AEOGA CH88

In the game, there was a plotline where a local official in the northern border submitted a memorial reporting that bandits had taken over Mount Wolong, establishing themselves as mountain kings, turning to outlawry, and committing every imaginable evil. The report asked the Emperor how the court wished to handle the situation.

Under player control, Xie Chongjin would blindly issue an imperial decree to dispatch troops for a suppression campaign. Since a single mountain force could not withstand the imperial army, after the successful raid, the game would prompt the player to choose how to handle the bandit leader, Dugu Ye: either execute him or recruit him into the imperial harem.

This was the method to recruit the plot consort Dugu Ye.

Dugu Ye’s character portrait depicted a rare, captivating beauty—possessing a pair of icy blue eyes like a wild wolf and an untamable, fierce pride. Even after entering the palace, he rarely bothered to acknowledge the Emperor. Players harbored an intense desire for conquest toward this “wolf pup” persona, and the romance route with him was essentially a process of taming him. This striking archetype made Dugu Ye immensely popular among the plot consorts.

Naturally, Lu Xuechao had no intention of ignoring a plot consort with such a prominent role. However, after awakening, both he and Xie Chongjin had been far too busy: managing state affairs, traveling south to purge corruption in Jiangnan and settle refugees, advancing the economy, military, and agriculture, and forging alliances with Helian Yu… Important tasks arrived one after another, leaving no time to spare for this matter. Only now, upon receiving the memorial from the northern border official just as in his past life, did he recall addressing it.

In the game, players never questioned Dugu Ye’s past. Since his history as a bandit before entering the palace was less than glamorous, players intent on courting him would generously express forgiveness and let bygones be bygones. Once Dugu Ye’s affection value reached 100%, a final special cutscene would trigger, where Dugu Ye would actively ask if the Emperor wanted to know about his infamous past.

The Emperor would then deliver the scripted line: “There is no need to bring it up again. Even if you slaughtered countless people and committed every evil, I still love you.”

Hearing this, Dugu Ye—who never smiled—would let out a laugh and truly never mention it again.

Players who loved this route commented:

• “The Emperor loves him so much! Dugu Ye actually smiled, so he must have finally found peace. Poor child, he must have been blaming himself for straying down the wrong path, but the Emperor loved him all along and forgave him long ago!”
• “My wolf pup shouldn’t blame himself anymore! Morals follow appearance; the worse a man is, the more I love him. Even if you killed countless people and did terrible things, I don’t care—this dynamic is so captivating!”

These player comments from the Heavenly Book left both Lu Xuechao and Xie Chongjin—two exceptionally sharp minds—utterly bewildered and unable to grasp the underlying logic.

Lu Xuechao felt that whoever wrote such a romance line understood nothing of genuine emotion.

Although he had yet to figure out why their world had been reduced to a game, Lu Xuechao had already deduced that the true value of any plot consort was never to serve as a mere harem favorite. Each possessed unique brilliance, with souls that were pure, unyielding, and radiant.

Tainted, ugly, or mundane souls would never attract grand fortune, nor would they possess the power to alter the course of history or qualify as plot consorts.

In other words, anyone capable of becoming a plot consort could never truly be an irredeemable villain.

Lu Xuechao had seen firsthand how local officials under negligent governance distorted black and white; the words in official memorials were entirely untrustworthy.

If one truly loved another, how could they fail to see through their actual nature? How could they deny them even a chance to explain and instantly brand them a villain?

Dugu Ye’s final laugh was likely not relief, but bitter irony. Had he not been bound and controlled by the game’s affection system, he probably would have wanted to kill the Emperor rather than fall in love with him.

All those so-called sweet romance routes written into the game were merely mirages wrapped in sugarcoating, concealing deadly poison beneath, tasting of nothing but pain.

This seemingly joyful harem game was, in truth, a terrifying horror story where no one survived.

Through Master Wang’s account, Xie Chongjin heard a version entirely different from the local official’s memorial.

Dugu Ye’s background was deeply tragic. He was an abandoned infant, left in the mountain wilderness right after birth. Deep within Mount Wolong, venomous snakes and wild beasts prowled amidst thick mists and miasma; it served as a natural barrier between Changli and Yelang, where even merchant caravans only dared travel during the day along the outermost paths, specifically hiring escort agencies for protection.

An infant left in such a place was guaranteed to die. He was born with blue eyes, and heterochromia had been viewed since ancient times as an ominous sign of a monster—likely the reason for his abandonment.

From Lu Xuechao’s perspective as a physician, heterochromia was merely a congenital condition, incapable of bringing misfortune to others. Yet in a world dominated by superstition and ignorance, viewing distinct eyes as monstrous and discarding a child out of fear that calamity would strike the family was not hard to imagine.

Yet the boy was miraculously lucky, raised by a wild mountain wolf that had just lost her pup, making him a true wolf-child. At the age of seven, he was discovered by a kind-hearted hunter who went into the mountains. Pitied by the hunter, he was taken home, taught to wear clothes and speak, and given the name Ah Ye with the hunter’s surname Dugu, without any disdain for his eyes.

Other children ridiculed him, threw stones at him, and called him a monster whose unusual eye color brought misfortune. Hearing this, the hunter would fiercely drive those children away before returning to bandage Dugu Ye’s wounds.

The child asked in awkward words, “They say I’m a monster who brings you bad luck… What do ‘monster’ and ‘bad luck’ mean?”

The hunter only said, “Don’t listen to their nonsense,” but didn’t explain the human terms he couldn’t understand as he usually did.

Yet Dugu Ye was exceptionally intelligent; he not only adapted to human life quickly but also taught himself to read, soon grasping the meaning of those words.

He paid no mind to the verbal abuse, worrying only whether he would truly bring trouble to the hunter. He asked the hunter if he would bring him calamity, offering to return to the mountains and his former life if that were true.

Surprised by his intelligence, the hunter simply patted his head and told him it was all baseless nonsense.

Until one day, the hunter went out to hunt, was arrested by the local government, and died in prison, never returning.

In the northern border, far from the capital, imperial decrees held no sway, and the local official ruled as absolute master. In Jiangnan, the Emperor would occasionally travel south on inspection tours, forcing officials to maintain a facade. But the northern border was a place where no one went except merchants; the local prefect acted as a local emperor, not even bothering to hide his ambitions. Where the court levied a thirty percent tax, the local official dared to collect fifty percent, pocketing twenty percent himself. Merchant caravans passed through frequently, requiring official approval to trade, which demanded heavy bribes to the authorities. Crucially, while acting tyrannically in the name of the imperial court, none of those funds were submitted to the capital—all were spent on his own lavish lifestyle. It was insatiably greedy and extortionate.

Master Wang had only avoided major trouble while doing business in the northern border because his son was in the palace. Before Wang Yiming entered the palace, even Master Wang had to pay massive sums to the local government to trade there. Commoners could not fight officials, and the Wang family was no exception—which was precisely why Master Wang had longed for power and status.

The hunter’s tragedy stemmed from his inability to afford the crushing tax burden. He had originally managed on his own, but raising a child and buying medicine for his own aging body made it impossible to pay the fifty percent tax. Unable to pay, he was thrown into prison by the official, where he fell gravely ill without access to a doctor and passed away.

Dugu Ye was eighteen at the time. After the incident, he grieved for days, believing he had truly brought calamity upon the hunter.

Yet he remained clear-headed. Seeing the miserable lives of the local populace, he realized that the entity bringing them the greatest misfortune was clearly the local prefect.

He could read and write, and had learned martial arts from an escort leader at a local agency; he possessed brains, tactical skill, and strong leadership. Thus, he rallied the oppressed commoners to rise in revolt, leading a crowd disgruntled with the local government to occupy the mountain as their stronghold, founding Yeyang Manor and defying official orders.

Under the prefect’s prolonged oppression, the commoners’ grievances had long run deep, lacking only a brave and strategic leader. Many followed Dugu Ye. At this point, who cared whether his heterochromia made him a monster? Anyone who could bring them a good life was their savior. The prefect had normal black eyes, yet his heart was black through and through—far more terrifying than any monster.

More and more people sought refuge with Dugu Ye. Under his leadership, the local populace stopped paying extra taxes, and merchant caravans grew far more willing to align with Yeyang Manor. Yeyang Manor did not rob them; instead, they dispatched men to protect them, charging only a modest protection fee to maintain the manor. Navigating the treacherous mountain wilderness was dangerous, and this fee was cheaper than hiring escort leaders. Furthermore, Yeyang Manor warned the prefect not to collect unauthorized fees outside court regulations, greatly benefiting merchants. Not only that, they forced the local government to return the wealth extorted from the commoners, threatening the prefect’s head if he refused.

Accustomed to tyrannical rule, the prefect could not tolerate such a group of rebels and immediately dispatched soldiers to suppress them. Yet every soldier sent was turned by Dugu Ye—the prefect oppressed his subordinates just as harshly, withholding even their official stipends, leaving the soldiers unable to endure it any longer.

With even the official soldiers joining the rebel camp, the prefect panicked, terrified of losing his head. Risking exposure, he reported the matter to the imperial court, requesting troops to suppress the bandits.

In the prefect’s memorial, Yeyang Manor taking in commoners became forcibly abducting men; official soldiers surrendering voluntarily became murdered victims who never returned; and raiding the official treasury to return extorted money to the populace became robbing the government in blatant contempt of the court…

The prefect even made a huge spectacle of the heterochromia, claiming the unusual eyes were an ill omen of a monster bringing ruin to the nation that must be executed.

These were Dugu Ye’s “crimes.”

Having conducted business in the northern border, Master Wang knew the exact situation, though he hadn’t dared report it upon his first meeting with the Emperor and Empress. But since they asked, he held nothing back.

Hearing this, Xie Chongjin sneered cold-heartedly and threw the memorial submitted by the northern prefect heavily onto the ground: “What a splendid distortion of black and white. Treating Us like a fool!”

Even more infuriating and tragic was that in his past life, when he saw this memorial, he had sensed something amiss, yet had no choice but to order a suppression campaign without any chance to investigate thoroughly. The so-called rebels slaughtered back then were all…

They were all his own subjects who had merely wanted a way to survive.

When Dugu Ye later entered the palace, he likely wanted to curse him to his face, prevented from speaking only by the constraints of the plot.

What the northern prefect did was by no means unique. To be precise, during the three years when Xie Chongjin was unable to rule personally, Changli’s officialdom was largely in this state: corrupt officials ran rampant, while honest ones could barely survive.

After regaining his freedom, Xie Chongjin investigated corruption strictly and ordered the tax rate—previously set at thirty percent by players—reduced to ten percent. Yet while orders were issued from above, local officials often defied them covertly; without court inspectors, the capital remained entirely in the dark.

While Shen Hezhou had unearthed many talents over the past year and Fu Xinian worked tirelessly to investigate corrupt officials everywhere, Changli was vast and Xie Chongjin’s active reign remained short. There were bound to be corrupt figures who had slipped through the net, and the northern prefect was clearly one of them.

Hearing the unrestrainable chill and terrifying anger in Xie Chongjin’s voice, Master Wang hurriedly said, “Your Majesty, please appease your anger.”

Lu Xuechao pondered briefly, leaning in to whisper near Xie Chongjin’s ear: “We can grant him amnesty.”

While Changli possessed many scholars, military talent among the younger generation was limited to Qin Yulong alone, which was ultimately insufficient.

The game’s options for Dugu Ye—either execution or recruitment into the harem—were both wasteful.

Now was precisely the time to employ talented people, and Lu Xuechao would not let such a grand talent go to waste.

However, owing to three years of delay and the local officials’ villainy, Dugu Ye likely harbored deep hostility toward the court and would not be easily won over.

Xie Chongjin understood instantly: “June is approaching. Traveling south year after year inevitably grows tedious.”

“I would like to take Qingshu to see the scenery of the northern border.”