Song Yi shook his head when he saw his two disciples acting like this. In fact, Pei Xuan had always been the disciple Song Yi was most proud of. An excellent student who learned everything both quickly and thoroughly. Although his temperament caused him to be a bit stiff and awkward, he always respected Song Yi as his master and listened to his teachings.
On the other hand, Su Tang was like an eternal thorn in his side. She always had some new and impossible to predict strange ideas in her head. Moreover, she also always had some crooked logic to explain away her fallacious reasoning no matter how absurd it might seem. In short, she had pretty much no relation at all to the words “sensible” or “obedient”.
Thus, the result of these two disciples’ meeting was predictable, really letting him feel what it truly meant to be caught between laughter and rage.
“Hmph!” Song Yi suddenly gave a loud grunt, trying to remind these two little destined foes that this was a serious situation.
After hearing his master’s hint, Pei Xuan sent a final reluctant glance toward Su Tang before refocusing himself and continuing: “Uncle Emperor and Auntie Empress seem to have lost their minds recently. They have been bestowing marriages one after another in the capital and even bestowed one to my cousin. After that I sensed that they seemed to have their eyes on me so, seeing that the situation wasn’t good, I immediately found a chance and ran away.”
Song Yi listened to Pei Xuan seriously and, after pondering for a moment, he said, “They want to bestow you a marriage? Could it be they plan to bestow Zhao’er to you?”
“Yes.” Pei Xuan nodded.
Su Tang suddenly thought of something. It seemed that this guy’s cousin should be the crown prince, right? After thinking this far, her expression slightly changed. Song Yi noticed the change and asked her, “Did you think of something girl?”
“Senior apprentice-brother, it was your cousin, the crown prince, who helped you to run away from the capital, right?” Su Tang asked Pei Xuan directly.
Pei Xuan replied in a shocked tone: “How did you know?”
Su Tang rolled her eyes and replied, “With your IQ, you probably won’t understand even if I explain.”
Seeing his junior apprentice-sister despising him, Pei Xuan stood up angrily and sputtered, “Y-you… I…”
“Wait, don’t make trouble just yet.” Song Yi suddenly interrupted from the side. Then he turned back to Su Tang and prompted: “Little girl, what have you thought of?”
“What can a little peasant girl like me think of the circumstances of these ‘noble’ people? Isn’t it just like they say, ‘no true relations among the imperial family’? Tsk tsk, aren’t they just cursing their son to be short-lived? Getting married at the age of 15, are they not afraid of going against the law? It’s always persistently the same old story…”
Su Tang pursed her lips. In fact, one of the laws passed down by the founding emperor of the Qihuang Kingdom was that men could only marry after the age of 18 and women could only marry after the age of 15.
It was said that this was all because the found emperor had missed out on his beautiful first love in order to found the kingdom back then, all because the girl’s family had married her off before she turned 15. This had been a source of lifelong anger for the founding emperor and, in the end, he had even made it a law that young people of his kingdom should not get married so early.
Thus, although the reason behind it was somewhat capricious, it was clearly written in the kingdom’s laws that there were no exceptions, even for the royal family. Therefore, all the princes even until now could only get married after the age of 18, and sometimes even as late as 20.
Su Tang had to admit that, although the original intentions behind this law were odd, the founding emperor’s views on this matter were actually in line with modern science.
But the result was now, all these years later, those well-fed nobles in the capital had nothing better to do and used all their efforts trying to play tricks to gain the throne. Obviously, they were hoping that Pei Xuan, as an eager young man, would be all-too-eager to go along with this marriage and ultimately end up dying on a woman’s belly. Heh heh, wouldn’t that sort of dog blood development be very exciting for those bored old men in the capital?
“What did you say?” Su Tang’s voice had been low and she trailed off halfway, so Pei Xuan didn’t hear her clearly and asked her to repeat herself.
Su Tang looked over at Song Yi, then over at Pei Xuan, and raised an eyebrow, “You didn’t hear me just now?”
Pei Xuan unconsciously nodded.
Su Tang smiled faintly, “You want to know, right?”
Pei Xuan tried to hold back, but still nodded in the end.
Su Tang’s smile got even bigger and sweeter than before, and she said, “Unfortunately, I can’t say.”
“You…” Pei Xuan blurted out. This little moneygrubber was really abominable, too abominable!
Su Tang sighed and put on an earnest expression: “It’s not that I don’t want to say, it’s just that this is a trial for you!”
Su Tang carefully watched Pei Xuan’s expression and slowly continued, “Actually, little brother, I feel that the air seems good and the sun seems warm today. Since we have such fine spring weather, don’t you think it would be very suitable for us to do some pleasant outdoor activities!”
Pei Xuan: Who can explain to me how the topic suddenly changed so drastically?
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tl begging corner:
