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“Enter.”

At long last Jun got permission.

He was actually starting to dose off on a comfy rattan chair, the sounds of music somewhere in the compound being a rather insidious lullaby. He was in the middle of stifling a yawn when the words, muffled by the door between them, reached him.

It was like a jolt to his system, the drowsiness being scared away as he got up and gathered his thoughts.

When was the last time he had talked to Aigou Yan, his father? Hell, when was the last time that he hadn’t thought of him as his father? Jun had lived his first life as a modern man in a modern world, yet the faces of whatever family he’d had then were hazy and undefined. Even his first name was something he didn’t clearly recall, the drag of time in his second life working like a poor man’s purgatory.

But Aigou Yan loomed high in his second life, an authority figure that behaved like a distant father yet did not demand filial devotion. Well, not directly; the rest of the family and their games to be the next heir ensured that Jun would anyway. Yet as much as he rebelled against this whole world, the approval of this man wasn’t nothing to Jun. It never managed to be.

At some point, the way Jun treated the man and the way the man treated him supplanted many things. One day he woke and discovered that, to him, Aigou Yan was indeed a father figure in his life. One he did not manage to make peace with in his second life.

One he still had no idea what to think of.

And one he was about to talk to now.

“Take a seat anywhere,” an older man with long white hair set in a bun and a long white beard going down to his chest sat in front of a desk wearing a blue tunic with the emblem of the Yan family being the only thing decorating it. He was a handsome man, in truth, handily falling on the “silver fox” square that many men tried to fill. He was in his late 40s by this point, and would live for another 20 years before his light was snuffed out.

Being in front of him like this made a host of emotions swell up in Jun’s chest.

“Well?” he was writing on a book with a jade-handle brush, scrolls rolling out of the desk and an ink pot safely set on a corner. He didn’t look up to question Jun.

But he did stop writing.

“Ah, yes, thank you, Father,” Jun looked around the room, noting the various plaques with ancient poems or proverbs hanging from the walls. There were examples of carefully and tastefully made calligraphy on scrolls hanging from the wall too, but those at least Jun knew were valuable simply because of who made them. Luckily, the room was furnished with chairs too, solid wooden ones that were all wooden joints and no nails.

Jun would have to assume that they were comfy as he was too tense to really notice.

“Good,” the Yan father’s brush continued to move as he looked back and forth between the scrolls on his table, “I assume you have a good idea why you are here, correct?”

“I read your letter,” Jun nodded, “Mother is cross with me, yet I couldn’t imagine why.”

Aigou stopped writing again, only this time he did look up.

He quirked an eyebrow at Jun.

“Alright, yes, I know I am not exactly a source of glory,” Jun blushed slightly, “Yet, is that not why I was sent to the middle of nowhere? Isn’t living in the ancestor’s summer home my punishment? Why is Mother Xue upset with what I do now of all times?”

“Your lack of ambition isn’t why you are here, son,” Aigou continued to peruse his documents, “Rather, it’s the sudden and unexpected spike of initiative.”

Jun’s heart almost stopped, “How do you mean?”

“You went and got concubines, boy,” Aigou said, his not tone not changing a bit, “Surely you knew that your mother was in the process of arranging a marriage for you?”

Up until Jun was 40 years of age in his second life, Xue Yan tried to set him up with someone…anyone. His real prospects had died before then, of course, but even now, at the point in his life that Jun found himself in, his flag had lowered enough to make the task rather difficult. But then, Xue was the sort of woman who wouldn’t let something like that affect her efforts.

“How is that my fault?” Jun asked, “Or, rather, how is that a problem?”

Which was, it seems, the problem.

“Truthfully, it isn’t.” Aigou rolled up a scroll and placed it in a bin by his desk. Another one was immediately unrolled, “Your mother was in the process of exchanging letters with a rich merchant family from the Zhe Lands.”

“She hoped that distance and unfamiliarity with the Yan family would convince a Lady Wu to cancel her current engagement to, instead, be with you,” the Yan patriarch shrugged, “News that you had already taken concubines gave that woman the perfect excuse to give your mother a firm ‘no’.”

Jun wondered about how frightfully quick news of his romantic liaisons had gotten but then, now that he thought about it, that was probably the most notable news about him that anyone had heard of in years. Evidently, he was foolish to think that they wouldn’t make any waves. And yet…

“Then why am I here?” Jun sighed, relaxing a bit as he realized that the size of the problem was, once again, not as big as he feared.

“Your mother wants me to harshly reprimand you for your actions,” Aigou admitted, “So, if you like, you can just sit there for the next hour. We can pretend I screamed at you the whole time afterward.”

That…sounded like Mother Xue alright.

“Very well,” Jun breathed out, “I guess we can do that.”

Aigou merely grunted at that.

That should have be the end of their conversation, Jun supposed. The sound of the music that reached him in the waiting room did not extend to his father’s office. But then, he supposed Aigou wouldn’t like any distractions from his work. There were a few books and scrolls that had not yet been opened, yet it was impossible for Jun to know if they were reports or merely information to cross-reference. Either way, his father steadily went through every single page and inch of them all.

The smell of ink was faint but brought many memories of a childhood Jun had once had. Even just the physical presence of his father seemed to defy casualty as Jun recalled having attended his funeral once. The whole thing was surreal, and yet the only thing he was allowed to do was…wait until he was done.

He’d have to stay at least one day, certainly, and maybe he would have to apologize to his mother and speak to whichever of his family members were around. But that was merely a performance, the third act of which waiting here with his father was merely the second.

He…didn’t have to worry about anything. He was essentially done.

And yet.

And yet.

“Say, father,” the memories of whom this man had once been, the realization that he would not be able to speak with him or get to know him in another life, made it hard to simply do nothing, “Do you mind if I ask some questions?”

“Speak,” Aigou, without seeming bothered, gave Jun leave.

“Hmm,” Jun racks his brains for something to talk about, “I was wondering what you thought of the, oh, the Guard Captains.”

“The Guard Captains?” Aigou asked.

“Yes, I’ve experienced some problems with them,” Jun said, getting ready to downplay whatever would call too much attention to him. To be honest, it should be a “safe” topic, the cruelty that he subjected Jianjun to notwithstanding.

“Your performance has been acceptable,” his father simply replied.

“R-really?” Jun blinked.

“You’ve gone through three Guard Captains in the span of a few months,” Aigou explained, “One of them was a shortsighted treacherous dog. The other was an utter catastrophe and tragedy of perception and social misunderstanding. And the third is quite simply just very unlucky.”

“That’s, um, a good summary,” Jun swallowed. It seemed his father had been reading his men’s reports.

“You put down the first like a rabid dog. The second one died protecting you from harm and the third..,” here Aigou stopped and furrowed his brow as he thought about the matter, “The third appears to have turned his luck around.”

“Really-I mean, that’s good,” Jun nodded.

Aigou snorted, “It is quite suspicious that all reports sing his praises; the men assigned to your retinue aren’t the sort to particularly value a superior doing their job well. Yet I cannot possibly think of a reason why it would matter. Either Jianjun has been able to coerce and bend these men to his will, which shows a useful talent for managing troublesome elements. Or he genuinely charmed them, and charisma is always a useful asset.”

“Well, in that case-” Jun only hesitated for a single moment before pouncing on this opportunity, “Do you mind promoting him out of my retinue?”

Aigou stopped again and gave Jun a questioning look, “Certainly, that could be done. Are you sure? You will not get a Captain supposedly as good as this any time soon.”

“Yes, I am sure,” Jun replied, “Jianjun has more than earned it.”

Aigou grunted and went back to writing, “Then perhaps we will put him to the test in a position more suited to his apparent talents.”

Jun sighed with relief with that particular issue resolved.

“Acceptable, huh?” he then mused out loud.

That was…that might be the first unambiguous compliment he had ever gotten from the man. At the very least, it was the nicest thing he’d ever heard from him. Getting told by this man that Jun met his expectations was…Jun couldn’t help but be galvanized by it.

It was certainly a dangerous thing, but it still felt nice on some level.

Still, he might as well find out how much he needed to worry about it, “Say, Father, in that case, did you hear about Auspicious Fields?”

If his father asked what that was, then Jun had nothing to really worry about. If he did, well, so long as he didn’t get any more praises, pleasant as they were, then he should be fine.

Probably.

“I hope you didn’t do that to impress me,” Aigou, right away said and calmed Jun’s paranoia, “It is normal for peasants to try and curry favor with one of the family when they can, and the gratitude of a small village far from any center of influence is hardly an accolade worth speaking about.”

“Um, understood Father,” Jun nodded, barely remembering to put the right amount of disappointment in it.

“Still, winning against a Spirit Beast by yourself, with no weapons in hand?” Aigou said, making Jun start to get worried again, “It seems the reports were not just trying to give you face and so I must commend you on your physical pursuits.”

“Then again, given you made said Spirit Beast one of your concubines,” the Yan lord gave Jun a flat look, “Perhaps we merely lacked the necessary motivation to awaken your ambition.”

“Right,” Jun coughed and looked away.

“I cannot say I hate how greedy your choice was,” Aigou added, “still compared to most of your siblings, these are merely the first steps in a race that’s already nearing the halfway point.”

“U-understood,” Jun surreptitiously wiped away some sweat on his head, “Wait, ‘most’?”

“One of your sisters stumbled and fell on the wayside,” Aigou grunted, “It is unlikely she’ll manage to run again.”

Try as he might, Jun could not figure out who that might be. Yes, many of his siblings started outright losing at around this time but that wasn’t something he’d put attention to on the self-enforced hedonistic hermitage of his second life. Yet again, he cursed himself for being such a dumbass.

It made it hard to see what Jun was safe to change.

He had a way to make himself personally powerful under everyone’s noses, he had a way to gain a very powerful asset, and he even had a way to finance himself in the future. All these things he would need to really change the future, yet he still didn’t see a good way to leverage them to affect said change.

Except…he was here in front of his father now, wasn’t he?

Maybe, perhaps, he could use this unforeseen opportunity to give his father warning?

“Say, father,” Ju nervously started, “Apologies for changing the subject, yet I am going to ask you to indulge me.”

“I’ll humor you,” Aigou waved at him.

How much could Jun divulge?

“I…heard a story,” Jun said and waited for his father to tell him to not bother him with trivial things.

Aigou Yan merely grunted.

“A story about a man who, hmm, you could say reincarnated?” Jun pushed through, improvising as he went, “But not into another life, no.”

“He reincarnated into his own life, some years before it ended,” Jun’s hands gripped his knees, “Like a traveler going upstream in time.”

“Hmmm,” Aigou stopped writing for a moment to ponder the issue, “I’ve heard stories like that, too.”

Jun blinked, “Really?”

“Such Regressors were, to a person, individuals obsessed with changing ‘something’,” Aigou confirmed, “Or so the tales went. Could be they were insane individuals, or duplicitous people hoping to hide their real motivations behind unprovable claims.”

“Either way, they engage in rather troublesome acts.” Jun’s father told him.

“Did…did they succeed?” Jun couldn’t help but ask.

“Supposedly,” Aigou emphasized again, “sometimes. Most of the time, however? Most cases end with the alleged Regressors being crushed, one way or another.”

“I see,” Jun’s lips thinned.

“Then again, fate is supposed to have inertia, “ Aigou told him, “If it didn’t, then anyone could become a Cultivator.”

And there was that.

Still.

“In the story that I heard,” Jun said with some resolution, “Our family, decades hence, will, or would, be stupidly betrayed from the inside.”

“The race will have already ended, yet some will not stop running,” Jun explained, “Thus, with no way to move the finishing line from the inside…they will seek actors from the outside to put it in front of their feet instead.”

“The whole family dies once the doors are opened,” Jun finished.

A short, brief, silence follows after that.

“That’s unfortunate,” Aigou simply says and gets back to writing, “Yet it sounds like the sort of thing I’ve prepared for. Tell me, in this story, am I still alive?”

“Ah, well, no,” Jun awkwardly said, “You’ll have been dead for a few years before that.”

“Then it doesn’t matter,” Aigou shrugged.

“I beg your pardon, Father?” Jun choked.

“Either the one to be the Yan Lord can carry the whole family on his shoulders, or he can’t,” Aigou told Jun, “Either he has the foresight to handle such catastrophes or something else will blindside them. No Lord can depend on luck.”

“As for me?” Aigou looked at Jun, “Should I, the current Yan Lord, hold on to the present too hard I’ll tarnish the future.”

“Should I fear for what my successors will do after I die, I’ll not find any satisfaction in what I do now while I am alive,” Aigou said.

“Short of starting to Cultivate right now to prolong my life?” Aigou snorted, “There is nothing I can do except give my children warnings that they may or may not heed.”

“Half my life I've already spent doing that.” Aigou closed the book at his side. After a moment of thought, he fetched another.

“Speaking of, here is a warning for you:” Aigou said without looking at him, “It is fine if no one else knows of that story. No, not even your women need to know. Either you act on it or you don’t. Either you can justify your actions or you can’t. Should the story be known, almost all of your siblings will assume you are making it up to get back into the race and to drag down the ones that are currently in the lead.”

“I figured,” Jun sighed.

“See that you don’t forget,” Aigou told him.

Few things bothered Jun more than having to be thrust into the mire that was the succession to be the Yan Lord. The web of intrigue that he would have to navigate every single breathing moment of his life. The alliances that he would have to find things to sacrifice for. The constant vying for a life that he knew, with all certainty, that he would not enjoy.

It was essentially a full-time job that he hated that he would also never be able to quit.

He looked at his father as he was now, going over reports from all over the Yan lands and he envisioned himself in his place, having to do this hour after hour, day after day.

He did not envy it. He did not desire it. He had to do everything in his power to protect his hedonistic pointless ideal life!

So Jun pinched his nose and, after much hesitation, asked the question that he really didn’t want to ask, “Father…do you know how to square things up with Mother Xue?”

Xue Yan probably had favorites among her siblings, but as the disappointment of the family that wouldn’t affect Jun. If Jun, however, wanted to know enough about the family to NOT fuck up changing its collapse without getting involved in the Yan race, then he absolutely had to get her on his side. Or, at least, get her to not be mad at him.

Xue Yan was a lot of things. But among all of them? She was a huge gossip.

She was the mine of information that he needed.

“Son,” Aigou put his brush down and sighed, “Allow me to give you some advice, man to man, father to son.”

“Alright?” Jun said.

“Do you regret what you did?” Aigou asked him, “Getting your three girls. Do you regret doing it?”

Jun thought about Xia and her flirtatious nature, Fu and her soft love, and Lynguin and her adorable piggish traits. Except for the last one, he got them all for purely calculated reasons, and even Lynguin managed to help him reach his goals. From a purely utilitarian point of view, Jun could not say that he did.

He also could not say that he regretted it from any other, “I do not, Father.”

“Then you don’t need to do anything,” Aigou said, “Simply take the anger and whatever petty punishment your mother makes you go through as the rightful price for doing the things that you wanted.”

“Doubt, my son,” Jun’s father told him, “Is the worst poison for the spirit of a man.”

“...huh,” Jun did not expect that advice.

“However,” Aigou raised a finger, “If you really and must simply smooth things over with your mother right this second…you could let her marriage you off to whomever she wanted.”

“I mean, wasn’t Mother already assuming I would say ‘yes’ to whomever she managed to pick for me?” Jun asked. That had never happened in his second life, but who knows what this one had in store for him.

“Your mother is not an idiot son. Xue well knows that she always was going to have to fight to have you accept whichever marriage she presented,” Aigou drily said, “Still, she enjoys arranging such things.”

“So I just let Mother Xue know that she can cast her net wherever she wants and she’ll be happy?” Jun asked. Given how long it took to communicate back and forth? It would take Xue a while to find anyone for him. And, in the end, having a stranger become his official wife wasn’t any worse than buying concubines merely on what he believed he could get from them.

He could handle one more woman.

“You don’t understand, Jun,” his father shook his head, “Your mother previously selected brides purely on what would be advantageous for the family, because that is a great pressure to put on you.”

“If she needed no such things?” Aigou rhetorically asked, “Then she wouldn’t cast her efforts abroad.”

“She’d try to shore up relations with one of our officials?” Jun asked. That was certainly pragmatic.

“No,” Aigou shook his head, “That is too far. Think closer.”

But there were officials living in this island city within a city right with them?

“Respectfully, Father, this son of yours does not understand,” Jun plainly told Aigou

The man grunted, “Since you seem interested, it is probably better if you talk to her about it. Your mother would certainly be happier being able to indulge in her interests.”

“That sounds worrying,” Jun frowned.

“Son,” his father told him, "We are Nobles. We care not for the opinions of others."