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While I was walking the streets with Moon, the first autumn rain started falling.

It was still summer when I went to Yun Hai, but when I returned, it was already at the tail end of summer. Adding the period of time I stayed with Aleya in the Demon Race on top of that, I could already feel the slight chill on this return. It isn’t strange for it to be autumn with how long I’ve spent away. It’s worth noting that West-Resisting City lies in the southern part of Eternal Heaven State, otherwise this rain would’ve fallen a little earlier.

My original plan was to inspect the city with Moon, but I didn’t expect for us to be caught by this rain just as we were doing so.

Since the two of us were getting soaked from the rain, we casually found a house and hid under their eaves.

Moon placed both of her hands into her sleeves, sneezed, and rubbed her nose as she said:

“It’s going to be a good harvest this year.”

I smirked as I responded:

“I feel like you’ve become possessed recently since you can’t speak three sentences without mentioning harvest. After you’ve started managing West-Resisting City, your entire temperament has changed. In the past, you would pick up a branch and draw out all the major events occurring in the world, appearing like an extraordinary person. Now that you’ve been provided with life’s necessities, it feels like you’re a middle-aged woman who’s had her edges and corners grinded by life itself.”

Moon rolled her eyes at me and retorted:

“If not for how thorough you are at being an all-talk no-work commander, I wouldn’t need to deal with everything, every day. It’s already good enough that I’m not worrying.”

Moon was still hiding her hands within her sleeves and standing alongside me as she slowly revealed:

“The plan isn’t able to catch up with the rapid changes. If you didn’t have an acrimonious falling-out with Yunyang, you would’ve been able to seize those 10 cities from Zhao Chen and use them as a foundation to slowly nibble away at Yunyang’s land. You could have occupied 5 inches before retreating 2 inches and used your identity as a son of Yunyang to continuously implicate the Overlord of Yunyang. After all, it is common practice for the internal strife within the territory’s younger generation to be solved between themselves. So long as you don’t have a clear falling out, the Overlord of Yunyang wouldn’t dare to do anything to you. Afterwards, you would start amassing provisions and building a high wall. Then, once the world falls into confusion, you could incite some conflict between Yunyang and Tian Cheng in the east. Taking advantage of the time the Overlord of Yunyang is away to command troops eastwards, you could have swallowed the ‘empty-city’ Yunyang and seize Lingyun City, giving us a considerably more stable home.”

I chuckled before responding:

“I understand the argument, but it isn’t me who wants a falling out. Rather, it is me putting out my face for them to slap, but they’re not cherishing this chance. They’ve swept me out without fooling around, how reasonable can you be with such people.”

Moon creased his brows and wore an expression like she was worrying about a thousand different things, then began speaking like he was talking to herself:

“Yes, that’s why it’s so strange. I’ve seen the Overlord of Yunyang’s profile before. Although this person is extremely selfish, he isn’t really an idiot. Otherwise he wouldn’t have stood on the side of the royal family without hesitation in that year when the Overlord of Cangzhou raised forces. In that year, there were an uncountable number of people who believed that Eternal Heaven State would be changing the surname of its royal family. After all, the Overlord of Cangzhou had a phenomenal rallying power and unimaginable influence. But the result? The Overlord of Yunyang still stood on the opposing side and followed the royal family in suppressing Cangzhou. If not for that, do you really think he would betroth his little princess to your elder brother.”

Speaking of that little princess Lan Na, I nearly forgot about this person. If not for her secretly sending me a letter recently. The words in the letter addressed to me were all over the place and talked about everything, even some things that were probably confidential. It included the King’s newly arrived imperial scholar, someone’s meteoric rise, how the ‘Great Sword Hero’ once again taught her swordsmanship, how she nearly cut her own foot, and plenty of other useful and useless information, showing off how happy she was.

I sent back a letter to her knowing that it would most likely be intercepted outside the imperial palace, but it was still filled with my heartfelt regards nevertheless.

Speaking of my dad, I’m actually quite resentful of how he’s always targeting me.

In the beginning, I thought that he might just have excessively faith in my elder brother, but later I discovered that it apparently wasn’t so. He occasionally would expose an expression towards my elder brother displaying his resentment towards him for failing to meet expectations. Yet towards me, you would expect that he would display a bit of remorse, but he actually displayed not even a speck of it. If not for him still calling me ‘Li De’, I would’ve thought that this person had seen through me reincarnating into his son’s body. That he knew that I wasn’t his son in spirit and therefore deliberately went to screw me over.

In brief, it’s very crazy. Moon isn’t able to make sense of this point and honestly, I don’t understand it either.

Moon let out a sigh and loosened her brows, then confessed:

“Thinking about this is useless. If you’re not feeling sad, then why should I substitute for you in feeling sad. I originally thought that being disowned would make you feel depressed for a period of time, but now I can see that you truly are shameless.”

“Well, not really.”

I laughed as I spoke, but my laugh began slowly dying down.

To be honest, if it’s possible, I’m actually unwilling to have a direct conflict with Yunyang. In the past, at least before I left Yunyang, I’ve never had a formal conflict with my dad and elder brother. It’s not that I’m unable to defeat them or anything since I had plenty of opportunities to kill them at the time. It was because I didn’t have any ideas of doing so and felt like it was meaningless to do so.

But I didn’t think that even after I gave up my right to inherit Yunyang, endure humiliation as I left Yunyang, escaped to the western-most West-Resisting City and experienced a narrow escape……alright, fine, there was no narrow escape, but I still had to suffer quite a bit. With great difficulty, I stabilized the situation here yet they still haven’t given up. I don’t know whether or not the first thing they say when they get up is to encourage themselves or not, but I do know now that they aren’t the type of people to renounce their goal before reaching it.

Moon whispered:

“I used to really envy you, envying you for being born a noble, that you would never be like me, a person reduced to becoming a slave of a noble. Envying you for being able to live free and easy, envying you for being able to do what you think of, envying you for having a lot of money, envying you for having so many friends surrounding you, envying you for having such an optimistic outlook……”

Moon grinned as she continued:

“Of course, I also envy you for being prettier than me after you put on makeup.”

I helplessly beseeched:

“Big brother, can we not bring up this matter!”