Chapter 24 The number one scholar’s father is a charlatan who always wins in gambling!
Tan Zhuyue, who was visited by the aggressive Tan family, felt very aggrieved. On her wedding night, her groom ran away to live in the study, and her mother-in-law came to blame her. Is there any bride as miserable as her? Her in-laws joined forces to bully her. She thought her life would be easier since her mother-in-law was her real aunt. She didn't expect that Tan, who treated her kindly and gentlely in the past, would be so hateful after becoming her mother-in-law.
After being scolded by Tan, Tan Zhuyue finally couldn't help but speak up and said, "Aunt, you can't blame me for this, right? My husband looked reluctant to marry me. I just asked a few questions and he left angrily. I didn't even have a chance to talk to him more."
Tan had heard the explanation from her son. Now that she heard that her daughter-in-law's explanation was different from her son's, she naturally chose to believe her son's explanation.
Tan sneered, "Changwen and you haven't met many times before marriage, and the imperial examination is coming soon. It's normal that he doesn't care much about marriage. After the examination, you will have time to cultivate your feelings. You actually wrongly accuse Changwen of having an affair with Qingyue. How can you ruin the reputation of your husband and sister as soon as you get married? If I had known you were like this, I would have let Changwen marry Qingyue." At least Tan Qingyue has a younger brother from the same mother, who is more in line with her standards for choosing a daughter-in-law.
Tan Zhuyue turned a deaf ear to what Tan said before, and only noticed Tan's last sentence 'I'd rather let Changwen marry Qingyue'. She thought: As expected, the Li family wants to marry Tan Qingyue. Not only Li Changwen has feelings for Tan Qingyue, but even aunt Tan has taken a fancy to Tan Qingyue. No wonder Tan Qingyue's marriage in the previous life was a harmonious one, but now she is facing all kinds of difficulties after marrying in. Perhaps in her previous life, Wang had planned her marriage, and the Li family had also intervened, otherwise how could the Li family have married Tan Qingyue as they wished?
Tan Zhuyue was quite dissatisfied with her aunt and mother-in-law, Mrs. Tan. She was not a cunning person who was good at acting, so her face showed some dissatisfaction and resentment.
Tan was originally speaking in anger, and after saying that she was planning to teach her eldest niece and daughter-in-law a lesson. However, just after she finished speaking, she saw the dissatisfaction and resentment on Tan Zhuyue's face, and her heart sank.
Did she hold a grudge against me just because I scolded her a few words? How can you treat your juniors like this? Tan, who was not very satisfied with Tan Zhuyue to begin with, now had a deeper impression of her and her previous idea of teaching her daughter-in-law faded. She said with a lack of interest: "Forget it, you are not allowed to talk about Qingyue anymore. Changwen has to prepare for the imperial examination, so you should not bother him too much."
After saying this, Tan left. She didn't want to look at Tan Zhuyue again.
Tan Zhuyue's dissatisfaction and resentment grew more and more, but she also knew that when you are under someone's roof, you have to bow your head.
She had just married into the Li family and had not yet established herself, so it was not a wise move for her to offend her husband and mother-in-law.
So Tan Zhuyue thought about it, and decided to suppress her anger and dissatisfaction, changed into a casual outfit, and sent a maid to bring a bowl of noodles from the kitchen, and personally took it to the study, and said to Li Changwen, "Husband, it was all my fault before, please don't blame me..."
Li Changwen stayed alone in the study for a while and calmed down a lot. He felt that there was really no need for him to be angry because of Tan Zhuyue. If he really didn't like her, he could just treat her as a decoration. As a man, couldn't he take a concubine if he didn't like his wife?
As a man who was born and raised in this era, Li Changwen is not the kind of man who has the consciousness of keeping his chastity, but he does not value beauty. If he has a harmonious relationship with his wife, he will not deliberately take a concubine. However, if his relationship with his wife is not good, he will naturally want to take a concubine. It all depends on how important his wife is in his heart and whether he can give up taking a concubine for his wife.
Tan Zhuyue took the initiative to apologize and make peace. Li Changwen didn't care whether she was sincere or just pretending. He gave her a way out and was too lazy to care about it. After all, how could he have the mind to review his studies when his family was in turmoil?
Li Changwen ate the shredded chicken noodles sent by Tan Zhuyue and said that he accepted her apology and goodwill, but he had no intention of going back to the new house to sleep.
Tan Zhuyue left with gritted teeth in anger. The groom actually spent the whole night in the study on their wedding night. After the news spread in the Li Mansion, even the servants would not take her, the new young lady, seriously. Her troubles were still to come.
Realizing that her husband's family was not as easy to get along with as she had imagined, Tan Zhuyue suppressed her temper and played the role of a quail for a few days. Her performance was quite good. Mrs. Tan thought that she was really being obedient and had a different impression of her. So when she returned home three days later, she specially prepared some extra gifts for her to save her face.
Under Tan's instructions, Li Changwen pretended to be a considerate husband and accompanied Tan Zhuyue back home.
However, the relationship between the Tan family and the Li family is too close. The Tan family is Li Changwen's maternal family. Not only are the maids and servants around Tan Zhuyue brought from the Tan family as dowry to the Li family, even the servants around Li Changwen are the children born after the dowry was taken away from the Tan family when Tan got married and the family gave birth to a child and went to the Li family. They are related to the servants of the Tan family.
So the embarrassment that Tan Zhuyue tried so hard to avoid on her wedding night was soon discovered by the Tan family.
Stepmother Wang was the first one who couldn't help laughing. When Tan Zhuyue came back, she asked her in a sarcastic tone how her marriage was going.
Tan Zhuyue's face turned ugly due to the ridicule, but she still had to put on a smile and pretend that she was living a good life. However, whether she was living a good life or not could be seen from her face. Even the careless Tan father could see that his eldest daughter seemed to be living an uncomfortable life after getting married.
Tan's father frowned and secretly criticized Li Changwen. He put on the airs of an uncle and father-in-law to teach Li Changwen a lesson and asked Li Changwen to treat Tan Zhuyue well.
Li Changwen originally had a grudge against Tan Zhuyue because of this arranged marriage, and because Tan Zhuyue insisted on thinking that he liked Tan Qingyue as if she didn't understand what he was saying, he had never been able to like Tan Zhuyue as his wife. Now, when he heard Tan's father forcing him to like Tan Zhuyue in such a strong tone, he became rebellious and showed a bad face to Tan Zhuyue right in front of Tan's father at the Tan family.
Tan's father was so angry. He asked Li Changwen to be nicer to Tan Zhuyue, but Li Changwen turned his face away from Tan Zhuyue in front of him. Was this the look he gave to Tan Zhuyue? This look was clearly directed at his father-in-law!
It was as if Father Tan was competing with Li Changwen to see whose expression was uglier. Anyway, both of their expressions were uglier than the other. The father-in-law and son-in-law didn't even want to talk anymore, and the conversation suddenly became awkward.
Tan Zhuyue was so embarrassed to be caught in the middle. She wanted to smooth things over, but because the conflict was not made public, she didn't know how to do it.
The only person who was happy was the second wife Wang. After all, Tan Zhuyue had disgusted her a lot before she got married. Now that Tan Zhuyue was not living well after getting married, Wang was extremely happy. What made her happiest was that Tan Zhuyue insisted on jumping into the fire pit of Li Changwen herself, and fortunately she did not let her daughter jump in.
Otherwise, no matter how promising Li Changwen is, Qingyue would probably suffer a lot if she married a man who didn't even look at his wife in a good light when he returned home.
Tan Qingyue tried hard to reduce her presence. She was also glad that her mother's plan to snatch the marriage contract with Li Changwen for her had failed. Otherwise, wouldn't her life be extremely difficult if she married a man who gave a cold shoulder to his newlywed wife?
Why would she start with hell when she can have an easy start? She would rather her mother choose a husband for her who was easy to handle.
However, although Tan Qingyue looked down on Li Changwen's cold attitude towards his newlywed wife, this did not prevent her from wanting to establish a good relationship with Li Changwen.
Because she was an unmarried girl and there was another person named Tan Zhuyue who was eyeing her, it was not easy for her to have a good relationship with Li Changwen, so Tan Qingyue pushed her brother forward to make friends with Li Changwen.
Since Li Changwen is so talented and has a bright future, what does it have to do with her that he is a scumbag to his wife? He is her cousin, and he has a bright future ahead of him, so she can enjoy the shade under his big tree.
If she has a promising relative, she will be able to marry into a higher class in the future.
Tan Qingyue thought very rationally in her mind, and she would choose whatever approach was most beneficial to her.
Tan Qingyue's mother, Wang, had similar ideas to hers, so she was happy to see her son getting close to his cousin Li Changwen. Even when Tan's father wanted to get angry at Li Changwen, Wang deliberately interrupted him and changed the subject to prevent Tan's father from attacking Li Changwen.
What does it have to do with her whether Tan Zhuyue, her stepdaughter, lives a good life after getting married? She didn't want to offend Li Changwen, a nephew with a bright future, just because of Tan Zhuyue.
With Wang's obstruction, Tan's father was never able to explode under Tan Zhuyue's expectant gaze. The expectation in Tan Zhuyue's eyes became fainter and fainter, and finally disappeared, and she glared at Tan Qingyue fiercely.
In Tan Zhuyue's view, Wang and others' actions of showing goodwill to Li Changwen were just Tan Qingyue's attempt to seduce her brother-in-law.
So this time, Tan Zhuyue didn't stay long and hurriedly took Li Changwen away.
Li Changwen felt that it was really rude of Tan Zhuyue to take him away early. Although he didn't want to stay any longer, what if Tan's father couldn't help but start to attack him? As a junior, he could only bow his head and listen to the lecture, so he followed Tan Zhuyue and left. But this did not prevent him from throwing all the responsibility of leaving Yue's house early to return home to Tan Zhuyue, and he pretended that he was forced to leave Yue's house early because his wife dragged him away.
Li Changwen even took the initiative to turn the tables: "Madam, you are so rude. Logically, we should have stayed a little longer. If we leave early now, outsiders will think we don't know etiquette."
His righteous manner did not reveal at all that he was actually happy to leave early.
With Tan Zhuyue's eyesight, she couldn't tell what kind of thoughts were hidden under Li Changwen's righteous and stern appearance, and she really thought that she had successfully forced Li Changwen to leave early.
Tan Zhuyue felt a little happy in her heart: Although my husband was unwilling, he still followed me, which shows that he still has me in his heart! So it must be that bitch Tan Qingyue who seduced my husband. It is Tan Qingyue who is wrong...
She never thought that if she stayed for a short time and left early on the day of returning to her parents' home, she would lose face as a newly-bride. Others would only think that the couple left early on the day of returning to her parents' home because either her husband's family disliked her and didn't want her to stay longer at her parents' home, or her parents' family disliked her and didn't want her to stay longer at their parents' home.
Tan Zhuyue, who was completely insensitive to these twists and turns, was seen as a fool by Li Changwen and Tan. The more they came into contact with her, the less they liked her.
Father-in-law Li Jingyuan had little interaction with Tan Zhuyue except for the time when he met her when his daughter-in-law toasted him. Tan and Li Changwen would not tell Li Jingyuan that Tan Zhuyue was a fool for the sake of the Tan family's face, so Li Jingyuan still thought that everything would be fine as long as his family was harmonious, and he was only concerned with instructing Li Changwen to prepare well for the imperial examination.
Li Changwen was exhausted both physically and mentally by the stupid and unconscious Tan Zhuyue, and he couldn't even concentrate on reviewing the lessons for the imperial examination.
While Li Jingyuan's family was in chaos, Si Yuan's family was enjoying eating melons with gusto.
Si Yuan was broadcasting the show himself, and the audience was Yu Yan and Li Changqing. The mother and son listened to the chaos in Li Changwen's family after he got married, and they sighed while eating melons: "If you marry an unvirtuous wife, your family will be in turmoil."
Li Changqing felt particularly sympathetic towards his cousin Li Changwen: "I said he shouldn't get married before the imperial examination. His current family environment will definitely delay his studies." But he and Li Changwen were not too close. In fact, because their fathers had a bad relationship, there was some subtle awkwardness in their relationship. Even if he sympathized with Li Changwen, he couldn't do anything.
Yu Yan turned to her son and said, "Don't worry, Changqing. Mother will never find you a wife like this in the future."
Li Changqing was not shy at all about talking about what kind of wife he would marry in the future. He said calmly, "Mother, my father said that I will decide my marriage in the future. He will not interfere. It's up to me."
Yu Yan looked at Si Yuan in surprise. Seeing Si Yuan nodded, she said, "Well, since your father said so, he must have his reasons. We will not care about you anymore. Go find a wife by yourself."
Although Si Yuan seemed eccentric and unreliable over the years, he educated his son very well. Yu Yan also had a high degree of trust in him and felt that he had his own intentions in everything he did and would never harm her son. So although Yu Yan didn't understand why Si Yuan wanted to give Li Changqing the freedom to marry, she still chose to support him.
After all, it is because Yu Yan is different from Tan. She does not have the idea of pushing her son to succeed. She is happy if her son is successful, but it doesn't matter if he is not successful, as long as he can live a healthy and happy life. Anyway, her family is rich and has the support of the Jingyuan Earl's Mansion, so they will not be bullied. Her husband does not care about the inheritance of future generations. As a person with the surname Yu, she does not care about the inheritance of the surname Li. She only cares about whether her biological son Li Changqing lives a good life.
In the original plot, Yu Yan urged Li Changqing to work hard to make progress. That was because the original Li Siyuan was too unreliable. He lost all his family property in gambling and offended people everywhere. Li Changqing had no qualifications to lie down and grow happily. He could only work hard to make progress with heavy expectations and burdens.
Yu Yan hopes that her son will work harder when he is young, live a good life in the future, and escape from the quagmire of his original family. That's why I use every possible means to motivate him to work hard and make progress.
Now that Si Yuan had traveled through time and completely changed the tragic fate of their mother and son, Yu Yan's thoughts naturally changed. Yu Yan never again said to her son Li Changqing that she hoped he would earn an imperial edict for her.
But Li Changqing was very sensible and knew how to make progress: "Mother, there is no rush to get married. I want to work hard to make a career now, earn a royal title for you, and make father famous because of his son."
Yu Yan glared at Si Yuan. How could you educate your son like that? The saying "a father's status depends on his son" was so ugly.
Si Yuan smiled innocently and joked, "As a father, I can't make progress if I don't want to work hard. Anyway, I have no future in this life, so I can only let my son support me!"
Li Changqing smiled and leaned against Si Yuan intimately, and said happily: "Dad, don't worry, your son will definitely be very successful. When you become an official, let him support you and mom!" The child who grew up in love is particularly proud and confident, with a sunny smile on his face.
Si Yuan smiled and hugged his son's shoulders, saying with relief: "Yes, yes, my son will definitely be very promising. Then Dad and Mom will wait for Xiao Changqing to raise us, so that we can be honored by our son."
Li Changqing scratched his head and smiled embarrassedly: "Hehe."
Li Changqing stood up with full fighting spirit: "Then I will continue to review my lessons. I must win the first place in this imperial examination!"
Passing the imperial examination was a sure thing for Li Changqing, so achieving the "big three" among the imperial scholars was what Li Changqing wanted to pursue further.
While Li Changqing was preparing for the metropolitan examination and the palace examination, Si Yuan was actually not idle either.
The battle for succession, which began more than ten years ago, has now entered a white-hot stage.
Newcomers who joined the officialdom during this period could easily become cannon fodder in the fight for succession. In the original plot, after the male protagonist Li Changwen passed the imperial examination and entered the officialdom, even with the protection of his father who was a third-rank official, he was repeatedly involved in the struggles among the princes. If Li Jingyuan had not secretly surrendered to the third prince and had not been protected by the third prince who had secretly accumulated strength and was quite powerful, I am afraid that Li Changwen, the third place winner in the imperial examination, would have become cannon fodder.
The top two candidates in the imperial examination who entered officialdom in the same year as Li Changwen were both involved in the battle for the throne and became innocent victims, and were easily killed as cannon fodder.
It is very difficult to survive in such a chaotic officialdom. There is no way to survive for those non-stick-pot officials who are dedicated to working for the people and don't want to take sides.
When the princes who were engaged in factional struggles found a wild official who had no camp, their first reaction was to win him over. If they failed to win him over, they would get rid of him and then replace the official with one of their own.
There is no way to survive for wild officials who are not protected by the camp.
How could Si Yuan let his son live in such a chaotic officialdom and be so frightened?
So Si Yuan started quietly planning a few years ago. He did not show up, but was just fanning the flames behind the scenes. Now it's time to close the net.
Before the imperial examination this year, there was severe turmoil in the government and the country.
The third prince reported that the eldest prince had hidden the dragon robe with the intention of treason. The eldest prince was horrified because he did not hide the dragon robe.
However, he was not panicking, because the eldest prince really had the intention of rebellion. As the fight for the throne had lasted for more than ten years, his power had been suppressed, and the chance of becoming the crown prince was getting lower and lower. He had to consider taking the risk of forcing the emperor to abdicate.
So after being wrongly accused by the third prince of hoarding the dragon robe, he simply rebelled and coup-ed.
Because a certain master who wished to remain anonymous told him that he was betting on him to win the rebellion bet.
The confident eldest prince forced the palace to rebel, and the third prince was horrified because he had wronged the eldest prince and just wanted to frame him and kick him out of the battlefield for the throne. He had even sent people to hide the dragon robe in the rockery of the eldest prince's palace.
But the third prince never expected that the eldest prince did not really hide the dragon robe, but really wanted to rebel!
The Third Prince was caught off guard by the First Prince's troops. The First Prince forced his way to the palace and came before the Emperor. The Emperor was furious and unwilling to give him an abdication decree, so the First Prince sneered and killed the Third Prince to make an example of him: "Father, you don't want to end up like your Third Brother, do you?"
Before his death, the third prince felt aggrieved and tearful: Brother, you have been wronged by me, how could you really want to rebel?
The eldest prince sneered: When you are wrongly accused of treason, you'd better have really made plans for rebellion!
The emperor was frightened by the eldest prince's ruthless act of killing the third prince with a knife. When he was really planning to write an abdication edict to save his life, the second prince brought people to protect him.
As the saying goes, the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. The second prince said that a master who did not want to reveal his name had given him advice, and that if he came to the rescue at this time, he would definitely get what he wanted. He was sure to win this bet!
The eldest prince, the praying mantis, really did not expect that his own men would be easily defeated by the men brought by the second prince. He planned to fight to the death one last time. As long as he could kill the emperor and the second prince, what would it matter even if he openly rebelled? He is the only one who can sit on the throne!
So the eldest prince rushed to the emperor with his sword first, and the second prince seized the opportunity to call on his personal guards to rescue him. He hid behind the remaining personal guards to protect his own safety and verbally rescued the emperor: "Father! Your son is here to rescue you! Hurry up and rescue you! Big brother, you traitor, let father go!"
The eldest prince stabbed the emperor in the kidney and was then subdued by the second prince's guards.
In the end, the eldest prince was executed, the emperor was seriously injured, and the second prince became the final winner.
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