CH 39

Although Fu Zhiyu didn’t like talking to Xie Ke, what he said now was indeed important, and it was closely related to his own plans. At this point in his previous life, the frontier was extremely peaceful, but now that even General Zhongyong Xie Lin was about to be dispatched, it was not a trivial matter.

“The Qianyuan Battle is ahead of schedule,” Xie Ke saw Fu Zhiyu get serious, and the expression on his face softened. “At least two years ahead of schedule.”

Fu Zhiyu clearly remembered the Qianyuan Battle. This was a big battle that made the capital unstable in his lifetime.

This was a battle with the grassland barbarians. The original king of the barbarians, King Beiliang, was old and unwilling to toss and turn. During his reign, he perfectly abided by the previous peace treaty, and there had never been any disputes with other countries.

However, after the death of King Beiliang, his son Xidan inherited the throne and became the new chief of the barbarians. This one was not as easy to talk to as his father. Soon after he took the throne, he quickly sent troops to attack Chen, the country that  bordered the grasslands.

In addition to Jilin, the combined land area of the other two countries of the Central Plains, Chen and Jing, was not even one-tenth the size of Jilin. These two countries had voluntarily surrendered a long time ago, and in recent decades they had completely become vassal states.

Chen was unable to resist the grassland iron cavalry at all, so they immediately sent a letter to Emperor Qingyuan for help. Emperor Qingyuan was naturally ready to send troops, but before he could make a good plan, news came from the front line that the barbarian cavalry had set foot into his own territory.

This made Emperor Qingyuan furious, and he immediately dispatched his confidant, General Zhongyong Xie Lin, to fight against them. Xie Ke went with him as his second-in-command with the strict orders that they could either win or die.

The war lasted for more than a year, with heavy losses on both sides, and finally ended with a narrow victory of Jilin.

It was worth noting that Xie Lin was seriously injured in this war. Therefore, in the final decisive battle, the young general Xie Ke was ordered to take full command. Originally, his side’s advantage was not large, but in the end, he really turned the defeat into a victory.

After Xie Ke returned to the capital, he was greeted by people, and because Xie Lin’s health was really failing, Xie Ke took over all the troops of the Xie family with the approval of the emperor, and became a young general with real power.

But all this should have happened within two years.

“King Beiliang died early,” Xie Ke continued, “Everything is ahead of schedule, and there are even more things to come.”

“What… more things?”

“The cavalry general has come with the news in the past few days that there are some changes in the ancient countries of the West, begging to prepare and asking the court for forage.” That was not all; Xie Ke didn’t stop here. ”General Lin’s subordinates handed over a memorial, reporting that there was a large group of rioters in Lincheng, and requested to raise troops to fight against them, asking the court for forage as well.”

In this era, the means of communication were limited, the speed was extremely slow, and it was easy to distort and lose the original authenticity of the information. Anyway, Fu Zhiyu felt strange listening to these two things.

Not only because it hadn’t happened in the previous life or in the original book, but more importantly, because it was so coincidental for these things to happen at this point in time, as if done by an agreement.

Xie Ke seemed to understand what he was thinking and explained: “This is really not a coincidence, there is a reason. Emperor Qingyuan began to train the Eleventh and Thirteenth Princes, which made both the Lin and Xue families start to panic.

The Lin family conspired with the tiger and chose to cooperate with the barbarians to help Prince Xidan kill his father and take the throne in advance, but they didn’t expect that Xidan didn’t play cards according to common sense. On the spot, he tore up the agreement with the Lin family and threatened to send the correspondence to Emperor Qingyuan if they didn’t listen to him. The Lin family is now really afraid of the barbarians and dare not cooperate anymore. It is absolutely impossible for them to really leave the Central Plains territory and follow the barbarians. They can only stop where they are and make up something to try to cover their movements, intending to intercept the letter from Xidan if he really sends it to Emperor Qingyuan. If they can’t intercept it, they will have to bite the bullet. Conspiring with the enemy is a treason. If the Lin family wins, well, history is written by the victors anyway, but now the barbarians are no longer a normal partner. The Lin family can’t ride a tiger, so they can only stay put for the time being.

As for the cavalry side, that was something that the Xue family did. It was the cavalry general who had an idea and hit it off with the Xue family. They were aware of the movements of the Lin family, and they wanted to follow suit. They were going to mobilise the troops in the name of suppressing the riot. They actually didn’t plan to rebel so quickly, just wanted to put pressure on the emperor to make him dispel the idea of cultivating other heirs. The ancient kingdoms of the West were true to the spirit of the agreement, but no one expected the barbarians to smash the pot. The real war is coming, and the Xue family didn’t expect all this.

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Neither of them originally wanted to ruin Jilin, but they were forced by Emperor Qingyuan to use external forces to achieve their goals. Their plans could not keep up with the changes, though. Now both of them are in a very awkward situation. One pretends that nothing happened, and the other is still holding on, planning to slowly minimise the damage and let the country pass the crisis of the barbarians first. But I guess that even if the ancient countries of the West are more honest than the barbarians, they don’t have such a good temper.”

It was the first time in two lifetimes that Fu Zhiyu had heard Xie Ke say such a long passage to him. The amount of information in this passage was so huge and detailed that he was shocked and suppressed his dislike of Xie Ke for a while. It was as if Xie Ke was eavesdropping in the corner of the Lin and Xue residences every day.

Xie Ke looked at his shocked expression and his widened eyes, and felt that Zhiyu was extremely cute. He tried his best to suppress his urge to touch Fu Zhiyu’s hand, and continued to talk about business: “Don’t be surprised, it’s all true. I have my own way of learning things. The emperor doesn’t know as much as I do. He just has some suspicions now. Apart from the barbarian anomalies, he is suspicious of the two families. But many things are still uncertain, and even the Lin and Xue families involved are not very clear about the whole situation now.

Zhiyu, I’m telling you this because I want you to be more vigilant. The situation is changing so quickly that it cannot be explained by the experiences of your previous life. You must be more careful.”

Fu Zhiyu took a step back, was silent for a while, and then said, “You’ve been watching the Xue and Lin families so carefully. I’m afraid you’ve been watching me like this as well, right?”

“No, really not,” Xie Ke immediately denied, his face serious, “I… my method can’t be used on you, really.”

As he said this, he subconsciously moved forward a little bit, but Fu Zhiyu took a big step back, as if he had seen a snake or a scorpion, with a wary expression on his face.

“I was wrong, I was wrong, really wrong, okay?” Xie Ke exclaimed bitterly, “I’m really not going to touch you anymore, don’t go yet. I haven’t talked to you like this for a long time, and I finally got such an opportunity. I still have some things to say.”

Fu Zhiyu hesitated and didn’t leave for the time being, but still kept his distance from Xie Ke.

Xie Ke breathed a sigh of relief, and softened his tone again: “Things happened so fast, I didn’t have time to react either. Zhiyu, if I really have to leave for a while, can you come and see me off?

Three days later, at Aiwan Pavilion in the suburbs, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to talk to me, I just need to see you. The situation is very complicated this time, in case I really can’t come back…”

Fu Zhiyu lowered his head, and Xie Ke waited patiently for him to answer. Unexpectedly, Fu Zhiyu suddenly turned around and ran away. Before escaping, he dropped a sentence: “You’re trying to deceive me again, I won’t come.”

Xie Ke didn’t go after him, standing helplessly in place, watching the carriage leave quickly. He was trapped in the dark, laughing bitterly and saying in a voice that only he could hear: “It’s been like this several times. It seems that I only make Zhiyu be more wary of me… 027, am I really not good at courting people?”

“Yes,” 027’s mechanical voice sounded in his mind, commenting, “The beginning was okay, Fu Zhiyu listened very seriously, but the last part completely collapsed, a mess.”

027 was silent for a while, and said, “Maybe the shadow caused by the previous life is too heavy…”

It quickly detected that Xie Ke was in the wrong state after hearing this sentence; his emotions fluctuating wildly. 027 immediately cleverly changed its perspective and put forward a positive suggestion: “By the way, I just searched all the knowledge bases for the keywords on courting people and found that the most popular way is to give gifts. You can try it.”

“It’s not that I haven’t given them…” Xie Ke sighed, and then began to explore the reason for the failure, “Maybe because the gifts were too ordinary?”

Thinking of this, he muttered to himself again: “By the way, I do have something for him. If I really have to leave for a while, Zhiyu must be fine. Nothing can happen to him here.”

“The props you have saved are almost useless to Fu Zhiyu,” the mechanical voice reminded him, “I have mentioned many times that he is a very, very special data. I have tried many methods on him after the hibernation was over, but there is no way to have the slightest impact on him.

All the data coming back from him is disordered, but Shen Yang, another person who came back, has no abnormalities. As long as Yuan Mingdao does not stay with Fu Zhiyu, he is very normal too. But when he comes into contact with Fu Zhiyu, the data will be disordered immediately.”

Xie Ke also knew this. He could only use the most primitive manpower to protect Zhiyu now, but the palace was different from the outside. It was much more heavily guarded. Zhiyu almost always stayed in the palace and didn’t go out. He was also very sharp, and Xie Ke didn’t dare to act rashly.

“Why doesn’t he want to believe that I’m sincere?” Xie Ke was distressed, “I don’t know what to do about him.”

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Fu Zhiyu ran back into the carriage in a hurry, and Yuan Mingdao saw that his face was sullen and silent when he returned, so it was better not to disturb him. He waited until Fu Zhiyu’s mood had calmed down before asking tentatively, “Is Master alright?”

“Yes,” Fu Zhiyu nodded, “Just… a little frightened.”

After this place became a free world, the plot was like a wild horse that couldn’t be stopped. He didn’t know what exactly the Lord God’s definition of “Don’t let the world collapse” included. If it was just the compression of the plot, it shouldn’t be too serious… right?

Xie Ke was going to win. It was impossible for him not to come back, but it was possible to come back many days in advance.

His words just now gave Fu Zhiyu a real understanding of how incredible the top-three actor was. Without the constraints of the plot, he was more successful than the protagonist.

The Lord God also complained to him back then, saying that these people were particularly difficult to manage. The system had the basic function of protecting the actor from pain. He also didn’t need to go through every day meticulously; there was an option for the actor to pull the progress bar.

For the actors at the top of the pyramid like Xie Ke, the whole world of the Lord God was one interesting adventure game, and if the points were high enough, the protagonist they played didn’t have even a tenth of their own power. Had the Lord God not come out with a patch to limit props later on, those actors at the top of the pyramid could have destroyed the entire Lord God’s world.

That was why Fu Zhiyu felt frightened. He calmed down a little bit, and then briefly talked to Yuan Mingdao about what Xie Ke had just said.

“I have to send a pigeon to let my uncle know. Although the place of the elder uncle has not been affected, he is a general of the imperial court, after all. The younger uncle, he should stay in the south peacefully and stop going out with caravans,” Fu Zhiyu thought for a while, and then hesitated, “As for us…”

Yuan Mingdao also wondered in his heart how Xie Ke could know all this, but he looked at the expression of his master and felt that his master was a bit unsettled.

“Is the Master worried about the war?” He tried to reassure Fu Zhiyu, “None of these things happened because we wanted them to, nor did we provoke them. Those under heaven are fighting for profit, and as long as people are fighting, these things will happen sooner or later.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Fu Zhiyu took a deep breath, “Forget it, let’s go back first. We can’t believe everything Xie Ke said. We’ll see later.”

He still remembered Xie Ke’s sentence, “My method can’t be used on you”. If it could be used, Xie Ke would likely know more than that. Fu Zhiyu also knew very well that he was a bug that could not even be deleted by the Lord God, and now he was mutating again. Nothing was impossible.

It was an unexpected pleasant surprise that Xie Ke’s supernatural powers didn’t work on him.

The emperor was also really wary. Fu Zhiyu heard the noise outside at noon the next day. It was the sound of a group of people running neatly. He didn’t even need to go out to hear Caimei, the little gossip, fuss again.

“There are so many soldiers coming!” She said in shock, “They’re all over the palace. When you go out to get something, you have to meet five or six groups of them, waiting in strict formation, so fierce. I heard that it’s the same outside, the entire capital is under martial law. It’s scary, I don’t know who committed the crime.”

“You can’t say that openly,” Fu Zhiyu put down the teacup in his hand and glanced at her, “I’m afraid it’s a big deal.”

“Don’t worry, Master, I have a sense of proportion.”

Consort Yun was calm, sitting aside and embroidering. Fu Zhiyu talked to her in the morning. Consort Yun had no memory of the previous life, and she was much calmer than Fu Zhiyu.

It took another two days before the emperor issued a decree explaining all this dissension to the people.

The barbarians attacked, and General Zhongyong and his son Xie Ke were to immediately go to war to meet the enemy, leading an army of 800,000, hoping to continue their undefeated record and strengthen the prestige of Jilin. Commander-in-Chief Lu and Commander Du led their troops to guard the capital, protect the heart of Jilin, and preserve the law and discipline of the imperial court. If any rebels or traitors disturbed the army, they would be executed.

The Lu family and the Du family, just like Lu Linhai and Du Yin who followed Xie Ke, were both from the same faction of General Xie and were both confidants of the emperor.

Now that all those people moved, the emperor was really angry. Fu Qingyan had been walking step by step along his way and accumulated a lot of power. Even though he was not a paper tiger, he still couldn’t touch the deep-rooted Lin and Xue families for the time being. But it was not that easy for these families to deal with him either.

The decree stated that Xie Ke would set off early tomorrow morning. Fu Zhiyu still remembered that Xie Ke asked him to see him off, but he decided that he wouldn’t go, just as he said.

In his previous life, he had gone there, just in time to run into the famous scene in the book. Miss Xue risked her life to come and say a tearful goodbye to Xie Ke. Later, Xie Ke returned triumphantly, and Miss Xue got what she wanted and was given a marriage by the emperor. The two were really a divine couple, and the extra person like him was simply inexplicable.

Obviously, Xie Ke was only to set off the next morning and knew that the hope was negligible, but he still had waited at the appointed place the whole night before.

“As long as he really comes, even if it’s not to see me, but to learn more about the news over there, I’ll get what I want.” He sat alone in Aiwan Pavilion, sounding like he was talking to himself, “As long as he comes, as long as he comes, I won’t leave even if it kills me. The Qianyuan Battle is nothing, what I can get from this war I can get from other places.”

He looked in the direction of the capital, and then murmured: “As long as he gives me a chance, even just a little bit…”

The 027 system that woke up from hibernation last month listened to all this silently without saying a word.

As an auxiliary machine, it had a hard time understanding human feelings, and it was even more difficult for it to understand why its host, who was originally using this world as his playground, was now so desperate.

But there was actually some foreshadowing long before, it was just that the host was so used to being confident at that time that he thought he couldn’t be wrong. He didn’t expect that an accident would really happen.

Now, most of Xie Ke’s methods were useless for Fu Zhiyu’s abnormal data, but Fu Zhiyu was still limited by this world and subject to the powers of the world.

Xie Ke didn’t want to leave the capital. At least here he was a little closer to his baby, but with his current status, Fu Zhiyu could refuse to see him if he wanted to. As long as he stayed in Liuli Palace and didn’t come out, Xie Ke couldn’t enter.

Xie Ke had the power to break in violently; especially after his system woke up from hibernation and he had more props at his disposal. However, compared to Fu Zhiyu, Xie Ke was even more afraid that the world would collapse and Fu Zhiyu would disappear with the world. So at present he was still carefully maintaining the operating logic of the world and didn’t dare to be too presumptuous.

As Xie Ke said: “Zhiyu can not care about these things, but I can’t. I have to rely on my power to protect him. Otherwise, what if someone really bullies him?”

But 027 wondered whether returning with such and such powers in this world would be good or bad for his relationship with Fu Zhiyu.

…Isn’t it you who obviously upsets him the most?

The so-called power was not the main problem between the two of them, the 027 system thought. It was also a good thing to leave. This opportunity could be used to teach Xie Ke to calm down and correct his problems, as well as make him realise that his current method of asking for forgiveness could only be counterproductive.