wanted to make friends with the King of Huaiyin. Originally, Li Cheng just wanted to stay here, but now that he saw that everyone was dealing with him and treating him as a local lord, Li Cheng felt more and more like the master of his own house. Naturally, some people wanted to give their daughters to him, but he would politely decline the offer.

The reason why he refused was of course because his wife was a daughter of Zheng, the daughter of Marquis Zhaojie of Jizhou. Besides, it would not be of much use to marry someone else casually now, and he would become someone else's blood bag.

Huiyin had seen many of these ladies from aristocratic families bring their daughters to their homes, and they were as well-behaved as they could be. Of course, she understood why. Her mother's family often had such families, and her father's favorite concubine, Hu, was sent by the Zhang family, a local wealthy family in Jizhou.

She was thinking of a solution, but she didn't expect Li Cheng to reject all of them and didn't even mention it.

When Huiyin Zhengbang was changing his clothes, he asked directly, "Today, Madam Miao brought her daughter to our house. She kept praising her daughter for being well-behaved. Hey, what do you think she meant by that?"

Li Cheng was stunned: "How would I know that?"

"Stop pretending, you know what I mean." Huiyin sometimes felt that women were really sad. Would she have to hope that men would not take concubines in the future? This was too easy. As long as a man had a little power, he could have a beautiful concubine.

It was the first time that he saw an unhappy expression on Huiyin's face, and her eyes were even a little cold. Li Cheng was instantly unable to express his emotions, because even his father, King Wu, was very harmonious with his mother, Cui, but in order to maintain stability, he still had to marry a daughter to increase his power.

In today's world of warlords vying for supremacy, if you have no power and influence, you will be swallowed up silently.

But when he saw Huiyin, he couldn't help but speak out his true thoughts: "These people just want to send their daughters here, hoping that I can protect their families. But I have already occupied this place, and the people here are nothing more than prey in my pocket, so why should I do this?"

"I thought you were doing this for me? Forget it, let's not talk about this anymore. Change your clothes. I'll come over to welcome you later. I've asked your cousin Xun to come over as well." Huiyin curled her lips and said no more.

After saying that, she turned around and was about to leave, but was stopped by Li Cheng: "I'm sorry."

Huiyin shook her head: "You don't have to say sorry to me. I'm already very happy that you can tell me the truth."

At dinner time, Xun Rou showed up. She was wearing a peacock blue long dress with a slanting collar and a silver-plated hairpin inlaid with gemstones, tourmalines and kingfisher feathers. She looked extremely rich and elegant.

She was very relaxed when talking to Li Cheng. She even called out coquettishly, "Cousin, look at you. This time, you didn't even spend more time with your cousin's wife. Instead, you went to meet so many people."

Li Cheng had just offended Huiyin, and now after hearing what Xunrou said, he thought that the two of them had a good relationship. If it wasn't, Xunrou wouldn't have said it in a joking way, so he smiled and said, "You can't refuse, so you should spend more time with your cousin's wife."

Huiyin was not worried at first, after all, their marriage was a political one, and Li Cheng didn't even have a concubine before marriage, and she couldn't find out after much investigation. The family was also handed over to her to take care of, and this time he came back specifically, probably for her.

But she clearly didn't mention that she was in a good relationship with Xun Rou when she mentioned Xun Rou before, but he didn't notice it at all.

She didn't believe that men and women had different ideas. To put it bluntly, Li Cheng didn't care about her enough.

"Okay, I can only obey your orders, cousin. Hey, cousin, do you remember Sang Zaoer? It gave birth to a nice puppy last year, and I made a doghouse for it..." Xun Rou kept talking about the memories she and Li Cheng shared, about the puppy, Jianye, and she even spoke a few words in dialect when she was in a good mood.

She felt that she had finally found a way to fight back against Huiyin, that is, she and Li Cheng were familiar with each other for ten years, and no one could change that. How could she not be anxious when someone interfered with her first arrival?

At the end, even Xun Rou still felt a little unsatisfied.

Li Cheng suddenly said, "Cousin, you have been accompanying my grandmother in our house for so many years and you have done your best. But I can't keep you here forever. I have already told your sister-in-law that my husband and I will find a marriage for you. In the future, you can just treat me and your cousin as your brother and sister-in-law. We are still a family."

Xun Rou suddenly couldn't even take back the smile on her lips, but she felt like crying but had no tears.

Huiyin thought to herself, see, men actually know everything.

【Author’s words】

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