After Su Mian publicly “force-fed” Xie Wei a life of luxury, the entire capital saw how dazedly the young scholar departed.
Some said the little demon king had sucked the backbone out of Scholar Xie. Others said the young lord of the Duke Who Guards the Realm’s household had been blinded by beauty. But whatever gossip filled the streets, the spring civil service examinations arrived right on schedule.
As for Su Mian?
He was sprawled in the Grand Princess’s warm pavilion, holding a bowl of chilled milk custard and humming with contentment.
“Mianmian, today is the first day of the main spring examinations.” His godmother, the Grand Princess, was dazzlingly beautiful. Peeling lychees, she poked his forehead with helpless amusement. “Every noble son in the capital has gone to suffer at the examination compound. I hear those cubicles are so narrow they cannot even stretch their legs. They must eat, drink, sleep, and relieve themselves there for nine full days. And you have slipped off to idle away the time in my residence.”
Su Mian swallowed a spoonful of custard in satisfaction and curled deeper into the couch like he had no bones.
“Godmother, have mercy on Mianmian. Those examination cubicles are no place for a human being. Sit an exam there once and you lose at least five years off your life. Money can be earned again when it is gone; lose your conscience and you can earn even more. But once your life runs out, that is truly the end. I am simply cherishing life and staying away from the civil-service grind.”
“You always have some crooked logic.” The Grand Princess laughed, popping a peeled lychee into his mouth. “Still, I heard you absolutely insisted on giving that gold token to the poor scholar named Xie Wei. Tell your godmother honestly: have you taken a fancy to his face? If you truly like him, I will send him an invitation tomorrow and have him marry into our household to serve you.”
“Cough—cough—cough!”
Su Mian nearly choked on the lychee pit. He bolted upright and waved both hands. “Godmother, please watch what you say! That is not how relationships work! I only saw that he was about to work himself to death and decided to do a little charity. He has terminal obsessive-compulsive disorder and severe anxiety. His head is full of poisonous nonsense like ‘comfort is reserved for the dead.’ If I do not cut him some slack, he will destroy himself sooner or later.”
The Grand Princess looked utterly baffled. “What obsessive-compulsive disorder? What nonsense? Mianmian, the things you say have become harder and harder for me to understand.”
Su Mian sighed. Ancient people had such impoverished entertainment and such terrifyingly narrow values. Aside from becoming officials or soldiers, they understood nothing of the joys of capital.
He patted his neat robe, pulled the Grand Princess’s rosewood writing desk closer, tore off a sheet of fine paper, and used a wolf-hair brush to draw a gigantic egg. Next to it, he drew several tangled curves.
“Godmother, since we have nothing better to do, Mianmian will give you Great Qi’s first exclusive lecture on finance.” In an instant, Su Mian slipped back into the bearing of his former life as a Wall Street partner. His smile remained lazy, but a sharpness flashed in those peach-blossom eyes that could not be ignored.
“Oh? I am all ears.” Amused, the Grand Princess propped up her chin and sat down with him.
“Look. Everyone believes that whoever controls the power of Great Qi controls everything. Those princes at court, for instance—they fight over a seat at the Secretariat like gamecocks, driving their underlings to chase performance targets every day.” Su Mian tapped the egg with his brush. “But to me, it is only an egg that can crack at any time. A real god does not touch power. A real god touches money.”
He dragged the lines on the paper hard, running them straight across the map of Great Qi.
“My mother holds the silk, state salt, and canal shipping routes of the sixteen southern provinces. If Mianmian wishes, within three months I can use hidden estates to hoard cotton and hemp throughout the south and ruthlessly short the northern aristocratic families’ cloth shops. When the autumn examinations arrive and the court needs winter uniforms for the frontier soldiers, they will discover that cotton prices across Great Qi have increased tenfold. And every textile merchant colluding with the princes will go bankrupt enough to jump into the moat.”
The Grand Princess had begun with a teasing smile, but as she listened, her expression gradually changed.
Having held power for many years, she knew exactly how dependent Great Qi was on frontier supplies. The “ruthless shorting” and “economic monopoly” Su Mian described did not even have a crime listed for them in Great Qi’s laws. He had not moved a single soldier or uttered a single rebellious word.
It was simply… a strike from another dimension.
“Mianmian…” The Grand Princess looked uneasily at this godson who had always seemed so idle and useless. “Where did you learn such things?”
Su Mian tossed the brush into the water basin and flopped back onto the couch like a salted fish. He shrugged indifferently.
“I learned them in a dream. So, Godmother, stop urging me to make something of myself. Why would this young master give up being the ultimate final boss just to compete with ordinary people for the top examination rank? It would be beneath me.”
The Grand Princess was stunned for a long while. In the end, she could only laugh and shake her head. Looking at Su Mian’s innate talent for pleasure, her eyes were full of indulgence. “Fine, do not take the examinations. It would not matter if our Mianmian remained a salted fish his whole life. But… you have shown Xie Wei a path to the clouds. If he truly passes at the top and returns from court, what do you intend to do with him?”
Su Mian shifted into a more comfortable position and closed his eyes, a playful smile rising at the corner of his mouth.
“Do with him? Easy. Once he becomes an official, I will drink tea opposite his office every day. He can rise at dawn to report for duty, while I sleep until the sun is high. When he turns three parts of effort into ten parts of boasting, I will sit beside him cracking sunflower seeds.
Teaching ancient people the right way to slack off—is that not far more interesting than becoming the top scholar?”