DLWAV CH107

Zhou Hongyi Extra.

My name is Zhou Hongyi, the legitimate eldest son of the Final Emperor of Qian, and the adopted heir of the Great Founder of Yang. Others may be veteran ministers of two dynasties, but I am the only Crown Prince of two dynasties since the times of Emperors Yan and Huang.

In the first year of the Final Emperor of Qian’s Zhangwu reign, I was established as the Crown Prince by virtue of being the eldest son of the Empress.

I was only four years old at the time.

But later, as the Noble Consort grew increasingly favored, my Imperial Father’s heart gradually leaned toward my second brother, who was only a month younger than me.

Just when my Empress Mother and maternal grandfather both thought the path I would walk in the future was predictable—one of head-to-head confrontation with the Second Prince—in the fifth year of the Zhangwu reign, my Imperial Father, the Final Emperor of Qian, acted pigheadedly and insisted on personally leading a military campaign against the Western Rong. As a result, he was defeated and captured at Zhaoming Pass, leading to the total annihilation of our 150,000-strong army.

And he even voluntarily led the way for the Western Rong, bringing them right to the foot of the capital’s walls.

It was my youngest Imperial Uncle who took command in the face of danger, repelled the Western Rong, and saved Great Qian.

I admired his courage and bravery.

So when he abolished my position as Crown Prince, I actually didn’t have many complaints.

After all, my Imperial Father had committed such heinous crimes. As his son, how could I be worthy of the Crown Prince position?

But what I never expected was that in the tenth year of the Jianxing reign, while my Imperial Uncle was gravely ill, my Imperial Father actually bribed the civil and military officials, led an army into the capital, and restored himself to the throne.

He even issued an order to those generals to execute my Imperial Uncle immediately upon capture.

Fortunately, my Imperial Uncle escaped.

Fortunately, the person who bumped into him was me.

I chose to let him go.

However, my Imperial Father chose to strip him of his imperial title, erase his achievements, give him a malicious posthumous title, and bury him in the barren wilderness with the rites of a woman.

And out of the entire court of civil and military officials, not a single one objected.

I could no longer look my Imperial Father in the eye, much less the civil and military officials of the court.

My Imperial Uncle once said that it didn’t matter if he was no longer the Emperor of Great Qian.

I also wanted to say that it didn’t matter if I was no longer the Crown Prince of Great Qian.

But I couldn’t just walk away.

Because my maternal family, my wife’s family, my subordinates… their lifelong honor and disgrace were already tied to me.

Furthermore, if I didn’t do it, who would?

My second brother, who embezzled nearly a million taels of silver from the Ministry of Revenue in just half a year? Or my third brother, whose belly is full of treacherous schemes?

But my Imperial Uncle managed it.

He no longer wished to be the Emperor of Great Qian, so he destroyed Great Qian.

Yet after succeeding, he made me the Crown Prince.

At that moment, a myriad of feelings surged in my heart.

I couldn’t help but wonder, how could there be someone as broad-minded as him under the heavens?

I was grateful for his trust.

I admired his confidence.

I resolved to be a good Crown Prince and a good Emperor, to never disappoint his expectations.

And then I ended up working overtime for two consecutive years…

Because my Imperial Uncle… no, I should call him Imperial Father now.

He exiled the entire court of civil and military officials, causing the imperial court to fall directly into paralysis.

To restore order as quickly as possible, we had to work overtime day and night.

Fortunately, after the Western Rong learned that Great Yang possessed divine weapons like firearms, they didn’t dare to act rashly.

Later, to eliminate future troubles, the Marquis of Chengyi simply led troops and annihilated them, finally preventing the situation of internal strife and external aggression that plagued Great Qian.

As for my Imperial Father, he took my new… Imperial Father-Consort and ran off to travel all over the country playing for a full two years.

I suddenly felt that the rose-tinted glasses through which I viewed my Imperial Father might have been a bit too thick.

I tried to express my dissatisfaction.

The next day, my Imperial Father left behind an edict passing the throne to me, and took my new Imperial Father-Consort to ride horses in the northern lands.

…The rose-tinted glasses through which I viewed my Imperial Father were indeed a bit too thick.

But the gratitude in my heart for him increased tenfold.

Still because of his unreserved trust.

In November of the second year of Jianxing, I ascended the throne in front of the Huangji Hall in the Yangzhou Palace. I took the reign title Chengde, meaning “to respectfully inherit the grace and virtue of the Supreme Emperor.”

In the tenth year of Chengde, a mystery that had always troubled me was solved.

I finally learned the true origins of the Marquis of Chengyi and his companions.

They were not heavenly troops and generals from above, but visitors from another world.

The firearm technology, high-yield rice, and cement formulas they had presented in the past… were all products of another world.

In their words, they had spent over a decade and finally manufactured a medium-sized shuttle ship. From then on, Great Yang and the people of the Hua Nation could freely travel between the two worlds.

Compared to the boundless joy of the Marquis of Chengyi and the others, I had trouble sleeping and eating.

Because the Hua Nation proposed to formally establish diplomatic relations with Great Yang, and to express their sincerity, they gifted me many things.

This included a several-hundred-thousand-word set of the “History of the Hua Nation.”

When I read the volume on the “Modern History of the Hua Nation,” I couldn’t sleep for two consecutive nights.

Because as I read that history, my mind was filled with the phrases “falling behind leaves you vulnerable to beatings” and “a man’s wealth is his own ruin.”

Today’s Great Yang is not even comparable to modern Hua Nation, because the elite troops of the Yang dynasty are all in the hands of the Marquis of Chengyi and his people.

But the current Hua Nation, with the help of a gentleman surnamed Xia, is already a top-tier power in their world.

With Great Yang’s resources being so abundant, would they also give rise to greed, just like those Western countries back then?

But this matter left no room for me to object.

Because the Hua Nation’s technology was so advanced that even without my consent, they could still enter our world at will.

Just like that, I was forced to sit at the negotiating table with them.

The person negotiating with me was a gray-haired old man.

He directly handed me a pre-drafted agreement.

The first page of the document read: “Mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality, and mutual benefit.”

But I directly ignored it.

I opened the document to look, but found it somewhat unbelievable.

The Hua Nation also requested to lease a piece of land in Great Yang to build a base, but they offered the generous condition that Great Yang could send international students to the Hua Nation at a ratio of one person per ten mu of leased land.

They also proposed that regarding the tariffs on Hua Nation goods entering Great Yang, Great Yang needed to consult with the Hua Nation, and the tariffs could not exceed the import tariffs set by the Hua Nation government.

I only found out later that the Hua Nation’s import tariffs were generally around 25%, while Great Yang’s import tariffs were only ten-to-one (10%). Calculated out, Great Yang actually made a profit.

They also proposed that civil lawsuits between citizens of Hua and Yang occurring in Great Yang would be handled by the Hua Nation government; the Great Yang court could offer suggestions, but the final decision-making power remained with the Hua Nation government.

They explained this to me on the spot, saying it was mainly because they were afraid we would execute the offender’s entire nine generations over every little thing.

This agreement was overly fair.

And just as I was feeling suspicious, they suddenly mentioned that Great Yang could not possibly catch up to the Hua Nation for at least a century.

However, once the Hua Nation built a large-scale shuttle ship, Great Yang could perhaps try developing a tourism economy to reverse the trade deficit.

For example, vigorously promoting agritourism, opening the previous dynasty’s imperial palace for tourists to visit…

After all, Great Yang’s environment was truly purely natural and pollution-free. One must know that in the Hua Nation these days, half a kilo of wild swamp eel could sell for a hundred yuan, and aged wild ginseng and ambergris were priceless treasures—yet these things were everywhere in Great Yang.

But I felt as if they had finally bared their fangs.

—Opening the previous dynasty’s imperial palace?

Was the next step opening Great Yang’s imperial palace, and even making me send the Imperial Seal for the Hua Nation people to view?

Then they added another sentence: “Just like how we occasionally open our country’s Presidential Palace. It’s very profitable.”

I was completely dumbfounded.

And what I expected even less was that in the following dozen or so years, just as the Hua Nation government promised, they never crossed the line by a single step.

Even if issues occasionally arose on the Hua Nation’s side, they were quickly corrected.

To the point that later on, I actually specifically made a new Imperial Seal, only adding a line of small text on it: ‘For Tourist Reception Use Only.’ It was exclusively used to stamp on blank imperial edicts, which were then sold to tourists from Earth.

—They especially loved conferring titles and noble ranks upon themselves on these edicts, and casually sentencing their friends to “life imprisonment without a wife.”

After all, the price of a hundred taels of silver per edict was quite tempting, because selling just a few would be enough to help the people of Great Yang build another large bridge.

And with the help of the Hua Nation, Great Yang began to take off.

In the fourth year of Chengde, Great Yang’s grain yield per mu rose from the original 190 jin to 580 jin.

In the sixth year of Chengde, the first electric light lit up in the Yangzhou Palace.

In the eighth year of Chengde, the grand dikes of the Yellow River were completely finished, and tens of millions of commoners across the six provinces on both banks were freed from the ravages of floods forever.

In the twelfth year of Chengde, the imperial court collected eight million taels in import taxes alone, accounting for roughly one-third of Great Yang’s total annual tax revenue.

In the fourteenth year of Chengde, Great Yang completed its first tractor production line.

In the eighteenth year of Chengde, the first batch of international students returned to the country. Brimming with vitality, they were bound to lead Great Yang in creating a brand-new future.

In the twentieth year of Chengde, the Hua Nation developed large-scale transport ships, and Great Yang began exporting jade, oil, grain, and other resources to the Hua Nation.

And two of the members in the research and development team were from Great Yang.

By this time, I finally completely believed that the Hua Nation had no intention of invading Great Yang.

I also finally realized that the reason the Hua Nation specifically gifted me that set of “History of the Hua Nation” was actually to tell me that the Hua Nation had experienced such humiliation in the past, so no matter what, they would never impose that same humiliation onto another country.

However, later on, the Marquis of Chengyi told me another reason.

He said, “Does Your Majesty still remember Song Qingying?”

I thought about it: “Was that the Third Prince’s consort from back then?”

I vaguely remembered that in the second year after the Third Prince and his group were exiled to Yunnan and Guizhou, Song Qingying was taken away by the Marquis of Chengyi.

He said, “Song Qingying was actually a transmigrator.”

—They directly sent her into a laboratory, and it was estimated that it wouldn’t be long before they could pinpoint the coordinates of her original world.

He detailed the entire sequence of events from beginning to end.

“Actually, before this, we also discovered a reincarnator. After coming to our world, they all tried to use the advanced knowledge from their original worlds to stand at the pinnacle of power.”

Hearing this, I couldn’t help but feel a lingering fear.

Because if they had succeeded, the consequences would have been unimaginable.

After all, for people with no moral bottom line, it is hard to believe that they wouldn’t commit acts of inhumanity once they stood at the pinnacle of power.

The Marquis of Chengyi said, “We believe they failed precisely because of their moral corruption, which is why they suffered divine retribution.”

“We have learned from this lesson.”

But I instead felt that things weren’t that simple.

However, by the time I realized that the Hua Nation government had always behaved exceptionally respectfully toward my Imperial Father, and that my Imperial Father seemed to have never doubted the Hua Nation’s intentions, he had already taken my Imperial Father-Consort and departed from this world.

I couldn’t help but reminisce about every little thing concerning him.

Right.

I must also admit one thing: what he said back then was correct.

His exclusive doting on my Imperial Father-Consort truly became a beautiful legend in the Hua Nation.

In the words of the Hua Nation people: “Even a feudal emperor could preserve his chastity, yet those trashy modern men and women, despite having neither money nor power, play around with cheating and two-timing every day. It’s ridiculous.”

In the fifteenth year of Chengde, I even accompanied them to watch an entire TV drama praising the love between the two of them…

I must say, it was actually quite good.

Although the Marquis of Chengyi said this TV drama wasn’t realistic, because the opening credits lacked the words ‘Not Suitable for Minors Under 18’.

Although I didn’t understand what he meant.

And precisely because of this, countless tourists came to Great Yang every year, hoping for a chance encounter with them.

And the second most closely followed person by the Hua Nation people was me.

On the one hand, it was because I was the Emperor of Great Yang. On the other hand, it was because they thought I was the luckiest person in the world.

The reason being, both being Crown Princes, the one from the Qing Dynasty was deposed once and was directly ruined; whereas after I was deposed once, I still managed to become Emperor.

Both being Crown Princes, right after my coming-of-age capping ceremony, my uncle passed the throne to me; whereas the one from Country Y only became king after being the heir apparent for over seventy years…

But I had to admit, they were right.

………………

Lu Dang Extra.

Lu Dang felt as if he had nothing much to say. The only thing he kept in mind was probably that, in the end, he had still lost.

Because when it came to the skill of serving people, he had also lost to the middle-aged man.

Thinking of this, he nuzzled against the clean and comfortable quilt over his body, and contentedly rested his head on the middle-aged man’s abdominal muscles as he fell asleep.

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