Chapter 292 The Diligent Emperor Used as Cannon Fodder (Seventeen) Lord Pei...
Before Lord Pei could speak, Pei Chengzhi was dragged into the study by the furious Pei Ce without any power to resist.
After being dragged in, he frowned in disgust at Pei Chengzhi's weak and helpless appearance, until Pei Chengzhi obediently called out, "Uncle."
Pei Chengzhi was ultimately the one who was manipulated, so Pei Ce tossed him aside and continued arguing with Lord Pei.
"Then why don't you explain again, brother, why your youngest son's clothes and hairstyle today are so similar to the man your wife is keeping!" Pei Ce sneered, speaking without any restraint.
"If it wasn't to scheme against Miss Yue and this boy, could it be that she looked down on you, so old and frail, and had her eye on the illegitimate son, so she found a man to impersonate him and hide him in the house to ease her longing?"
Lord Pei's face darkened further. He wanted to tell him to watch his words, but his wife's actions were even more inconsiderate.
Pei Ce and his fiancée were engaged when they were young. The Pei and Yue families were also old friends. He often visited their home with his father when he was young, and they could be considered childhood sweethearts.
Miss Yue's wedding was delayed because of mourning. He has been waiting patiently all these years, and now that the clouds have finally parted and the moon is shining, his fiancée was almost plotted against. Does he really think Pei Ce is a pushover?
Lord Pei opened his mouth, but seeing the murderous look in Pei Ce's eyes, he changed his tone and pointed at Pei Chengzhi, who was standing to the side, to reprimand him:
"Look at the time! You've just come back from the wild, without any manners! Instead of staying quietly in your own yard, you've come all the way here. You don't usually come to pay your respects at this time. Could it be that you have some other purpose?"
The implication was that Pei Chengzhi might have deliberately changed his clothes to slander his stepmother.
Pei Chengzhi shrank back as if startled, and only after his father finished scolding him did he explain in a low voice, "I went to the poetry gathering with my teacher today and heard some important things, so I wanted to come and tell Father, but I did something wrong..."
He pretended not to understand the implied meaning in Lord Pei's words, like a wronged child who dared not utter a sound, and carefully looked up at Lord Pei's face, looking as if he was about to kneel down and beg for forgiveness at any moment.
Pei Ce's snort grew louder, "What, you're even dragging your own son down to protect that poisonous woman? Kid, what are you chickening out for? Tell me properly, where did you go today, what did you do, and when did you put on your clothes!"
Pei Chengzhi shrank back, glanced at Lord Pei again, and seeing that he didn't stop him, he spoke softly:
"These clothes are what I wore when I got up this morning. All the servants in the mansion saw them. This morning, I first paid my respects to my mother and then went to the Imperial Academy. On the way, I also bought two sugar-coated sesame cakes."
I spent the whole day at the Imperial Academy. After school, my classmates and I went to find our teacher for a lesson. The teacher said that a colleague had invited us to a poetry gathering that day, and he had asked if we could bring students, so he took us there to broaden our horizons.
At this point, Pei Chengzhi glanced at Lord Pei's expression again before continuing, "Because we will be back a little late, in order not to worry our families, the master specifically instructed us to send a message to our parents. I also had someone deliver a message to both my father and mother. I suppose my father was too busy to see it."
Lord Pei had, of course, received the news. He had only just grabbed Pei Chengzhi and pretended to scold him in order to change the subject.
Now that he not only didn't talk back like his eldest son, but even found a way to save face for him, I couldn't take my anger out on him anymore.
"It's no coincidence. I just happened to be back around the same time that kid sent someone to deliver the message, which was exactly when the man dressed exactly like him was planning to sneak out from the backyard."
Pei Ce looked at Lord Pei and chuckled: "He's got something to do and won't be coming back, so this fake pretty boy is going to slip away. Brother, you don't still want to say that all these things are just coincidences, do you? And this thing, is it also a coincidence?"
Pei Ce then took out a jade pendant of only average quality, worth at most five taels of silver, and threw it on the table with a thud, tapping the table as he asked:
"This was found on that pretty boy. It's such a perfect jade pendant, with the character 'Cheng' engraved on it. Brother, tell me, why did this little thief leave so many wealthy people in the Marquis's mansion to steal from such a remote corner?"
Seeing the jade pendant, which was clearly meant to frame someone, Lord Pei had no way to refute it anymore. He wasn't some clueless naiveté; he could see through the scheme.
This was clearly his wife's plan to kill two birds with one stone: to slander the newly emerging illegitimate son and, incidentally, to suppress her future sister-in-law who would surpass her. However, the illegitimate son did not return home on time, and his conspiracy was exposed by Pei Ce, who had come home early from get off work to see his fiancée.
If the investigation continues, the truth will surely come out. Whether it's the wine, the maid who was acting, or the man Pei Ce caught, they are all flaws.
But if the matter were to be brought to light, Madam Pei would likely ruin her reputation and face certain death, and even her eldest son would not fare well.
Lord Pei sighed, resignedly raised his hand, and patted Pei Ce on the shoulder. Although he didn't explicitly say how he would deal with the Lady Hou in front of the child, it was tantamount to acknowledging the matter.
Since nothing had actually happened yet, Pei Ce didn't want to keep harping on it, so he took the opportunity to back down and softened his expression.
Seeing this, Lord Pei breathed a sigh of relief. As the eldest son, he inherited the title and became a marquis, but he had no troops or power, so the title was just for show.
Pei Ce, however, is a capable man and a close advisor to the emperor. Many matters and information depend on him, so it's impossible to turn against him.
Only a woman like Madam Pei, who only cares about the power struggles in the inner quarters, would try to put pressure on and manipulate his wife, thus offending her.
Although Lord Pei would not divorce his wife for the sake of his eldest son, such a woman who had caused trouble could only stay obediently in the courtyard, chanting scriptures and worshipping Buddha, cultivating her character for the rest of her life.
Pei Chengzhi stood obediently to the side with his head down, his heart filled with joy, but he didn't show it on his face at all, pretending not to understand what kind of veiled meaning the two were conveying.
Now that his wife has offended Pei Ce, his eldest son will certainly not be favored by him either. Only now is Lord Pei taking this timid and submissive illegitimate son seriously for the first time.
He didn't understand his second son, but he did understand his wife. A son who was an illegitimate child that his wife would go to such lengths to deal with must have some extraordinary abilities.
"Didn't you say you had something important to say? Tell me slowly. Were you bullied at the Imperial Academy?" Lord Pei forced a kind father's smile and spoke in a gentle voice.
Pei Chengzhi cooperated perfectly, showing a look of surprise and admiration, and replied softly, "There's no need to trouble Father with such a small matter. I only came to find Father because I heard some news at the poetry gathering."
Pei Ce, who was standing to the side, was too lazy to watch the two of them act out a father-son relationship. He was about to turn around and leave when he was stopped by a sentence from Pei Chengzhi.
"My son had only heard that the teacher was a poor minor official in the capital who only took on a few students because he was short of money. But when he went to the poetry gathering, he discovered that he was actually a compiler in the Hanlin Academy and the third-ranked scholar in this year's imperial examination, Lord Li Tianle."
Lord Pei had been arguing with Pei Ce for half the night. He had just breathed a sigh of relief and poured himself a cup of tea to soothe his throat when he almost died from that one sip.
He coughed for a while before finally expelling the water that had gotten into his lungs. After stopping Pei Chengzhi from patting his back, he asked incredulously, "You're saying the tutor you hired for five taels of silver is the newly appointed third-ranked scholar?!"
Pei Ce, standing to the side, was once again amazed by Li Tianle's poverty. When did the title of Tan Hua (third-ranked scholar) become so worthless? He wondered if His Majesty would regret not giving him enough silver as a reward after hearing about it.
After all, it would be somewhat embarrassing for the imperial court to admit that five taels of silver could hire a third-ranked scholar.
Pei Chengzhi recounted the events of the day in detail, and also secretly complained about being poor on behalf of his teacher and himself. Lord Pei immediately understood and prepared a generous tuition fee, and also gave Pei Chengzhi a large sum of pocket money.
Meanwhile, Subsystem 2, which had been keeping a close eye on the situation, finally noticed something amiss. Was Pei Ce's return time too coincidental?
It followed the clues and investigated all the way down, and after confirming that another subsystem had intercepted its task, it secretly rolled its eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.
I was really scared to death by this idiot; I almost thought that headquarters had sent people to clean them up.
It deliberately exploited a bug to bring that idiot Number One along to this little world.
Through the energy repulsion between the two systems, the already fragile small world has become so vulnerable that it cannot withstand any high-energy impact.
No matter how powerful and influential the people at headquarters are, they can't do anything in this small world. None of them can bear the consequences of destroying a world.
As for those smaller systems, or novice mission takers, they are even less worth mentioning. Even if they did come, they probably wouldn't even be able to detect the existence of the subsystems.
However, I still need to tell my petty host about this, otherwise, if he finds out that I've been hiding something so important, the little bit of trust I've just built will probably be shattered again.
[Ding! Host, besides us, there's another conquest team in this world. They're also trying to seduce the Emperor, just like us. That system even stole the Pei family's mission.]
After listening to the system's explanation, Li Tianle didn't get angry. He generously forgave its oversight and inquired about the details of the other system with great interest.
Subsystem 2 had been scolded by him so much that it was a little uncomfortable to suddenly encounter Li Tianle's gentle manner. It quickly and secretly felt pleased and sent all the information of Subsystem 1 over.
After all, the emperor's energy is finite; if the other side absorbs more, then our side will have less.
Looking at the data in another system, Li Tianle felt that there was something off about this matter. A woman that even the emperor couldn't be bothered to pay attention to, who went to the empress's place to freeload every day.
Would she really be so bored as to deliberately say something like, "Hey, I know you, your girlfriend is about to be bullied, if you don't go back soon you'll be cheated on," when the emperor's guards are passing by?
Don't even mention doing tasks. Just look at that long list of unfinished tasks in her task list. Aren't they all simpler than this task?
When this system was talking about another system before, it vaguely mentioned something about being hunted down. Could it be that, without the system's knowledge, someone else really came to this world to deal with the system?
Li Tianle's heart skipped a beat. If that were true, wouldn't he really be able to get rid of this spirit-like system behind him?!
"Look how simple and clear their tasks are, and they all involve direct contact with the Emperor. Unlike mine, my tasks are a mess, with no focus..."
After saying that, Li Tianle sighed with regret, and the system, which had been excited, instantly became as quiet as a chicken.
When you're using PUA on someone, the most skillful tactic isn't to constantly belittle them, but to subtly compare them to someone similar, and then praise that person repeatedly.
Then, without making a sound, subtly and gradually, they express their envy and admiration for the other person, as well as their dislike and perfunctory attitude towards them, through their actions.
Over time, the other person will subconsciously doubt themselves under such comparison, become insecure, and even try desperately to show off in order to get a few compliments.
Preliminary experiments also show that this method is not only suitable for humans, but also effective for systems with intelligence similar to humans.
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