The Trick to Teasing a Noble Family's Son - Chapter 3

After chatting with Old Madam Wei, Wei Lan returned to Wei Xiong’s room, where Imperial Physician Zhang had already visited to take a look After taking the prescribed medicine, Wei Xiong’s fever subsided that very night.

Wei Lan stayed by Wei Xiong’s side until his fever broke before finally returning to her own room. Her maid, Ran Mo, who was attending to her, expressed dissatisfaction while helping her wash up, “Young Lady, your life is too hard. It’s nothing like the young master’s. Every day he just wears beautiful clothes, buys jewellery, and plays with the maids in the courtyard, swinging and doing embroidery.”

Ran Mo was straightforward. Wei Lan rarely encountered such a lively maid, so she didn’t restrict her. After putting on her nightclothes, she closed her eyes and said, “After all, he is a man. It’s fine for men to live more delicately. Besides, he is my brother. As long as I am here, I can protect him so he can stay happy and worry-free.”

Hearing Wei Lan’s words, Ran Mo sighed. She was used to her young mistress speaking in such an odd manner. Sometimes, she even felt that her mistress had spent so long demanding of herself as a man or pretending to be one that she had internally inverted her concepts of male and female.

Wei Lan listened to Ran Mo’s sigh and felt a bit helpless herself.

Wei Lan’s real name was Wei¹ Lan. She was the eldest daughter of the Wei family, the top noble family in the Liang Kingdom in her previous life. Intelligent and beautiful from a young age, she was a role model for noble women. She became Prime Minister at the age of twenty-eight, making her the youngest Prime Minister in Liang Kingdom’s history. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very lucky and died at twenty-nine from a venomous snake bite while on an outing.

Dying with unfulfilled ambitions, Wei Lan’s heart was filled with sorrow. When she opened her eyes and found herself as a seven-year-old girl, she was initially overjoyed, thinking Heaven had given her another chance to fulfil her great ambition.

But she quickly realized something was wrong—

The world she was in now had a history almost identical to her previous world, except for one thing: the gender roles of this world and her world were reversed.

In her world, women were superior to men, but here, men were superior to women.

Women read the “Three Obediences and Four Virtues”², the emperor was a man, and the famous generals and officials in history were all men. She had to swap the genders of everyone in historical texts to understand them!

Lord Xinling was a man, Lord Longyang was a man, Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty was a man…

In the first year of becoming Wei Lan, she read through all the history books here and sadly realized that the Heavens had made her a woman in this world to never let her fulfil her ambitions!

However, she soon thought of a solution. After she calmed down and seriously observed her situation, she found that her current identity—as the legitimate daughter of the Cangxin Marquis Manor—offered another path. Because she had a twin brother who loved to dress up as a woman, a soft-hearted grandmother who made mistakes, a father who was a rough man only knowing warfare and a brother who could do nothing but cause trouble…

This family desperately needed her to replace her brother and support the family, giving her a justification and the possibility to disguise herself as a man.

So, she quickly formulated a series of plans.

First, one had improved oneself to restore her previous life’s abilities, like poetry and calligraphy from the Five Arts, and like martial arts…

Then had to force the Wei family to acknowledge her as a boy and let her replace Wei Hua…

While doing these things, she also tried to transform the people at her side. She couldn’t change the world, but she hoped that those around her, for instance, her maids and so on, could be more like the people from her world.

She really didn’t like women crying nor did she like men exposing their torsos. Even after being here for seven years, every time she saw such scenes, she would feel a surge of anger.

“How inappropriate, this kind of thing, how can it be acceptable!”

Although she was fully aware that this was no longer her world, she knew clearly that if there ever came a day when she could witness these scenes without anger, her world would be truly gone.

She would be like an eagle with broken wings, assimilated into this world, becoming a docile and weak woman, and forgetting what it felt like to fly.

She couldn’t tolerate that.

Lying in bed, Wei Lan suddenly felt a little sad, a sense of loneliness in her heart that she had never felt before. She pondered the Old Madam’s words. It was ridiculous for Old Madam Wei to urge her to get married, but finding a man to spend her life with was indeed a very real problem.

Although as the eldest child, there was no reason to worry about a husband, but, in this world of problematic men, where was she going to find a man to her liking?

Even though her brother’s character was nice and delicate, he was related so she never thought otherwise. But for the husband she would marry, she hoped he would be someone who could manage the rear courtyard for her and uphold the family name together

Ideally, he should also be handsome and come from a good family, and even if he was a concubine’s son, she could compromise…

The most important thing is that he had to be from a good family.

She had a severe obsession with purity in such matters. After all, she was the legitimate eldest daughter of the Wei family, a noble family with a hundred-year history. A man’s chastity was related to her honour, and she would never compromise on this.

Thinking about this, Wei Lan fell into a deep sleep. The next day, she instructed Ran Mo to bring all the portraits of all the Young Masters of influential families in the capital around her age from the secret unit she had personally trained.

Hundreds of portraits were piled up in the room. Ran Mo asked curiously, “What is the Young Lady planning to do?”

“Since I can’t find a ready-made young master,” Wei Lan flipped through the scrolls and earnestly stated the scheme she had thought about all night, “let’s raise one. They are all only in their teens now; there’s plenty of time…”

“Young Lady is speaking oddly again…” Ran Mo frowned, but Wei Lan ignored her. After flipping through the scrolls for a while, Wei Zhong’s voice came from outside, “Shizi³, the Xie family has sent someone over to make amends.”

Wei Lan nodded and had someone put the scrolls away. She then headed to the front hall. As she walked through the corridor, she saw someone.

It was still late spring, with a chill in the air. The visitor wore a black robe with a crane cloak over his shoulders, his waist-length hair was half-tied with a golden crown, standing quietly in the middle of the hall.

He appeared to be about the same height as her, though his frame was obviously larger. From Wei Lan’s perspective, looking through the blossoming peach flowers, his figure, half hidden, it was like a scene from an ink painting, already extraordinary.

Her interest piqued, Wei Lan thought to herself- This young master is bound to be a beauty when he turns around. So, she stood in the corridor, adjusted her clothes and hair, then turned around and asked Ran Mo, “Ran Mo, do I look proper?”

“Very good,” Ran Mo knew her young lady’s habit of being particular when meeting handsome young masters. “Shizi has always had an impeccable appearance and would not be rude in any way. You should go quickly; it’s not good to keep Young Master Xie waiting for so long.”

“Rightly said,” Wei Lan raised the corners of her lips, walked towards the hall, and called out, “Young Master Xie, I’ve kept you waiting.”

Xie Zichen lifted his eyelids and turned around, and saw a young man in a jade-coloured wide-sleeved robe walking over.

He is indeed good-looking, just as the rumours said.

After deciding on Wei Lan as his ally yesterday, he went out of his way to look into his information and was surprised to find that the highest praise the person in front of him received was not for his talent but for his appearance.

Perhaps because he was still young, his features were smooth and gentle, not as sharp and angular as most men, with a beauty that made it hard to distinguish between male and female. Yet, his demeanour was calm and elegant, not at all like a young master from a family of military commanders like the Changxin Marquis Manor but more like a noble young man from a prestigious family like the Wang or the Xie with century-old roots.

The peach blossoms fell perfectly, matching his beautiful face, with a simple elegance mixed with ancient charm, truly dignified like a pine under the wind, and graceful like willows under the spring moon.

While Xie Zichen was assessing Wei Lan, she was also quietly assessing him.

She rarely looked at a man with such a serious attitude; it was for no other reason than that the man before her was too beautiful.

As a noble scion who once held immense power, beauties to her were like crucian carp crossing a river. She enjoyed their pleasing beautiful appearance but maintained a noble person’s demeanour, never indulging, perhaps it was her own fault. If one’s beauty was overwhelming, one wouldn’t feel amazed.

But this man in front of her exceeded all her previous knowledge of beauty. His skin was as white as ivory, his figure slender, with eyebrows like painted strokes and eyes like polished lacquer. He seemed no more than fourteen or fifteen, yet he carried a rare steadiness…or rather, a sense of lifelessness.

His facial features were flawless. If that were all, he would merely be “beautiful,” but what truly amazed people were his eyes.

They were like deep, calm pools, tranquil and serene.

Starting from those eyes, the young man seemed to radiate a silent strength from the inside, making people involuntarily bow their heads in silence.

That’s kind of interesting.

Wei Lan went forward to greet him, pondering in her heart that she was a person who had lived two lifetimes and once used to sit on a high position but would be intimidated by a young man’s aura, letting her feel as if she had instantly returned to the turbulent Imperial Court of the past and standing opposite her were those rivals unto death. And, this young man’s level, was obviously much higher than those men defeated.

Wei Lan smiled and greeted him as he sat down, separated from each other by a small and had Ran Mo served the tea. “Young Master Xie, you must be here this time about the matter between my younger brother and Young Master Xie Bing?”

“My elders in the family were very angry when they heard about my cousin’s misconduct. According to family rules, he was flogged five times and is grounded for half a year,” Xie Zichen said. His voice was also extremely nice, like cold springs striking rocks, clear with a slight coldness, making one feel clear-headed.

Wei Lan liked this clear-headed feeling. She silently admired Xie Zichen’s handsome face and nodded, “Your family is too courteous. It’s just children playing around; there was no need for such a heavy punishment.”

Xie Zichen sipped his tea calmly, not speaking, but he couldn’t help but secretly curse, ‘The one beaten up also has to get medicine oneself. Isn’t that just a reminder for the Xie family to behave?’

Wei Lan felt delighted watching the beauty drink tea, thinking, ‘The Xie family is sensible; it’s great like Mount Tai⁴’.

After a moment of strange silence, a thought crossed Wei Lan’s mind. She had been contemplating about raising a husband; could this Xie Zichen be a good candidate?

Born into the prestigious Xie family,  he was easy to control as a concubine’s son, steady in character to manage the household, and most importantly—

Handsome! Handsome! Handsome!

As long as he was good-looking, everything else could be taught.

Thinking this, Wei Lan smiled slightly, her eyes gleaming. Xie Zichen who was drinking tea, sensed something. He looked up to see the eyes of the person in front of him filled with tender affection and joy, which made him feel uneasy.

He frowned, and was about to speak, when she said, “Young Master Xie, have you had lunch? If it’s convenient, why not join me at Linglong Pavilion for a few drinks?”

Xie Zichen didn’t speak immediately. He looked at the bright eyes and gentle demeanour of the one before him, feeling that there was something going on which was beyond his imagination.

However, for the sake of the urgent matter at hand, Xie Zichen decided to ignore the oddities for now. He nodded, set down his teacup, and said lightly, “If Wei Shizi is so inclined, it would be impolite of me to refuse.”

1. 魏 and 蔚 both have different meanings but the same pronunciation as Wei
2. Three Obediences and Four Virtues (三从四德) refers to a set of traditional Confucian principles for women: obeying one’s father before marriage, one’s husband after marriage, and one’s sons in widowhood, and the four virtues of morality, proper speech, modest conduct, and domestic skills.
3. Shizi: Heir Apparent of a noble house
4. Mount Tai: One of the 5 most sacred mountains in China used as a symbol of largeness, loftiness, and importance.