It had only been a few days after Wang Shouren was back from his study tour (wandering around), but his father already bothered him with the matter of his marriage, so he was a bit offended. He felt that what his father meant by this was, just get married, then he could live independently and live happily with his wife!

Let’s focus on: him and his wife.

It was a pity that marriage was determined by parents’ orders and the matchmaker’s words. Wang Yangming, the future leader of mind study, was no exception to this. He packed up and went back to Yuyao with his grandfather. That was his hometown, he had to go there since he was about to get married to tell his ancestors.

After Wang Shouren and his grandfather was gone, the house was completely silent.

Without his older brother, the legend, by his wide, Young Master Wen had lost his patience with trying to listen to others and continued to eat and sleep everyday.

It wasn’t until two months later after Wang Shouren and his grandfather left home that Young Master Wen finally caused a problem that made everyone’s heads hurt: he didn’t want to breastfeed.

His nanny had a son who was two months older than Young Master Wen. Because she took over the Wang family’s job, his son now ate rice paste most of the time.

Children could get some complementary foods when they were five or six months old, firstly to supplement more nutrients, and secondly to prepare for subsequent milk withdrawal.

Lady Zhao’s milk supply was not abundant, but Wang Hua became rich after becoming the top scholar, so it was no problem for him to hire a nanny. There was no need for Young Master Wen to prepare for breast milk withdrawal so early.

His nanny saw that her son enjoyed her milk, so she wanted Young Master Wen to try it as well. Unexpectedly, Young Master Wen ate all the rice paste and fell asleep. When he woke up, he didn’t want to drink milk and only wanted the rice paste.

His nanny had no choice but to tell Lady Zhao about it.

Lady Zhao and his nanny coaxed him for a while, but they were unable to do anything. They had to bring a bowl of rice past and feed Young Master Wen before going to ask Mrs. Cen for advice.

Mrs. Cen also found it strange. Children from other families would cry and shout so not to stop breastfeeding, so how it could be the other way around for this child?

At this time, Young Master Wen was already sleep.

If he had been awake, he would definitely be able to answer this question: the moment he ate the race paset, he remembered, oh, eat, humans could eat.

Before this, he had followed his body’s instincts to just eat and sleep without thinking about it at all.

Now that he had realized this, he could no longer breast feed carefreely like a real baby.

Mrs. Cen had lived for a long time afterall. She was well-informed and had a good way of raising children. There were ways to raise children who didn’t like being breastfed, especially now that they had a lot of money. They could make better rice paste.

Mrs. Cen washed her hands and took Young Master Wen over. She carefully opened Young Master Wen’s mouth and touched his gums. She smiled and said, “ Look, his gums are hard. Maybe teeth will grow out of it in a few months. Young Master Wen is a big boy now, you don’t have to worry too much.”

Lady Zhao was comforted by Mrs. Cen and felt much more at ease. Seeing that Young Master Wen was still sleeping soundly, she washed her hands and tried to touch his small gums.

Actually, she couldn’t tell the difference at all.

However, Lady Zhao trusted Mrs. Cen who was several years older than her. After listening abour Mrs. Cen’s parenting experience, she returned with Young Master Wen in her arms.

In the evening, Wang Hua returned home and soon learned from Mrs. Cen about Young Master Wen’s ‘hunger strike’ today.

Wang Hua went to see his son and happened to see Lady Zhao feeding Young Master Wen rice paste. She was so attentive in feeding him that she didn’t realize that her husband was back.

He lifted his robe and sat down on the side, looking at Young Master Wen who was eating while squinting his eyes. He didn’t feel too worried.

He even had successfully raised such a terrible son as Wang Shouren and kicked him out to get married. Why would he be scared of baby who still had no teeth?

It was only after Lady Zhao had finished feeding him the rice paste that she found that her husband had come and sat down next to her for who knew how long.

She was about twenty years younger than her husband. When she first learned that she was going to be married as someone’s second wife, she had been worried that her husband would be fat like his father’s friends. After she got married, she found out that her husband was not only handsome and elegant, but also very knowledgeable.

Of course, Lady Zhao liked this kind of husband. She hurriedly called Wang Hua “My Husband”, then told Wang Hua about Young Master Wen’s unwillingness to breastfeed.

Although Wang Hua was a father of three children, he had no experience in raising them. He only comforted her by saying, “He has to quit sooner or later, so it doesn’t hurt to do it earlier. You can ask Mother if there’s something you are unsure about. My brothers and I as well as Young Master Ren was raised by Mother.”

The Wang Family had some extra money back then, but no one had even been an official. Wang Hua was regared as ‘Number One Scholar in civilian clothing’.

He had an older brother and a younger brother. Usually, it was the older brother’s job to take care of his parents, but after he had become the Number One Scholar, he became his family’s backbone and took care of his parents.

This was very common in the Ming Dynasty. Even if a fellow countryman became a successful candidate of the imperial examination, many people would ‘take advantage’ of it, let alone the Number One Scholar.

There were even many wealthy gentry households who supported the candidates’ families ‘voluntarily’ and ‘for free’.

The salary of officials in the Ming Dynasty were not high. It was indeed difficult to live a good life with just salary as an official, but the benefits promised by the imperial court to scholars were countless.

The exemption from taxes and servitude after passing the imperial examination were what many people dreamt of.

Otherwise, how could there be so many people taking the imperial examination one after another?

Wang Hua was one of the direct beneficiaries of these preferencial policies.

Seeing that Young Master Wen became so energetic after eating, he reached out his hands and carried him.

As the months went by, Young Master Wen became more and more energetic, which was firectly reflected in the reduction of his sleep time.

Of course, this was only relative to himself. In the eyes of the adults, he still slept most of the time.

Young Master Wen glanced at his father, who was in his early forties, and felt that his father did not look old. He might also become a handsome uncle in the future!

Young Master Wen curiously stretched out his hand to grasp Wang Hua’s long beard, feeling that the several adult men from the court that he had met during his one-month celebration had similar beard.

Did they have the same person style their beard or did they learn to do it by themselves? If they started to go bald, would their beard also go bald? Wouldn’t it mean that wearing a hat couldn’t hide their bald look and they could even be mistaken for an eunuch? It was too cruel!

Young Master Wen struggled to grab a few strands of Wang Hua’s beard and tried to pull them out. Unfortunately, the baby’s little hands didn’t have strength. After failing to grasp it for several times, he could only stare at the beard and sigh.

Wang Hua who discovered his son’t intention to pull his beard out, “…”

Great, it seemed that this was not a worry-free son. His obedience was just an illusion.

Since Young Master Wen’s staple food had changed, he could try something else one after another.

Lady Zhao and the others were very careful and didn’t give him food that might cause him to choke. They just gave him a lick and a taste of the five flavors in advance.

Young Master Wen was already very satisfied with this.He ate and drank well, so he grew up quickly and had successfully mastered the skill of turning over his body. He spent the long and hot summer days rolling around the couch every day.

Seeing Young Master Wen rolling so vigorously, Lady Zhao and his nanny didn’t restrain him and watched him with more care, fearing that he would accidentally fall off the bed.

They weren’t worried for no reason. A few days ago, his second older brother came over to play with him. He saw his younger brother rolling around and found it very intersting, so he also rolled around a few times to show that he was playing with him.

Then his brother–

Fell to the ground.

Children aged two or three have fallen a lot and were used to it, they could get up without anyone helping them. However, seeing the ‘are you a fool’ look on his younger brother’s face who was lying on the edge of the bed, Young Master Jian’s face turned red and he ran away.

With the presedence of Young Master Jian being stupid, of course Lady Zhao and the others would be extra careful.

Every day, they had to dig up the glorious history of his second older brother, “Don’t roll your body until you get outside, okay? Look at Young Master Jian…”

He believed that if there were younger brother or sister in the future, this matter would still be brought out and used as a negative teavhing material.

Tragic, he was really miserable.

After suffering such a big blow, Young Master Jian didn’t come to play for several days. Young Master Wen felt so much calmer.

These days, he had learned from Lady Zhao and his nanny that Young Master Jian was born to Lady Yang, the concubine, which meant that the three children of the Wang family were not born to the same mother. Such a sinful feudal society!

Young Master Wen sighed, then he heard footsteps coming from the door. He turned over skillfully, turned his head, and he saw his father coming back from outside.

Wang Hua changed his clothes and wiped his face under Lady Zhao’s service. It was late summer and autumn was about to begin, so the weather was staring to get colder. They needed to add more clothing under the official robes. Everyone’s robes were cut quite spaciously, no one would know if they were secretely earing autumn clothes or long trousers.

Young Master Wen took a closer look, trying to figure out that the autumn clothes and trousers of the Ming Dynasty looked like, but he saw that his father didn’t look particularly happy.

Lady Zhao had also noticed that something was wrong with Wang Hua’s expression, so she stepped forward and asked, “Have you encountered anything troublesome?”

Wang Hua reached out his hands to pick up Young Master Wen, who was listening to the couple’s conversation, took a look at him, then said with a helpless look, “Shouren, that brat, still caused trouble even after getting married!”

As soon as Young Master Wen heard Wang Shouren’s name, he immediately became energetic and wanted to hear what legendary experiences his older brother, the legend, had.

After listening to it, he realized that his brother was more awesome than he had thought.

After getting married, his brother went out for a walk and ended up in a Taoist temple called Tiezhu Palace.

At that time, his brother saw an old Taoist priest meditating there. Curious, he ran over to ask for advice. The two chatted and even got into practice on the spot.

Unexpectedly, Wang Shouren could master everything he learned at once, including all the guidance methods. He immediately entered a mysterious realm where things and himself were forgotten.

He and the old Taoist priest seemed to be playing the game of ‘who moved first, lost’. They meditated opposite each other without eating, drinking, and sleeping. They sat until the next day and no one had given up!

It wasn’t until his father-in-law, Zhu Rang, found Tiezhu Palace that Wang Shouren got out of that magical ‘zuowang¹’ state!

After Zhu Rang had found him, he wrote a letter to Wang Hua. The main content of the letter was ‘look at what your son has done.”

This matter was indeed worthy of writing a complain.

His daughter, who had just gotten married, ran over while crying about her husband being gone. How could Zhu Rang not be angry?

He had chosen his son-in-law by himself, but he made Zhu Rang so worried.

Fortunately, Zhu Rang was considered (one of the) second-in-command of the Jiangxi Provincial Department, so he could send out a large number of people to find Wang Shouren immediately. Otherwise, who knew how long Wang Shouren would have been doing ‘zuowang’!

1. a classic Taoist meditation technique, described as “a state of deep trance or intense absorption, during which no trace of ego-identity is felt and only the underlying cosmic current of the Tao is perceived as real.” ↩︎