Fix Smile Order Chapter 9
Translated by Pure
Edited by cookiecrunch
Chapter 9: A Gathering of Talents
Tan Lingyin woke up in the middle of the night, and it took a while to remember what happened to her. She stood up, touched her dizzy head, and felt pain on her forehead. She turned her head and looked at the closed moon gate under the bright moonlight.
Tan Lingyin looked up and sighed. An ill jinshi, a really ill one. Who would have thought that the sex-fiend magistrate would run naked in his own courtyard at night? How perverted must one need to be to do such a thing? Tan Lingyin shook her head and couldn't help worrying about the fate of the locals.
After sighing, she decided to go back. As soon as she took a step, she felt something was wrong with her left foot. Tan Lingyin squatted down only to find out that her shoe was missing.
It turned out that when Tang Tianyuan was dragging Tan Lingyin, the force made her lose her shoe.
Tan Lingyin looked for a while but couldn't find it, so she gave up and hopped back to the Southern Study.
Because both of them were embarrassed at last night’s event, Tan Lingyin didn't go to see Tang Tianyuan early the next morning, which gave the latter a happy, quiet day.
In the morning, Tan Lingyin had nothing to do, so she had tea and chatted with some bailiff officers. She gave each of them a reading, causing them to praise Tan Lingyin, and together, they pooled money to invite her to have a good meal. During this period, Tan Lingyin acquired an incredible piece of news: the name of the new magistrate turned out to be ‘Tang Feilong’?!
She became famous because of these three characters and made a lot of money, so she is familiar with this name. But the "Tang Feilong" she wrote about was not this "Tang Feilong", but the famous Tang Tianyuan. More than two years ago, Tang Tianyuan became famous, became the dream lover of countless girls, and a role model for many scholars. Tan Lingyin saw this as a business opportunity and wrote a book based on Tang Tianyuan under the pen name of "Miao Miao Sheng". Since then, her reputation has spread far and wide. If she used the name "Tang Tianyuan" directly in the book, she was afraid that the other party would come to her door, so she chose another name "Tang Feilong", inspired by "Wyverns in the Sky".
In short, anyone who had read her book would know that Tang Feilong is Tang Tianyuan.
Now, the real "Tang Feilong" has come to her door.
Tan Lingyin thought carefully about what Tang Feilong had said to her before. Although he said that he admired her, the tone of his voice said otherwise.
Then, wasn't this Tang Feilong here to find fault?
Though, it was understandable. He and Tang Tianyuan were both jinshi from the same department, but Tang Tianyuan's limelight overshadowed him. And then, someone else wrote a book with his name, but every sentence pointed to Tang Tianyuan. As the real Tang Feilong, how could he be reconciled? Moreover, if his relatives and friends read the book, they would probably compare him with Tang Tianyuan. Wouldn't this hurt his self-esteem even more?
Tang Feilong was probably here to seek revenge.
It made sense why he was so adamant about her not writing any boys’ love novels... If it weren't his special interest, no man would be willing to put his name together with another man and appear together in such a context.
What to do? The County Magistrate must have hated her to death… Tan Lingyin was a little melancholy.
After lunch, Tan Lingyin wanted to take a nap, but unexpectedly, Dawang came to her and said that the county magistrate wanted to see her. Tan Lingyin went to the Retreat Hall, where she found the county magistrate was talking to another person.
The man had a scorched yellow skin tone, a goatee beard, and a pair of small, gleaming eyes. At a single glance, she could tell he wasn’t the ‘easy to deal with’ type.
Tang Tianyuan noticed Tan Lingyin’s arrival and thought of the farce last night. Although he was not happy, he didn't show it on the surface. He led Tan Lingyin to meet that person, and the three of them were in harmony.
Goatee-man was the newly appointed Chizhou Prefecture’s county deputy. The county deputy was the vice-superior of a county, with status and power second only to the county magistrate. The county magistrate was not authorized to privately recruit his own county deputy. Even if he were to find a suitable candidate, he must submit an application to the higher-ranking officials. Tang Tianyuan was saved by this arrangement. He couldn't even recruit a head commissioner, let alone a county deputy, so he directly requested Chizhou Prefecture to send one.
The new county deputy's name was Zhou Zhengdao. Tan Lingyin thought, most men named "handsome" and women named "beautiful" were often not as attractive as their names suggested. This goatee-man’s name was ‘the correct path’, but she was pretty sure he was not an upright or principled man[1].
She was not prejudiced because of his appearance but because of the current foundation. The county magistrate, an ordinary jinshi from Sichuan Province, had no big backers. On the other hand, the prefect of Chizhou was full of old fritters in the officialdom. So as a new official sent to Tongling, they probably wouldn’t be kind enough to reach out their hands to help him. Therefore, the people who were sent to him were either picked out from other people’s leftovers or were sent to probe and entice him into their political party.
If Tan Lingyin had figured out this much, then Tang Tianyuan wouldn’t have the wrong assumption either. However, temptation was a two-way street. If others could tempt him, he could also tempt them. Since he had only met Zhou Zhengdao for the first time, Tang Tianyuan couldn't say which path the other party was on, so he would see as he goes.
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Footnotes:
[1] Zhengdao- (正道) meant ‘The right way’ in Buddhism. As in taking the correct path. Just and fair.