ITVCFITB CHAPTER 46

 Chapter 46 – Countermove

Luo Shuyu was surprised by his reaction. That wasn’t how it should go…

In their last life, Li Mingjin had longed for a child, sticking to his side whenever he had a spare moment. But this time, when Shuyu brought it up, Mingjin’s attitude was different.

Did he actually not like children? Was he just humoring Shuyu?

Shuyu didn’t know whether to be relieved or a little sad.

Still… he was probably overthinking it. If Mingjin truly intended to compete for power, now wasn’t the right time for a child anyway. In that sense, it fit Shuyu’s current plan but just not what he expected.

Li Mingjin didn’t want a child too early. On that, at least, they were perfectly in sync. He didn’t dislike children; he just wanted to wait. And Shuyu knew Mingjin couldn’t be indifferent. Last lifetime he’d stayed up several nights just to pick the perfect name.

Maybe Shuyu was simply being cautious about everything lately, too used to thinking three steps ahead. He couldn’t treat Mingjin like a variable; Mingjin was the one he meant to rely on.

He double-checked, softly: “So Your Highness means… not for now?”

Mingjin didn’t answer directly. Instead: “And you, do you want one now?”

Shuyu replied with calm logic. “I once read that if a ger bears a child too young, it can harm his health. If Your Highness prefers waiting, I have no objection.”

Mingjin let out a quiet breath. “Then let’s wait.”

Both of them relaxed, an unspoken pact settled with ease. Each kept his own reasons to himself. Since neither wished to pry, they let it lie and enjoyed the rest of their ice football outing.

On the way back, the sky turned heavy; snow seemed imminent. The Emperor and Noble Consort Lin’s carriage led, the princes’ carriages followed, and the officials brought up the rear. In deep winter, Mingjin didn’t insist on riding to look dashing in front of his spouse. He sat with Shuyu inside the carriage instead. Halfway along, the snow came and the wind rose.

The procession halted and Mingjin sent someone to see what was wrong. A guard reported that the road had collapsed ahead under the snowfall, trapping the imperial carriage; they’d need to switch carriages and haul out the wheels before moving on.

Shuyu and Mingjin had a brazier and a hand warmer; thus they were comfortable enough. Others, perhaps, not so much. With nothing to do, they chatted about roads.

Shuyu remembered a line Shen Mingyun loved to cite: one of the system’s later “infrastructure” suggestions he’d fed to the Fourth Prince. As advice, it was solid.

Snuggled against Mingjin, Shuyu said, “Your Highness, a certain ‘master’ I knew once said something quite useful.”

“Oh?” Mingjin was all curiosity. “What is it?”

“To get rich, build roads first.” Shuyu smiled. “Not mine, just a good old-fashioned wisdom.”

He wouldn’t do what Shen Mingyun did: steal an idea and claim credit. Know your limits and work within them; Shuyu never overreached.

Mingjin weighed it and nodded. He’d already been thinking about the country’s lifelines. With roads, so much else becomes possible. A shipment arriving a day earlier or later could change the price entirely. With thoroughfares radiating outward and vassal states paying court, Great Xia could plant itself at the center. With land, people, and wealth, allies today could be territory tomorrow.

“Crude words, sound sense,” he said. “When we’re back, I’ll advise Father. Come spring, we can hire refugees for roadworks. Let them earn their travel funds home.”

“Refugees already?” Shuyu hadn’t heard.

Mingjin nodded. “You mentioned it before, so I remembered and memorialized it. Those who would’ve crowded the city gates are now housed in sheds on the outskirts. No major incidents, so most people don’t even know. No panic.”

Shuyu had indeed tossed off that suggestion, never expecting Mingjin to act so neatly. He’d planned to open porridge kitchens in the Third Prince’s name if crowds appeared. Now there was no need. So Mingjin truly did have a merciful heart.

He added, “Winter’s about warmth: clothes and food. It’s best if the refugees can help themselves. Otherwise trouble brews.”

“Men are watching it,” Mingjin said. “Father assigned Lin Haiming’s troops to that camp. They won’t dare make a fuss.”

“All because of disasters,” Shuyu sighed.

“Mm. And who knows how to stop them. I fear next year may bring the same.”

Shuyu sifted through the book in his mind. He didn’t have Shen’s “insecticide,” but there was another method: chicken and duck herding. Natural enemies of locusts, and you get meat and eggs.

“We can raise more chickens and ducks,” he suggested. “They’re said to be effective against locusts and they’ll fatten well.”

Mingjin knew Shuyu had no background in farming, yet every casual idea of his held up to scrutiny, practical, and eye-opening, better than most officials’. “I’ll discuss it with Father. Yuer, at this rate you’re bound to earn great merit.”

“Not mine,” Shuyu murmured. “I’ve just… read one more book than others.”

A book about his fate, paid for with his family’s lives; he meant to spend every page on those he loved.

Mingjin looped an arm around his waist. “Yuer is too modest.”

“And I’m not,” Shuyu said, lacing warm fingers through his. “It’s all Your Highness’s merit.”

“Then my merit is yours.”

They were still quietly flattering each other when a guard tapped the carriage wall. “Your Highness, a letter just appeared tucked by the wheel.”

They broke the seal together and there was no signature.

“How did this get here in broad daylight, with so many people around?” Mingjin frowned.

Since learning about Shen Mingyun’s “tools,” Shuyu was unruffled. “Someone slipped it in during the confusion.”

Who would send Mingjin a letter now?

They read and the contents were… something. The further Mingjin read, the more he wanted to tear it up, vulgar from start to finish. Shuyu calmly finished every line, then dropped it into the brazier and watched it curl to ash.

Mingjin watched his face, tense. “Yuer, don’t be angry. It must be some sick joke at my expense. I’m innocent!”

From another angle, it was a love letter and frank to the point of filth.

“Why do you always think I’ll be angry?” Luo Shuyu laughed lightly. “When have I truly been angry with you?”

“When you banished me to the couch…” he answered honestly.

Luo Shuyu clapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t be silly. Why would I fall for such a crude attempt to sow discord? I can even guess who sent it.”

“Not that Zhou princess?” Li Mingjin asked.

“You’re rushing, you saw the surface and not the root,” Luo Shuyu said. “It’s an obvious trap meant to make us quarrel, to split us.”

“Who would stoop so low, and now of all times?” Li Mingjin’s voice chilled.

“Someone hoping to fish in troubled waters with no brains to speak of.” Luo Shuyu had a pretty strong guess. The haste alone screamed Shen Mingyun.

This life, Shen Mingyun was nothing like the man from the book. Perhaps Luo Shuyu had grown too, seen more clearly; the closer he looked, the more shallow and shabby the other seemed.

“We’ll deal with him later,” Li Mingjin said, catching Luo Shuyu’s thought. That cousin was uncanny.

He did want to crush him, but Luo Shuyu had warned there might be a “master” behind Shen, better not startle the snake.

“Then let’s pay him back in kind,” Luo Shuyu suggested, smiling sharp.

“Good. I’ll follow your lead,” Li Mingjin said. In schemes, too, his spouse suited him perfectly.

The letter was simple: a “love note” in Jiayang Princess’s name to Li Mingjin: brazen and obscene. That was why Luo Shuyu had pegged Shen Mingyun at a glance. The man had no idea how restrained real letters were in this era; only people from his time shouted “love” and “like” every other line.

---

The Emperor’s convoy rolled on without further trouble. With the snow worsening, he dismissed everyone home rather than require them to escort him back to the palace. Mingjin and Shuyu returned safely.

After a wash, Shuyu fancied something simple for dinner: noodles in broth after a meat-heavy lunch. Mingjin had no objections; knife-cut noodles with chili oil hit the spot.

That night, Mingjin made good on his daytime threat to “eat him up.” Shuyu had thought it a joke until he was thoroughly devoured, flushed and speechless. He ended up enjoying himself anyway, marital joys and all that.

The next morning dawned bright and clear.

Li Mingjin went to court early. Luo Shuyu stretched lazily, breakfasted, and headed to Mingjin’s study. They shared it now; Mingjin never avoided him while working, and sometimes even asked his opinion.

Though there wasn’t much for the Criminal Ministry to do on the surface, Vice Minister Tang took Mingjin seriously and often gave him old cases to review. When Mingjin was out, Shuyu didn’t touch the files.

He sat on a fur-covered chair and thought.

That “love letter” had poked his reverse scale. Anyone who tried to sow discord between husband and husband could rot in hell. Clearly Shen Mingyun meant to break them apart to serve the system’s goal. Did Shen even know why the system issued such tasks? Likely because Shuyu and Mingjin were the boulder blocking the Fourth Prince’s road to the throne.

They were already that boulder and Shen still hadn’t earned the Fourth Prince’s full trust.

So how to remove them?

At times like these, steady hands won. No rushing.

He had Qingwang grind ink, flexed his wrist, and copied stroke for stroke, the style of a Zhou princeling whose letters he’d seen in the book. Then he dried the ink, folded the page, and sealed it.

“Deliver this to Shen Mingyun,” he told An Jiu. Even if Shen guessed the sender, the hand wasn’t Mingjin’s or his.

He trusted Mingjin’s loyalty to the bone. But would Li Mingchun trust Shen Mingyun’s?

Sowing discord? Two could play.

---

That night, Li Mingchun waited for Shen Mingyun to finish his bath. Shen always took half an hour or more. Bored, Mingchun propped up his pillow and found a letter beneath it, sealed with a lurid pink chrysanthemum.

Mingchun was deep and doubting by nature. He’d used a small trick to bring Shen into his manor; naturally, he also doubted the man’s loyalty.

He sat upright and slit the envelope. The first line stabbed his eyes:

My beloved Yun’er: a day apart is like three autumns…

He skimmed the page in angry gulps, then thrust it back along the original fold lines, replaced the pillow, and stared at the bed with a rising and falling chest.

Shen Mingyun dared... dared... to hide another man’s love letter under his pillow? How cheap. How fickle.

He pressed a hand to his sternum and forced his face smooth, eyes fixed on the bath curtain. The chatter and laughter within no longer sounded pleasant, only grating.

Who was this man? What did the “chrysanthemum” mean?

Chrysanthemums… he thought of only one person: the Crown Prince. He remembered the Crown Prince’s appreciative looks last time at the villa. Those days Shen had spent there, who was he with? The Crown Prince? Someone else? No, no one but the Crown Prince could enter that villa.

Then there was the waterwheel design. How had the Crown Prince gotten it? Had Shen handed it over himself?

If so, then Shen Mingyun… was he straddling two boats?

From the start, Mingchun had known Shen didn’t care about the boundary between men and gers, forever slinging arms around shoulders and calling people “brother.” Once, that had seemed like candor and lively charm. Now it stuck like a thorn.

Shen emerged from his bath wearing little and scented faintly, clearly in the mood. With the system’s “enhancements,” his skin was fine and his looks striking. When he didn’t talk and just posed, he was… alluring.

Mingchun, who had been seething, looked at him and felt a faint nausea instead. He touched his stomach. “I just remembered some business I haven’t finished. I’ll go to the study. You sleep first.”

He needed to cool down. Shen was satisfying in bed, yes, but he could not accept the man flirting outside after entering his household. Should he endure it for the grand design?

---

While cracks formed between the Fourth Prince and Shen Mingyun, Luo Shuyu hadn’t forgotten Princess Jiayang either.

Autumn had passed, and affairs multiplied. First, word that the Crown Princess was pregnant; a few days later, the Eldest Prince’s manor announced a pregnancy too, each racing to produce the first imperial grandson.

Shuyu and Mingjin watched the show with great interest.

With year’s end approaching, Shuyu had something else to arrange. And someone had been dropping increasingly obvious hints these two days.

For example, yesterday, someone had placed a raw egg on the desk.

Feigning ignorance, Shuyu said, “Why bring me a raw egg? Who wants their monthly pay docked?”

Mingjin asked gently, “Yuer, does a raw egg remind you of anything?”

“Fried eggs?” Shuyu blinked.

Mingjin shook his head. “No. Think again?”

“Boiled eggs, then.”

A little anxious now: “Try harder. Raw egg, not cooked.”

“Then… hatching chicks?”

“Close.”

“Oh!” Shuyu brightened. “You want to discuss whether the chicken or the egg came first.”

Mingjin stared at his spouse, complex emotions churning, and told the servants to take the egg to the kitchen and fry it. Clearly, his beloved needed a brain-boosting lunch.

---

Author’s Note:
Third Prince: Wife, let me see where exactly you’re going to have that baby~~
Luo Shuyu: …

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