Clack, clack-clack. Clack, clack-clack. The night watchman was making his rounds, striking his wooden clapper in a steady rhythm. As the hollow strikes drifted into the stilt house, Fang Yuan opened his dry, heavy eyelids, murmuring inwardly: “It is the fifth watch.” Yesternight, he had lain in bed pondering long into the night, making plans and arrangements. By his reckoning, he had slept for barely a little over two hours. This body had not yet begun cultivation and had little stamina; he still felt tired, and sleep kept tugging at his body and mind.
Yet five hundred years of trials had long tempered Fang Yuan’s willpower into profound, unyielding steel. A faint trace of lethargy meant nothing to him. Without hesitation, he tossed aside the thin silk quilt and rose to his feet with crisp precision. Pushing open the wooden window, he saw that the spring rain had ceased. Fresh, moist air carrying the scents of earth, trees, and wildflowers rushed into his face. Fang Yuan immediately felt his mind clear, his drowsiness swept away completely. The sun had not yet crested the horizon; the sky was a deep, brooding azure, caught between shadow and dawn. Looking out across the expanse, stilt dwellings constructed of green bamboo and timber blended seamlessly against the surrounding mountains, painting a tranquil panorama of verdant emerald.
These stilt houses were built at least two stories high, an architectural hallmark of the mountain folk. Because the rugged terrain was steep and uneven, the ground level consisted of massive timber stilts, while the upper floor served as living quarters. Fang Yuan and his younger brother, Fang Zheng, lived on this second floor.
“Young Master Fang Yuan, you are awake. Your servant will come up right away to attend your morning wash.” Just then, a girl’s voice came from downstairs.
Fang Yuan glanced down to see his personal maidservant, Shen Cui. Her looks were merely average, but she dressed with care, wearing a green tunic with long sleeves and matching trousers, embroidered shoes on her feet, and a single pearl hairpin nestled in her dark hair, radiating youthful vitality from head to toe. She cast a delighted glance up at Fang Yuan, then hurried up the wooden stairs with a basin of water, her brisk footsteps pattering against the planks. The water had been prepared to a gentle warmth for washing his face. To rinse his mouth, he used a willow twig dipped in fine snow-salt to clean and whiten his teeth.
Shen Cui attended him with gentle care, a bright smile on her face and coquettish warmth in her eyes. As she helped Fang Yuan dress and fasten his clasps, she brushed her plump bosom against his arm and back from time to time. Fang Yuan remained expressionless, his heart like still water. This maidservant was not only his aunt and uncle’s informant, but she was also vain and fickle. In his past life, he had once been blinded by her charms; yet after the Aperture Opening Ceremony, when his status plummeted overnight, she instantly turned against him, giving him no shortage of cold disdain.
When Fang Zheng came in, he saw Shen Cui smoothing the creases in Fang Yuan’s clothes over his chest, and a glint of envy and jealousy involuntarily flickered in his eyes. Living with his elder brother all these years and benefiting from Fang Yuan’s care, he too had a servant to attend him. Yet it was not a young maid like Shen Cui, but a fat, bloated old woman.
“If Shen Cui could attend to me like this one day, how would that feel?” Fang Zheng thought about it somewhat, yet dared not dwell on it fully.
That their aunt and uncle favoured Fang Yuan was common knowledge throughout the household. Originally, he had no servant to attend him; it was actually Fang Yuan who took the initiative to demand one for him. Although Fang Zheng was the master and Shen Cui the servant, he ordinarily did not dare look down on her. Her mother was Granny Shen, who attended their aunt and also managed the entire household. Deeply trusted by their aunt, she wielded considerable authority.
“Enough. There’s no need to fuss anymore.” Fang Yuan impatiently brushed aside Shen Cui’s soft little hands. His clothes had long been smooth; she was doing more to entice him than to straighten them.
To her, Fang Yuan had a bright future and was very likely to possess Grade A aptitude. If she could become his concubine, she could rise from servant to mistress, a single leap to the heavens. In his previous life, Fang Yuan had been deceived, even falling in love with this maidservant. Now, reborn, he saw through her completely, his heart as cold as frost.
“You can go.” Without so much as looking at Shen Cui, Fang Yuan adjusted his cuffs.
Shen Cui pouted slightly, feeling puzzled and a little hurt by his indifference to her advances today. She wanted to say something coquettish, but an inexplicable air about Fang Yuan, barely perceptible, intimidated her. She opened her mouth several times, but in the end merely said, “Yes,” and obediently left.
“Are you ready?” Fang Yuan looked toward Fang Zheng.
His younger brother stood blankly at the doorway. Lowering his head to look at his toes, he gave a quiet murmur of assent. He had actually woken during the fourth watch. Too nervous to sleep, he had slipped out of bed and prepared himself early. There were dark circles under both his eyes. Fang Yuan nodded. In his previous life, he had not understood what was on his younger brother’s mind. But in this life, how could he fail to understand? There was no point in exposing it now, however. He simply said, “Then let’s go.”
The two brothers left their residence. Along the way, they encountered quite a few youths their own age, in twos and threes, evidently heading to the same destination.
“Look, those are the two Fang brothers.” Cautious whispers reached their ears.
“The one walking in front is Fang Yuan, the Fang Yuan who writes poetry,” someone emphasized.
“So that’s him. Expressionless, acting as though no one else exists, he really is as arrogant as the rumours say.” The speaker’s sour tone carried both envy and jealousy.
“Hmph. If you could do what he does, you could act that arrogant too!” someone answered with a cold snort, concealing a note of discontent.
Fang Zheng listened expressionlessly. He had long grown accustomed to such talk. Head lowered, he followed silently behind his elder brother. By now, the horizon glowed with the light of dawn, and Fang Yuan’s shadow fell across his face. The morning sun was gradually rising, yet Fang Zheng suddenly felt that he was walking into darkness. This darkness came from his elder brother. Perhaps, for his entire life, he would never escape the enormous shadow his brother cast over him. Tightness gripped his chest again and again, until even breathing became difficult. This damned feeling brought one word to mind: suffocation!
“Hmph. Such talk. Truly, the tree that rises above the forest bears the brunt of the wind.” Listening to the comments around him, Fang Yuan sneered inwardly.
No wonder that, after his aptitude had been tested as Grade C, he had found himself surrounded by enemies, subjected to harsh treatment, cold disdain, and neglect for a long time. He also caught every sound of his younger brother’s increasingly labored breathing behind him. What he had failed to notice in his previous life, he now perceived down to the smallest detail. This keen insight came entirely from five hundred years of life experience. He suddenly thought of his uncle and aunt. They certainly had their methods. They had assigned Shen Cui to monitor him at close quarters, while giving his younger brother an old woman. There were other differences in their treatment, too, in the details of daily life. All of this was deliberate, intended to stir his younger brother’s sense of injustice and sow discord in the brotherly bond between them.
People worry not about having little, but about having unequal shares. In his previous life, he had been too inexperienced, and his younger brother too foolish and naive. Their uncle and aunt had succeeded in sowing that discord. Now that he had been reborn, the Aperture Opening Ceremony was already at hand. The situation seemed too deeply entrenched to reverse, but with Fang Yuan’s methods and wisdom as a demonic overlord, it could still be changed. This younger brother of his could certainly be subdued and brought to heel. Shen Cui, a mere slip of a maid, could all the more easily be taken as one of his concubines ahead of time. As for his uncle and aunt, the clan leader, and the clan elders, he had at least several hundred ways to put them in their place.
“But I have no wish to do any of that…” Fang Yuan sighed inwardly, untroubled.
So what if he was his own younger brother? Without familial affection to speak of, he was merely an outsider. Discard him, and so be it. Even if Shen Cui were even more beautiful, so what? Devoid of love and loyalty, she is nothing more than flesh. Take her as one of my concubines? She’s not worthy. So what if they were his uncle and aunt, the clan leader, or the clan elders? They were all merely passing through his life. Why exhaust his ingenuity and waste his energy putting these passersby in their place?
He chuckled.
As long as they do not block my path, they can piss off. I wouldn’t even deign to step on them.