Work Text:
The Leadership
Xie Zheng — The Overqualified Secret Matrilocal Husband
Professional Qualifications:
- Military genius.
- Political mastermind.
- National war hero.
- Human embodiment of enemy morale collapse.
Actual Job:
The moment Fan Changyu enters his life, every strategic priority immediately reroutes.
This is a man capable of dismantling rebellions, outmanoeuvring court factions, and winning wars. Yet somehow, he ends up spending his free time secretly marinating pork for his wife's butcher stall.
Unfortunately, years of noble education had not prepared the Marquis of Wu'an for important civilian skills such as weighing meat, haggling with customers, or determining which garlic cloves had gone bad. On the other hand, his face alone increased sales by approximately three hundred percent.
Customers would arrive intending to buy half a jin of pork and leave with a modest bundle of scraps that should have inspired disappointment. Instead, they departed looking suspiciously pleased.
The culprit was the handsome assistant behind the stall, who would smile politely, apologise for the lack of choice, and wrap the scrap meat himself.
At some point, Changyu realised her customers were no longer paying for pork. They were paying for customer service.
However, Xie Zheng's qualification did not stop there.
His greatest contribution to the family business was not labour nor excellent customer service. It was marketing.
In fact, he was so good at it that Changyu once accidentally agreed to rent him out to Yu Qianqian without either of them fully realising his market value.
At the time, thirty taels had seemed like an outrageous amount of money. In hindsight, that price was a catastrophic miscalculation. Had Changyu known she was leasing out the Marquis of Wu'an—the empire's most eligible bachelor, national war hero, and owner of that face—she would have charged at least three hundred taels.
Possibly more.
After all, spending an entire day pretending to be the wife of the Marquis of Wu'an ought to come with a premium rate. Frankly speaking, Yu Qianqian got the bargain of the century.
Then came his astonishing blacksmithing ability (yes, he was already excellent at needlework and leatherwork, why don't we add metalwork as well?)
Changyu's beloved cleavers were damaged during the war—which, admittedly, was hardly surprising considering meat cleavers were designed for pigs, not battlefields.
Naturally, Xie Zheng decided to forge her a new pair. Not buy. Forge. Personally. Because apparently, the solution to every problem in his life is either military strategy or extreme acts of devotion. Unfortunately, ordinary blacksmithing was deemed insufficient.
The process somehow escalated into him slicing open his own arm because, in his mind, the blade required something more.
Not better steel. Not superior craftsmanship. But blood.
The cleavers needed to be tempered with dedication, suffering, and approximately one pint of Marquis-grade emotional instability.
Gongsun Yin — The Rational Anchor
Professional Qualifications:
- Elite strategist.
- Administrative genius.
- Master diplomat.
- Human calculator.
- Capable of predicting enemy troop movements three campaigns in advance.
Actual Job:
Officially, Gongsun Yin is Xie Zheng's closest friend, chief strategist, and trusted adviser.
Unofficially, he serves as:
- A highly educated document courier.
- Yan Zheng's mysteriously wealthy friend.
- The owner of a conveniently profitable bookstore.
- A secret financial sponsor of the Marquis of Wu'an's matrilocal husband lifestyle.
While other strategists spend their days calculating supply lines and military formations, Gongsun spends his time fabricating excuses, transporting paperwork, and quietly funding Xie Zheng's latest domestic project.
"Where did the money come from?"
"The bookstore."
"Who redeemed the hairpin?"
"The bookstore."
"Who bought the medicine?"
"The bookstore."
At this point, the bookstore possesses greater strategic importance than several provinces.
His role within the narrative is equally vital.
Whenever the plot becomes too tragic, Gongsun appears to either:
- Gaslight someone for their own benefit; the Marquis of Wu'an is no exception.
- Interrogate Xie Zheng about his feelings.
- Suffer.
Usually all three at once.
He is widely known for being subtle, composed, and politically brilliant.
Unfortunately, he is also cursed with an imagination so dramatic it ought to be classified as a military threat.
Before meeting Fan Changyu, Gongsun had somehow convinced himself that the infamous butcher girl must be an enormous, terrifying woman who had tied Xie Zheng to a slaughter bench and coerced him into marriage through sheer force of personality.
In his defence, "Marquis of Wu'an voluntarily became a matrilocal husband" sounded less plausible than kidnapping. The reality—that Xie Zheng had fallen hopelessly in love and marched willingly into domestic bliss—was somehow the more unbelievable explanation.
Gongsun also famously refuses to wear armour on active battlefields because he firmly believes intelligence is a superior defence mechanism. This philosophy works remarkably well right up until the moment someone starts shooting arrows at him. At which point, intelligence rapidly discovers its limitations.
At some point, he spends much of the story coughing blood (both fake and real) while attempting to simultaneously manage:
- A princess he is catastrophically in love with.
- A commander suffering from an identity crisis.
To his credit, Gongsun somehow managed to keep the military encampment functioning while simultaneously preserving Xie Zheng's secret identity.
This was not an easy assignment.
His daily obstacles included:
- A butcher's daughter who kept accidentally derailing carefully constructed military plans simply by existing.
- A commander whose decision-making skills dropped by several alarming degrees whenever his wife was involved.
- An entire army of otherwise competent adults who, when exposed to romance, collectively lost the ability to behave rationally.
Every time Gongsun believed he had finally grasped the situation, reality would unveil a fresh layer of absurdity.
One day, he was managing troop deployments. Next, he was explaining why the Marquis of Wu'an was secretly selling essays, buying large amounts of goods under false names, helping at a pork stall, and pretending to be a poor scholar who was forcefully conscripted to war while his wife unknowingly marched through the same military camp looking for him.
No military manual had prepared him for this.
His entire character arc can be summarised as:
"I studied strategy for twenty years. I mastered statecraft, diplomacy, logistics, military history, and political intrigue."
"None of it prepared me for Xie Zheng falling in love."
Or, as Gongsun likely realised somewhere around the middle of the war:
"The Marquis's enemy was never the rebels."
"The Marquis's enemy was divorce papers."
The Corporate Clean-Up Crew
Xie Wu, Xie Jiu, and Xie Qi are not related by blood.
They are, however, united by something much stronger:
Shared workplace trauma.
Specifically, the trauma of keeping Xie Zheng's double life from exploding.
Xie Wu — Human Resources Department
Professional Qualifications:
- Large-scale troop deployment.
- Military logistics.
- Battlefield discipline.
- Keeping thousands of soldiers alive under impossible conditions.
Actual Job:
- Accidentally safeguarding the future Empress of Great Yin without knowing it.
- Pretending not to notice that his Supreme Commander has a suspiciously complicated relationship with a certain butcher girl.
- Stopping other romantically clueless members of the Xie Army from "helping."
- Protecting the Marchioness at all costs.
- Creating opportunities for Hou-ye and his wife to spend time alone without making it obvious.
- Managing the consequences whenever those two inevitably create chaos.
Most importantly:
Maintaining a professional expression whenever someone asks inconvenient questions about why the Marquis of Wu'an is secretly working as a matrilocal husband.
This responsibility is, technically speaking, above his pay grade.
Xie Wu's greatest strength is adaptability.
Unfortunately, nothing in military training prepared him for Fan Changyu.
Imagine spending years mastering warfare, logistics, and command strategy only to discover your greatest challenge is writing an incident report that says:
Marchioness Fan administered knockout soup to the Marquis of Wu'an, stole his armour, impersonated a soldier, and personally joined the battle.
Without making the entire army sound completely insane. Even worse, all of it was true.
At some point, Xie Wu likely stared at the report for half an hour before deciding that future historians could deal with the problem.
His daily responsibilities also include preventing well-meaning idiots from exposing Xie Zheng's identity.
This is harder than it sounds. Half the army wants to help. The other half wants to congratulate Hou-ye on being married. Neither group understands the concept of secrecy.
As a result, Xie Wu spends most of his time intercepting conversations before they become disasters.
In another life, he would have made an excellent military commander.
In this one, he is effectively the Human Resources department for a family of emotionally compromised war heroes.
Every morning, Xie Wu wakes up hoping for an enemy ambush.
At least enemy ambushes follow logic.
Fan Changyu does not.
Xie Jiu — The Traumatised Actor
Professional Qualifications:
- Counterintelligence.
- Deep-cover operations.
- High-risk infiltration.
Actual Job:
Community theatre.
During the military tribunal, Xie Zheng's identity must remain hidden from Changyu. Therefore the obvious solution is:
Put Xie Jiu in the Marquis's armour. Hide him behind a curtain. Give him a script. Tell him to pretend to be the most feared military commander in the empire. What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
Absolutely everything.
The moment Changyu arrives, the script dies. Jin Yuanbao and the 'fan' club only make it worse. Then, Xie Zheng barges in. Changyu goes off-script. The fake Marquis is suddenly presiding over a domestic argument between a husband and wife who are both trying to volunteer themselves for punishment.
Xie Jiu spends the entire scene improvising like a man trying to defuse a bomb while being judged by Heaven.
Xie Jiu is drafting his will and preparing to lose control of his bladder.
Frankly, surviving enemy assassins was probably easier.
Xie Qi — The Professional Third Wheel
Professional Qualifications:
- Shadow operations.
- Reconnaissance.
- Message interception.
Actual Job:
Relationship support staff.
Because Xie Qi is competent, he is constantly assigned the most ridiculous errands.
Need a secret letter delivered?
Xie Qi.
Need somebody to check if the Marchioness is still angry?
Xie Qi.
Need emotional damage assessment after a marital disagreement?
Unfortunately. Also Xie Qi.
His face permanently carries the expression of a man who loves his commander deeply but would also like a raise.
The Falcon — The Most Overqualified Bird in History
Professional Qualifications:
- Long-range reconnaissance.
- Terrain scouting.
- Enemy tracking.
- Battlefield intelligence gathering.
- Aerial surveillance across hostile territory.
Actual Job:
Relationship surveillance.
Imagine being a majestic bird of prey, a creature born to soar above mountains and monitor military campaigns, and then discovering your primary mission is:
- locating Changyu,
- checking whether she's angry,
- carrying relationship updates,
- and functioning as an ancient text messaging service.
Somewhere along the way, this elite military asset stopped being a reconnaissance falcon and became a feathered marriage counsellor.
At one point, he was probably flying over enemy territory, thinking:
"I used to track rebel movements."
"Now I'm tracking emotional damage."
What makes the situation even worse is that this was not always his life.
Once upon a time, he was a respected military scout. Then he was captured during a mission, and Fan Changyu nearly turned him into soup.
It is difficult to recover professionally from learning that your greatest natural predator is not an enemy archer, but your master's wife.
After that incident, the falcon likely developed a healthy respect for the Marchioness.
And by "healthy respect," we mean absolute terror.
The Xie Army fears the Marquis of Wu'an. The falcon fears the woman holding the cleaver.
The Heart of the Chaos
The reason this all works is because the Xie Army isn't simply loyal to Xie Zheng.
They love him.
Jiuheng grew up carrying grief, loneliness, and a blood feud large enough to crush most people.
His soldiers watched him survive things no child should survive. They watched him mourn his parents. They watched him become the terrifying Marquis of Wu'an. They watched him sacrifice softness piece by piece until almost nothing remained.
And then Fan Changyu appeared.
Suddenly, their commander smiled. He laughed. He remembered how to be human.
So when Xie Zheng hides inside a tent pretending to be Yan Zheng...
When he trades his terrifying title for a simple meal and a warm home...
When he spends an evening listening to Changyu complain about grocery prices instead of discussing military campaigns...
The entire army quietly conspires to protect it.
They tolerate the lies.
They tolerate the chaos.
They tolerate fake tribunals, stolen armour, emotional crises,
They tolerate marital misunderstandings.
Because they understand something Xie Zheng himself does not.
Fan Changyu is not merely his wife. She is the first peaceful thing that has ever happened to him. And if preserving that happiness requires an entire military intelligence network, three exhausted subordinates, one overworked strategist, and a deeply stressed falcon—
Then so be it.
The Xie Army can defeat the rebels.
The Xie Army can survive wars.
The Xie Army can endure court politics.
But the true mission they all signed up for was apparently:
Operation: Keep Hou-ye Happy.
Success rate: surprisingly high.
Casualties: Gongsun Yin's blood pressure.
(And the funniest part is that every member of the Xie Army would deny this analysis while simultaneously risking their lives to make sure Hou-ye gets to finish dinner with his wife in peace.)