That Lady is a Fearsome Lady
That Lady is a Fearsome Lady
"Hrk... ur... urgh..."
"Y... Young Master?"
The bastard got caught in a joint lock square on and collapsed on the spot, face twisted in agony.
The servants' expressions began to fill with consternation at the sight...
and as I watched them I spoke in a cold voice.
"Crush them properly. Scum like you—so what if she carries a servant's blood, she is still a full member of the main family, and some branch-family nobodies dare lay hands on her? Right... this is how you lot take out your resentment against the main family, is it?"
"Gahk!"
"Y... Young Master! A... a misunderstanding!"
"That... that isn't... we were merely..."
Honestly, main family this or that—none of it mattered to me in the slightest.
But in a status-based society, picking a fight using rank as a pretext carries far more force than going on about human rights.
Once I had cowed the servants, I spoke coldly.
"Shut it. Go at once and bring the medicine she needs—no, brew the decoction directly and bring it. If you ruin my mood any further, then..."
"Y... yes!"
"W... we understand, Young Master Yuan Shu!"
At the order laced with quiet threat, the servants scrambled away.
If I had my way I would've put every last one of them in a joint lock, but right now the priority was to check the collapsed girl.
This much should have served as sufficient warning.
They knew Yuan Shu's filthy temper, so nothing similar would happen again.
Once I hurried the troublesome lot off, I approached the girl at once.
"Are you all right?"
"..."
At my question the girl slowly raised her head.
For a moment she looked up quietly at my face.
Silver hair, and eyes as blue as the sea.
A face that struck me as lovely at a single glance.
In the original ancient China that would have been a rather unusual appearance, but a week into this world I already knew that hair colors and eye colors like this were nothing particularly special.
Just now, among those branch bastards from earlier there had been one with somewhat dull silver hair,
and even among the servants behind me there were some with hair close to blue or red.
Unlike the story of the Three Kingdoms in the East where everything is black—or brown at most—this world felt oddly colorful, almost like game characters.
In any case, I slowly held out my hand to the girl, who was staring at my face with swollen eyes opened wide.
"Can you stand?"
"..."
Instead of answering, she stared fixedly at that hand.
After a moment of seeming hesitation, the girl—whose blue eyes gleamed beautifully like beads—carefully reached out.
The girl took my hand.
I felt a sensation both cool and soft.
Once on her feet, the girl inclined her head deeply toward me.
"Thank... you. For helping... me..."
"There's nothing to thank. We're both of the Yuan main family—helping each other is only natural, isn't it?"
Even if that weren't the case I would have helped in a situation like that, but since the topic had come up, I decided to push that line.
"B... but I am..."
"A slave's daughter? What does that matter? Either way, you are a member of the same main family as me."
"Y... Young... Master."
The girl still looked hesitant.
Clasping her hand firmly, I answered in a serious voice.
"It's all right. The blood of the Yuan Clan running through you doesn't thin that easily."
"!"
Her face looked rather shaken.
I didn't know what the reality was, but since I genuinely had no interest in things like bloodline, I simply gave her the best words I could think of.
Besides, concepts like illegitimate this and born-of-a-servant that—as a modern person I couldn't accept them anyway.
'Speaking of which, just who is this girl? Even if she's a slave's daughter, no one comes to mind right away.'
I knew roughly that Yuan Shao and Yuan Shu had a maternal nephew.
His importance wasn't great, but his name—I could never forget it.
Gao Gan.
That irritatingly named nephew also meant Yuan Shu had an older sister, but...
as it happened, Gao Gan's mother was most likely a child of the principal wife.
Which meant the girl in front of me had to be someone who never appeared in history...
"M... my lady!"
"?"
A voice suddenly rang out from over there.
A servant was dashing this way in a hurry.
"Lady Benchu! Are you all righ...! Oh... Young Master Yuan Shu."
"!?"
The moment the servant saw my face he went pale and bowed his head.
But.
The most startled person here wasn't the servant kowtowing before me—it was me.
"W... wait... Ben... chu? Your name is Benchu?"
"Yes, it... is..."
Benchu.
In this Three Kingdoms era, as far as I knew, there was exactly one person in the Yuan Clan who bore that name.
"I am Yuan Benchu... Yuan Shao."
"..."
She confirmed the kill with a respectful bow.
Yuan Shu's elder cousin and the most famous, most successful of the Yuan Clan in the Three Kingdoms.
Brother Yuan Shao.
No,
Elder Sister Yuan Shao and I...
That was how we first met.
*
Yuan Shao.
Anyone who has read Romance of the Three Kingdoms has heard the name at least once.
Starting from the Rebellion of the Ten Regular Attendants, he appeared as Cao Cao's true rival and an adversary he had to overcome, and only after surpassing him was Cao Cao finally able to ascend as the supreme hegemon of the realm.
Going by ability alone, he was certainly not inferior—if anything he exceeded Cao Cao—yet he is recorded as the second-place figure who failed, thwarted by a talent for winning men's loyalty that was one notch short of Cao Cao's, and by the wall of his own lifespan.
Even his childhood was never smooth for this ill-fated hero.
Born to the main line of the Yuan Clan... and the son—no, daughter—of the Family Head himself, Yuan Shao was born of a servant mother.
His birth is still debated to this day.
There is a theory that he was the biological child of the father on his family register, Yuan Cheng,
and another that he was the child of his late uncle Yuan Feng, who took in the young Yuan Shao after Yuan Cheng died.
For reference, since Yuan Feng is Yuan Shu's biological father,
the current me and Yuan Shao could be cousins—or half-siblings... no, half-siblings as brother and sister.
Does the Three Kingdoms really have a situation straight out of a morning drama out of nowhere? You might ask, but this is content recorded in proper histories.
With such noble yet ambiguous blood, Yuan Shao endured considerable discrimination and hardship from the clan during childhood,
and was reportedly persecuted especially harshly by the arrogant Yuan Shu.
Even after reaching adulthood, Yuan Shu continuously disparaged Yuan Shao, calling him a servant's whelp, and Yuan Shao, once established, did not hide his hostility toward Yuan Shu either.
Thus, despite both representing the same Yuan Clan, the two had a perpetually snarling relationship.
In the end it was only after Yuan Shu had fallen to the sorry state of rambling about Honey Water that he tried to bow and entrust himself to Yuan Shao, but he never even reached him—getting speed☆run straight to the underworld en route—and the relationship between them remained unrecovered until the moment of death.
And now,
that very Elder Brother Yuan Shao who would one day walk the path of hegemony.
No...
Objectively speaking, our exquisitely beautiful Elder Sister Yuan Shao
was politely paying her respects to me as I sat.
She looked much tidier in every respect compared to a few days ago.
Her clothes had been replaced with new ones, and her hair, once disheveled, was now neatly arranged as though someone had tended to it.
It seemed my scolding of the servants that day had sunk in well.
If she had still been in the same miserable state as back then, I had been fully prepared to hunt down and wreck everyone involved.
But as expected, bastards with rotten characters only straighten out after you beat them.
"Thank you, Young Master. My mother has safely recovered thanks to you."
Yuan Shao expressed her gratitude with a calm and composed demeanor.
Servant blood or not, looking at the young woman before me she was, quite literally, elegance personified.
Part of it was that clothes made the person, but even her atmosphere was extraordinary—probably because her basic features backed it up.
Historically Yuan Shao was a considerable beauty of a man, so it was only natural that, having become a woman, she would be a beautiful woman now.
"I'm glad. If you ever need help again, just say the word, Sister."
"Pardon? Si... sister... you say, but I..."
"Father took you in as an adopted daughter, and you're actually older than me. Isn't it only natural that I call you Sister?"
"Th... that may be. But how could I possibly call Young Master Yuan Shu..."
"I said it's fine. Come on, call me 'little brother'—call me Gonglu."
At my urging to speak casually, Yuan Shao wore a troubled expression.
To her, who until just days ago had been treated with contempt by those around her, this attitude of mine seemed bewildering in many ways.
But for the current me, this matter of address was not something I could back down on.
After a brief silence,
Yuan Shao averted her eyes slightly and spoke carefully.
"Go... Gong... lu...?"
"Yes, Sister Benchu."
"Uu..."
Her face still flushed slightly, as though awkward.
Yet seeing that she wasn't entirely displeased by it, I broke into a broad smile.
Outwardly, I looked innocently happy.
But honestly, the emotion inside my smile right now was closer to "relief" than joy.
Right now she might wear that shy expression, but I knew.
If I mishandled this timid-looking woman in front of me and accidentally stacked even a little resentment, I would end up, one way or another, utterly screwed—in for a very rough time.
Yuan Shao in the Original Timeline was a fiercely proud person, and above all, someone who never forgot a past grudge.
A real example: when Yuan Shao became the leader of the Anti-Dong Zhuo Coalition, the enraged Dong Zhuo slaughtered every member of the Yuan Clan in Luoyang, yet Yuan Shao took no prior measures whatsoever concerning this.
The reason he effectively abandoned his own clan when he could have given advance warning was obvious.
To settle the hatred from childhood discrimination and abuse without dirtying his own hands.
Though Yuan Shao rose in the world with the help of the Yuan Clan, he could be said to have never forgotten the bitter dregs of what he suffered from the household, and repaid them thoroughly.
Even Cao Cao, the very person who brought about Yuan Shu's ruin, had been secretly receiving Yuan Shao's backing, so when you consider that, Yuan Shu too can essentially be seen as having been ground to death by Yuan Shao's resentment.
Knowing this ability and this temperament of Yuan Shao's,
from where I stood, the correct answer was to prostrate myself voluntarily right then so as not to prick the temper of the elder sister who would command the realm in the future.
When my base stats were already lacking, rather than putting on half-baked airs as a superior like Original Timeline Yuan Shu, getting defiant, and collapsing like a dog, it was a far easier and safer path to settle into the position of the cute little brother who voluntarily sucked up.
Stacking favorable impressions bit by bit this way was the only way to benefit when this elder sister rose in the world later on.
The first step in securing insurance—for a life that was warm, safe, and genuinely sweet in the coming Age of Warring Lords—began just like that.
*
Her mother's complexion had grown much healthier compared to a few days ago.
As she watched her mother sleeping in the clean new quarters she had been assigned,
the girl's face seemed, as always, to hold no emotion at all.
Beautiful but cold.
An appearance like transparent ice.
Yet inside her head,
for days now, a single sentence had been repeating itself without end.
'The blood of the Yuan Clan doesn't thin that easily.'
It was the first time she had heard those words.
The household servants, the elders, even the Family Head who had taken her in—
without exception they called her a lowly thing that soiled the clan's blood, and never stopped their discrimination and persecution.
That person, the first ever to reach out to her with words filled with certainty.
Recalling the face of that young boy.
She.
The girl who bore the name Yuan Shao.
Unconsciously, she spoke that name aloud.
"Gonglu..."