The Genius Concubine-Born Daughter - Chapter 3

To give credit where it was due, that university student from a thousand years in the future truly knew a thing or two—apart from handwriting so ugly it offended the eye.

According to my son, she had memorized more essays than his schoolmaster. She could recite “On Teachers,” the “Memorial on Sending Out the Troops,” and “On the Six States” from beginning to end, and explain a fair number of allusions from the Zuo Commentary with convincing authority.

Her teaching methods were novel too. She packed his schedule full and taught with ruthless precision.

“Classroom consolidation,” “identifying and filling gaps,” “reinforced memory,” “knowledge frameworks”…

The phrases were incomprehensible yet impressive.

She also devised something called the Five-Three Plan. Five days without easing up, she said, followed by three days without relaxing one’s focus.

It ran in eight-day cycles. For the first five days, he memorized two essays, copied three passages, and answered five questions each day. During the next three, he had to take everything from the previous five days and review it all over again.

She called this “closing the loop.”

My son looked ready to die.

On the first day, he tried to escape. He had only made it halfway through the window, his waist not yet straight, when his elder sister caught him by the back of his collar and dragged him in.

She stroked his head. “Be good. Hold on a little longer. You’re saving your sister’s life.”

He looked at her. “Saving your life? Why must I lose mine?”

On the second day, he pretended to faint while copying a text.

The moment he lay down, she bent over his ear and whispered again and again, “Strike when he’s sick, take his life. Strike when he’s sick, take his life…”

He revived within half a second and sat straighter than a bamboo pole.

The third time, he tried bargaining. “Sister, can I memorize one fewer essay today?”

She nodded with a gentle smile. “Of course.”

Then she added, “Write two more policy essays tomorrow.”

After several such attempts, my son finally resigned himself to his fate.

Before long, his schoolwork left every young gentleman in the academy behind.

In the past, my son had occupied the status of a household pet at school: mild, lovable, never troublesome, and never outstanding.

Now?

The other young gentlemen avoided him for fear that his relentless studying would grind them to death.

All except his elder brother, Su Huai.

Su Huai had reason to be restless. As the legitimate eldest son, he had been raised from childhood to be upright and steady. His scholarship was respectable too, though never the finest at the academy.

That was because Madam Gu had always believed one thing:

The eldest son must be steady. He need not fight for the spotlight.

But now the spotlight had grown legs and run straight to my son’s head.

My boy was honest—painfully so.

When Su Huai casually remarked, “You have been quite diligent lately,” he answered with equal honesty, “My sister teaches me.”

“How?”

“Every day.”

“She knows enough?”

“She knows everything.”

From that day onward, Su Huai began circling our courtyard.

He made no sound and never came inside. Sometimes he passed during an afternoon stroll. Sometimes, even as dusk fell, one could see him walking slowly beneath the covered gallery.

He walked with such propriety that one glance proved he was not merely “passing by.”

After several visits, he finally entered.

He greeted me, exchanged a few words with his younger brother about the academy, then seemed to remember something and asked with studied casualness, “Fourth Brother tells me that Third Sister has been directing his studies.”

“She has,” I answered.

He paused, then solemnly produced a box of newly made Huizhou ink and several Huzhou brushes.

“I ask for your permission, Aunt, to let Third Sister instruct me as well.”

His words were measured and courteous.

I thought it a good thing. He was willing to lower his head and seek instruction without putting on airs. That was rare. Besides, studying together would improve the atmosphere.

Unfortunately, my dear son blurted out the moment he heard, “Eldest Brother! Are you looking to be tortured?”

Su Huai frowned. “I wish to improve myself. How is that seeking torture?”

I smiled. “The decision is not mine. Zhi’er must agree.”

He paused, then said, “When Third Sister returns, I shall ask her myself.”

For the next three days, Su Huai came without once seeing A-Zhi.

It was not bad timing. She was avoiding him.

Whenever he arrived, she hid. Her gaze darted about, and her answers twisted in circles. One moment she claimed her energy was limited; the next, that teaching her younger brother was exhausting. Again and again, she refused even to meet him.

I could see something was wrong. This was nothing like her usual air of “the script is in my hands, so the world is mine.”

I called her over and questioned her in private.

“What are you doing?”

She picked at her fingers. “It isn’t very convenient.”

“What isn’t?”

“It just… isn’t.”

I patiently advised her, “One flower alone does not make spring. A hundred flowers in bloom fill the garden. If you produce two top-ranked students, that will be your strongest foundation. Whether you are legitimate or concubine-born, who would dare look down on you then?”

She still said nothing.

After a long while, she whispered, “Seeing him… would be awkward.”

“Awkward?” I was baffled. “He is your own brother. What could be awkward about that?”

She hesitated.

Something occurred to me, and I narrowed my eyes. “In your original design, were you planning to make him a villain? Was he meant to torment you alongside your sister?”

Her head snapped up.

So that was it.

I sighed. “That was your imagination, not reality. He has always treated you kindly and never made things difficult for you. Do not frighten yourself.”

She remained silent for a long time before stammering, “That isn’t the problem.”

“Then what is?”

Her voice was almost inaudible. “I… wrote a little orthopedics.”

I stared. “What branch of medicine?”

She hurried to explain. “Not in reality. It was a character setup, a kind of… plot.”

It took quite some time for her to make me understand what “orthopedics” meant.

Once I did, I fell silent.

Then, with great difficulty and perfect accuracy, I said, “Writing an angst novel was bad enough.

“You also planned to arrange that sort of ethical catastrophe for yourself?

“No wonder you stopped after the first chapter.

“If you had written any further, the ancestral tablets themselves might have exploded.”