I Rely on Beauty to Stabilize the Country

This chapter is the first of this week’s double update courtesy of ko-fi goals! Don’t miss the second one!

Fortunately, pants in the Great Heng period didn’t have an open crotch. Gu Yuanbai had also ordered the sides of the clothes underneath to be sewn together as well, so that, even if the robe was raised, the pants were one solid piece.

After riding the horse that time, Xue Yuan assessed that the skin was rubbed red, but it should not have burns.

Gu Yuanbai disliked being so delicate, but the skin on his body was tender nonetheless. The more pampered he got, the more painful and uncomfortable it’d feel. The palace attendants and doctors around him always kept all sorts of medicines around to prevent problems.

Xue Yuan took the medicine and stretched out a hand.

The medicine Tian Fusheng had given him felt very cold to the touch.

Xue Yuan, in the shade, faced the young Emperor’s white skin, which was as soft as tofu. It was the second time in his entire life that he was taking care of someone else, and his hands were reckless. After he pressed harder, the Emperor kicked him, sucked in a cold breath and said, “Lightly.”

After being kicked, Xue Yuan didn’t feel like taking care of him anymore. He brushed the dust off his clothes, with a layer of fine sweat covering his forehead. He didn’t know whether to sigh or act impatient. “Was I too rough?”

Gu Yuanbai laughed and said, “Guard Xue, your hands are so rough that they feel like Our skin is being scraped against a rock whenever you touch Us.”

The palm of Xue Yuan’s hands had many thick calluses and small scars. He had soldier hands, and naturally they couldn’t be called fine. Xue Yuan thought to himself, my entire body is this rough, perhaps the only soft spot is my tongue?

—But to use his tongue to apply medicine to Gu Yuanbai? Forget it, Xue Yuan didn’t have such a hobby yet.

Xue Yuan used the softest part of his little finger and the lightest strength he could to apply the ointment on the Emperor. Gu Yuanbai frowned, and he regretted having let him come.

After finally finishing the medicine, both of them breathed a sigh of relief. The skin on the inside of Gu Yuanbai’s thighs was hot and burning, and the medicine felt cold. Overwhelmed by the contrast, he couldn’t even exert enough force to stand up. Gu Yuanbai said, “You’re still not setting down Our robes?”

Xue Yuan smiled wryly and, seeing as the Emperor still had a bad expression, he said, “Emperor, could you smile at this official?”

Gu Yuanbai snorted, unable to hold back his amusement. “The audacity.”

He finally smiled, his eyebrows arching upwards, in an uncommon expression for a man that carried a heavy weight in his autumn-like hands. It wasn’t a faint or a polite smile that he usually wore, but a simple smile that had been caused by Xue Yuan.

Xue Yuan looked at his smile for a while, and felt itchy in his heart. He lowered his head and continued to tidy up Gu Yuanbai’s clothes in silence. Halfway through his hands holding the clothes, he discovered that the medicine was still drying, so he leaned forward and placed his head between the legs of the young Emperor, blowing on the spot where the ointment hadn’t dried yet.

The hot breath he blew over the cold ointment made Gu Yuanbai’s thigh shake. Gu Yuanbai didn’t like this position, held under his palm, so he supported himself up on the ground with one hand and grabbed Xue Yuan’s hair with the other, holding him firmly and he said in an indolent tone, “Hurry up.”

Xue Yuan’s scalp ached, and he smiled angrily. “I just opened my mouth to blow on the freshly applied ointment. After blowing on the left side, I still have to blow on the right side, there’s nothing I can do.”

There was no one around. Everything was quiet, the shadows of the trees and flowers blocked them from the view, and nobody would be able to see them. Gu Yuanbai sat up and looked down. “So it turns out it did get red.”

The skin had already been rubbed red, and afterwards, when Xue Yuan’s rough hands touched it, the redness became worse.

Xue Yuan touched the delicate skin, which felt soft and pleasant. He had no idea that the redness was also related to his rough hands. He asked calmly, “Does it still hurt?”

Gu Yuanbai frowned. “Go back and inform the servants.”

Once it was almost dry, Xue Yuan arranged Gu Yuanbai’s clothes again. Then he suddenly lowered his body over Gu Yuanbai, surrounded him with his arms, pulled him up, and stood up firmly.

Gu Yuanbai’s face turned dark and he was about to struggle to break free. Xue Yuan freed up a hand and patted him. Unexpectedly, he patted him on the butt. “Emperor, you can’t walk or ride a horse now. If you don’t want to suffer more pain, you have to obediently let this official carry you.”

Gu Yuanbai sneered, “See if you dare do that again!”

Xue Yuan raised his hand nonchalantly and patted him again, with a dark smile that showed his fangs. “I thought Your Highness liked to be patted.

“If Your Majesty wants me to pat a bit more, wait until we return to the palace,” said Xue Yuan, patiently and slowly. “There’s no need to rush, I need both hands to hold you right now.”

Gu Yuanbai was angry.

There was nobody around at the time. The two hands Xue Yuan was holding him with felt as if they were made of iron. Gu Yuanbai couldn’t get out of Xue Yuan’s hold with just his strength, and he guessed that Xue Yuan had the same thought and that it was the reason he was acting so bold now.

Did he think he couldn’t be punished at that moment?

Gu Yuanbai reached out with his hand, grabbed Xue Yuan’s collar and abruptly pulled Xue Yuan’s neckline down. Xue Yuan bowed his head and looked at the young Emperor condescendingly.

With no strength in his hands, he wouldn’t be able to pinch Xue Yuan’s neck. Gu Yuanbai pulled Xue Yuan closer, leaned up, held Xue Yuan’s neck and bit down.

When the teeth bit onto the neck, blood flowed out in an instant. Xue Yuan’s browns twisted in pain, his veins pulsed, and he couldn’t avoid exerting some force with his hands.

That really fucking hurts.

Xue Yuan’s fingers dug into the Emperor’s skin. Feeling the pain, the Emperor’s mouth became more fierce, blood flowing from the corner of his mouth and dripping to the guard uniform’s collar, dying the white fabric red.

Gu Yuanbai, with his mouth full of the scent of iron, felt satisfied and released his hold, licking the blood that remained on his lips. The corner of his mouth lifted coldly. “Do you still dare?”

The blood on his upper lip was Xue Yuan’s, and it was Xue Yuan’s blood being licked by the tip of his tongue. Xue Yuan’s meridians1 felt like they were bursting from the pain and his eyelid twitched. When he heard the Emperor’s words, he smirked fakely and asked, “Your Highness, do you feel comfortable now?”

Gu Yuanbai bit him again.

Xue Yuan hissed.

Gu Yuanbai had taken over an entire country. He didn’t usually get irritated and displeased with stupid things or stupid people. However, sometimes he felt envious of Xue Yuan. Why was he healthier than him, and also dared to act more deranged than him?

He had taken a bite with all his strength, using all the irritation in his heart. The blood spilled into his mouth, coating it in carnivorous anger, but Gu Yuanbai felt the pressure in his heart suddenly ease up.

He could vent all the tension against Xue Yuan.

Because Xue Yuan could take it.

Gu Yuanbai wiped his mouth, grabbed Xue Yuan’s chin, and turned his face to the front. “Give Us a good walk, don’t be stubborn. We tell you to listen and you don’t listen, but instead now you’re more submissive than a dog.”

Xue Yuan laughed, pressing his hand against the two bloody bite marks on his neck. “This servant originally just wanted to hold Your Highness to go to the palace.”

Gu Yuanbai raised his eyebrows and reached out to poke at the wound on Xue Yuan’s neck, “It hurts, doesn’t it?”

Xue Yuan said honestly, “Yes.”

“If you know it hurts, behave a bit,” Gu Yuanbai said, “be smart.”

Xue Yuan stopped talking. After a while, he said, “Aren’t I good enough?”

Gu Yuanbai pressed his wound again, and Xue Yuan twisted his mouth and said, “I’ve already been very well behaved, Your Majesty.”

“Behave a little more.” Gu Yuanbai smiled. “We like well behaved people.”

Xue Yuan’s eyebrows were pressed together, and he looked very gloomy.

So you like Chu Wei?

Is that why you smile at him when you see him?

Don’t you know he has bad intentions?

Xue Yuan felt suffocated in his heart, and stubbornly carried Gu Yuanbai back to the bedroom. The servants who were waiting here were frightened to see the blood on Xue Yuan’s neck and their legs became weak. Tian Fusheng was about to rush to seek an imperial doctor, but Gu Yuanbai stopped him. “We are fine.”

Tian Fusheng turned to look at Xue Yuan, who had blood all over his neck. Xue Yuan, with an unpleasant expression on his face, replied stiffly, “No need.”

Seeing as Xue Yuan was injured, the guards wanted to go forward to take Gu Yuanbai from Xue Yuan. But Xue Yuan bypassed them directly and put Gu Yuanbai on the bed.

A pale beauty on the bright yellow, dragon-patterned bed sheets. Xue Yuan glanced at Gu Yuanbai, pulled back his robe and wiped the blood on his neck.

He wiped more and more, and his robe was stained with blood. Xue Yuan thought to himself, he still has sharp teeth.

After the Emperor was tended to, someone tried to give Xue Yuan medicine. Xue Yuan

refused with a wave of his hand. The tall figure walked over to the dragon bed and stood there, looking as if he had just stepped out of a pool of dirt and blood.

Gu Yuanbai raised his eyelids to glance at him and was taken aback. “Why are you still bleeding?”

Xue Yuan didn’t care. He only wanted to say, “Can’t you just look at me more happily?”

The people around were busy, but the dragon bed was quiet and no one was disturbed. Gu Yuanbai frowned.

What Xue Yuan had said a while ago that had made him laugh, and what he had said just now, what did it all mean?

Did he really look so badly at Xue Yuan most of the time?

Seeing that he didn’t speak, Xue Yuan turned his head to look at the sky outside. It was almost time for him to leave.

If he could really get the young Emperor to look happy with him, there’d be no harm in pretending to be obedient to make him happy.

He turned his head around and the wound on his neck began to bleed again. Gu Yuanbai repeated, “Stop the bleeding from your neck first.”

Xue Yuan wiped it casually, and then glanced at the people in the palace. Seeing that no one paid them any mind, he suddenly bent his knee next to the bed, placed his face close to the Emperor’s, and tried to persuade it, still wrapped in the scent of death and dirt. “Your Highness, smile again, alright?”

" "

Gu Yuanbai didn’t hold back. He rolled his eyes at him and said, “Official Xue, you’re out of line.”

“This official grew up in army barracks ever since childhood,” Xue Yuan said slowly. “I’m rough, ignorant, unruly, and didn’t study the six arts of the gentlemen2. Even waiting on the Emperor is not easy, but this official is loyal to Your Majesty, in Heaven and Earth,” said Xue Yuan. He took the young Emperor’s hand and placed it on his neck so that he was touching his tall Adam’s apple, his lifeline right under the Emperor’s fingers so that it could be pinched easily. “Your Majesty, how about a smile for me?”

The mad dog had taken the initiative to show his neck and let Gu Yuanbai hold it. Suddenly, Gu Yuanbai’s desire for war and conquest felt satisfied. He narrowed his eyes, rubbing Xue Yuan’s neck with his fingers.

After a long time, Gu Yuanbai put his hand down and said lightly, “Officer Xue, you had a tiring day, head back.”

Xue Yuan replied in a formal tone. After a glance, he spotted the blood on the back of Gu Yuanbai’s hand from rubbing his neck. He wiped the blood on the back of Gu Yuanbai’s hand with his own before standing up straight and saying respectfully, “This official will head back.”

Gu Yuanbai looked at his back as he strode away and he took a long breath. He told himself that he had almost been charmed.

The crazy dog has learned to behave?

When Xue Yuan returned to the family mansion, the blood on his neck looked so terrifying that Madam Xue fainted.

The servants brought towels and hurried to call for a doctor. Xue Yuan sat silently, his eyes vacant and sunken.

After the blood was wiped clean, two deep bite marks were exposed. General Xue’s face grew stern when he spotted them, and he said, in a very bad tone, “What happened?!”

Xue Yuan raised his eyes and glanced at him, as if he was looking at an idiot. “I was bitten.”

General Xue was furious. “How could I not see that you were bitten?! What your old man is asking is how you were bitten!”

Xue Yuan couldn’t be bothered to reply, and General Xue went red with anger.

Madam Xue ignored the confrontation between father and son and looked at Xue Yuan’s wounds in distress. She sighed. “Look at you right now. How can you be worthy of being by His Highness’ side like this?”

“The Emperor will not resent me.” Xue Yuan’s mouth almost seemed to smile. “He might even feel happy.”

Madan Xue didn’t understand his muttering. “What?”

Xue Yuan didn’t elaborate. Instead, he got up, clutching his neck, and said casually, “Tell the doctor to come to my room to find me.” Then he strode away.

The Chengbao Temple and the Imperial Court exchanged three offers and three refusals. Once the temple fields were sent to the prefect for the fourth time, the court accepted these hundreds of acres of land and immediately arranged for manpower to be sent to the fields where spring sowing was still unfinished, to use them as a test field for cotton.

The abbot of Chengbao Temple finally breathed a sigh of relief, no longer having to be afraid about the matter. Meanwhile, the other temples that had seen the article written by the Chengbao Temple’s abbot were all cursing and calling the temple shameless.

If you want to donate stuff, just donate. Why do you have to drag us into it?!

Many people were keeping an eye on the actions of the Court. Every time the court went to the temple fields, many of the abbots felt full of impotent rage. If you’re going to take it, just take it, why do you have to keep going? Just return the gift! Return the gift!

When the dust finally settled, no matter how much rage they felt, they couldn’t change the facts. At that time, the court did another cruel thing regarding Chengbao Temple.

They praised the actions of Chengbao Temple, and took out the paper that had been written by the abbot and published it extensively.

Public opinion started acting up, and Chang Yuyan, who was well liked by Gu Yuanbai, publicly praised the abbot of Chengbao Temple vigorously, saying that he had displayed the compassion proper of Buddhist followers and shown that the monks hold the entire world dear, not caring about material wealth.

Chang Yuyan’s mouth had always been poisonous. Back then, he even dared to write thirteen poems insulting government ministers, even letting the Emperor see them to show off his talent. In any case, hearing his words now made the people from other temples come close to dying of anger.

So only those that donate their wealth can be considered true followers of Buddha?!

The Great Heng Dynasty didn’t lack genuine love and respect for Buddha. Each dynasty had its own rules. The former Emperor had revered Buddha, but now it was necessary to abide by Gu Yuanbai’s rules.

How many monks there could be for the size of the temple, and how many fields it could have, there were so many rules and regulations one after another, a big change was to be expected.

Against that sort of opposition that had a high moral standing, the best way to force them to surrender was using public opinion.

In the palace, Chu Wei stood next to Kong Yilin as he told the minister of industry about the sowing of the white cotton.

Kong Yilin came prepared to use these seeds as a ladder for his own advancement in court, and, naturally, he would not come ignorant. When he first saw white cotton and learned about its use in the Xixia border, he had also inquired about the characteristics of cotton in detail, including the soil, humidity, and season suitable for planting it.

Without him, the minister of Industry wouldn’t have a clue how to handle it, so in the meeting, after the two of them reported, the minister praised Kong Yilin.

Although Kong Yilin’s eyes looked a bit disturbing, the man had a good temperament and he remained calm, not trying to forcefully claim credit and instead just cultivating a good interaction for a long time to gain appreciation.

“…if you truly manage to cultivate it, Master Kong, you’ll have made a great contribution,” said the minister of Industry with a smile. “You should be involved in the entire process personally, Master Kong’s involvement is a blessing for the people.”

Kong Yilin acted humble and replied, “I dare not.”

Gu Yuanbai smiled and said, “The two of you are both pillars of the nation, so there is no need to be so modest. Having said that, since, as Scholar Kong said, the cotton wool and the seeds are together, it can be troublesome to peel the seeds off. We were wondering whether, after the sowing is completed and before it’s time to pick it, it might be possible to build a machine to deseed it.”

The minister of Industry was taken aback for an instant and then said, “This official will head back and discuss it with the officials.”

Gu Yuanbai nodded slightly.

After the two courtiers left, Chu Wei looked at Kong Yilin’s back with a slight wonder.

The Hanlin Academy was too leisurely. Originally, Kong Yilin was as unoccupied as him, and he didn’t pay him any mind. But these days, the other man was always busy, going out early and returning late. And, although the other man didn’t say anything, there was a smile on his face. The way he was always busy made Chu Wei feel like the other man was already surpassing him, which made him feel deeply uncomfortable.

The second ranker in the examinations had started to get busy, but he had nothing to do all day.

The feeling of being left behind, step by step, made the prideful Chu Wei suffer.

Gu Yuanbai noticed Chu Wei’s eyes looking at Kong Yilin. He smiled slightly, turned towards his government affairs, and continued to deal with state matters.

Outside the Imperial city.

Official Chu Xun, covered in dust, was exhausted. He handed his identification certificate to the soldier guarding the gate. Even though his face looked tired and run down, his eyes were frighteningly bright.

The dozen or so officials that had accompanied him originally had not been able to withstand the several days of exhaustion and had already returned to their mansions to rest, preparing to return to their duties the following day.

Master Chu Xun held a memorial to the throne in his arms and looked at the solemn expression of the gatekeeper. The excitement in his heart made his hands tremble.

He had fulfilled his mission and successfully returned to see the Emperor!

In which Xue Yuan’s sub vibes intensify.

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Footnotes

The meridian system is a concept in traditional Chinese medicine. Meridians are paths through which the life-energy known as “qi” flows.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Arts