Chapter 1536 Extra: Lin Feng (Part 2)
Lin Feng didn't drink much wine because he had to attend court the next day.
That feeling of joy was even more intoxicating than alcohol.
She never expected that the Lord would hold a private celebration banquet for her. This time, the Lord paid 40% of the bill, and the teacher also paid 40%.
Who will pay the remaining 20%?
Shen Tang said, "Of course it's justice."
His colleagues had worked tirelessly to perfect his path as a scholar, so what was wrong with asking him to pay a little? Luan Xin also had a capable wife at home who was good at managing things, and Shen Tang knew without even calculating that this guy was more financially well-off than her, so she managed to squeeze 20% out of him.
Lin Feng: "..."
I never expected that Luan Xin would be among those who paid the bill.
It sounds a bit far-fetched, but upon closer inspection, it makes a lot of sense.
Shen Tang hooked her arm around Lin Feng's neck: "Today, Lingde is the host. Eat and drink as you please. Live for today!"
"There's a grand court assembly tomorrow."
"What's there to be afraid of? If you're really too drunk to get up, just have your avatar check in." She prided herself on being an enlightened monarch and wouldn't deduct a subordinate's perfect attendance bonus for such a trivial matter; even having her avatar check in was considered a success.
Lin Feng: "..."
That makes some sense.
The court attendant didn't look too well.
As night deepened, the noise gradually subsided. Lin Feng, reeking of alcohol, didn't run home across the rooftops, but instead leisurely rode back on horseback. The capital had been in use for over four years, and with the continuous influx of people, it possessed a unique, vibrant atmosphere at night, unlike the empty and desolate atmosphere of the first year of Yanhuang. Lin Feng enjoyed the night breeze on his face while circulating his spiritual energy to dispel the excess alcohol from his body; the cool sensation immediately dispelled the slight drowsiness in his head.
Upon arriving at the door, the gatekeeper hurriedly stepped forward to lead the horse.
"Why did the parents drink so much?"
I'm quite happy today.
When she got home, she found that everyone was there today.
The great-grandfather held an account book in his left hand and an abacus in his right. The light in the hall illuminated his slightly furrowed brows. His father and brothers sat on either side of him, while his fourth uncle rested his chin on his hand, lost in thought. Lin Feng noticed something was off as soon as he entered.
My great-grandfather put down what he was doing.
"Why do you reek of alcohol?" Although times have changed, the old man still subconsciously felt that it was dangerous for the young woman to be out at night while drunk. However, his words of concern, coupled with his tone, sounded more like an interrogation.
"There's a happy occasion today, so I had a few drinks with my colleagues."
My great-grandfather didn't ask any further questions, but simply had someone prepare a hangover soup.
Lin Feng said, "My grandson has sobered up."
Whether you drink the hangover soup or not makes no difference.
My great-grandfather sighed, "I forgot again."
Lin Feng glanced at her father and brothers out of the corner of her eye, subtly inquiring about the matter. She was still curious about what the maid had said about someone coming to propose marriage; she wondered whose daughter it was and how the meeting went. Her great-grandfather shook his head: "Let's not talk about that now. Do you have someone in mind?"
Lin Feng was dumbfounded.
Why are you pressuring her?
"My grandson wants to focus on his career and has no time for romantic relationships."
As someone with experience, my great-grandfather knew these kinds of tactics best and wasn't fooled at all: "It's good to have ambition, but the household also needs a capable and virtuous wife to help you manage things. Putting aside other matters, you can't always have me do the monthly salary payments for everyone in the household. Your son, you are dedicated to your duties in the court, and you inevitably have trivial matters to attend to with other families. You also need someone to handle these for you. You can't do everything yourself, would that be too much of a hassle?"
Since the first year of the Yuanhuang era, the royal court had been exploring and implementing various new policies, one of which was the abolition of slavery. Servants and maids in every household were released to their freedom, but their masters still needed care and had to rehire them. Rehiring required signing contracts and paying wages, the standards of which were still set by the government. The wages offered by the masters could only be higher, not lower.
These are all the little things he's been doing for the past few years.
Lin Feng felt a headache coming on when she thought about the other future paths her teacher had mentioned back then. Fortunately, she was the one in charge, and if she was determined not to consider them, no one could do anything to her, much less make decisions for her. Lin Feng had this confidence, but her brother, Lin Chun, was less so, becoming the focus of their great-grandfather's attention. The four of them were sitting here waiting for Lin Feng to arrive, hoping she would make a decision.
Lin Feng suddenly looked at his elder brother.
Over the past few years, Lin Chun has escaped bullying from his colleagues and financial hardship, and his overall spirit has improved considerably. However, due to his personality, he is not a person with sharp edges, and coupled with his strikingly handsome face, he looks like a porcelain figure sculpted by Nuwa.
It's still a fine little porcelain figure.
Lin Chun felt uncomfortable under Lin Feng's gaze.
Lin Feng then looked at his father: "What family does the woman come from?"
Lin's father: "..."
This is a long story.
In conclusion, the blind date fell through.
The woman's family had some savings. Her father had been a soldier in a military prefecture in his early years, but returned to his hometown after being injured. He started a business there and, after things improved, settled in the capital, also waiting in line for the royal court's welfare treatment for veterans. The woman fell in love with Lin Chun at first sight and even took the initiative to propose marriage. However, her parents were not optimistic—not to mention her younger sister Lin Feng, Lin Chun's own local political achievements, however mediocre, were not something their family could aspire to. Moreover, the couple did not intend to let their daughter follow the old custom of marriage.
Lin's father and the others were not mean-spirited people.
Both sides said nice things to each other, and the conversation turned out to be quite pleasant.
The topics discussed during the meal gave Lin's father some ideas.
He wanted Lin Feng to help him make a decision about these ideas.
Lin Feng said, "Father, please speak."
What do you think about your brother marrying into another family?
She opened with a bombshell, leaving Lin Feng wondering if he was still drunk. She stared wide-eyed at her father, then looked at her elder brother, Lin Chun, in horror.
No, is that right?
The great-grandfather corrected: "It's not about marrying into the family, it's about compatibility."
"...Shouldn't my brother be considered for a marriage match?"
Kangguo was a young and vibrant country where new things emerged every day, providing fertile ground for the concept of marriage alliances. Traditional marriage was based on the principle that men should marry when they reached a certain age and women should marry when they reached a certain age. The practice of uxorilocal marriage was the inversion of this traditional system, where women should marry when they reached a certain age and men should marry when they reached a certain age. In the past, in a chaotic world where many infants died young, the stronger party held the upper hand, and having one man with multiple women allowed for the birth of many offspring.
Now the situation is completely different.
The side with greater power had more female warriors and scholars.
Initially, the number of cases was small, and each household had its own solutions; if they couldn't reach an agreement, they could negotiate slowly. Now, the number has increased, and with the first batch of female warriors and scholars giving birth, people have noticed a problem—the burden of childbirth has lessened, and so far, there have been no reports of any female warriors or scholars dying from childbirth. With the development of medical science, the survival rate of infants is also reaching new highs year after year.
As a result, families where the women had the talent for cultivation completely rejected the traditional marriage model, and were even unwilling to have their wives marry into their husband's family.
This brings us to an old case from two years ago.
The case was not complicated; a local family went to the capital to appeal to the emperor.
Dissatisfied with the county government's ruling, she appealed to the prefectural government, then to the state government, and still dissatisfied, she appealed to the capital. The plaintiff was a woman in her forties, and the defendants were her son-in-law and son-in-law. The woman had married into the family when she was young, but after her grandson was born, her son-in-law and son conspired to change the grandson's surname to the son-in-law's. The woman had no parents, brothers, or sisters left, and was naturally left to fend for herself.
Your grandson follows the surname of three generations of blood relatives, which is in accordance with the law.
The woman angrily retorted: "It's lawful but immoral! This son-in-law should take my family name, how can he change it to someone else's!"
So she filed a series of lawsuits.
This seemingly trivial matter caused a huge uproar in the capital.
Of course, she won the case in the end.
However, the impact of this event lasted for a long time, directly leading to the emergence of marriage alliances. One family, who had served as key members of the Gongxi Chou Conservation Association, was troubled by this matter when a sudden inspiration struck them: the special marriage practices within the idol tribe.
【We could also get married based on compatibility!】
He came up with this word on a whim.
What is marriage compatibility analysis?
[This means that if a woman in the family can marry a man, the children born can stay and be raised in the mother's family, and the man is not considered a son-in-law. To give an imperfect analogy, if our daughter is a martial artist, she's like a farmer's hen; she lays her eggs in her own home, so there aren't many problems, right?]
This metaphor is inappropriate, but it captures the essence of the matter.
If a son-in-law is brought in, the family might be vulnerable to theft if they fall into poverty years later. But if the son-in-law doesn't come in, there are no such concerns.
This idea was crude, but it still appealed to these families.
It was even brought up during the court assembly.
It is hoped that the royal court can revise a set of laws specifically to ensure its feasibility.
Ordinary people should have ordinary marriages, with the bride and groom's families deciding who marries whom. However, special families with cultivation talents should be treated specially. Current marriage laws are no longer applicable to modern marriages, so it's best to intervene as soon as possible while conflicts are still relatively few.
It would be troublesome to intervene if problems arose later.
The civil and military officials also had different opinions on this.
After several physical altercations, a draft marriage proposal was actually finalized.
Compared to the initial, somewhat crude proposal, this one is much more comprehensive. The marriage compatibility test also signifies that the man and woman are husband and wife, and the children's household registration must include the names of both the biological father and mother, although the registration will be under the woman's name. This is to prevent their offspring from claiming marriage to blood relatives years later! The trial and positive feedback of the marriage compatibility test further prompted changes to the old marriage law, prohibiting marriage between people with the same surname, and also prohibiting marriage within five generations, regardless of paternal or cousin relationships, thus eliminating the outdated idea of marriage between relatives. The last point, however, is quite controversial.
Officials felt that relatives could be restricted in this way.
Cousins don't need to, right?
Some even have wildly imaginative concerns that Shen Tang is using this incident as a pretext to restrict the various families' avenues for deeper intermarriage and expansion.
In the past, restrictions were mostly imposed on cousins, but now even cousins are prohibited?
Shen Tang said: "When a man and woman unite to produce offspring, the man contributes half and the woman contributes half; they are all blood relatives, so how can there be any distinction of closeness or distance? The child still needs to be carried in the mother's womb for ten months. If we really want to be precise, shouldn't your so-called cousins be closer and more numerous than your maternal cousins?"
That's still ten months too long.
Shen Tang was also fed up with consanguineous marriage.
According to the statistics on the number of newborns in the past year from the Medical Department, the mortality rate has decreased, but nothing else has.
Almost every village produces one or two children with Down syndrome every two years.
In chaotic times, these children with Down syndrome wouldn't survive. Even if their parents discovered the problem, they would drown or strangle them, and the authorities would not investigate unless the public complained. Now, the world is different; the government will not ignore parents killing their children. But once they do intervene, how to raise these children and how they will make a living becomes a problem. Even the most skilled physicians like Dong Dao cannot intervene in these congenital chromosomal abnormalities.
Such a high rate is largely due to consanguineous marriage.
They do know that people with the same surname shouldn't marry, and that cousins shouldn't marry, but there are fewer concerns about cousins with different surnames. Some families even consider it a way to strengthen family ties, resulting in a very high rate of infant mortality. Even if the children don't die young, they still face many problems as they grow up.
Taking this opportunity, Shen Tang changed it.
In the past two years, marriages among women with cultivation talent in the capital have mostly been based on compatibility analysis. However, six or seven out of ten of these compatibility matches involve ordinary men, while male martial artists and scholars with cultivation talent tend to prefer traditional marriage customs. Lin Feng believes these two groups are still locked in a tug-of-war, neither willing to back down first—even though they both feel that having both parents with cultivation talent increases the chances of having offspring with cultivation talent.
Let's work things out and push things together.
There's always a balance that can be found.
She just hadn't expected her father to have such thoughts about her eldest brother's marriage, and to bring up the topic of a marriage match. Her eldest brother wasn't particularly talented, but he was a scholar with a literary mind and an official position. Even if he didn't have much room for advancement in the future, he was still no ordinary man to be considered for a marriage match.
They are somewhere in the middle of the marriage market, neither the best nor the worst.
Although surprised, Lin Feng did not deny it.
She wanted to hear what her father and brothers thought.
Lin's father said, "Two 'Lin' characters cannot be written in one stroke..."
Lin Feng's eyebrows twitched.
Lin's father continued, "Your efforts over the years have been seen by your father and others, and you have received a lot of care. They also favor you more. As for your elder brother... I can't plan anything for him, and his personality is like this... If he has a wife, firstly, his career will be easier, and secondly, it won't affect you."
There are not two Lin families.
Back then, the branch that went out all secretly wanted to acknowledge Lin Feng as their leader.
But this put Lin Chun in an awkward position.
Mr. Lin didn't want to be harsh, as Lin Chun had also had a tough time these past few years. Fortunately, his son was exceptionally handsome, not competitive, and had little ambition. He could focus on being a good wife and mother, which made things much easier for him, and he could finally relax.
Yes, he prefers the latter over the former, between a marriage where the spouse moves into the wife's family or a marriage based on mutual consent.
Lin Feng's great-grandfather disagreed.
Lin Chun was, after all, a scholar with an official position and a refined taste. Even if his abilities were limited, he would still be a valuable asset. What would it look like if he married into the family? It would be better to arrange a marriage directly. The woman would be attracted to his looks, his body, and his temperament. He could also stay in the Lin family with peace of mind. In the future, if his son had children, he, as the uncle, could also offer assistance. The flesh, of course, should rot in our own pot. Lin's father and he subtly argued about this matter.
But no matter how subtle it was, the others present weren't fools.
Fourth Uncle Lin Chao understood, and so did the person involved, Lin Chun.
They could only catch their breath after Lin Feng returned from the banquet.
Don't ask why Fourth Uncle is so nervous... He suspects that if he weren't so old, he'd probably be sold off by his grandfather by weight. Whether it's a marriage based on kinship or a marriage with a family member, anything that benefits the Lin family and Lin Feng, the head of the family, is acceptable.
Lin Chao looked at his silent nephew with some sympathy.
That's terrible, absolutely terrible.
Lin Feng: "What do you think, elder brother?"
Lin Chun seemed to be in a daze, his face pale and pitiful. He shook his head and murmured, "Let's do whatever you say."
She said she would make the decision.
|ω`)
The new book should be released on the 15th of July, the first day of the month. _(:з」∠)_
This time, we absolutely cannot stand each other up!
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
