Chapter 78
Apart from his bodyguard Huang Zhong, there was no one else by Marquis Gu’s side.
Thus, Gu Jiao ruled out the possibility that he was here to have her arrested.
But if it wasn"t for that, why did he come here?
Gu Jiao didn’t have a favorable impression of Marquis Gu, who kept himself high above others and treated people below him like ants. She hugged Little Jing Kong in her arms and looked at him warily.
If he dared to do something to hurt them, she didn’t mind killing him here.
Seeing Gu Jiao"s hostility, Marquis Gu coughed softly and said, "This Marquis didn"t come here to arrest you. This Marquis doesn’t mean any harm."
Gu Jiao, however, did not pay attention to his words, and remained looking at him with defense and vigilance.
Marquis Gu"s mood was very complicated. On the one hand, it was difficult for him to digest that the little girl, who had dug pits for him again and again, was his long-lost flesh and blood. On the other hand, he somewhat couldn’t bear to look back on the past interactions between the two of them.
Anyway, since he was already here, he might as well make himself clear.
Marquis Gu gave Huang Zhong a meaningful glance, and Huang Zhong backed away.
Marquis Gu dusted off his wide sleeves and said, "My surname is Gu, and I am Marquis Ding"an, Marquis Ding"an from the Hot Spring Villa."
Gu Jiao actually guessed his ident.i.ty a long time ago. When they first b.u.mped into each other, Gu Jinyu was sitting in his carriage.
She recognized Gu Jinyu"s voice.
It seemed unlikely that there would be a second person who could sit in the same carriage as Gu Jinyu and call himself ‘this Marquis’.
Then, when she ran into him again in the woods, she noticed that he looked very similar to Gu Yan upon seeing his face at a close distance. If he wasn"t Gu Yan"s father, she wouldn"t believe it.
It was just that he didn"t declare his ident.i.ty himself all this time, and Gu Jiao didn’t try to mention it either.
Marquis Gu: "What happened today..."
Gu Jiao interrupted him, "If you are here to apologize, it’s not necessary, I don’t care about it."
Marquis Gu widened his eyes at her and said, "No, I... How could you talk like that? Is there anyone else aside from you who shows no respect for her elders?"
He came with a trace of guilt, yes. However, he was a Marquis, how could he apologize to a little girl?!
Parents never make mistakes. Did her parents not teach her that?
Right. Her parents didn"t.
Ahem. He and Yao shi of course could not have taught her.
Gu Sanlang and Xu shi also left early and didn"t have time to teach her.
He heard that she used to be a fool, but she had already recovered to normal recently.
Thinking of this, Marquis Gu felt that he could be more tolerant.
He suppressed his bubbling anger and said to her, "I came to see you. I have something to tell you. You might not believe it, but you... and me... We..."
Alas, why couldn’t he say it?
Marquis Gu felt worried.
"What about me and you?" Gu Jiao racked her brains and couldn"t figure out what this man had to do with herself. But she had at least lived for two lifetimes, what kind of weirdo had she not seen? She said, "You don"t have some kind of fetish, do you?"
Although she was disfigured, she was young, and some men had exactly such a preference.
Marquis Gu staggered and almost fell into the well beside him!
Who did this girl take him for? Was there ever anyone else who slandered their own father like this?
Marquis Gu"s grumpy temper, which he had suppressed with great difficulty, exploded, "Do you know who I am? I am your——"
……
A quarter of an hour later, Marquis Gu limped back to the carriage with a black eye.
Huang Zhong came over, and was stupefied upon seeing him. He said, "Lord Marquis, have you been beaten? You’re not beaten up by the young miss, are you? You can’t even beat the young miss?"
Marquis Gu roared like thunder, "Of course I didn’t fight her back!"
He would never admit that he really couldn’t beat her!
His appearance looked so tragic that Huang Zhong couldn"t bear to look at it directly. After following the Marquis for more than ten years, he had never seen him cut a sorry figure.
Huang Zhong asked, "Why did the young miss beat Lord Marquis so hard? Didn"t Lord Marquis tell her you are her father?"
At the mention of this, Marquis Gu became even more furious, "How did I not tell her?"
Huang Zhong was puzzled, "Then… You told her?"
Marquis Gu said with righteous indignation, "I told her I’m her old man! She accused me of insulting her, and then she beat me up!" [1]
And very miserably to boot!
Marquis Gu had never suffered such grievance since he was a child.
Huang Zhong: You might as well have said you were her uncle[2]? Would the word father burn your mouth or something?
Gu Jiao went home with the sleeping Little Jing Kong after beating him up.
Xiao Liulang was away. He would take the exam in the prefectural capital and wouldn’t be back until next month.
Suddenly, the room seemed to be quieter with the absence of one person.
In fact, Xiao Liulang was also very quiet at home, and most of the time he would just stay in his own room. However, not seeing the young man studying at his desk upon pushing open the door of the west room, Gu Jiao suddenly felt a bit unaccustomed.
Gu Jiao put Little Jing Kong on the bed and pulled up the quilt to cover him.
Then she went to the kitchen to cook dinner.
Little Jing Kong had already eaten his fill in town, so Gu Jiao didn"t wake him up. She sat in the main room with the elderly woman for dinner.
Gu Jiao asked, "Huh? Xiaoshun didn"t come?"
Gu Xiaoshun would return to the Gu Family"s old residence after having his dinner here every night.
"He said he would stay in the academy for a while." The elderly woman said, holding a piece of braised pork.
Without Liulang and that silly little guy, somehow the red braised pork wasn’t appetizing!
Gu Jiao asked curiously, "Why did he suddenly want to stay in the academy?"
The elderly woman replied, "I don"t know. He left in a hurry."
Gu Xiaoshun ruined the Gu Family"s ‘good plan’, and Gu Changhai and Liu shi couldn"t wait to beat him to death. In order to avoid disaster, he decided to stay in the academy overnight.
No outsiders were allowed to enter the academy. The only person from the Gu Family who could enter was Gu Dashun. Gu Dashun was allowed to beat him if he had the ability, unfortunately Gu Dashun couldn’t beat him at all!
"I will send him some money tomorrow." Gu Jiao was worried that Gu Xiaoshun would have no money to buy meals.
"I already gave him." The elderly woman said.
"Where did you get the money?" Gu Jiao asked.
The elderly woman was very down and out when she first arrived here. She didn"t have any money on her at all.
During the New Year, Gu Jiao did give the elderly woman a big red packet, but it was a silver banknote.
The elderly woman grunted, "Did you think I’m narrating plays for people for nothing?"
Gu Jiao was stunned. She actually started a sideline at home?
The elderly woman said without changing expressions, "There are also your medicines. You don"t want them anyway, so I sold them all."
Gu Jiao asked curiously, "What medicine?"
The elderly woman responded, "Jinchuang medicine ah! You have been messing about at home for several days, you think I didn’t know!"
Gu Jiao: "Oh, so you knew."
She made medicines during the day when Xiao Liulang wasn’t at home. Although the elderly woman was here, she didn"t think the elderly woman would know about the Jinchuang medicine she made, so she didn"t avoid the elderly woman’s eyes too much.
She was very demanding when it came to medicines. She would make more than a dozen bottles, but leave only three bottles with the best efficacy.
She didn"t care if the rest of the bottles were gone. She only thought that the elderly woman threw them away, but who knew they were actually sold by the elderly woman privately?
Hearing the elderly woman’s manner of speaking, Gu Jiao thought she seemed to be an old hand at this, "Have you ever done such a thing before?"
"Are you talking about selling medicine? Well, maybe! However, what I sell should not be Jinchuang medicine, I think." The elderly woman thought about it carefully and picked out a name from her few memories, "It seems to be aphrodisiac."
Gu Jiao：“…”
Later generations recorded that Empress Xiande[3] sold aphrodisiacs to imperial concubines and accepted bribes to manipulate the Green Head Pieces[4].
"Don"t talk about feelings with this Empress, Emperor. Just sleep with the highest bidder!"
Xiande was the t.i.tle of the Empress Dowager back in her Empress days.
1. ↑ — The term used here is Laozi, translated as “I, your father” or “This father/grandpa” etc, a common phrase used to belittle others. 2. ↑ — The term used here is daye, which is a term of respect for older men. 3. ↑ — Xian De: meaning virtuous 4. ↑ — When an emperor selects maids or concubines for himself or summon his concubines to sleep with him, he uses the Green Head Pieces. This usually refers to Turning over the Piece. There are still three other kinds of Green Head Pieces, not sure if she manipulates all of them, or just these Harem pieces.