Chapter 1994 — You Like Her?
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
It has to be said that Feng Tianqi's undoing lay in marrying such a brainless, shrewish woman. Her family's backing had been the whole point of the match, yet she never lifted a finger to help him—she only ever made trouble for him.
Among the young heir-apparents of ancient clans like Feng Tianqi, who did not keep three wives and four concubines? Yet the flesh and blood of his own true first love had to be hidden away, never to be seen—and that chafed at Feng Tianqi bitterly.
He rather envied the choice his elder brother had made back then: heedless of everything, the man had simply fled the marriage, taken a woman from the secular world outside, and cut all ties with the ancient Feng family. Feng Tianqi, by contrast, to keep from disappointing his father and to keep his brother alive, had married the woman who by rights should have been betrothed to his brother.
What Feng Tianqi had never expected was just how shrewish, willful, and jealous the woman truly was. Somehow she got wind that he had a woman and a daughter outside, and she brought her people to the door to kill. His wife vanished without a trace, and it was years later before he managed, at great pains and through many hands, to find his daughter again...
When Feng Tianqi learned that his wife had gone there to kill, he did not explode; he chose to swallow it. For he knew the affair was nine parts likely the work of his third brother, Feng Tianhu, who had long coveted the position of young heir. Such detailed information could have come from none but a few close brothers about him.
Yet as Feng Tianhu's son Feng Nitian gradually revealed his cultivation talent, the old man placed ever more weight on Feng Tianhu, and Feng Tianhu's power within the Feng family grew with it. That made Feng Tianqi all the more afraid to make a rash move; he could only go on enduring in silence—enduring until the day he truly held the Feng family in his hand.
By then he would fear no one. For the sake of years of married life and of their son, Feng Tianqi would not harm his wife, but neither would he spend every day forcing a smile and waiting on her as he did now.
The first thing Feng Tianqi would do once he took the seat of family head was bring his daughter home and declare to the world that she was Feng Tianqi's daughter. And he would bring his elder brother back too, restore him to the Feng family. His father had cast his brother out, but a new sovereign brings new ministers: his father had been family head then; now Feng Tianqi was.
Feng Tianqi and his elder brother were the closest of all. Though they were not sons of the same mother, they were closer than full brothers—and that was one weighty reason why Feng Tianqi had married his brother's intended wife in his stead.
If he too had refused, his father would surely have blamed his brother all the more; he might even have killed him.
And that was precisely what Feng Tianhu wanted: for the alliance marriage to break, for his father to kill the eldest, for the second to plead on his behalf—and then both would lose their father's trust, both would be finished, and he, the third, would rise to the place as a matter of course.
So for his brother's sake, and to keep the third's scheme from succeeding, Feng Tianqi had gritted his teeth and held on all these years. But Feng Tianhu, thanks to his son Feng Nitian, now stood on the verge of matching him blow for blow—and Feng Tianqi's days grew harder and harder.
Then, not long before, Feng Tianqi received news that was heaven-sent: Feng Tianhu's son had put on airs at the Ice Palace trials, and relying on his title of "first among those below the Earth Rank," he had been beaten into a cripple by a still stronger "first among those below the Earth Rank."
Feng Tianqi knew his chance had come again. For the Feng family, Feng Nitian's fall was no good thing—but for Feng Tianqi himself, it was.