Chapter 20#

[Second Life]#

Before I met my classmate, I thought I was the most fortunate transmigrator in the world.

Actually, calling him a classmate is a bit of an exaggeration.

The truth is, he was the Crown Prince of the current dynasty, and I was the second son of the Prime Minister’s family, also serving as the Crown Prince’s study companion.

When I transmigrated to this fictional dynasty, my original body was only seven years old. He, oh, no, I had a loving pair of parents who were devoted to each other, a talented elder brother who was already famous at twelve, and a future sister-in-law who was even more renowned than my brother.

Although my brother being able to compose a poem in seven steps at the age of twelve was already impressive, my future sister-in-law, who was one year older than me, was a super-powered protagonist with a halo, who had mastered classics at three and could speak eloquently at seven.

If she hadn’t refrained from reciting Tang and Song poems or inventing soap and glass, I would have truly suspected that she was also a transmigrator.

Oh, saying “also” might be overestimating myself a bit.

As a programmer, transmigrating to this ancient world, I really didn’t have any advantages as a transmigrator.

I could easily write a piece of code, but the people around me, let alone understanding code, didn’t even know what the ‘abcd’ in the code meant.

Let’s get back to my future sister-in-law.

It is said that when my future sister-in-law was just born, she would cry at everyone she saw, until she saw my brother, who came to visit the little sister, and then she smiled. Later, when she could crawl and grasp a little, as long as my brother was there, she would definitely cling to him.

My future sister-in-law’s family and mine were old acquaintances with a deep friendship. Seeing this, both families quickly arranged a marriage for my brother and my future sister-in-law, just waiting for the two families to become in-laws in the future.

My future sister-in-law was naturally happy about this childhood engagement, otherwise, she wouldn’t be clinging to my brother in the Prime Minister’s mansion every day, and shamelessly asking me to call her “sister-in-law” now.

As for my brother?

This young man, who was handsome and elegant in front of outsiders, would only smile foolishly in front of my porcelain-doll-like future sister-in-law.

Tsk.

Lolicon, pedophile.

Definitely a henpecked husband in the future.

So, anyway, I grew up in a wealthy and harmonious family, with loving parents and filial children, and even my future sister-in-law was like a sister to me.

You tell me, with my background, why would I still bother to study hard and strive for success?

Anyway, as a gay man, I wasn’t thinking about having any descendants. With my family’s wealth, just a small portion would be enough for me to live a carefree life as a dandy.

Studying hard, taking difficult exams, becoming an official… that would be a waste of the life I got for free.

Yes, I am gay, a homosexual, a “cut sleeve.”

But I have a bottom line, I don’t like children, and I think that in this aspect, I am a little stronger than my brother.

However, my brother and my future sister-in-law are a willing pair, and now it’s in ancient times where social customs are different, so I can only romanticize their relationship as “a boy riding a bamboo horse, playing with green plums around the bed.”

Anyway, since I had the capital to be a dandy and no burden of the next generation, I happily threw away my books, abandoning my father’s idea of raising his second son to be talented, and spent my days playing to my heart’s content, enjoying this wonderful ancient life without TV, computers, mobile phones, or the internet.

…Actually, it wasn’t that great, but I got used to it after a while.

After transmigrating, I enjoyed life like this for three years, finally turning myself into a notorious dandy.

Actually, I just think I didn’t study and just ran out to play. I didn’t go to brothels or gambling houses, nor did I forcibly snatch common women… but these high-ranking officials and nobles in the capital who wanted their children to be successful were afraid of me like the plague. I felt a bit wronged.

However, considering that I have a father who became the top scholar at twenty, and a brother who became the top scholar at fifteen, and I don’t study much but just run around playing wildly, being treated like an “Ebola-like ‘dandy syndrome’ virus” isn’t particularly unfair.

Yes, my brother became the top scholar a few days ago.

Logically speaking, given my brother’s flourishing age, the court would usually implicitly give him the third place (Tanhua).

Firstly, he was too young, and the top scholar (Zhuangyuan) and second place (Bangyan) were better left to those who had studied for decades; secondly, choosing a handsome and elegant young man for the romantic and charming title of Tanhua would be a beautiful story.

But on the day of the palace examination, His Majesty the Emperor looked at my brother for a long time, and couldn’t bring himself to let my brother ruin the beautiful title of “Tanhua Lang”. In the end, he still awarded my brother the Zhuangyuan based on his talent.

You might find it strange, isn’t my brother a handsome and elegant young man?

The problem, again, lies with my future sister-in-law.

My future sister-in-law, I don’t know if she ate too much, took the wrong medicine, or ate all the vinegar in the city’s grocery stores, but starting a year ago, she always said that my brother was too dashing and would attract butterflies, and insisted on making my brother look ugly.

My brother is a lolicon and a future henpecked husband, and my parents always say good things about their future daughter-in-law. After a year, my brother outside the Prime Minister’s mansion became a model of “a man changes greatly at eighteen, and turns ugly in a blink of an eye.”

All the young ladies in the capital felt that a handsome man was gone, which was a pity.

I think my future sister-in-law, such an intelligent beauty, has a hole in her head, which is a pity.

However, when my brother, who should have been Tanhua, unexpectedly became Zhuangyuan, I felt that perhaps my future sister-in-law didn’t have a hole in her head, but rather, she was reborn.

But that shouldn’t be the case.

I have such a powerful cheat as a transmigrator, and I don’t have any memories of a previous timeline, so there’s no reason why my future sister-in-law could be reborn.

But out of scientific curiosity… or rather, boring gossip, I deliberately told my future sister-in-law many stories about past and present lives, and Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly.

As a result, I talked until my mouth was dry, but she suddenly asked me, out of the blue, what the current Crown Prince’s name was. Of course, as someone who doesn’t care about national affairs, I couldn’t answer.

Then she looked at me like I was an idiot for a long time, took three pastries from a plate on the table and put them in my hand, and then sent me out to play.

Although there is indeed an insurmountable gap in intelligence between us, when she looks at me like that, I still feel very hurt, I tell you.

And my future sister-in-law probably thought that what I told her were mostly romance stories, indicating insufficient reading. She didn’t care if a dandy like me could understand them, and the next day she sent someone to give me a pile of books like “Sanyan Erpai” and “The Travels of Lao Can.”

After this incident, I felt that I was overthinking things. A transmigrator meeting a reborn person, this isn’t a novel I’m writing.

My brother became the top scholar and entered the Hanlin Academy, and his life changed.

And my life also changed because my brother became the top scholar.

When the emperor bestowed honors, he praised him for being young and promising for a long time, complimented my father for being good at raising children, and then appointed me as the study companion of the Crown Prince, whose name I couldn’t answer.

My father was terrified because his son was unlearned.

My brother was terrified because his younger brother was unlearned.

I was also terrified because I guessed that the suspicious ruler on the dragon throne, fearing that the Crown Prince would be too powerful when he grew old, wanted to use the unlearned me to influence his son, so that his son wouldn’t be too talented.

Of course, I had another reason for my fear.

Ever since I was little, my future sister-in-law would always scare me with stories about the current Crown Prince and his mother.

I don’t know where my future sister-in-law heard so many secrets of the imperial family. Anyway, from the bloody turmoil in the early years of the harem, to how the Crown Prince’s mother became the current Empress by virtue of her family background, to how this Empress could suppress three thousand beauties, to how the Emperor had no other surviving sons besides the Crown Prince, to how the eunuchs and palace maids around the Crown Prince would “disappear” after a while… my future sister-in-law would tell me these stories as bedtime stories, pre-meal stories, pre-play stories, and meeting stories, whether there was anything going on or not.

She told me so much that whenever I heard words like “palace,” “Empress,” or “Crown Prince,” I would feel a chill down my spine.