"Please stand up, young master. What's the point of kneeling like that? If the emperor finds out, he'll accuse me of taking advantage of my status to bully you." Feng Ming finally spoke in a calm tone.
Wang Yijun, however, was even more terrified and lowered his head, answering timidly, "It's all my fault. The princess deserves a lesson."
Wang Yijun was so scared because he had been severely bullied by Fengming in the past. In his heart, Fengming was like a monster or a demon.
The thing is, before Fengming returned to the capital, Wang Yijun was a bully in the capital. He relied on his father's position as the Grand Tutor to bully men and women and run rampant in the countryside.
Logically speaking, in the capital city where eight out of ten people hit by a brick are officials, Wang Yijun's behavior should easily be caught by the censor and used as an opportunity to impeach his father, Grand Tutor Wang.
But what makes Wang Yijun evil is that he is rational and cultured. Gangsters are not scary, but gangsters with culture are.
He usually oppressed the lower classes, those who had no recourse to file a complaint, and it didn't matter if he did. But when he oppressed those who did have recourse, he wouldn't go to extremes. Whenever the oppressed were driven to the point of despair, he would stop oppressing them, and the oppressed would, having been let off, not dare to provoke him again and not file a complaint.
So although ordinary people knew that Wang Yijun was a bully in the capital, the upper-level officials were unaware of it. Wang Yijun had been living freely in the capital, taking pleasure in oppressing others every day and building his happiness on the suffering of the poor masses.
It wasn't until Fengming dropped out of school and returned to Beijing to start a gossip newspaper that he happened to rescue a beautiful young girl who was about to jump into the moat. The girl sobbed and told him that she was a villager who raised long-haired rabbits on the outskirts of Beijing. The day before, she was selling rabbit fur in Beijing when Wang Yijun's men took her back to the mansion. Upon learning of her abduction, her parents went to the Grand Tutor's Mansion to look for her. Although they fought hard to get their daughter back, the two elderly people were beaten to death.
The girl's family was already poor, and her parents were about to die of illness because they had no money to see a doctor. The girl was so depressed that she decided to commit suicide.
Fengming Daily was just worried about not having any big news to get off to a good start when it was first published. Now that Wang Yijun had run into the trap, he naturally had to dig deeper.
Wang Yijun's past misdeeds were exposed, and the imperial censors, naturally, took no chances in exposing themselves. Their numerous memorials made Grand Tutor Wang miserable. In the end, Fengming's father, the Emperor, took Wang Yijun's pleadings into consideration, and, considering that Wang Yijun had oppressed the people but hadn't killed anyone, spared him from imprisonment.
But it was impossible to let it go so easily. So, at Fengming's suggestion, Wang Yijun was ordered to compensate every household he had oppressed, kneel down and admit his wrongdoing in each household, and publish a self-criticism in a gossip newspaper. Suddenly, Wang Yijun became notorious in the capital. Although he escaped imprisonment, he was looked down upon everywhere. This, for the always self-conscious Wang Yijun, was even more miserable than being imprisoned.
Because it exposed the evil deeds of the son of an important court official from the very beginning, Fengming's gossip daily got off to a great success and gained a large number of users.
Now, more than two years have passed. Although Wang Yijun's affairs have gradually been forgotten by ordinary people, Wang Yijun, who was once looked down upon by everyone, dare not forget it. His legs go weak when he sees Fengming.
So even though Feng Ming's tone had calmed down and the Princess had backed off, Wang Yijun didn't dare to assume that everything was alright. Now that he'd calmed down, he finally remembered that the "pervert" Feng Xiyun he'd rushed over to fight was the Princess' closest cousin.
Feng Ming pinched the cup lid with her orchid fingers and gently stirred the tea leaves, still speaking in a calm tone: "Young Master Wang, please stand up and talk. Kneeling in public is not a proper gesture."
Wang Yijun looked up timidly, then stood up after thinking it over, but he looked hunched over and cowering.
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