64 Arc 5.5 Empress of Four Kingdoms
"Please annul Fei-er's engagement with General Long."
Long Zheng frowned and his eyes met her own provocative ones as she remained seated above him beside the Emperor on the golden dragon throne. He hadn't expected her to abruptly break their engagement, as she had been treating him relatively amiably even if her provocations seemed to be hinting at her looking down on him somewhat.
The Emperor and Li Yun's heartbeats sped up. They were so happy they could barely hold back their smiles. Of course, they tried their best to maintain the air of solemnity in order to give the general face.
Emperor Li's face was serious as he questioned Li Feifei's reasoning, "Why does Fei-er wish to annul the engagement with the General? Has Fei-er been wronged?!"
At that last thought, the Emperor was already feeling anxious and unreasonably angry as his domineering aura was instilled into his rising voice, causing General Long who had indeed wronged Li Feifei to inadvertently break out into a cold sweat even though he knew she wouldn't rat him out for standing by idly as she was defending herself from assassins.
Li Feifei glanced at Long Zheng whose head was lowered back down as he continued standing but the tension in the throne room was real.
She smiled slightly, "Fei-er..."
Fuck! What am I supposed to say? Father, ah, you were supposed to just happily comply as the doting father you were written to be!
Li Feifei's genial smile slowly faded and turned into a pout instead as she resorted to pleading, "Imperial Father, Fei-er found that General Long's first impression was very bad. Fei-er doesn't want to be with the general for her entire lifetime at all."
Let's just go with this approach for now...
Li Yun who sat at Emperor Li's other side suppressed his amused chuckle, as according to Li Feifei's previous explanation to him, the General had supposedly lent a hand in dealing with the assassins from earlier which usually would have been the catalyst for pulling every young maiden's heartstrings.
But his dear little sister just revealed that the General had done otherwise and ended up contradicting her earlier words instead.
He really had to teach her how to be more convincing with her lies, ah!
But, because of how much of an "amateur" she was at lying through her teeth, neither the Crown Prince nor the Emperor ended up thinking that she was acting out of character.
Meanwhile 001 was breaking out into a cold sweat at how his host was standing on the edge of a cliff with her acting in this world...
In truth, the only reason Li Feifei and Long Zheng had been engaged was because he was the only other male in the Kingdom who was close to her age and held a proper rank worthy of her own as the Second Princess of Li. There were no other political or familial reasons to the engagement so it was okay to let it go.
The other two officials that could somewhat compete with her own rank, the Left and Right Prime Ministers, had sons that the Emperor was not entirely reliant on in regards to taking care of his precious daughter--and even though he knew that General Long wasn't the best either, he was the better of the three evils.
Across from them, Long Zheng already knew that he didn't help Li Feifei at all. Rather, he just stood to the side and even hoped she had been killed by those assassins.
He narrowed his eyes; if he'd known of her capabilities, none of this would have happened and his ambitions would be much easier to achieve with her by his side.
Knowing that such a strong woman definitely wouldn't back down on her request and he was the one in the wrong, instead of trying to convince her to stay with him, Long Zheng helped her to convince the Emperor to annul their engagement. This way, he would be seen as sensible instead of shameless.
Also, the matter of their marriage really didn't have to be rushed. Currently in the Kingdom of Li only he was the only man who had the qualifications to take Li Feifei's hand in marriage as there were no other promising youths in their generation aside from her own two brothers.
He could take the time after their engagement had been temporarily broken to woo her back to his side.
Long Zheng lowered his head and brought up his hands, "Your Majesty, if gongzhu truly desires an annulment, this General won't be shameless and clingy."
Even though Long Zheng was called back to speedily marry Li Feifei, his initial intention was to annul the engagement anyway so it wouldn't change his plans by much aside from the fact that he would maintain a friendly relationship with the royal family.
And that resulted from the fact that the woman he was pursuing had deviated from the original plot line, changing from the female lead to Li Feifei.
His original intention was to infuriate the royal family by ruining her reputation, causing the young princess to retaliate so that he could strike her down within "reason." This would in turn deal a blow to the especially close royal family as a whole, weakening their resolve and spirit and making them easier for him to take down.
As for that Li Hao, that smitten boy from earlier was no threat to him at all.
The Emperor had been conflicted over the matter of his daughter's marriage ever since her coming of age ceremony a few months back as there was a lack of candidates to be his son-in-law. But he didn't take this annulment too seriously as his train of thought aligned with Long Zheng's in that if he annulled it today it would only be temporary.
Thus, he consented just to make his only daughter happy as he laughed cheerfully because he was also secretly happy that she hadn't fallen in love with the youth in front of them and thus hadn't been stolen away from him, "Good, good! Imperial Father will do as Fei-er wishes. From today onwards Fei-er and General Long are no longer betrothed."
In his opinion, even fifteen was still too young for his daughter to be married off!
Even the Crown Prince beside him couldn't hide the satisfied smile behind his spotlessly white sleeve from his keen eyesight.
Li Feifei beamed as she bobbed her head down in a curtsy, "Thanking Imperial Father for the grace!"
Thinking about how he had ordered for Long Zheng to return from the border just to marry his daughter and how the youth was in the capital for no reason now that the engagement had temporarily been held off, the Emperor turned from Li Feifei to Long Zheng.
As the Emperor, he had to make sure to tie up any loose ends even if the General himself had complied to his daughter's selfish plea.
"Zhen has wronged General Long in this exchange. Is there anything that the General would like to request from zhen?"
Although he said "anything," everyone in the room knew that he was just being perfunctory. If Long Zheng ended up asking for anything too overbearing then Long Zheng would be overstepping his boundaries instead.
Cupping his hands together, Long Zheng's youthfully deep voice that had just barely gone through puberty as he was only fourteen was still powerful enough to echo throughout the hall, "Thanking Your Imperial Majesty, this General won't ask for much. Only that this General may remain in the capital until next year."
Since he was no longer obligated to stay in the capital, he would normally have to return to his duties at the border.
In the original plot, Long Zheng had only remained in the capital due to the numerous problems arising after he himself rudely broke off the engagement and offended the royal family.
But because Li Feifei was the one who held the higher rank and standing, combined with the fact that neither of the involved parties suffered any actual indignation, no one was dissatisfied. So, Long Zheng would naturally have no reason to remain in the capital as opposed to the original plot.
However, in order to woo his former fiancée and more importantly to kick-start his plans of reigning over the Four Kingdoms, Long Zheng needed to stay.
Seemingly ignorant to the young general's ambitions, the Emperor lightly complied to let him stay within the capital.
It wouldn't hurt, as they were expecting foreign visitors from the neighboring Hua anyway and having Long Zheng around to guard the capital in the meantime was a plus.
As for whatever the young general had in store, the Emperor was actually secretly hoping that the general would just ask for the throne already ah! He really wanted to go live a peaceful life with his beloved Empress somewhere in isolation.
He already knew that Li Yun had no real desire for the throne, and General Long was young but competent--and the Long family had been wronged all those centuries ago anyway--so Emperor Li didn't have too many misgivings at all in handing the throne away. One only feared that the Third Prince and the officials wouldn't take it nicely. That, and the General had lofty ambitions that could endanger the citizens.
If the three others in the room could read his mind at that moment, Li Yun and Li Feifei would shake their heads helplessly while Long Zheng would cough blood as all of his meticulous planning to get the throne would have been rendered a waste of time.
From the mission details, Li Feifei already knew the Emperor's stance and that he only remained on the throne in order to keep a civil war from happening as there were currently three factions within the Kingdom--the Crown Prince, Third Prince, and General Long's.
Though, of course, the Crown Prince was a passive and open player while the other two were sneaking around.
Additionally, he was hesitant in handing the throne over to Long Zheng because he knew the youth wanted to conquer more than just Li. The Emperor wasn't sure if such ambitions could be achieved without the bloodshed of his people so he ended up continuing his act of ignorance while supporting Li Yun as the safest candidate as the heir to the throne.
Li Yun, of course, was aware of his Imperial Father's profound thoughts and agreed with them.
As one of the two militaristic kingdoms they really didn't need to go about ruining the peaceful relations that they had currently with the other three kingdoms.
And, if any of the other three kingdoms suddenly decided to attack Li, it would be difficult for any of them to come out unscathed and not open to attacks from the others watching on the sidelines.
Unfortunately, Li Yun and Li Yunzhi were both just residents of this world so they were unaware of the inevitable ambition of the three neighboring kingdoms.
On the other hand, Li Feifei was considering the possibility of temporarily allying with Hua in order to easily take over the other two kingdoms. It was even more feasible since the current emperor of Hua had only recently been enthroned.
The bulk of the matter was that if she could guarantee the safety of the citizens, Emperor Li wouldn't mind handing the throne to her even if she was a woman. Especially so, since she was heavily doted upon by him in the first place.
So, if she could get the throne for herself first, then ally with Hua, there would be the least amount of casualties when dealing with the other two kingdoms. In fact, with two militaristic kingdoms joining hands it wouldn't be weird for both Zhao and Shi to feel extremely intimidated.
She was also confident that her Imperial Father would choose her over her ex-fiancé and half-brother because of her "less violent" ways.
After all, Long Zheng was a proud young man who wanted to rely entirely on himself and his army to conquer the lands which would undoubtedly call for more bloodshed, while Li Hao wanted to steal the throne for a childish reason.
Li Feifei didn't really take into consideration if Hua was willing to ally itself with Li, though, nor did she care for their opinion. If anything, she was more than willing to go over and "negotiate" personally. But then again, she felt there was probably no need to as the proposal was really enticing--if the two of them allied then it would be a piece of cake to take over Zhao and Shi even if the two other kingdoms combined forces.
One was, after all, a trade kingdom while the other was purely intellectual. A brute show of force combined with a good amount of brains was usually enough to do just about anything, which were the qualities that the Hua and Li Kingdoms could fulfill.
There wasn't really any more of a reason for Li Feifei to continue staying in Li anyway, as her devil was obviously not in the kingdom. Who knew which country he would end up in, but the most likely answer was actually Hua, the other powerhouse kingdom, which was another reason she was interested in allying with them.
It was hard to imagine her show-off of a man as a delicate scholar from Shi. And even though he was shameless enough to be a scheming trader of Zhao, Li Feifei felt that the militaristic Hua actually more in tune with his image.
But, she knew that the Sixth Prince--err, the newly crowned Emperor of Hua--was only fourteen. If he was truly her devil, then they had both been thrown in for a loop by the mission world this time as they could only lament as they waited for their child to be born between them!
As if it wasn't already bad enough that they were miles apart from each other...
