Chapter 55

Xue Jin'an was having a quite comfortable time living under house arrest in Zhaoyang Palace.

Every morning, he opened his eyes promptly on the dot. His very first reaction was to reach under his pillow, where he would invariably find a silver ingot weighing anywhere from one to fifty taels—all of them filial offerings bestowed upon Teacher Little X by the Emperor.

Ever since that incident where Teacher Little X had swindled the Emperor... oh, no, given the Emperor a diagnostic test, the Emperor seemed to have developed a brand-new hobby. From time to time, he loved to come over to Teacher Little X's place to cast a fortune, and he was no longer restricted to tarot cards.

To be more precise, tarot cards were merely an unprecedented novelty to the Emperor; what truly fascinated him was classical, traditional Eastern metaphysics, such as character stroke analysis, the Chinese zodiac, dream interpretation, and so on. He became so obsessed that he ended up analyzing the names of all the imperial princes and ministers. If it weren't for the fact that birth dates and times were considered genuinely sensitive information in ancient times, the Emperor would have undoubtedly gone all out and done a complete set for himself.

After several days of this, Xue Jin'an received a backend pop-up window from Teacher Little X, which was crammed full of optimization suggestions. At first, the overall style was quite normal, mainly focusing on subcategories for test questions and proposals to recommend corresponding bundled packages based on user habits. This was purely for a better user experience, so it was completely excusable. Xue Jin'an directly agreed and granted Teacher Little X the permission to debug the program structure based on big data.

Then, Xue Jin'an saw the subsequent proposals: adding a check-in section and a membership system, with memberships across different categories being incompatible with one another. For instance, tarot cards had their own tarot membership, dream interpretation had its own dream interpretation membership, and you had to buy whichever one you needed.

These memberships were further divided into regular memberships and super memberships. Regular users could get a basic fortune slip through daily check-ins; regular members could receive the detailed interpretation of the slip; while super members could get free slip interpretations along with blessing cards for collection or electronic wooden fish acceleration cards, among other things.

In addition to those, there were perks like paying extra to take test questions in advance, or buying test packages to get tarot cards as a free gift... In short, all sorts of tacky, pay-to-win trash designed to fleece users.

"..." Xue Jin'an once again couldn't help but wonder what on earth Teacher Little X's big data debugging had actually debugged. It hadn't learned anything else, but it had mastered every single consumer trap used to fleece users. It was a capitalistic AI by nature.

Xue Jin'an had originally not planned to agree. It wasn't because he felt any pity for the "leeks" being harvested or felt that it went against his conscience—good grief, a mobile phone didn't even have morality to begin with, so where would a conscience come from?

His reason for rejecting Teacher Little X's proposal was very simple: he purely felt that the program's only user at present was the Emperor alone, and the Emperor wasn't worth him wasting time writing code to add so many features, even if writing such code wasn't difficult for him at all.

However, Xue Jin'an didn't expect that while he had no intention of harvesting leeks, the leek himself became unhappy about it. The next day, Teacher Little X's backend popped up with feedback from its sole user.

The Emperor: "It is We who insist on daily check-ins; it is We who insist on buying memberships; it is We who want to spend money to take the latest test questions!"

Well, that was that. A capitalistic AI by nature had met the ultimate leek-bodied Emperor.

"..." Xue Jin'an checked his own skill sheet and stated with absolute certainty, "Teacher Little X, you accessed my memo data."

This unspoken, oozing green-tea vibe was identical to the one Consort Rong, Xiao Shu, had previously used on the Emperor. One had to admit that the Emperor indeed fell for this exact routine.

Teacher Little X refused to admit it and instantly transformed into an artificial intelligence retard: *I don't understand what you are saying, please repeat it.*

To this, Xue Jin'an had only one sentence: "You said code life doesn't lie to code life."

Teacher Little X: .

Xue Jin'an opened the system's application permissions list and completely banned all of Teacher Little X's read permissions.

***

However, banning permissions was one thing, but since the Emperor himself was offering his head to be harvested as a leek, Xue Jin'an had no reason not to swing the blade. Fully adopting the tactics used by major internet platforms to fleece users, he additionally developed various activities such as inviting new users to get membership red envelopes and slicing prices to draw blessing cards for zero yuan, all to solve the problem of having too few users.

Xue Jin'an spent half a day rewriting the code and upgraded Teacher Little X once more, enabling it to collect user experiences and autonomously launch minor activities. This would help maintain a sense of novelty for old users and improve retention rates.

On the very first day the new features went live, Xue Jin'an experienced another morning waking up amidst a bed full of gold and silver treasures. From then on, he began bringing in a steady daily income of one to five taels. Although it looked less than the sporadic, large-scale bounties the Emperor used to dish out whenever the mood struck, its advantage lay in stable income and sustainable development.

The only catch was that although the Emperor always clicked into the event pages, he hadn't managed to invite a single new user into the system so far.

Xue Jin'an wasn't in a rush either. According to his data calculations, the Emperor would sooner or later step into the water himself. For now, staying put and making no move was simply due to the Emperor's paranoia and arrogant self-esteem at play.

Opening his eyes, collecting the money from the Emperor, getting up to wash up, going to the main hall to burn incense, and then turning on the fitness software to start military training alongside Helian Cheng—during all this, he would browse live broadcast videos. If he happened to catch the Imperial Study opening a new class, he would open the study software to download new textbooks and casually listen in on a lecture.

Speaking of which, after the assassination attempt, the Imperial Study was originally only supposed to suspend classes for three days. As a result, a whole string of events followed hot on the heels of one another, and two imperial concubines even died in the palace. Consequently, the classes were suspended for nearly half a month, and candidates for the Ninth Prince's stepmother had almost been finalized.

On that note, quite unexpectedly, the person the Emperor picked wasn't one of the beauties he usually favored—neither those with outstanding appearances nor those with exceptional talent or personality. Instead, it was the daughter of Prince An's wife's paternal aunt, Miss Xie Hongying from the Marquis of Linyuan's estate. She was already twenty-eight years old and still unmarried.

She had previously been betrothed to her childhood sweetheart, a maternal cousin. Half of the traditional betrothal rites involving the three letters and six etiquettes had already been completed, and the marriage was on the verge of being finalized when the cousin suddenly announced that he had fallen in love with a pugilistic woman. Having laid eyes upon the pugilistic woman, he decided that Miss Xie was as plain as unsalted food, so he abandoned his family to follow the woman away, and the marriage naturally fell through.

Actually, this wasn't really much of a big deal to begin with. The one who did wrong wasn't her, after all. The Marquis of Linyuan's estate held high social standing and had even produced a Princess Consort An; even if she were to take in a resident son-in-law, there would still be plenty of men willing to step forward. The trouble was that not long after, that cousin died, and all twenty-odd members of his family clan vanished overnight, leaving behind only a terrified young child who was so traumatized that they lost their wits and couldn't even speak.

Some said the cousin had provoked pugilistic figures and was hunted down for revenge, while others claimed the Marquis of Linyuan's estate couldn't stomach such humiliation and took matters into their own hands for retaliation. Regardless of the truth, Miss Xie's marriage prospects had thus been delayed ever since.

Xue Jin'an had seen this Miss Xie in the live broadcast videos. Compared to other exquisitely charming and flirtatious young women, her facial features were indeed somewhat ordinary, though not ugly. Her personality was calm and introverted, and throughout the whole process, she quietly sat in a corner without drawing much attention to herself.

The Emperor hadn't intended to pick a favored consort in the first place, but rather a utility person to take care of the Fourth Princess and the Ninth Prince. Seeing that the two children didn't detest her, the Emperor kept her in the palace. Not long after, her title—"Zhuang"—was decided, and a palace was already readily available; Consort Rong's Minghua Palace was directly renamed the Chonghua Palace.

They were merely waiting for an auspicious day for the freshly minted Consort Zhuang to move in and take charge.

The Emperor originally thought the matter had come to a complete end right here, and even felt that today had gone quite smoothly, completely devoid of the many twists and turns predicted in Teacher Little X's fortune slip.

As the saying went, people simply couldn't handle being jinxed. No sooner had he muttered those words than he was greeted by the Ninth Prince, who burst into loud, wailing tears and threw a massive tantrum.

The Ninth Prince cried and screamed for his birth mother, weeping so hard that his limbs spasmed and his entire body turned bright red. The sight was utterly miserable, leaving the Emperor completely helpless. He ended up carrying the child onto the dragon bed to sleep for several days before the boy could finally be pacified, which essentially fulfilled the fortune slip's prophecy of "turbulent mind, weighed down by melancholy and anxiety."

From then on, the Emperor held absolute, unyielding faith in Teacher Little X's fortune slips.

It was also at this time that the Emperor remembered classes in the Imperial Study were still suspended, and he immediately issued an order for them to resume. The very next day, all the princes went back to school, and even the Ninth Prince—who was technically not yet of age—was stuffed into the Imperial Study by the Emperor under the fine-sounding pretext of "early enlightenment."

In the eyes of others, the Seventh Prince, who was currently under house arrest, was the only prince who had reached the appropriate age yet had never set foot in the Imperial Study. Consequently, they drew a conclusion: the Emperor loathed the Seventh Prince and intended to raise him into a useless good-for-nothing.

***

Then, during the morning court session a few days later, the Emperor was impeached by the Censor-in-Chief of the Left.

Xue Jin'an, who had already formed the habit of watching pre-recorded morning court sessions before bedtime: "..." Censor-in-Chief of the Left, you aren't impeaching the Emperor, you're impeaching me.

Xue Jin'an didn't say anything to the Censor-in-Chief of the Left, knowing that even if he spoke, the man wouldn't hear him. Instead, he chose to complain to someone who *could* hear him.

[Stepped on the face and outputted, Emperor, you are so useless, you might as well abdicate and yield your position to someone worthy.] Xue Jin'an routinely advised the Emperor to abdicate.

The Emperor had already grown somewhat accustomed to hearing such evaluations. Moreover, ever since he changed his perspective and regarded the voices echoing in his ears as divine revelations, the Emperor had gained a new understanding. He didn't feel that Xue Jin'an was scolding him; on the contrary, he felt he was being affirmed in entirely different ways.

The phrase "stepped on the face and outputted" was heard by the Emperor for the very first time, but he could deduce its meaning just from the words "stepped on the face." It meant the Censor-in-Chief of the Left was speaking improperly and acting far too presumptuously in front of him!

Wasn't this—wasn't this simply a testament to his openness to advice and willingness to humbly accept admonishments? The Emperor happily instructed Li Hechun to open his money pouch and award the largest silver ingot inside to Teacher Little X as a reward.

Teacher Little X popped up a notification window: *The Emperor felt thoroughly exhilarated by your scolding and rewarded you with fifty silver ingots.*

"..." Xue Jin'an didn't understand, and Xue Jin'an decided to learn more from the court ministers on how to properly poke people where it hurts—at the very least, so he wouldn't end up making someone feel "exhilarated" by scolding them.

The Emperor adopted the proposal made by the Censor-in-Chief of the Left, and Cui Pengfei, the teacher who had been designated for Xue Jin'an a long time ago, finally made his formal appearance before him.

The Cui family's carriage entered the palace, traveled all the way along the palace thoroughfare into the inner court, and came to a halt right at the entrance of Zhaoyang Palace. Since Xue Jin'an already knew people were coming, he naturally followed the etiquette he had been taught and flung open the palace gates to welcome them.

The first person he saw was the young man driving the carriage. With curly hair and emerald-green eyes, his appearance was breathtakingly striking yet accompanied by smiling, curved brows and deep dimples at the corners of his lips, radiating a strong sense of childlike innocence. It was none other than Cui Zui.

Today, Cui Zui wasn't wearing coarse linen garments or a hood; instead, he was dressed in green robes with a jade crown, carrying a bow tightly wrapped in gray cloth strapped to his back. The arrows in the quiver at his waist were all, quite unusually, positioned with their tips pointing upward. Furthermore, the arrowheads weren't fitted with forged iron tips; rather, they were crudely ground into triangular shapes out of stone, looking as though they lacked any real destructive power.

Apart from the imperial guards, no one else was permitted to carry lethal weapons within the palace, so having the arrowheads configured this way was somewhat understandable. As for why the arrowheads were quite unusually pointing upward inside the quiver, one could easily imagine it was due to inspections by the guards at the palace gates.

Cui Zui reined in the horses, stood upon the carriage shaft, smiled at Xue Jin'an, and said in a frivolous, unhurried tone, "Your Seventh Highness, we meet again. This humble person is Cui Zui, styled Weixing. From now on, I shall remain here in the palace to accompany and protect you. I ask Your Highness to please take good care of me."

A man who was not a member of the imperial clan intended to reside in the inner palace long-term? Xue Jin'an's first reaction wasn't to question the truth of his words, but rather to tilt his head, open the health monitoring panel, and fall into deep contemplation as he looked at the man's stable hormone levels.

Suddenly, looking down at his own hands, he understood: word of his steady hands must have leaked out.

Therefore, just as Cui Zui leaped down from the carriage and walked over, intending to continue using honeyed words to coax this legendary Seventh Highness, the Seventh Highness—who bore not a shred of murderous intent—suddenly raised his hand and chopped down on Cui Zui's neck with the edge of his palm.