People in the royal family were most untrustworthy. People would rather believe the existence of the ghosts in the world than the words that came out of those royalty’s mouths!
That was wisdom.
The king smiled and said,
Fine. With my presence, you will very likely feel restrained. Fine. I will leave after several drinks. I don’t want to be the uninvited guest.
And then he sighed and said,
Brothers who have fought with me side by side in the battle are now distant to me… Oh. What a shame…
He pointed at someone in the crowd and said smilingly,
Meng Lao-Wu, don’t hide behind others! You shared one tent with me. I remember there was a midnight when you had loose bowels, you shitted your pants in front of my bed. Don’t you remember that? Damn it! You kept saying you were disgraced in front of me. Did you think you were any better before it… Now you actually stopped talking to me. Maybe your bald head was even worse than your useless pxnis…
Meng Lao-Wu was a big guy with a bald head. There were some scars on his face. He rubbed his head and murmured,
You highness, how could you say that… If you didn’t secretly make me take some cathartic, how could I shit my pants… And now you have seen how embarrassed I was…
What he said immediately made everybody laugh loudly!
The king was laughing too. He said,
And you… You, Han Lao-San, Song Lao-Qi, Bai Xiao-Jiu. And you, you… You bastards. We agreed to catch some fish, but when I jumped into the water naked, you ran away with my clothes! I kept covering my crotch and stayed there until the night came. When I just arrived at the barrack, you motherfxkers actually lit up all the torches and shouted. You actually made me naked under the light and let everybody know I am giving some good show… I was so embarrassed! Did you actually forget about that?
He stared at them and acted like he was angry,
You ungrateful bastards!
The king kept telling the old stories of them and the atmosphere from before returned a bit.
Some of them said,
Your highness, you can’t blame us on that one… You can’t just tell the story about you being naked. It was in the desolate north. There wasn’t even a female rabbit, yet you secretly made us take some philter… We have been staying in the cold water for a whole night to get over it. What we did to you was quite a kind respond already…
The king laughed,
You lazy shameless fool. You dared to get me naked those years, yet now you are too scared to drink with me. Are you really that of a coward?
The king had made these men recall their deep memories. They suddenly felt cozy about it. They started to shout,
Come on then! Drink!
In the old days, they would have probably said ‘do you have the guts to drink it up then’!
Yet now they truly didn’t dare to speak out this kind of words!
Make it a bottle then! Screw the cups!
The king was heroic and he raised a big bottle,
I will either make you die drinking or make you puke!
Wait, wait, wait… Your highness.
Meng Lao-Wu got over and said,
Just in case. I think I have to check your bottle. It could be a bottle of water. We all know you. You always play a scheme while drinking. We are vulgar men, but we are not fool. We can be fooled once, but never again. We remember things anyway…
People laughed loudly when
they heard him. They shouted together,
Good point! Good words! Go on! Check the bottle!
Meng Lao-Wu checked the bottle and found that it was really a bottle of water. He was shocked,
Well, your highness. So many years have passed and you still do this. I am admiring you…
The king rubbed his nose and was embarrassed,
You son of bxxch. How dare you disgrace me like this. I am not gonna forget this…
Punishment! Punishment! That was so over. Hahahaha…
People started to shout together.
Behind the king, there was an old eunuch with a white face. He was holding his belly laughing and gasping at the moment. He spoke brazenly and weakly,
Oh your highness, it is so funny here. What you said truly made me laugh to death… I felt like I got impotent immediately…
The generals and the king who had been laughing together were now quiet. They looked at the old eunuch for a while. And then the king finally spoke,
You… Got impotent?
The old eunuch wiped the tears on his eyes and said happily,
Yes… I felt like I got impotent at once…
Puff!
The king spat out the liquor he had just drunk and laughed. The generals all burst into laughter that seemed to shake the heavens.
[A eunuch… actually said that he got impotent…
That was brilliant!
Does he still have that thing down there?]
Because of this joke, the embarrassment that restrained them was finally gone. The king was so into these generals. He shouted and laughed. He started to rub his hands and rolled up his sleeves. He kept drinking with one old friend after another.
Ye Xiao sensitively noticed something. When the king rolled his sleeves, he tapped on the old eunuch’s shoulder casually.
[It seems he means sorry by doing that? Maybe it means… What is it?]
Ye Xiao felt respect.
[This king is truly out of my estimation.]
No matter what the king meant by tapping on the eunuch’s shoulder, it made Ye Xiao feel respect. The first time when he saw the king, what the king did was favorable to Ye Xiao.
The king had kept Ye Nan-Tian in this place for twenty years by a promise, yet he had a son like that. It seemed that things between Ye Xiao and the king were bound to be discordant after this night…
As the king who ruled the whole kingdom, he actually still valued the stories with his old comrades and put down his figure like that. He laughed and shouted together with these generals. Although it was during the feast before they join the battle, and it was possible that the king was trying to win popular support, it was still not an easy thing to do for a king!
Besides, Ye Xiao felt that when the king was talking, he was sincere. At least while he was staying with these old friends, he didn’t treat himself as the king who was in a higher position!
And the joke about that eunuch was apparently something that was planned to finally relax the crowd. A eunuch who could stay beside the king was never a fool like that.
The eunuch must have a huge power as he was the closest one at the king’s side. He might call himself servant, but even the queen and the the crown prince didn’t dare to treat him as a servant!
Such a man was willing to sacrifice his dignity to help the king doing what he wanted.
While the king tapped on the eunuch’s shoulder, Ye Xiao felt that the king was a good person somehow.
That tapping was a comfort and also a praise!
Watching the king having fun among all the generals so closely, Ye Xiao realized why people like Prince Hua-Yang, the War God of the Kingdom, would be willing to serve the king!
He understood why his father, Ye Nan-Tian, who was a remarkable heroic figure, would agree to make the promise of staying for twenty years!
If a king could behave like this, even if he was acting, it was enough!
That was enough for a king to conquer everybody.
That was something Ye Xiao could learn!
Thinking about the crown prince who kept doing dirty business, Ye Xiao only had one feeling: the dog son of a tiger.
Ye Xiao! Ye Xiao!
The king shouted,
You little prick, come over here! You father is not here tonight, so you are going to drink up this bottle of liquor for him. I am going to see how the alcoholic rice ball looks like…
Meng Lao-Wu rubbed his head and asked,
Your highness, that Ye boy drinks and he may puke. But what’s that to do with rice ball?
The king laughed,
Don’t you know he was the ‘midnight snack’? A midnight snack that was soaked with liquor, what else could it be if it isn’t alcoholic rice ball…
Meng Lao-Wu thought for a while and said,
That’s not a reasonable explanation. ‘Midnight snack’ isn’t ‘rice glue balls (yuan xiao)’. He is not going to be an alcoholic rice ball anyway!
[1]
The king was stunned and then he turned perverse,
Ok. The midnight snack that night was the rice glue balls. How about that? It has to be!
Meng Lao-Wu nodded quickly and spoke with flattery,
You are the king with golden words. What you say must be the truth…
People were booing around him all of a sudden!
In fact, the five generals of the northern army felt proud at the moment!
[Even though our great general isn’t here, the king never forgot about this! The king never forgot about him!]
Ye Xiao was smiling bitterly. He said yes to the king and thought, [Damn it. Everyone knows my nickname, Midnight Snack, and yet I am going to have another one like ‘rice ball’ or something. Damn it, this is bad luck!] He had to go over to the king. So he walked over, nipped his nose and drank up that whole bottle of liquor for his father.
The officers sitting in the side halls watched the king playing around in the main hall. They all showed strange expressions on their faces.
When the king was still a prince, he concealed his true status and got into the army. They all knew about it.
Yet they had never thought that the king actually valued these generals so much…
…
—
[1] Explanation:
We all know midnight snack in Chinese is ye xiao. While there is one kind of food, the rice glue ball in China, which is called yuan xiao in Chinese. So the king apparently mistakes ye xiao (midnight snack) with yuan xiao (rice glue ball).
ED Note: Last chapter was the 4th and last of the bonus chapters, and this chapter will be the first of 5 guaranteed chapters for the week. Also, last chapter was accidentally posted because of miscommunication and without my knowledge, and so I have just fixed most of the mistakes just today, sorry for the inconvenience.
1st guaranteed chapter of the week. 2 more later on.
Translated by: Rain
Edited by: Arch
From XianXiaWorld
