Durin's Diary

Chapter 945: Managing Chao Zhuang

Finally, the empire's prime minister mounted his old horse and rode away without saying a word.

Du Lin stood at the door, seeing the old man off. Du Lin knew what the old man was thinking; his talk of pitying his grandson was just a lie.

An old man like him can abandon anything as long as this land prospers. If his children and grandchildren are not, look at him, he has been smearing himself since early on, thinking that one day he will retire from the court and take the most worthwhile child among his grandchildren to make a comeback in the years to come.

He came here this time to see what Dulin was planning. With Dulin's guarantee, the old man might soon resign. The New Era doesn't need an old minister like him; it would be better for him to retire early and educate his grandchildren.

As for the child who offended Du Lin, the Mo family has many grandchildren, so he doesn't care. In the Changtang family, every generation loses a few children, and the older generation in the family probably doesn't even blink an eye at the deaths of a few ignorant good-for-nothings.

Thinking of this, Dulin turned and walked back to the Candle Dragon Pavilion.

He was waiting for Sun Renyi—the embodiment of Director Sun's rationality.

He wanted to hear how to deal with the remaining three, and how to find them as quickly as possible.

After all, one old lady has already died, so the remaining three should be even more cautious, right?

………………

When the empire's prime minister returned home, it was nearly nightfall, and the huge front door seemed somewhat unfamiliar to him.

His elderly wife stood inside the door and sighed as soon as she saw him.

“The children are all waiting for you to come back. Why didn’t you take a car this time, but instead rode your old horse?”

"An old horse knows the way, unlike a car. If I die on a horse, there's no way to pull me back." The old man walked to the door and looked at the family kneeling in the yard.

"You old man, you're really heartless."

"Too cruel?"

Listening to his bedmate's complaints, the old man chuckled: "If I'm not ruthless, what else can I do? These three passes and four seas, which place isn't a hellish place that will devour anyone? Compared to that, dying at Du Lin's hands at least means I have a whole corpse. How could I have such useless grandchildren? Their father fought his way out of the three passes and four seas just to make the Mo family lose face time and time again at their hands?"

"That's enough. Go and make them stand up. They've been kneeling for ages," his old lady said, frowning.

“Not enough. Today, this kid dared to set his sights on that child’s wife. I was prepared to beat him to death as an apology. That child is kind-hearted and gave him a way out. Let him kneel for a while longer. If his parents feel sorry for him, they can kneel with him.”

As he spoke, he took off his coat and handed it to the old butler who was walking over. The old man then headed towards his study.

"Mo Huaien! How could you do this! He's just an outsider!" The sound of sobbing came from the person next to me behind me.

“Outsider! That child is her offspring! Her father is also your child! I already agreed back then, why wouldn’t you let her mother into the family! Now you’re saying she’s an outsider! I think this family is going to be ruined by you!”

The old man turned around and looked angrily at the old woman in front of him. He began to wonder if he had made a mistake back then, which had turned the shameful things of his youth into a nightmare now.

How could she be so stupid!

"Great-grandfather..." A chirping sound, like that of a small bird, finally calmed the old man down. He looked at the window beside him, where a small red-haired bird was watching him.

“Don’t be afraid, your great-grandfather isn’t angry with you.” The old man waved his hand, then sighed and looked at his wife: “Make them kneel for another half hour, then have them come to my study.”

Having said that, he turned and walked to the window. The little girl before him was the girl his seventh grandson, Hongyu's son, had found in the south. The two had met on the battlefield, fallen in love, and eventually come together. This time, he had made up his mind and finally allowed his grandson to bring that woman back.

So what if a child has some foreign blood? As long as they are a child of the Mo family, it doesn't matter if they are a little tall or a little short. As long as they are kind-hearted and willing to risk their lives for this land, they are good children.

“Great-grandfather.” The little bird possessed the bloodline of a bird demon from her mother and also found the power of the past from her own roots. She was a lucky one, but precisely because of this, she was also unlucky—the emperor’s great-grandson had long been planning to arrange her marriage.

He genuinely didn't want to agree to the marriage because he didn't want his children to repeat his mistakes.

However, he also understood that the emperor's family, including his sons and grandsons, all had to go to the battlefield. Over the years, all the royal family members who died on the frontier were buried in the local cemetery.

That is why, no matter how the war goes, the people of Changtang will not complain – look at the children of the emperor, the general, and the commanders, who are buried there just like their own children, and the people will not harbor any resentment.

Let's look at Prime Minister Luo. He was also from an early family. Later, he married a descendant of the Little Old Man. Although he became a dwarf demon and no longer looked like a human, how many children of the Luo family died for Changtang before this Prime Minister, and how many more children shed their blood after him? Who can count them all?

Chang Tang should not use bloodlines as a shackle, binding generation after generation of young people to abandon their happiness. It is already difficult enough to cross the three passes and four seas, and it is even more difficult to kill off all seven sons of one family. So let's not make the children face pain again.

When he was young, he had complained about his parents in this way: because of his engagement to her, he could not express his love or feelings. In the end, he returned home like a walking corpse, married her, and had children.

He thought he could just grit his teeth and get through this.

But he was wrong again. His favorite granddaughter eventually ran away, preferring to be buried in the Western Lands and marry an old man rather than come back.

Over the years, he has been wondering when all of this will end, and when this suffering will finally come to a conclusion.

Perhaps it will never come to fruition.

For a thousand years, the people of Changtang have suffered the torment of these three passes and four seas. This long period of time has made the people of Changtang forget that war between humans was the main theme of history, and that the struggle between life and death was the main theme of history.

He didn't know whether this was good or bad.

But now, things may soon take a turn for the better.

Dulin, this child, appeared before everyone as if he had appeared out of nowhere. He even killed one of the four alien gods all by himself.

Such power was unheard of before today.

He, like everyone else, was once delighted by this change.

But soon he discovered a problem—what if Dulin could solve all of this within a generation?

Will the people of Changtang lose their enemies as a result, and will everything get better and better after losing their enemies?

Will not.

The stories of those old eras are filled with accounts of how terrifying and tragic the struggles between humans were. With the loss of the great enemies across the three passes and four seas, the former non-human races were no longer seen as pedantic scholars belittling each other, but as an urgent reality.

All of this... requires planning ahead.

(End of this chapter)