Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Fake Household Registration

Shen Tang sucked in a breath so sharp it stung.

Only then did she understand why Qi Shan’s face had gone so dark.

Put that kind of humiliation on anyone—who could swallow it?

“A defeated royal house leading its officials to surrender is supposed to be an honor for the victor. No matter how unwilling the ruler of Xin is, he shouldn’t dare resist.”

Her voice dropped, tight with disbelief.

“But Zheng Qiao… Is he out of his mind?”

Qi Shan let out a cold laugh. “Out of his mind? I think he’s simply unwilling to accept it.” The shame he’d suffered in Xin State back then—he wanted Xin State to repay it tenfold, a hundredfold. He wanted to nail Xin State to history’s pillory and leave it there to rot.

Shen Tang’s chest burned. “That’s filthy.”

“Filthy” still didn’t cover it. The more she thought about it, the more Zheng Qiao felt like poison—vicious, petty, and nauseating.

What did it mean to “bind the hands and hold jade in the mouth”?

In plain terms, it meant tying your hands behind your back and placing a piece of jade between your lips before surrendering. In burial customs, jade in the mouth was believed to slow decay and mark the dead as noble. Used in surrender, it became a symbol: I offer myself up. I am already as good as dead.

In practice, you also bared your upper body to show you carried no weapon—like a lamb waiting for the knife.

You handed your life over completely. Kill me, cripple me, do whatever you like.

And now, Zheng Qiao was forcing the ruler of Xin to abdicate to the princess—a woman with neither literary heart nor martial gall, and also his only daughter—and making her strip in public and present the surrender document, the official seals, the household registers, and the state treasury.

There was no mistaking it. He was trampling the face of Xin State’s remnant subjects into the dirt and grinding it down with his heel.

Qi Shan stared at the teacup in his hand. His smile was thin as a blade. Only sheer restraint kept him from crushing it. He drew in several hard breaths before his voice came out steady.

“Raised in the inner palace, a man who knows only how to please with his face as a favored toy… how much ‘gentleman’ do you think he has in him?”

He tapped the cup once with a fingernail.

“If he can’t get Xin State’s state seal, the profit of this war is cut in half. With Zheng Qiao’s temperament, do you think he’ll just let it go?”

The words “state seal” made Shen Tang’s eyelid twitch. “A man like that won’t sit steady on his throne.”

Qi Shan had said earlier that if Zheng Qiao didn’t die suddenly within five years, Geng State would fall. Even that “prediction” felt conservative.

With Zheng Qiao’s current cruelty, whether he could last even three years was a huge question mark.

Worse, he’d set a rotten example—letting the troops under him run wild, burning, killing, and looting.

Discipline and loyalty took years to build, and only a moment to collapse.

Outside the teahouse, Geng State soldiers spotted the owner’s wife—pretty enough—and filth stirred in their eyes. They traded glances and deliberately called her over to refill their tea.

As she poured, hands slid where they shouldn’t—fingers brushing her palm, arms hooking her waist. One even puckered his lips and leaned in to steal a kiss.

She recoiled, face going pale. Her frightened yelps only made the soldiers howl with laughter.

“Soldiers, soldiers…” The owner rushed forward to help his wife, only to catch a hard slap across the face. His cheek swelled red on the spot.

“Get lost!” a soldier barked. “You ruined my mood. Looking for death?”

Crack.

Qi Shan lowered his gaze toward Shen Tang’s hand.

The teacup in her grip had shattered under her fingers.

At least she didn’t slam the table or charge outside. Her face went cold, her voice colder.

“If you can’t restrain troops with strict discipline, the blades Zheng Qiao uses to conquer and command will turn on him one day. Their desires won’t be satisfied. Resentment will grow. And in the end—”

Her eyes were flat, almost indifferent.

“They’ll bite their master to death.”

Qi Shan looked up at her without thinking.

Her calm was… unsettling. Calm enough that it felt like she was watching a swarm of insects destined to die anyway.

He hid whatever flickered through him by lifting the cup to his lips. “Before that day comes, who knows how many innocent commoners and capable people will die?”

He sighed, soft and tired. “The world is already like this. Young Master Shen—what can you and I do? We can only watch.”

“Yuan Liang.”

Qi Shan’s brow lifted.

Young Master Shen called him “Sir Qi” and “sir” often enough, but he could tell the difference between politeness and respect. Strangely, the “Qi Yuan Liang” she’d blurted in anger earlier had sounded more real.

Now she called him simply “Yuan Liang.”

He didn’t feel slighted. He felt… curious.

“What is it?”

Shen Tang sat, forcing herself not to watch the scene outside. The soldiers were still only in the groping stage, and they had prisoners to escort. They likely wouldn’t go further.

If she jumped out to play the hero, she’d only drag the couple into worse trouble.

So she swallowed her frustration and looked for another outlet.

“I’m curious,” she said quietly. “Who are you, really?”

Qi Shan knew too much.

And he’d appeared at too perfect a moment.

What kind of luck did she need, after a hellish start, to stumble into someone like him—some outrageously competent master of the brothel-manager trade?

Qi Shan didn’t answer. He tossed the question back like a ball.

“Before I answer, shouldn’t Young Master Shen also be honest about your true identity? That would show sincerity.”

Shen Tang went silent.

It wasn’t like answering would help her either.

Instead, she smiled faintly. “Who does Yuan Liang think I am?”

A slick, all-purpose deflection.

Throw the ball back. Look mysterious. She could do that too.

Qi Shan fell quiet. His gaze turned so tangled she couldn’t read it. Then, abruptly, he sighed.

“I thought… Right. Shen. Your surname is Shen.”

His expression lit up as if a door had opened in his head.

Shen Tang stared at him, baffled, but refused to lose face. “My surname is Shen. Yuan Liang didn’t know that already?”

Her mouth tightened. “A literary heart doesn’t lie—unless I’m as good at disguising myself as Yuan Liang is.”

Still… so what if her surname was Shen?

Qi Shan gave her the answer, and it left her speechless.

“Then the young lord is ‘Gong Cheng’?”

Shen Tang’s mind went blank.

Who in the world was Gong Cheng?

Qi Shan continued, eyes fixed on her, voice dropping into gossip. “The ruler of Xin loved women and treated them coldly. Maybe it was karmic retribution—he only had the princess. Yet he favored Madam Gong’s legitimate son, Gong Cheng, far more than his own daughter.”

He paused, then went on. “Some busybody once suggested Gong Cheng be made the princess’s husband. The sovereign scolded him harshly and punished him. After that, rumors spread…”

Shen Tang’s brain supplied the rest on instinct. “You mean—the ruler of Xin put a whole prairie on the Gong clan patriarch’s head?”

She coughed and corrected herself, deadpan. “I mean, he slept with the Gong clan patriarch’s wife?”

Gong Cheng was the ruler of Xin’s child?

Then the Gong clan patriarch had been a cuckold for years?

Wait—

Shen Tang froze. Slowly, she looked down at her own literary heart, then back at Qi Shan’s eyes, which practically shouted, I’ve already seen through you.

She nearly spat blood.

Her voice came out strained. “The Xin State royal house’s surname is…?”

Qi Shan said calmly, “Shen.”

Qi Yuan Liang’s imagination was vast.

As for the truth…