Time Reversal

35. A Punishment That Works, Part 3

"That Wei Yu is a little shit!" Considering that Wei Ying was technically complaining about their newest disciple's antics, he sounded awfully proud of the boy. Wei Ying, being Wei Yu's sort of cousin, was his named guardian and so whenever the boy was mischievous, it was Wei Ying who was called in to stand by the child as he was disciplined.

The Clan History teacher had been very loud in his condemnations of Wei Yu falling asleep in class. Wei Yu had, in turn, been very quiet about putting a frog in that teacher's tea pot.

Too many of the elders Wei Yu pranked or 'disrespected' wanted his bum paddled, at the very least. Having seen the boy's bruises and watched how Wei Yu still flinched whenever someone was too loud, too fast, too close, he had absolutely no intention of ever using corporal punishment on the child.

Kneeling was a good punishment, he had thought, until the day he saw his husband washing a pair of short trousers that were suspiciously thick around the knee area. "You gave Xiao Yu padded trousers?"

"Kneeling is boring," Wei Ying whined. "And your knees hurt for days after with all the pebbles jammed into them."

"Kneeling is supposed to be painful," he reminded his spouse. "It's a deterrent to not do that activity again."

Wei Ying did not look repentant. "Not the way I do it."

So kneeling was out. As was writing lines because Wei Ying was certain to teach the young man how to replicate whatever needed to be copied without actually doing any of the copying.

Reading, however, accomplished almost the same goal. Wei Yu sat in the library for weeks reading various sections of the Rules to the senior overseeing his punishments. He learned the Rules and practiced his reading; two wins for the price of one punishment.

Wei Yu never again hid a snake in the archery hut, so it was a triple win.

This frog stunt, however.... "If I assign Wei Yu to wash dishes for a week, are you going to design a spell to wash them instead?"

"No?" Wei Ying looked thoughtful. "Although... that's probably a good idea. No one actually likes washing dishes, do they?"

"Wei Ying..." he sighed and rubbed his face. "You can't keep rescuing Xiao Yu from his punishments. He needs to learn appropriate behavior."

"Lan Zhan." Wei Ying looked very stern. "This is appropriate behavior. I wrote to Wen Qing when he first came here and looked like he was petrified to speak. She said... it's going to take some time for him to understand that he's not going to be beaten for breathing at the wrong time. These pranks... they're harmless, really. The way we react to the pranks is what matters. Assign him reading again. A different book each time; he likes reading."

"You want me to assign him a punishment that he enjoys?"

"It worked with me, didn't it?"

The punishment of 'go sit in the library, read a book, and write a report on it' wasn't much of a punitive punishment; it was effective. Wei Yu chose fiction books for the most part: stories about great hero warriors who fought for their emperor and won the heart of the princess seemed to be his favorite. A few were educational: a history on spiritual swords or the teachings of an immortal cultivator and the like. And one was a spring book.

Wei Ying was literally rolling on the floor, laughing, when that report was submitted.

Wei Ying wasn't laughing later when he confiscated the book and made Wei Ying play the part of the woman as they reenacted the more explicit scenes.

~*~

Life marched on. Lan Xichen and Yu Lijie married with as little fanfare as possible. Wei Ying continued to work with Lan Ruochen and Lan Xueqin developing the spiritual fans and its emerging associated cultivation. A new set of eager cultivators descended on Yunshen Buzhichu hoping to be one of the few who would pass the entrance exams to be in the second cohort of talisman students.