Flowers and Trees Lean on Each Other - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My father was the most shameless general in the entire dynasty. On the day our estate was confiscated, he appealed to the Emperor, kneeling in the hall and refusing to admit anything even if it killed him. “Wanjun is not my biological daughter. She shouldn’t be beheaded with me.”

The Emperor endured it. “Fine!”

After saving me, the fake daughter, my father pushed his luck and brought up the real one. “Xiaohe hasn’t been entered into my family’s genealogy yet, so she doesn’t count either.”

That was when I truly believed my father had once been the Emperor’s most favored subject, because the Emperor actually endured it again. “No problem!”

Who would have thought his tolerance would create an increasingly brazen subject? My father knocked his head to the floor with a thud so loud it made everyone tremble, then brought up the wife he had married in his youth and loved dearly for many years. “Your Majesty, please see clearly. This guilty subject must divorce his wife as well!”

A vein jumped on the Emperor’s forehead. “And what excuse do you have this time?”

“I…” My father stammered for ages before finally throwing caution to the wind. “This guilty subject is impotent. My wife committed adultery. My legitimate son Cheng Shujun is not my biological child at all!”

With one sentence, he wiped us all clean of the matter. If the Emperor agreed again, then this grand, sweeping execution of an entire household would, in reality, only be beheading one lonely bachelor of a general.

His Majesty was so furious his hand shook. He grabbed something from the desk and hurled it at random, striking my father right on his shiny, oily forehead.

“Good, good, good. Beloved Minister Cheng, your family truly is… full of hardships!” Look how angry the Emperor was. My father was about to lose his head, so what kind of beloved minister was he supposed to be?

My father had not spent years honing his skill at clinging and pestering for nothing. Since it was obvious he could not explain himself, he simply seized the opportunity. Using that blow as his excuse, he “fainted” on the spot.

The Emperor looked like he was about to faint too. From rage, no doubt.

In the end, my father’s shameless speech, sacrificing all dignity for survival, fooled no one. My nominal parents of more than ten years, along with an elder brother, still failed to escape the fate of beheading.

In the end, the only ones who survived were me and the real daughter. I had been removed from the genealogy long ago. As for the real daughter, that was even simpler-she had never had time to be entered into it in the first place.

The real daughter and I stared at each other, wide-eyed, for half an hour. She didn’t want to talk to me, and I genuinely had no idea what to say.

Just one day ago, the two of us had still been enemies by all worldly standards. Now, we had become each other’s only support.