Good Man Operation Guide

And so like his two brothers, the Third Prince was quickly knocked out of the fight.

For the moment, in the eyes of the Emperor, Shen Huyang and Shen Hu’an, this pair of brother and sister, have become his inverse scale. If someone were to touch them, the heavier the punishment was, the better he would feel in his heart.

(TNote: inverse scale = According to legend, there is a palm-sized white scale under the neck of the dragon, which is crescent-shaped. It is commonly known as the inverse scale, and they will be angry if anyone touches them.)

When the Emperor returned to his palace, he was worried about what to do with the Third Prince.

He asked this to the old eunuch, “After all, he is my own child. One would develop feelings for even a small dog or cat after raising them over the years, not to mention that I have always been soft-hearted.”

Then the ‘soft-hearted’ Emperor sent the Third Prince to the miasmic lands where the Eldest Prince was.

He only didn’t want to kill his own children, so he chose to let them die in a roundabout way.

In the Emperor’s mind, the heavier his hand was when he disposed of the Third Prince, the closer Shen Huyang and Shen Hu’an hearts would feel towards him.

After all, he sent the Third Prince to die for them, didn’t he?

But things don’t always turn out as what people wished them to become.

When the news reached their ears, Shen Huyang sneered twice and stopped paying attention to the matter, while Shen Hu’an flinched at the thought.

Today he has seen what a merciless Emperor was.

On the surface, Emperor Father claimed that he loved the Third Prince, but he killed him in one stroke. The Third Prince – the son, who at least had been filial to his Emperor Father for more than ten years – was treated like this, so wouldn’t he be even more ruthless to the son he hadn’t had much contact with?

Shen Hu’an felt a great sense of crisis in his heart. He was afraid that he would be the next one to be abandoned. So he didn’t need to be urged by his sister and brother-in-law anymore and studied hard every day, trying to grasp the key points Lin Shiheng was teaching him, and except for his Imperial Sister’s call, he would stay indoors. He succeeded in becoming the nerdiest imperial son in history.

In the same situation as him in the palace, there was also the Fourth Prince.

There wasn’t much difference in age between the Fourth Prince and Shen Hu’an. However recently, he, who had always felt that Emperor Father was fair, finally felt the obvious bias.

And so although he felt he hadn’t consciously done anything, in the Emperor’s eyes, his birth was already a mistake.

After all, the difference between the Fourth Prince and Shen Hu’an born of Consort Liu was only a few months. But at that time, Consort Zhao, the Fourth Prince’s mother, had been well-favored. She had been well taken care of since she was pregnant with the Emperor’s child. With something like even a simple sneeze, the Emperor would quickly call people over from the Physician’s Office to take care of her. Then after the Fourth Prince’s birth, he received even more favor until he gradually gained the desire to compete with his brothers, which was when the Emperor finally withdrew his favor, treating him no differently from his other three sons.

At that time, the Emperor had outright ignored Shen Hu’an. But now that he discovered that he had misunderstood Consort Liu, he now found the Fourth Prince displeasing to the eye.

Think about it, the Fourth Prince was in Consort Zhao’s womb when his mother ate all kinds of delicacies, while Consort Liu fell out of favor at that time. Although the people serving won’t dare to be careless, places such as the imperial kitchen were accustomed to looking down on people using their dishes. The treatment of such an unfavored consort had always been perfunctory, so he could well imagine how Consort Liu had fared.

Then after the Fourth Prince was born, he was immediately given a name by the Emperor, and his treatment followed like his mother’s, he was raised with utmost favor. Meanwhile, not long after Shen Hu’an was born, his consort-mother died and was then entrusted to an unfavored concubine to raise. In the end, that concubine also soon died of illness.

The other concubines in the palace all felt that he was the bearer of bad luck. Otherwise, why would both his mothers have died one after another? The high-ranking consorts were favored and felt that they wouldn’t be unable to give birth to children as they were still young, so they were not interested in taking care of this imperial son who ‘killed his own mother’. As for the lower-ranked concubines, even if they had thoughts in their hearts, they didn’t have the qualification, and so the Emperor also pretended not to see it. For Shen Hu’an to have been able to stumble to adulthood, it was all attributed to Shen Huyang’s careful care.

Revisiting the past now, the Emperor simply ignored the fact that he was the first person to express his disinterest in the little prince, leading to the servants of the palace to do the same, causing Shen Hu’an’s food and clothing to be inferior to that of the Fourth Prince. And so, he didn’t hesitate before targeting the Fourth Prince with his anger.

How good you’ve been, you’ve eaten well and grew up being well cared for…

Then look at the child between Consort Liu and me, who is only a few months younger than you. It’s amazing how different your lives are!

The Fourth Prince soon felt how bitter it was to be treated with indifference by the Emperor.

Of course, with his brain, there was no way for him to be able to guess why the Emperor suddenly started to treat him this way, so he was simply at a loss. He could only cower in the palace every day, not daring to emerge at all.

The Emperor was satisfied with his good sense in targeting the Fourth Prince, but he also wanted this second-to-last son to ‘take the initiative’ to withdraw from the competition for the throne.

After all, in his heart, Shen Hu’an was already equivalent to the Crown Prince, and he had already abolished the other three sons. If the Fourth Prince also made mistakes, Shen Hu’an would be later criticized for being a ‘prince who relied on the fact that his older brothers were dead to rise to the top.’

What’s more, he wasn’t a cold and heartless person who didn’t care about his own son’s life!

After the suppression of the Fourth Prince, who didn’t dare to step forward anymore, the Emperor began to frequently pull Shen Hu’an, who had tried to stay in the palace, out to deal with political affairs.

It must be said that though perhaps the Emperor was a man who would unreasonably protect his own shortcomings and was rather prone to neurotic thinking, he was quite reliable in dealing with political affairs. So Shen Hu’an, who was taught by him, also went from being frazzled at the beginning to handling it swiftly towards the end.

Eventually, rumors appeared through the capital that the Fifth Prince, Shen Hu’an, would soon become the Crown Prince.

A minister in court also began to ask for a Crown Prince to be conferred.

Only that this minister didn’t ask for Shen Hu’an but the Fourth Prince.

After that, the minister went on to babble that the Fourth Prince was good in every sense and that he should be appointed as the Crown Prince, during which, the Emperor didn’t exhibit any change in his facial expression. After the minister finished, he only asked which ministers agreed that the Fourth Prince should be made Crown Prince.

Not many people came forward, and their positions weren’t high enough either. After all, among the four princes, the Fourth Prince was the youngest and his maternal clan wasn’t that strong. Moreover, compared to the three brothers who were abandoned before him, he was also rather short-handed in terms of men by his side.

The Emperor once again raised the banner of tolerance and reconsideration.

(TNote: The Emperor resisted being too cruel *cough* killing them all *cough* and tried to tolerate it.)

After the court was dismissed, he called Shen Hu’an to his side to teach him how to deal with political affairs. In a casual tone, he stated that the minister who proposed to confer the Fourth Prince as the Crown Prince was sent by him.

Shen Hu’an: “…”

“An’er should write down the names of those who came forward and keep them in mind. They are all your fourth brother’s people and may get in your way in the future, don’t let them remain in this court for too long.”

The Emperor’s meaning was obvious. ‘I helped you seek out your competitor’s people. You write down their names and wait until you’re in power, then weed them out one by one.’

Even though Shen Hu’an had been very clearly aware that Emperor Father’s thinking was different from normal people for a long time, this time, he was still left stunned.

Emperor Father, isn’t this an entrapment?

The Emperor was delighted with his shocked expression.

He waved his hand, saying that this kind of a small ploy could be used once in a while, and one only needed to remember to not be soft-hearted and not to indulge one’s enemies.

From his perspective as the Emperor, these courtiers were loyal. They surrendered to the Emperor, but they wouldn’t surrender to Shen Hu’an. Since they refuse to submit, they would cause trouble. If you don’t make the first move, then would you just wait for them to cause trouble?

Shen Hu’an’s head was filled with ‘strike first and gain the upper hand’, ‘heaven and earth will not tolerate people who don’t practice cultivation’ and ‘wildfire can’t burn all the weeds, they will always grow again in spring’.

(TNote: — Heaven and earth will not tolerate people who don’t practice self-cultivation = can be interpreted as two things. 1. the world won’t tolerate people who don’t cultivate/better themselves. 2. People should fight for their own things selfishly, or it won’t be tolerated by the heavens. — wildfire can’t burn all the weeds = the vitality of weeds.)

By the time he left the hall, his entire being was in a trance.

This was completely different from what the teachers had taught when he studied in the palace before.

In particular, the most unacceptable thing for Shen Hu’an was the Emperor’s last suggestion. That was, after his ascension to the throne, if the Fourth Prince were to make any strange movements, the other must immediately be executed without hesitation.

Shen Hu’an hated his Fourth Older Brother, but he didn’t expect that Emperor Father, who had always been so fond of his Fourth Brother, would express his support for killing the other.

Moreover, he also very attentively told him to not kill the other as soon as he came into power but to first maintain it as is for 2 years so that when his brother finally died, others wouldn’t think that it was Shen Hu’an, the younger brother, who had done it, so as not to provoke people’s criticism.

Shen Hu’an: “…”

He began to recall the memorial tablets of the several uncles he had only seen in the ancestral temple.

As far as he knew, the previous generation of Imperial Older Uncles and Younger Uncles weren’t of good health, supposedly because the previous Emperor married a wife who wasn’t virtuous at the time. The Empress he married was a medicine master who loved to drug people all over the place. As a result, the Princes rarely survived in the harem, and even if they survived, they were always in poor health. Even Emperor Father had been weak in his early days, and he was only slowly nurtured back to health after becoming the Emperor.

Emperor Father was kind and friendly to these brothers. But then, within 10 years after Emperor Father ascended the throne, the Older Uncles and Younger Uncles who were already ‘weak’, died of illness one after another.

If the imperial family really suffered from a weak bloodline because the Empress who had been abolished by the late Emperor, drugged everyone, why was it that only the Princes died? After all, most of the Princesses have lived peacefully even up until now.

Combined with the words from Emperor Father telling him to hold back and wait so that no one would get suspicious before making a move on the Fourth Prince, Shen Hu’an broke out in cold sweat even though he was under the bright sun.

Perhaps from his position, this bias from Emperor Father should have been considered favorable.

But Shen Hu’an wasn’t happy at all.

During this period of time, because Emperor Father had been kind to him and was devoted to teaching him, a child’s feeling of admiration arose; but now it was directly scared back.