Girl, There's Something Wrong With You - Chapter 10

How do I feel about it?

I feel it won’t work!

Of course, publicly berating Wang Maohong during a cabinet meeting was impulsive and foolish, so Yu Yuangui temporarily set the matter aside.

Returning to the palace, Zhongshu Yu once again went to check on the emperor’s lessons for the day.

Although he had become the de facto highest authority in the empire, Yu Yuangui had no intention of usurping the throne like Wang Chuzhong.

After all, the young emperor was his nephew. How could an uncle steal from his nephew? Not to mention the deep gratitude he felt towards the former emperor.

But the brother-in-law was a different matter. If Princess Nankang were to marry Cheng Jinyang, and if he established himself in Jingkou with the Iron Giant, he might become another Su Zigao next year.

Regarding the Iron Giant, during the two months Cheng Jinyang spent in the hospital after the war, the hospital controlled by the Yu family conducted numerous tests on him.

From hair to blood, they found nothing wrong, revealing him to be a perfectly healthy human.

Clearly, the so-called Iron Giant must be a mimetic ability residing in his unique bloodline, an ability that does not rely on physical substance to exist, making it difficult for current scientific technology to detect.

But it certainly works…

This situation, of course, is very troublesome. It means there’s a completely uncontrollable violent factor outside the central power structure.

If you recruit him (as a consort), he will certainly climb up the ranks within the system, and frequent wars will lead the central government to highly rely on his power, which will eventually result in him seizing power.

If you don’t recruit him, and he is recruited by noble families or rebels, he might violently overthrow your regime.

Or, if you think ruthlessly, could you find a fabricated charge to nip this unstable factor in the bud?

Still no. Forget about the Five Great Families, he couldn’t even get past Princess Nankang.

Of course, Yu Yuangui was a seasoned politician. Any seasoned politician is adept at ignoring unsolvable problems—oh, I mean, “waiting for a window of opportunity.” So he decided to set this issue aside for now.

When he arrived at the imperial study, Yu Yuangui was astonished to find that it was not Empress Dowager Yu tutoring the young emperor today, but Princess Nankang.

Compared to his mother, who frequently scolded him, his elder sister’s gentle and kind demeanor made the young emperor very happy.

Until he saw his uncle walking in with a stern face, he quickly sat upright and adopted a posture of listening attentively.

However, Yu Yuangui was preoccupied with his brother-in-law’s matter and had no time for the young emperor’s little tricks. He simply stared at Princess Nankang in a daze.

“What’s the matter, uncle?” Princess Nankang asked with a smile.

“Come out and talk to me,” Yu Yuangui sighed.

In the side room of the palace, after hearing her uncle’s roundabout inquiries about Cheng Jinyang, Princess Nankang laughed:

“Uncle, Father once asked me a question: how do you cage a rhino or elephant?”

Yu Yuangui was silent for a moment, understanding her implication.

Rhinos and elephants are mighty; they can only be fed and tamed, not caged. Since Cheng Jinyang possesses the power of the Iron Giant, constantly thinking about how to guard against or suppress him would only create unnecessary trouble. Can’t you see that you can’t suppress him?

“Wang Maohong wants to send him to Jingkou to recruit soldiers,” Yu Yuangui said in a low voice. “Jingkou is the private domain of the Cavalry Army. For other aristocratic children, Xi Daohui would have no problem giving them a military position directly.”

“But he is the head of the Cheng clan and has the name of the Iron Giant God. Giving him a low position would be inappropriate, but giving him a high position would be unacceptable. Xi Daohui must have concerns. Besides, since he is the only one in the Cheng clan with the potential of the fifth grade, they might not want to send him to serve in the Jingkou military to avoid any mishaps.”

“Maybe not for others, but the Shendu Cheng clan is an old military family with a tradition of military service,” Princess Nankang hinted.

Yu Yuangui was slightly startled, then smiled bitterly, saying, “I forgot about that.”

The Shendu Cheng clan, originally led by Cheng Zhijie, always followed the route of military nobility.

However, because of the deep integration of gravity with the military, the central government was unwilling to let the Cheng family delve too deeply into the military.

After generations of suppression and restriction, by the time of Cheng Shiju, the family business had almost completely transitioned to civilian aerospace research.

Other bloodline families with militarized abilities, like the five great families besides the Longxi Li clan, also generally avoid military forces.

Their members do not join the army or serve as regional governors. The Taiyuan Wang family, in particular, was a key focus of this avoidance.

It wasn’t until Wang Maohong and Wang Chuzhong escorted the emperor south, making an unparalleled contribution, that they broke this constraint.

Back to the main topic, after Cheng Shiju, the Cheng family began to decline, with their highest position dropping from the fourth grade to the fifth. The scale of family affairs also dwindled, leading successive clan leaders to refocus on military matters.

Given the ancestral marriage ties between the two families, the Sima family later agreed to let the Cheng family establish a special department within the Jinyiwei.

This department was later split off, becoming a private business of the Shendu Cheng family, which was one of the predecessors of Tianluo Department.

In the current chaotic era, the rule that militarized ability families should not join the military has long been broken.

The Taiyuan Wang family, with their ideological imprint, had Wang Chuzhong brainwash the Longxiang Army and then rebel.

After the rebellion was quelled, most of these people were executed. Even so, many members of the Taiyuan Wang family still held positions in various regional commands, making it difficult to purge them all at once.

Since that was the case, why not let the Shendu Cheng family rejoin the military to counterbalance the overgrown power of the Taiyuan Wang family?

Other families might not be willing to venture into an unfamiliar field, but as Princess Nankang said, the Shendu Cheng family is an old military family, both capable and interested in returning to the military.

The central government also just happened to support the Shendu Cheng family to counterbalance the Taiyuan Wang family, who “shared the world with the Sima family.”

Although the former was far inferior to the latter in terms of ability levels and resource reserves, they had the Iron Giant Soldier!

Thinking of this, Yu Yuan’gui was already inclined.

With the many refugees and numerous factions in Jingkou, even if the Shendu Cheng family established themselves there, it might not immediately alarm the Taiyuan Wang family.

Deciding on this, he thought that it was worth a try, and if it didn’t work out, he would make other plans.

In the Cheng family estate, Chu Qingqing was playing Go with Wang Wanrou. As they played, Miss Qingqing felt a strong sense of self-defeat.

“I’ve lost,” Miss Qingqing sighed, conceding. “I was no match for you in the middle game.”

“You’re too focused on the main battlefield,” Wang Wanrou said leisurely. She took Miss Qingqing’s bowl, picked up a stone, and gently placed it in the upper right corner.

“When direct confrontation is deadlocked, why not avoid entanglement and create a new territory?”