Chapter 2
The Wedding Night.

Except… there wasn’t really a wedding night.

Lady Huang, the official wife, and the rest of Zhuge Liang’s household (including but not limited to his brother, his father-in-law, and his adopted son) were still in Jingzhou. So, following Liu Zhang’s instructions, you were given a proper, formal wedding. The bride’s side was packed with guests, and the groom’s side even had the royal uncle holding court—it wasn’t lacking at all. You tried to remain composed under the watchful eyes of all these bigwigs, while your husband played the perfectly meticulous servant: precise in every step and gesture, robotic in his exactness, rigid yet elegant.

This rigid-yet-elegant demeanor continued into the bridal chamber. The female attendants stepped aside. You lowered your head, thinking that there were no proper mirrors in this era and you had no idea how beautiful you actually were or whether you could successfully collect the next CG.

Then, the bead curtain hanging over your forehead was lifted. Your eyes met his, and your male idol was looking at you with an indescribable expression.

To put it bluntly… the way he looked at you was like dealing with a real headache.

But who is your male idol! Your “official wife” (yes, although your benefactor father gave you a loophole to appear almost like the main wife, theoretically you were still the unfortunate concubine) might have had ordinary looks, but he didn’t care at all. So your beauty or lack thereof was completely irrelevant to him.

In other words, your charm stats seemed useless. As you mumbled this to yourself, he sighed.

And sigh he did—your male idol! Standing in front of you, rare in his full red attire, glowing beautifully under the lamp light—your dazzling male idol!
So you couldn’t help but speak up: “Sir, you sleep on the bed, I’ll just sleep on the floor…”

Your male idol visibly froze. His shoulders started trembling, his hands shook, and just as you worried that some short rod—you didn’t even know the name of—might poke your face, he withdrew his hand.

Without his feather fan, he could use the back of his hand to cover his face, and there he left you, standing awkwardly, laughing for what felt like forever.

When you started feeling a little guilty, he finally stopped laughing—but his face still wore that sly, fox-like expression. “Madam, are you really afraid of your husband?”

“Of course not,” you immediately denied, though you had no idea how to continue. It was awkward.

He moved a little closer, smiling, staring at you. His beauty almost blinded your “pay-to-win” eyes, but more importantly, you could clearly smell the scent of spices on him, mingling with the spices on you. Together, they formed a rich, expensive fragrance. That’s right—because you had spent money! The scent you wore wasn’t ordinary incense; it was Dragon Ambergris, only used in the palace before the collapse of ritual music!
For some reason, you suddenly saw things from Huang Yueying’s perspective: “You smell like her perfume… is my nose committing a crime…?”

Fortunately, your male idol didn’t make things difficult. He just leaned closer to examine you and said, “Madam, if you do not need Liang’s company, shall I first attend to the official documents?”

You quickly nodded like a good little puppy.

Green robes holding the inkstone and guiding the examination papers, red sleeves adding fragrance while reading—someone writing a poem in this scene would probably enjoy the atmosphere. But you didn’t enjoy it much, because clearly your male idol wasn’t enjoying it either.

After he stopped you several times from performing “favor-boosting” actions, like trimming the lamp wick or handing him hot tea, and gave you a look indicating you could go to the inner chamber to sleep, you obediently curled up, removed your pearl crown and all the glittering hairpins, and went to bed fully dressed.

Light clothing, not heavy makeup; the rushing wind still did not feel cold. Even though it was still summer, when you opened the window in the morning, the breeze on your face carried a hint of coolness.

“Madam, did you sleep well last night?”
You turned your head as your male idol lifted the curtain and entered. You didn’t notice when he had changed back into his signature “crane cloak and feather fan with silk cap” attire, but in the morning sunlight, there was not a trace of sleepiness on his face—only radiant energy. Still as mesmerizingly handsome as ever, his gaze on you still carried that faint, teasing smile. Your male idol truly felt like a breath of spring… though something felt slightly off.

Before you could think it through, he cupped his hands toward you and, with apparent regret, told you he was busy today, needing to go immediately to the provincial governor’s office. You would have to take breakfast on your own, and you needn’t wait for lunch either.

Well, that place used to belong to your benefactor father, of course, not anymore. After attending your wedding, Liu Zhang had already set off for Jingzhou—people gone, tea… gone.

As the saying goes, “see the essence through the appearance,” you suddenly realized that although your male idol’s attitude toward you was extremely friendly, almost charmingly warm, in his mind, you were still a burden he had to take on! Upon further inquiry, you learned that the residence you now lived in was the dowry Liu Zhang had left for you, while Strategist Zhuge had his own separate quarters…

Fine, then—it’s like the “walking marriage” treatment in The Tale of Genji. With a husband this indifferent, you could claim to be “above the hollyhock,” though technically that title belonged to the official wife, Lady Huang. If you said you were one of six concubines… well, you didn’t have that much jealousy, but at least you were above the third-rank palace ladies… Ah, no, you had no intention of putting a cuckold’s hat on your male idol—not a bit! May heaven strike me if otherwise!

So, as a woman in the Three Kingdoms period somewhat neglected by her husband, how was your life?

…Actually, it wasn’t bad at all.
Your benefactor father not only left you this residence with pavilions, terraces, and willows by the pond, along with dozens of servants and a hundred acres of fertile land, but theoretically, even if your male idol didn’t support you, you wouldn’t starve.

But surviving and living well are two different things. For example, you couldn’t get used to lamb, venison, freshwater fish, dog meat (of course dog meat wasn’t suitable for someone of your noble status), pork of this era, or cured meat that hadn’t been properly seasoned! And that’s just what you couldn’t eat—never mind the ancient people’s favorite salted fish. Aside from occasional beef, you mostly ate chicken—and that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was… no fried chicken! There was no soybean oil to lavishly use! Fry chicken in lard? Yeah, you wouldn’t be able to stomach that either.

So after several days of roasted chicken legs, pan-fried chicken breasts, boiled chicken without hazel mushrooms, and all kinds of boiled greens, you felt your male idol’s charm rapidly declining in your eyes! You didn’t know how others of the era were eating, but you felt miserable. You could empathize with the hardships of life in the late Han period!

You wanted to call a servant to buy some snacks for you, but you knew that at this time, forget cakes—there weren’t even egg tarts. Could you get osmanthus cake? Crisp sugar? Cherry yogurt? Then a new problem arose—you had so much silk fabric left by your benefactor father that it filled half a room, and the other half was packed with various gold, silver, and private coins made by your grandfather. Did you even know the exchange rates?

……………………

When your male idol, moving like an immortal, crossed the pavilions and terraces and came before you, it had been almost half a month since you last saw him. So aside from washing your face and brushing your teeth that morning, you hadn’t bothered to dress up. You had just wrapped yourself in a slightly worn robe, tied your hair back, squatted on the veranda to line up five-wu coins, and, using your mental search engine to calculate prices one by one, looked up at him. Once again, his eyes showed shock.

“…Madam, what are you doing?” he bent slightly, testing.

“…Counting money.”

“Counting money?”

“Yes… that’s what I’m doing…” You didn’t know if the term “purchasing power” existed yet, so you tried another way to explain: “I wanted to send the servants to the market to buy some things, but since I’ve always been in the inner quarters…”

Struggling with your awkward and half-archaic words, you tried to convey your confusion to your male idol: you wanted to buy things, you had money and goods, but the servants couldn’t tell you the exact exchange rates. You didn’t know whether it was the world’s fault or a problem with language.

Your male idol also looked puzzled, but he quickly relaxed. Then, fanning himself, he told you:

“Madam, there’s no need to worry about this. Liang has brought servants skilled in calculations. From now on, any purchases can simply be arranged through them.”

Before you could say anything, you watched the maid hand over the warehouse key.

In other words, from now on, your dowry was no longer under your control—it was controlled by Zhuge Liang. …You weren’t a third-rank concubine—you were basically the lady of New England! If it weren’t for your male idol standing in front of you, you thought you might have drawn a knife right then!

But you couldn’t say a word. You could only cover your mouth and watch helplessly as the key hung from the servant’s belt, the servant having a Jingzhou-accented face. You even missed several things your male idol said along the way. It wasn’t until he repeated the last sentence that you finally heard clearly—he was asking if you wanted to have lunch together.

Of course, you couldn’t show up looking like a total homebody when eating with your male idol. So you carefully combed your hair and changed clothes. As for makeup—forget it; there were no mirrors here, so no point.

When your lord arrived, the cook was thrilled and cooked with extra effort: roasted bamboo rat, salted fish, chive sauce, glutinous rice. Fortunately, there was at least a bowl of vegetable soup. You quietly ate your glutinous rice with it while sneaking glances at him out of the corner of your eye—terrifying… does Zhuge Liang actually eat chives too?

You had just glanced twice when he noticed. He paused, chopsticks in hand, looking puzzled. “Madam, what are you looking at?”

“I’m just… marveling that a man of heavenly reputation would actually eat chives…”

Your male idol looked shocked. “Then what should Liang eat?”
…………………You wanted to say something like “I subsist on wind and dew,” but you felt like your male idol was shocked. Your favorability with him was already low—if you pushed it any further, you’d probably be kicked out… oh, right, this is your family’s estate. So, you obediently lowered your head and continued eating your bowl of glutinous rice.

Sigh, your male idol sighed again. After finishing the meal and having tea, he began talking with you. Of course, it wasn’t a formal “teacher-student” style conversation, nor the structured strategy talk like in Longzhong. Instead, he invited you to take a walk.

The breeze rustled as cicadas sang at midnight, and frogs croaked in chorus. His feather fan swayed gently, keeping mosquitoes at bay. As for you, if a mosquito bit you, so be it—you were standing next to your male idol, shining under the bright moonlight; even a single glance at him felt like it added three years to your life.

“Madam, do you like music?”

“Yes, but I can neither play nor sing.” Actually, you could play (piano) and sing (“Hair Like Snow”), but anomalies are suspicious. You had no idea how perceptive your male idol was, and you didn’t want to cause unnecessary complications.

He turned to look at you.
“Are you good at painting?”

You had joined the comics club before and even contributed to the school newspaper, but for the reasons mentioned earlier, you still shook your head.

He looked at you again.

“Needlework?”

You shook your head once more.

He looked at you again.

“…Madam, do you know poetry and literature?”
This felt a little insulting! You’ve grown up without ever encountering an illiterate person around you. How could someone as skilled and capable as you be treated this way? You can write and calculate, not only craft Mary Sue novels but also edit videos, bake cakes, assemble computer cases, make reports, and tackle English-language games without fear—you’re truly versatile!

“I can read, just not write well,” you said.

He stared at you, and suddenly you realized what was on his mind—Liu Zhang’s plan in marrying off his daughter wasn’t to please him, but to offload a lazy daughter who didn’t know grains from her elbow, never worked, and always shirked responsibility!

“Sir, you may have misunderstood me,” you said awkwardly. After all, you were a university-educated, self-reliant cog of modern society—not the parasite he imagined. But after saying that, you still couldn’t think of any actual Han-dynasty-style skill you possessed. So you added dejectedly, “I have good comprehension—I can learn.”

Your male idol reached out his hand to you.

This was the first time he had touched you.

He patted your shoulder, shook his head, then, graceful as flowers and willows, departed under the moonlight.

You distinctly felt that all the teasing and testing from when he first saw you had vanished. His attitude toward you now was—

Deep, profound sympathy.