The Empress’ Livestream

“I will do whatever you teach me, old gentleman.”

Jiang Pengji beamed as she rolled the bottom of her long outfit up to her knees and fixed it with a rope. She exposed her tender and slim legs to the public.

She tied her big sleeves with an arm string for convenience.

Xiao Xiaogui: “This string for fixing the sleeves is very much like the one from Japan…”

Laosiji Lianmeng: “Panbo, AKA Arm Rope was not originally designed in Japan. As a matter of fact, the ancient people from Hua Country used a rope to fix their sleeves in order to avoid the inconvenience from the wide, baggy sleeves while they were doing farm work. No one wears wide-sleeved outfits anymore, so naturally you have never seen it.”

Okay, it was a good lecture to enrich their knowledge.

Jiang Pengji fixed her sleeves with Xu Ke’s help. She stood next to the experienced farm hand, carefully listening to him about how to harvest the crops.

The old farm hand had sufficient experience, considering that he had dealt with crops all his life.

In spite of his age, his moves were as good as, or even slightly swifter than, the young guys, even though most of his hair had turned grey.

At the same time, Xu Ke sharply sensed that his Langjun was acting weird.

He started to wonder if his Langjun finally found that it was too hard for him?

But what he saw completely blew away his expectations of his master. It was amazing that this Langjun, who was reckoned as being too feeble to do any labor and was unable to distinguish one kind of grain from another, was already able to start working after he observed the old farm hand doing it only once. The farm hand emphasized some matters he needed to be cautious about and he was doing a decent job.

“You have a good comprehension of this, Langjun. And you are much wiser than my grandson…” The old farm hand paid a high compliment to her out of joy, but he instantly realized that he had said something wrong.

There was no comparison between his grandson and his Langjun. There was a big social status gap between the two.

His grandson was very likely to starve to death if he didn’t grasp the skill. On the other hand, Langjun would never be bothered by trifles like food and clothing––he had no idea what crops looked like at all during his lifespan. The moment the farm hand realized that, he was so frightened that his face turned pale and he was about to kneel on the ground.

However, Jiang Pengji wasn’t upset about it. Instead, she grinned at him and talked to the farm hand with a gentle tone.

“It doesn’t seem that difficult. There are some parts of the work that need special attention for specific strength and postures, otherwise your whole body will suffer in pain after a long time of work.”

The farm hand knew nothing about terms like “postures” and “specific strength.” All his experience came from an accumulated experience, repetition of the same work, and testing the best method himself during his entire life.

Xu Ke stood beside the two and his face turned back to normal.

Jiang Pengji had no awareness that she was possibly being offended. She kept working and mowed the rest of the grain.

In about fifteen minutes, she sat on the edge of the field and swung her legs to rest. There was some sweat on her forehead.

“Do you want to take some medicine, Langjun?” Xu Ke held a small brown bottle with some medicine that helped dissolve bruises and stop bleeding.

Jiang Pengji looked at his hands holding the medicine and then looked at her own legs and the bottom of her feet, which were full of tiny cuts from the grain.

She came to realize her own condition but she still shook her head. She pointed at a place next to her and asked Xu Ke to sit down.

“That farmer didn’t mean to offend you, Langjun…”

Xu Ke was extra sensitive to acknowledge other’s emotional changes. He had gradually increased his understanding of his master. It was obvious to him when she was not in a pleasant mood.

He thought that the only reason that she was disturbed could be from the farm hand. But he was wrong.

Jiang Pengji was not impeccable; she was capricious, reckless, arrogant, unbridled, and hard to deal with… but those were common characteristics of all the gentry clan members. Jiang Pengji was still different from the rest of the gentry clan members in many ways. She would never harm weak and innocent people, not to mention that the old farm hand hadn’t intended to say anything in malice.

“Are you pleading for mercy for him?” Jiang Pengji couldn’t help but laugh as she said, “The premise to plead for mercy for someone has to be that you are aware of the whole story and the truth. It could turn into really nasty tension because of your pleading. And by the way, I wasn’t upset about that…”

Xu Ke seemed serious and said, “But it is true that you are not happy, Langjun.”

Jiang Pengji had a smile and asked him instead, “Then do you know why?”

Xu Ke was stunned. He began to doubt that it was a trick from his Langjun and that he was just making fun of him by pretending to be in a bad mood.

Xu Ke blushed. He cupped his hands in front of his chest. “I’m not sure about the reason. I was hoping to be enlightened by you, Langjun.”

Jiang Pengji asked, “Do you think I was stalling their process earlier when I was helping?”

Xu Ke was speechless…

She was targeting him!

Jiang Pengji didn’t wait for his response. “I seem all right at the moment, but my body is sore and in pain. Doing farm work is not just simple physical work. If you don’t know the process, your muscles will complain a lot and it won’t be fun for the next a couple of days…”

Xu Ke listened to her quietly and stared at the side of her face.

To be honest, for him, Langjun’s face was too delicate to be a man’s. He was very much like a girl just from his appearance. But that was the current custom in the current era. Guys needed to use perfume, do makeup, and dress in flamboyant clothing before they went out.

They were a bunch of glamorous, flaming guys.

It was still normal that his Langjun had a pretty face. He was too young to be able to judge his sex from his face. It would be obvious for others to tell once he grew up.

“It was painstaking.”

Jiang Pengji’s physical quality was considered garbage to her even though she was rather outstanding to her peers and among adult guys.

Her body felt worn out only after fifteen minutes of working in the field.

She felt that the loss outweighed the gain. The effort she put in was disproportionate to the outcome.

Besides, it was only her thought. Everyone else was amazed by her high efficiency and comprehension. They didn’t see her worse than any experienced farmers. There was a big generation gap between the two eras which caused the conflicted judgements.

“You don’t have to work this hard, Langjun,” Xu Ke said.

She was different from the other farmers. The latter had their lives entirely dependant on the fields. In contrast, she could eat and dress well without doing anything.

“You would be wrong if that is what you think.” She put her fingers in one hand against the fingers in the other hand and placed her elbow on her knees. “I feel the same pain with these farmers after I did the field work myself. The work they industriously put into the farm for planting and maintaining doesn’t match the products they earned in the harvest season.”

Xu Ke thought, There were more than enough unfair things that existed in the world.

“If we can popularize a more advanced tool for every single one of them, it will be less laborious for them to harvest one acre of crops successfully. They will still need to sweat, but the effects will be prominent,” she muttered to herself. The idea she had in her mind would not be implemented in the current world. She had to compromise her idea to match with the current era’s in some ways. “My expectation is to get the work done in less than ten minutes instead of two hours for the old method.”

Xu Ke wondered if his Langjun had brain damage from working too hard earlier.

“I need to think about it––and you are in charge here. Whoever slacks off will want to kill himself to get away from the training from the General Coach afterwards.”

It seemed like she had an idea and she quickly put on her clogs and left Xu Ke behind.

Xu Ke wanted to say something, but instead he kept quiet.

It was definitely awful to have his curiosity sparked, but even more that he was left without being told anything.

He reached out his hand to attempt to stop his Langjun, but his Langjun took off too fast for him to catch up. Langjun was nearly flying even though he had clogs on. He walked between the fields like he was walking on flat ground.

He just ran away and left Xu Ke dumbfounded where he stood.