Chapter 500: Chapter 180 Teacher

The table was lit by several more copper lamps, making the dark room brighter.

Whips, knives, wooden sticks, hammers...

The floor was a complete mess with scattered debris, and crumbled brick and stone littered the ground. Pei Yunmeng picked up the overturned tables and chairs, and also wiped the dust off the table.

Just then, a Green-clothed Guard entered, respectfully offering a redwood tray, placed the teapot and tea cups on it, bowed his head, and retreated from the room.

Pei Yunmeng sat down at the table.

There was a slight swelling at the corner of his mouth with a hint of blood, and his lips were bruised, yet his expression was calm. He poured himself a cup of tea and pushed it across the table with a smile, "Minister Yan, have some tea to cool your temper, there’s no need to be upset."

Across from him, Yan Xu sat down. He hadn’t been injured, his face was clean, but his wrinkled robes revealed that he too had grappled with someone in this room. Yan Xu’s eyes swept over the teacup in front of him and he sneered, "Why not smash the cup then?"

The young man put down his teacup, sighed, "I wouldn’t dare, Teacher."

At those words, the face of the man opposite him turned instantly cold, "Don’t call me that."

Pei Yunmeng stopped talking.

In the Da Liang court, everyone knew that Marshal Pei of the Palace Front Office and Minister Yan of the Privy Council were like fire and water, and would not miss an opportunity to see the other fall into misfortune. Certainly, there was an old grudge stirring between them, but it was an open secret among the officials that the main reason was the delicate status between the Palace Front Office and the Privy Council.

This relationship between the Three Guards and the Privy Council was, in fact, pleasing to the Emperor. The more these two came into conflict, the more secure Emperor Liang Ming felt.

Forces and authority should not, and cannot, be fused together.

Pei Yunmeng clicked his tongue, "I’ve already taken so much advantage of you, if I can’t even afford to call you Teacher, wouldn’t Minister Yan be at a great loss?"

"Shut up."

Pei Yunmeng stared at him, his smile not diminishing.

Before he was fourteen, he was born to privilege, his parents loving and affectionate, and he grew up pampered, envied as a child of heaven.

Until the turmoil at Zhaoyang.

His maternal family, his uncles, his mother, all passed away in succession. There was no end to the paper money burnt at the memorial hall.

During that time, days suddenly became unbearably long, Pei Yunshu was overwhelmed with grief and wasted away, he struggled to keep himself together and not drown in sorrow, but then he stumbled upon a secret rumor.

The young man was shocked by this secret and confronted Pei Di, but his reaction was unexpected, leading to a complete disillusionment at the ancestral hall in front of his mother’s memorial tablet, and from then on, all affection for Pei Di as a father was severed.

He wanted to investigate the true cause of his mother’s death, but without the status of Prince of Zhaoning, he found it tough to take even a single step in the vast Shengjing.

Out of desperation, he sought help from the Privy Council, from an elder who once had a connection with his maternal grandfather’s family.

The world is as unpredictable as a game of chess. The kindly elder of the past had now changed his demeanor, and after many days under his roof—perhaps out of respect for past affection—the elder gave him a ring, instructing him to kill someone and retrieve something.

He accepted the ring.

When he left the capital, he told no one, and yet he encountered too many attempts on his life. There were countless who wished him dead—the enemies of the Pei family, the enemies of his maternal grandfather’s family, and numerous concealed threats and silent arrows in the shadows.

The journey was long and fraught with heartbreak. A seemingly straightforward task took two years to complete.

In those years, he suffered betrayal, endured cold arrows, slept in Yizhuang, and hid himself in execution grounds.

Barely surviving, he finally returned with the item, only to be ambushed in the woods a few dozen miles outside Shengjing.

The encircling black-clad men made his heart sink.

He had only discussed his return with the trusted followers that remained with the Pei family.

The ambush was fierce; he suffered serious injuries and thought he would perish alongside the black-clad men when suddenly, reinforcements arrived.

The newcomers annihilated the assassins. Exhausted, the young man leaned against a tree, lifting his head warily to see the crowd splitting apart, and atop a lead horse, a man with a scar at the corner of his eye coldly watched him.

That man scrutinized his face carefully, as if memorizing it, and then after a long while, looked away and said, "Take him back."

In the warm glow of the dark room, Yan Xu’s indifferent voice reached him, "Calling me that only makes one feel disgusted."

Pei Yunmeng looked at him, feigning disbelief, "Really?"

Yan Xu never let Pei Yunmeng call him Teacher.

After returning from Su Nan, he temporarily did not go back to the Pei family. Pei Di had remarried, and his confidants had defected; the Pei household was no longer a place he could stay.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by Aunomay Read