Empress Xie

Empress Xie•6

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say Chu Jiayi is a genius. Both her maternal and paternal families are scholarly ones, and all her life she received strict formal education in the four scholarly arts. All her tutors praised her, it did not take her much effort to learn the basics and once she'd mastered them mastering the art itself came naturally to her.

Unlike Chu Jiayi, Xie Lien didn't particularly have formal education on such things. In order to properly hide her Xie Lien was taught all she knew by those around her. She learnt reading, writing, and painting from her mother, practiced Go with her brother and father, and learnt how to sing, dance, and play instruments from one of her mother's maids who was once a songstress.

If she picked up on any of these things with incredible speed it was because she either had knowledge on it from her past life or because she is mentally thirty-four years old.

However, the one thing that qualified Xie Lien as a genius was the time she put into practicing. Ancient China does not have phones or the internet, and novels involving overcoming status quos or challenging nobility and public morals are illegal. Being too idle will invite criticism so day after day, for fourteen years, Xie Lien did almost nothing but practice.

For her it was merely a means to eliminate boredom, but to those around her she is a hardworking and diligent lady who put in the utmost effort to master the four arts.

It was an pitifully quick game that ended with Chu Jiayi's loss, and the only person more surprised than Chu Jiayi was Xie Lien.

The Prime Minister's daughter did not think that highly of herself. Sure she could praise her beauty to the moon and back, but she would always be aware of who she used to be. In a far future she is an orphaned child working multiple jobs and gambling on the side to scrape up as much money as she can. Xie Lien knew and accepted she was not like the other girls who where born talented. Apart from her looks, she didn't find herself to be all that special.

It's this thinking that made her win all the more unbelievable for her. Don't be mistaken, Xie Lien may talk big (to herself), but she hadn't even humored the idea of winning against Chu Jiayi. She'd planned on dragging the game out and giving Chu Jiayi the biggest challenge of her life. Never did she expect Chu Jiayi to be such a careless player.

As Chu Jiayi scanned the board in an attempt to find where her loss began, Xie Lien joined her. There's no way right? There's no fucking way I actually won. But she did. Xie Lien was pleasantly surprised, and Chu Jiayi was silently enraged.

She couldn't look up, she didn't dare to. How could she meet anyone's eyes after such a shameful display? Though such thoughts were going through Chu Jiayi's head, her face was calm like the spring breeze.

Song Wen, who has awaiting Xie Lien's downfall, could hardly keep her composure. Her brows were narrowed in a fierce glare as she spat; "Xie Lien how could you call your skills "so and so"? You obviously wanted to make Chu Jiayi lower her guard!"

Xie Lien had the gull to put on a surprised look. "Song Wen you're wrong, this miss' skills are really not that great. Can't you see it was Chu Jiayi that let me win? How else could our game have ended so quickly?"

Everyone was taken aback by Xie Lien's words. Anyone who watched the game closely saw Xie Lien had instantly outmatched Chu Jiayi, but others actually wondered if the beauty spoke the truth. Chu Jiayi had always been good at everything, maybe she really let the beauty win.

Chu Jiayi stared at Xie Lien, infuriated by those starry Phoenix eyes. The latter had taken her trick and slapped her with it. Similar to how Chu Jiayi used the crowd to pressure Xie Lien, Xie Lien used Song Wen as a buffer to humiliate and/or save Chu Jiayi.