"My surname is An, and my first name is Cui."
Although he was dressed in the uniform of a soldier, he still greeted her with grace. He was not impolite.
"I'm Liu Xi," Jiang Pengji replied, then asked, "If I'm not wrong, Brother An is from the south?"
An Cui recalled Jiang Pengji's conversation with Wei Ci and the others when he arrived. He had already given up trying to hide it.
He said with a haggard expression, "Yes, from Nansheng."
Although An Cui had never heard of Liu Xi's name when he was in Nansheng, how could he not have heard of him after escaping to the north of Dongqing?
He had thought that Liu Xi would be a rather steady man from the old city, but now that he looked at him, he saw that he was actually a high-spirited youth. Even though his face was handsome, there was still a hint of androgynous immaturity about him. Looking at himself, An Cui could only sigh ruefully.
An Cui, An Duoxi.
Cui meant sorrow.
The elders had given An Cui the nickname "Duoxi." It sounded tacky, but it was full of wishes.
Unfortunately, An Cui's life had completely changed since the day the four factions of Nanman attacked the capital.
Wei Ci sighed in his heart — it was indeed him.
While Jiang Pengji and An Cui were talking, Wei Ci lowered his eyes without batting an eyelid. He secretly clenched his fists in his long sleeves, leaving behind a few white fingernail marks. Wei Ci remembered that when he had met An Cui in his last life, that person had still been a nameless nobody.
In An Cui's own words, he had toiled for more than ten years. When would it end?
The old country was no more, and his temples were covered in white.
He had been running around, and before he knew it, he was already more than forty years old.
If there were no accidents, he would have lived more than half of his life, but he still wanted revenge on the four factions of Nanman.
An Cui and the four factions of Nanman did indeed have an unresolvable blood feud.
Wei Ci sat at the side with his eyes down, listening to their conversation. He was thinking about his own matters.
After his rebirth, Wei Ci had thought about his old master, but he knew that An Cui was not a wise master for him.
This person's desire for revenge was too strong. Especially after more than ten years of wandering, his hatred for the four factions of Nanman had already penetrated deep into his bones. Revenge had already become his inner demon and obsession. Wei Ci still remembered the scene when An Cui gave the order to massacre the four factions of Nanman.
As someone from the Central Plains, Wei Ci did not have a good impression of the barbarians, but this did not mean that he could sit back and watch as An Cui gave the order to massacre the entire tribe.
However, one would know the outcome of Wei Ci and An Cui's dispute just by looking at the outcome.
Wei Ci lost.
Six hundred and thirty thousand barbarian civilians, regardless of their age or gender, were all slaughtered. Several rivers in Nansheng were clogged, and the river water was completely dyed red.
An Cui did not order the soldiers to stop. Wei Ci was well aware of what they had done before the massacre and what the barbarians had experienced.
After this dispute, Wei Ci gradually drifted apart from him.
What Wei Ci wanted was a wise ruler who could unify the Nine Prefectures, a saint who could save the common people from disaster, not a butcher who was blinded by hatred for his country and had also committed numerous crimes! What was the difference between An Cui's final actions and the previous four factions of Nanman?
Wei Ci acknowledged An Cui's accusation that he was soft-hearted and that it was easy for him to talk.
After all, it was An Cui who had his country destroyed, his wife killed, and his children lost, not him.
However, this was not an excuse for Ann to retaliate with the same reason.
There were other ways to punish the four factions of Nanman, and revenge could still be taken.
Why did An Cui choose the most brutal and despicable method?
Wei Ci understood An Cui's desire for revenge, but he did not approve of An Cui's actions.
An Cui had only raised his troops for revenge, and his vision was only for revenge. The fate of the common people had nothing to do with him.
A person who gave up everything for revenge was not the wise ruler Wei Ci was looking for.
People of different principles could not work together.
Therefore, Wei Ci did not pay special attention to his old master after his rebirth.
Fate made a fool of him. The two of them had met so many years earlier.
Nansheng had only been destroyed for slightly more than a year, and An Cui had only been wandering for a few months after escaping from his country. His face was still considered young, and there was a lingering sense of authority between his brows. He could barely maintain what little pride he had left, completely unlike him a decade later. At that time, although he was in his forties, his hair and beard were all white, his face weathered, and his shoulders were hunched. He looked like a man in his seventies, but his eyes still had an unyielding sharpness.
Feng Zhen noticed Wei Ci's strangeness and secretly tugged at his sleeve.
"Why are you daydreaming?"
Wei Ci lowered his eyes and said, "It's probably because I didn't sleep well last night and am feeling sleepy."
Feng Zhen cleverly followed up on his words. "If you're not feeling well, go back to the carriage and rest."
A sickly person should have the self-awareness of a sickly person. If he was not feeling well, he should go and rest.
His health was his capital to cause trouble.
Their voices startled Jiang Pengji and An Cui.
An Cui looked in the direction of the voice and was shocked by Wei Ci's appearance and bearing.
Now that An Cui had not experienced more than a decade of wandering, Wei Ci's appearance was quite in line with his taste.
Jiang Pengji also said, "If you're not feeling well, don't force yourself. We'll talk after you've rested."
Wei Ci did not insist. He got up and left.
Feng Zhen's eyes flashed. He bowed and bade farewell, quickly catching up to Wei Ci's footsteps.
"Why did you follow me?"
Wei Ci wanted to be alone for a while. The thick-skinned Feng Zhen climbed into the carriage with him.
"You know this An Cui," Feng Zhen said confidently. "What's his background? Judging from his physiognomy, he's not an easy person to get along with. "
Wei Ci did not deny it. Instead, he said, "An Cui is from Zhe County in the Jiang Province of Nansheng Country. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather have all been high-ranking officials for three consecutive generations. They can be considered a new aristocratic family in Nansheng Country. An Cui himself is also very famous in Nansheng Country. His mother was the younger sister of the Nansheng King and he also had some relations with the Nansheng King's royal family. The day Nansheng was destroyed, An Gui's entire family … "
Feng Zhen did not find it strange that Wei Ci knew so much. This fellow had always been well-informed.
"Only An Cui managed to escape?"
Wei Ci nodded. "Yes."
An Cui should be twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old now. He was at the peak of his life. If the Southern Barbarians had not invaded, he would have been the winner in life.
Unfortunately, An Cui's parents died tragically, his wife couldn't bear the humiliation and committed suicide, and his daughter and son died without a complete corpse.
Only he was left to drag out an ignoble existence.
Putting himself in An Cui's shoes, Wei Ci could understand why An Cui hated the southern barbarians so much.
Understanding didn't mean he agreed.
If An Cui was just a commoner, Wei Ci would praise him for being a man if he made his enemies pay with blood. But An Cui was one of the feudal lords who fought for supremacy in the world. Because of his hatred, he ignored reason and ordered the slaughter of the entire Southern Barbarians tribe. How could such a person be the ruler of the world?
Even if he was lucky enough to become the ruler, how long could this country last?
Feng Zhen said sympathetically, "He's quite pitiful. I'm afraid he would hate those barbarians to death."
Wei Ci said, "Not just that … perhaps he could have used his own abilities to fight his way back to Nansheng."
Feng Zhen thought of the flame pattern on An Cui's arm and seemed to understand something.
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