The Empress’ Livestream

According to Liu She’s wife’s description of Cheng Cheng, he wasn’t good at talking, but he was for sure good at writing––especially writing to condemn others.

Liu She started to picture the scene with Cheng Cheng holding a book in one hand and a pen in the other hand, scolding his enemies to tears with his pen. It was so hilarious that he had to stop thinking about it just in case he started laughing out in front of Cheng Cheng.

Liu She asked his people to take good care of Cheng Cheng and his wife, and to prepare food and hot water for them. They were not in perfect condition, but they tried to be as thoughtful as they could. Jiang Pengji took a group of guards to bury Liu She’s guards, as they lost their lives for Cheng Cheng and his wife, after all.

They brought back several more wagons when they came back. She couldn’t help her curiosity when she noticed that the wheel tracks were ingrained deep into the ground.

Cheng Cheng was no longer in mortal danger and he was overjoyed when he saw that his wagons were sent back by Jiang Pengji.

He walked into his wagon regardless of other people being present. He went through one box after another. He finally felt relieved when he found that all of his treasures were all in one piece.

Cheng Cheng’s wife smiled with her mouth closed and teased him, “You need to change your temperament or Liu County Chief and the Lanting are going to laugh at you. If these boxes of books were dumped along the road, they wouldn’t be picked up by anyone except for you. You treat them as valuable as your life. The people who have no knowledge of them will wonder how valuable they are.”

Cheng Cheng wore a shamed face. He blushed from his wife’s teasing. It was abnormal for him to take several wagons full of books along for a trip.

Liu She spoke for Cheng Cheng out of his embarrassment. Liu She felt for Cheng Cheng about how difficult it was to read books in the current era.

The wagons of bamboo slices were barely worth one liang of gold; they were just a small quantity of bamboo to start a campfire.

To people with vision, however, they were priceless––so much so that no gold could compare with their value.

Cheng Cheng smiled to his wife with a sense of complacency, which was funny.

Considering Cheng Cheng was injured, he couldn’t take any more suffering. The roads were bumpy, so Liu She deployed one of his own wagons for Cheng Cheng and his wife. The shock-absorbing system on their wagon was cutting-edge in the current era.

Cheng Cheng and his wife didn’t understand the reason for sparing a wagon for them until they got on the wagon and it started rolling. Then they felt the thoughtfulness and kindness of Liu She.

When it was only Cheng Cheng and his wife, the wife changed the gauze and put more medicine on her husband’s wounds. They causally discussed the bandits they encountered in the daytime.

“Do you have someone in mind?”

Cheng Cheng’s face fell and he said with a sense of disappointment, “Eh, it will only be him if I ever offended anyone.”

“Him?” Cheng Cheng’s wife rolled her eyes. It seemed that she was taking a guess who that would be.

“Meng Zhan in Cang Prefecture…” Cheng Cheng said to her hesitantly. “However, even though I do believe that Meng Zhan is not the same man that matches his reputation, he doesn’t have to be this vicious. I simply heard about some scandals involving him… It wasn’t worth sending a whole troop to take my life.”

If it was Meng Zhan going after him because of the scandal where he “replaced the wife’s son with concubine’s son” that he learned about on accident, there was no way he could step out of Cang Prefecture.

Why would he wait for months after he had learned about it to come after him?

“Some scandals? What scandals?” Cheng Cheng’s wife was confused. “You are not a person with a big mouth…”

She felt heartbroken seeing the injuries on his body. If she happened to know who was behind it, she wouldn’t spare their life easily.

“Meng Zhan lost a second wife’s son not long ago. On the surface, that son is from his wife, but the truth is, he is one of Meng Zhan’s concubines’ sons.”

He wasn’t going to withhold the truth from his own wife. He didn’t have the intention to let a second person know if it wasn’t because of what had happened that day.

Gossiping about others was never a behavior a gentleman with merits was supposed to engage in.

Cheng Cheng’s wife only reacted to him with an “Ah.” She didn’t think that would be the scandal.

In an era that the wife’s offspring and concubine’s offspring had clear boundaries, messing up the wife’s offspring and concubine’s could be judged as lack of upbringing and lack of restrictions. It could be a big deal as well. They could be committing a crime, such as violating the regulations of family structure, which could implicate the whole family and make them despised and looked down on.

With a noble family like the Meng’s, the higher in the hierarchy they were, the more attention they drew. Naturally they received more serious results once their scandals were leaked.

If it was like that, it was not entirely impossible that Meng Zhan would pay some assassins to kill Cheng Cheng. But Cheng Cheng’s wife shared the same opinion with Cheng Cheng that the chance of Meng Zhan being the murderer was very low.

“Think it through. It might be someone else…”

Cheng Cheng sighed hard. He had no clue after he had thought hard. He set it aside for then.

Their original plan was to separate after they arrived at the closest station, but Cheng Cheng and Liu She had very similar temperament and they had a good time talking to each other. Liu She eagerly invited them to travel along with them, which helped Cheng Cheng and his wife out of their current difficult situation.

If they sent a letter to their family in the station and waited for their family to send some people over, it would take at least a couple of months.

“Are you interested in these books, Lanting?”

Even though they were on the road and the conditions were primitive, after a while of resting, Cheng Cheng’s wounds were fully recovered.

Six Arts of Rites were the compulsory lessons for the literate elite in the current era. It wasn’t strange for Cheng Cheng to know about riding horses and archery. He no longer wanted to be trapped in the wagon after he recovered. He wanted to get some fresh air and ride a horse until he found Jiang Pengji staring at his boxes.

“Yeah, I noticed that you have more of a collection than what my father has in his study room.”

The books in the current era were the possession of the gentry clans. The deeper the foundation of a family and the longer the history of the clans, the more incredible and diverse the book collections were.

According to her knowledge during the period of time spent with Cheng Cheng, he was not from the main branch of the Cheng’s. But he owned the thousands of the books in the wagon, which was impressive. She had no idea where he collected the books from.

If it was possible, Jiang Pengji wanted to make a copy of all of them.

Books were the most important way to pass on the wisdom of humans. They played a necessary role if the civilization needed to evolve.

Of course, it would be indispensable if they wanted to break the cultural monopoly of the gentry clan.

Cheng Cheng wasn’t aware of what Jiang Pengji was thinking, but he couldn’t hide his pride after he heard about this from Jiang Pengji.

He didn’t brag, but some of the books in his collections were inclusive from some gentry clans, which had thousands of years’ of foundation.

“A small portion of these books belonged to the family collection. Some of them were just the remaining pages from ancient books that I searched for. I am more than willing to pay a visit if I overhear that some people have the precious ancient books.” Cheng Cheng was vague about how he collected the books. The, “more than willing to pay a visit” implied that he was never really invited. “After a long time, I have a pretty good collection of them.”

Cheng Cheng’s wife always complained to her husband that she was not the wife but a concubine that he married. These books in the boxes were the wife he went through all the rituals to marry. It was a joke, but it indicated how much Cheng Cheng cherished these books.

“Eh, the wars in the Period of the Sixteens Kingdoms made the citizens lose their families and lives in famine. There were countless precious, ancient books which went missing in the wars, too. My life’s purpose is to pass on these books to our descendants and retrace and repair the ancient books missing in the chaotic time so our descendants will have a chance to read them.”