Did the third place winner regret it today?

Chapter 25

He was actually waiting for her.
Shen Ti bowed her hands in greeting: "Cousin, please excuse me for a moment."
This is deep inside the monastery, and ordinary pilgrims from outside cannot come in. There are only three of them in the corridor. Yin Shi turned his head and saw some monks in the distance.

Yin Shi said to Kui'er, "Wait here."
She pointed outside and said, "Let's go talk there."
Shen Ti raised her hand and made a "please" gesture, and the two of them walked down the corridor and stood in the open space outside.

There is a blue sky and a white sun above our heads, and the world is bright and clear.
The maids in the corridor looked at them curiously, and the monks coming and going in the distance could also see them.
In this place, people speak openly and honestly. Even if others see them, they will only think that they are talking, and will not suspect that "they have private interests".
Shen Ti recalled her mother's comment about her cousin, which included the word "stable".
Shen Ti also nodded secretly in her heart.

Yin Shi stood still: "What's the matter? Just tell me."
Facing her handsome cousin, she was not shy at all and was even very serious.
Because she felt that she and Shen Ti had no connection at all, she now had a very bad guess - she suspected that Shen Ti had taken a fancy to one of the little cousins ​​of the Yin family and wanted her, the older cousin, to help pass on a private message or something.

no! Absolutely not!
Bullshit love is supreme, get out of my love mind! You two are living in the feudal era! If you want to fall in love, report to my parents, seek their support, and then ask a matchmaker to come to your house to propose marriage!
The procedure must be correct!

Yin Shi had made up her mind that if cousin Shen dared to make an illegal request, she would scold him severely.
In this kind of situation, the man would just pull up his pants, say "romantic", pat his butt and walk away, and still get promoted and make a fortune. But the girl's life would be ruined.
Cousins ​​and cousins, cousins ​​and cousins, of course, the cousins ​​are closer. As the eldest sister, she must protect the younger sisters.

Yin Shi has spread his wings, ready to protect his cubs.
Who would have thought that Shen Ti would start by saying, "Cousin, do you know that mother came here to arrange a marriage between you and me?"
Shen Ti stared at Yin Shi, observing her expression.

Yin Shi blinked, confused for a moment: "To whom?"
"you and me."
"What?"
"Engagement, marriage."

Yin Shi pointed a finger at Shen Ti, then at himself: "......?"
Shen Ti nodded.
Yin Shi pointed at Shen Ti, then at himself, then at Shen Ti again, then at himself again, and finally pointed at himself fiercely: "?!"
"Cousin, don't doubt it." Shen Ti confirmed calmly, "It's you and me."

"That's impossible." Yin Shi's first reaction was to deny it. "You know Qi Dafei——"
Her voice stopped abruptly.
Shen Ti watched the look in her eyes as she looked at him change from surprise and suspicion to pity and sympathy.
Shen Ti: “…”
Although I don't know what she was thinking, I always have a bad feeling.

"Cousin." Yin Shi tried to make his voice sound calm. Pity should not be shown too much, especially in this regard for men, whose self-esteem is very fragile. "In fact, some things are not as important as you think. There are still many more important things in life, such as your talent and knowledge. The court only admits 300 Jinshi every three years. That's why you are called the brilliance of the literati and the elite of the world."
"It must be the dream of many women to live with a learned and promising man like you for the rest of their lives."

In this era, some brides only know what their husbands look like after they have lifted their veils. Women who give birth early also die early, so love and even sex life are not that important. In this society with low productivity and medical care, living well is the most important thing.
You won’t die without sex, there are other ways to solve it, and if all else fails, there’s Mr. Horn.

"So, there's really no need to worry too much. Children can actually be adopted. The clan is so big, and there are so many relatives. In fact, the blood relationship is not that far. We all have the same surname, and we are all the same."
It is better not to have children. Instead, the clan can adopt one and use etiquette and laws to suppress him to take care of you in your old age. You can be a mother painlessly without having to worry about difficult labor and heavy bleeding.
Yin Shi herself was afraid that giving birth to a child at a young age would make it more likely for her to die, so she pestered the chief monk to help her make up such a big lie to delay the marriage.
"So, the right thing to do is to find someone who is of equal status to yours."

When she finished speaking, an eerie silence fell over the clearing.
Shen Ti was silent for a long time.
Really long time.
Anyway, Yin Shi clearly saw how his fair neck turned red little by little.
It’s great that your face is still fair and clean, only your neck is red. If you wore a high collar, no one would notice it at all. I’m so envious.

Although Tanhualang was only seventeen years old, he was well-educated and talented, so of course he could understand what his cousin was saying.
His Qi-nourishing Kung Fu, which he had cultivated for seventeen years but had not yet reached sufficient level, suddenly made a leap forward due to external stimulation!
Shen Ti used all her life's skills to control her emotions, and told Yin Shi calmly, "Cousin, please don't speculate. I'm in good health. I don't have any hidden illness!"

Your neck is bleeding.
Yin Shi didn't dare to provoke the young boy's proud and fragile self-esteem, and hurriedly said, "Okay, okay, yes, yes, no no no!"

[If you clear your mind, your spirit will be clear, and naturally the six desires will not arise, and the three poisons will be eliminated. The reason why you cannot do this is that your mind is not clear and your desires are not eliminated. Those who can eliminate them will look inside their mind and find that their mind has no mind...]
Shen Ti took a deep breath and quickly recited the Taoist Tai Shang Jing Xin Mantra in his mind, which made the burning sensation on his neck subside and he returned to normal. "Cousin, your guess is not completely wrong. There is indeed a reason why my mother came to Huaixi to find a marriage partner for me." He calmly told the other party involved in the incident the truth of the matter, "In fact... I already have a loved one. Her status does not allow her to be my legal wife, so for her sake, I don't want to marry."
"what?"
The third place winner is a love-brained person? Yin Shi couldn't believe it.

Because the imperial examination of this era is not equivalent to the college entrance examination of another time and space. The college entrance examination is more about memory and understanding. Occasionally, you can express your own thoughts in the essay. But for the sake of safety, everyone writes a routine essay based on the topic.
At that time, the imperial examination did not require you to fill in the blanks with the contents of the Four Books and Five Classics. Instead, the examination gave you extracts from the Four Books and Five Classics and asked you to express your views on how to solve problems, how to rectify politics, and how to govern the country in light of the current social problems.
Of course, there will still be many people who predict the topic and write it in advance, and they may even pass the imperial examination.
But the top three among these 300 people definitely did not get there by just memorizing formulaic texts.
They are definitely people with real political insights and a sense of the big picture.

The overall perspective is something that is inherently in conflict with the love-minded mentality.
People with a big picture perspective will first consider the interests and logic of the big picture. However, those with a love-brained mind believe that "giving up the whole world for me is true love."
So these two things are inherently in conflict. It is really difficult for people with a big picture perspective to become love-brained.
Yin Shi still believed in this already mature imperial examination system. So Shen Ti...how could he be a love-brained person?

"Let me sort it out..." Putting aside this confusion, Yin Shi began to sort out the information and immediately remembered something, "The beloved person you mentioned, isn't it your ex-fiancée?"
Madam Shen said that Shen Ti had been engaged before, but the girl's family fell into poverty, and all the female relatives were taken as official slaves and became lowly people.
Official slaves could not redeem themselves and become free men unless they were rehabilitated or granted amnesty. Otherwise, they would remain slaves forever.
The law stipulates that people of high status and low status cannot marry. The term "unmarried" here refers only to being a husband and wife, not including concubines, concubines, etc. Therefore, the ex-fiancée, because she was not a lowly person, could only be Shen Ti's concubine at most.

"She is a lowly woman and can only be a concubine. You are afraid that she will be tortured by the wife, so you don't marry her to protect her, right?"
"But my aunt and uncle would not allow you, a promising son who won the imperial examination, to not marry, so they proposed a compromise. They came to this small place like Huaixi to marry you a wife who knows you well but is not so well-matched and whose family is weak. This way, your wife would not dare to overly oppress your beloved, and thus you would reach a compromise, right?"
Yin Shi looked at Shen Ti with bright eyes.

Shen Ti felt that his mother's evaluation of this cousin might not be entirely correct. Of course, his own impression of her in the past was also wrong.
He was born and raised in the capital, a city full of talents and scholars. He took it for granted that the daughters of small gentry families in small places like Huaixi could only read a few words and were not necessarily blind, but their ideas and views must be shallow and narrow.
But he looked at Yin Shi's bright eyes and listened to her figure out the whole story in just a few breaths, with quick reactions and clear logic - it seemed that he was narrow-minded.

Shen Ti admitted frankly: "Yes, everything is just as my cousin thought."
He was even a little happy that his cousin was a smart and clear-headed person. Communicating with such a person was a hundred times easier than communicating with those who were paranoid and dull.
Sure enough, Yin Shi asked him, "Although I was involved in this matter without your permission, I knew nothing about the whole thing before just now. So, what do you want to do by coming to stop me, cousin?"

Shen Ti stared at her.
"My cousin is smarter than my mother praises her." He said, "I came here to tell my cousin the truth. As for our marriage, I will go and tell my mother myself, so as not to delay my cousin."
Yin Shi looked at him straight, and after a moment, he sneered softly with obvious contempt.
Shen Ti was stunned.

"If you want to resist, just go and make a scene with your family. If you make a big enough scene and resist persistently, the marriage will be ruined." Yin Shi stated calmly, "Then why did you come to me? I don't have to do anything, I can just wait for you to ruin the marriage. Why did you come to me and tell me all this?"
"It's just that... you can't resist on your own. If you could resist, you wouldn't have been forced to come to Huaixi by your parents in the first place."
"Because marriage is decided by the parents, and disobeying them is a serious crime that cannot be forgiven by laws and etiquette."

"You can't resist, so you expect me to resist and make trouble."
"As for me, an old girl who can't even be called a relative, if I am accused of being unfilial and have a reputation of being too arrogant that even the top scholar doesn't like me, what will happen in the future? Will I be locked up in a nunnery or a woodshed? Will I be married off to a poor old widower as a second wife? Or will I die quietly in some shabby courtyard at home? These... you don't care and don't think about them, right?"

Her voice was calm, but her logic was sharp.
It was like cutting through a layer of beautiful and clean skin, revealing the blood underneath.
Shen Ti's sleeves fluttered softly and gracefully in the wind, but he was stiff.

A beautiful shell was broken.
It was ruthlessly smashed to pieces by my cousin Yin Shi Niang.
Before that, he wasn't even aware of its existence and acted entirely on instinct.

"But, it doesn't matter."
My cousin's voice was very gentle and she looked at him with tolerance.
"It's okay. I can forgive you for not being able to think about these things or not wanting to think about them."

Just as my mother said, Mrs. Yin was a gentle and kind person.
"I can forgive you." She seemed to have reconciled with her sharp emotions in a very short time, and said in a gentle voice, "You won the third place in the imperial examination and have status. Everyone thinks you are an adult, and maybe even you think so."
"But you are actually...still a child."

(End of this chapter)