Chapter 137: Extremely Disliking Chu Lan

In front of Wei Mingting, Wei Ruo did not reveal her negative emotions, but facing Wei Jinyi, she did not hide her unhappiness too much.

As she spoke, Wei Ruo turned and walked toward Wei Jinyi.

Seeing Wei Ruo’s slightly drooped face, Wei Jinyi felt an inexplicable ache in his chest.

Looking at her, he found himself somewhat at a loss for how to comfort her.

"Let's talk in the pavilion."

Wei Ruo followed Wei Jinyi into the pavilion, where he instructed Xiao Bei to brew a cup of honey grapefruit tea for her.

"Ruo'er," Wei Jinyi opened his mouth, yet clumsily did not know how to offer comfort.

"Second Brother, what are you nervous about?" Wei Ruo asked, unable to help smiling at his expression.

Naturally, I am nervous for you.

Wei Jinyi kept these words inside his heart.

"I don't know how to comfort people. Tell me, what can I do to make you a bit happier?" Wei Jinyi asked with utmost seriousness.

"Just accompanying me to talk like this is enough. Although I'm in a somewhat bad mood, it's not that serious," Wei Ruo said.

Wei Jinyi furrowed his brows, scrutinizing Wei Ruo's expression as if evaluating whether her claim that it wasn't that serious was true.

Resting her chin on one hand, Wei Ruo murmured, "When I first improved the wasteland in the southern part of the city, I wasn't aiming for great achievements or building a career; I just happened to run into the Seventh Prince along the way, which blew the matter out of proportion. Therefore, I didn't care that much about receiving rewards and praise in the first place, so I'm not that upset about it."

"Yet I am still in a bad mood, because I dislike people taking advantage of me—taking the credit for the results of my hard work while pushing me aside."

Wei Jinyi still did not know what to say, so he could only remain a quiet listener.

Wei Ruo continued to mutter, "I have reason to suspect that Chu Lan intentionally withheld information so that he could arrogate more credit to himself and highlight the importance of the Seventh Prince! I know very well that those princes have been fighting fiercely for power lately. Wouldn't he seize every opportunity to rack up some credit for himself?"

"I already loathed this bastard to begin with. The last time he kept his promise and rewarded me with a hundred liang of gold, I thought he had a shred of conscience left, which dropped my hatred for him to nine parts. Now it's back to a full ten."

The mere thought of Chu Lan becoming emperor in the future made Wei Ruo extremely annoyed. She truly hoped the heavens would send someone to usurp Chu Lan's throne and leave him crying!

Of course, Wei Ruo knew this was highly unlikely. According to the original plot development, Chu Lan was bound to become the crown prince and eventually ascend the throne as emperor.

Although Wei Qingwan's storyline had changed now, it would most likely have no impact on Chu Lan's career path.

After all, the original novel was a female-centric inner-courtyard harem drama that did not involve the male lead's court struggles.

In the original book, after meeting Chu Lan in Xingshan County, Wei Qingwan fell deeply in love with him.

Later, when the Wei family met with disaster and Wei Mingting died in battle, Chu Lan brought Wei Qingwan back to the capital.

Although Chu Lan cherished Wei Qingwan in his heart, out of consideration for the power struggle, he married the daughter of the Minister of War as his primary wife. Because Wei Qingwan followed him without status or title, she was initially merely a concubine.

What followed was a story of true love conquering all. Though frail, Wei Qingwan was kind and pure. Chu Lan would always appear whenever she was hurt, and while pitying her, he grew increasingly resentful of his crown princess.

Gradually, Wei Qingwan rose from a concubine to a crown prince's consort, and finally became empress after Chu Lan ascended the throne.

Throughout this process, Chu Lan served merely as an overbearing-CEO plot device, appearing whenever Wei Qingwan needed him. His change in status merely served as an opportunity for the status changes of the women in his inner courtyard.

Thinking of the original plot, Wei Ruo could not help letting out a sigh. Only after sighing did she remember that her second brother was watching her with concern.

"Second Brother, I'm fine. I was just venting a little. I'm not going to cry and wail over things I am temporarily powerless to change. With that kind of time and effort, I might as well go do something else."

"Mhm." She had always been very strong and clear about what she wanted; he knew that.

Perhaps it was precisely her style of doing things that had influenced him, causing him to change his original intentions.

And it was precisely because of this that he began to think about fighting for that position he had once decided never to touch...

"Alright, Second Brother, after talking it through with you, I feel much better. Time to go back and get to work." Wei Ruo stood up.

"If you need anything, let me know at any time. Whether Second Brother is at home or not—if I'm not, you can just hand a letter to Jing Hu, and he will deliver it to my hands," Wei Jinyi said solemnly.

"Okay," Wei Ruo agreed.

Wei Ruo returned to Tingsong Courtyard. Rather than wasting time and energy grieving over unhappy events that had already passed, she had more important things to attend to.

Over this past period, although she had been busy providing relief to the disaster-stricken people, the cultivation in her dimension had not fallen behind in the slightest.

After the previous harvest of sweet potatoes, the dimension had upgraded to level three, with experience points at 100/1200. Following that, she obtained shiitake mushroom mycelium, and Wei Ruo had planted them frantically.

Moreover, to gain experience quickly, Wei Ruo had frequently participated hands-on in the production of shiitake mushroom cultivation bags, almost single-handedly performing the step of inoculating the mycelium.

Following nearly two months of cultivation, combined with the crops Wei Ruo grew on the soil within the dimension, her experience points had skyrocketed.

Just five days ago, the experience points filled up once again, reaching level four and unlocking a new set of plant seeds.

Upon seeing the new seeds, Wei Ruo had nearly burst into tears.

These were no ordinary seeds; they were precisely the kind of seeds she needed most right now—wheat!

Wheat seeds were certainly not rare in themselves, but what made these extraordinary was that the seeds provided by her dimension performed exceptionally well in all aspects: possessing disease resistance, drought tolerance, cold hardiness, and waterlogging tolerance all at once, featuring superior genetics.

More than half a month ago, Wei Ruo had intended to plant wheat on a large scale to achieve double harvests a year from a single plot of land.

However, the drastic weather changes had made that vision extremely difficult to realize.

The seedlings from the previous batch of planted wheat had been ruined by that wave of sudden cooling and rainfall. Now, after some reorganization, everyone was waiting for Wei Ruo to direct the planting of the new wheat.

Wei Ruo had been racking her brains trying to figure out how to use limited resources to ensure the following year's wheat harvest under harsh weather conditions.

Now, half of that problem had suddenly been resolved.

Wei Ruo now had to hurry and cultivate the wheat within the dimension, because the quantity of seeds provided upon leveling up was limited, and more seeds could only be obtained through planting and harvesting.

There was no time to plant them in reality; Wei Ruo could only pin her hopes on cultivation within the dimension. The growth cycle in the dimension was extremely short, and wheat planted in the dimensional soil would mature in just five days.

Today happened to be the fifth day since the first batch of wheat was planted. Wei Ruo needed to go back and harvest the wheat right now, and then take these seeds to the people in the southern part of the city for replanting.