mesbooks Chapter 280 The Mad Couple 44 (The End)
Chapter 280 The Mad Couple 44 (The End)
"Sister, look at this."
Ji Xiaohua spread the yellowed letter on the rosewood table, pointed her finger at the words "three mu of paddy fields in the east of the village," and said, "Back when we went from house to house begging for rice with our earthenware jars in hand, these people were not this respectful."
Ji Xiaosong leaned against the mother-of-pearl inlaid armchair, her gaze sweeping over the neat regular script on the letter paper.
The spring sunlight streamed through the glass window, falling on her scarlet palace dress, and the nine-tailed phoenix embroidered with gold thread trembled gently with her breath.
"I remember."
She stroked her seven-month pregnant belly and recalled, "Zhang the butcher's dog chased us and made us fall into a ditch, Li the scholar's wife said we were unlucky and caused the deaths of their parents, Wang the blacksmith..."
The last notes dissipated into the smoke of the agarwood, while the gilded incense burner emitted wisps of smoke that rose gently upwards.
Ji Xiaohua subconsciously clenched her sleeves.
Since her sister was crowned Empress, these moments of unconsciously revealing her emotions have become more and more frequent.
She watched as her sister used her jade nail guards to lift the letter, and the thin, brittle mulberry paper turned to ashes in the candlelight.
"Send word to the Imperial Palace Bureau."
Ji Xiaosong suddenly stood up, her twelve Xiang skirts sweeping across the ashes on the ground, and said, "I am going back to my hometown to visit my family."
Three days later, the auspicious time was chosen by the Imperial Astronomical Bureau.
Outside the Vermilion Bird Gate, seventy-two pairs of Golden Guards led the way with halberds, while twenty-eight female officials carried the Phoenix Seal and the Golden Book.
The phoenix carriage, crafted from agarwood, had pearls hanging from its four corners, and wherever it passed, the ground was covered in gold leaf.
"Your Majesty, Qing Shi Village is just ahead."
The head lady-in-waiting reported softly through the gauze curtain.
Ji Xiaosong tapped her fingertip on the carved window frame of the carriage, looking at the dense crowd of villagers kneeling at the village entrance.
Those faces that once spat at her are now pressed against the cracked yellow earth.
The village headman, trembling, presented the village chronicle: "Please, Your Majesty, review the blueprints for rebuilding the ancestral home."
The mud under his fingernails was still clinging to the fields where the Ji family's branch had harvested wheat last year.
"Not urgent."
Ji Xiaosong, with the help of the female official, slowly stepped down from the carriage, her embroidered shoes treading across the newly laid scarlet carpet.
The old locust tree at the east end of the village swayed gently in the breeze, its tender green branches hanging down, forming a green canopy above its head.
The village chronicle in the village head's hand fell to the ground with a "thud".
An elderly man in the crowd exclaimed, "What an auspicious sign!" That night, a nine-zhang-tall jade archway was erected at the site of the Ji family's ancestral home.
The dragon patterns carved by three hundred craftsmen overnight shimmered in the moonlight. At the location chosen by the Imperial Astronomical Bureau, a shrine made of white jade was under construction.
The craftsmen were busy piling up stones, and the bells on the eaves jingled in the breeze.
"This is the 'Eternal Protection of Mountains and Rivers' bestowed by His Majesty himself."
The Minister of Works, who was accompanying the group, wiped away cold sweat as he explained.
He saw that the empress only nodded slightly, and the stone lions in front of the ancestral hall, meticulously carved by the craftsmen, appeared lifelike.
Before the morning mist had dissipated, Ji Xiaosong knelt before her parents' graves in plain clothes.
Stripped of her finery, she appeared slender. When her fingertips touched the weathered tombstone, everything around her seemed to fall silent.
"Father, mother."
She placed the gilded incense burner bestowed by the emperor in front of the monument and said, "My daughter has turned our three acres of paddy fields into a school bestowed by the emperor."
The villagers who had been watching from a distance suddenly started coughing in unison.
To their surprise, they found that with each word the Empress spoke, their chronic ailments seemed to lessen.
On the day of the return trip, the number of villagers kneeling at the village entrance was three times greater than when they arrived.
Ji Xiaosong looked at the newly erected boundary marker outside the carriage and suddenly chuckled: "After returning to the palace, remember to remind me to send a plaque inscribed with 'Meritorious in Education' to the prefect of Wuzhou."
As the imperial carriage reached the corner of the official road, a Taoist priest in green robes suddenly appeared in the dust.
The compass needle spun rapidly in his hand, his gaze fixed on Ji Xiaosong's protruding belly.
"Miss!"
Before the guards could even draw their swords, the Taoist had already turned and left.
Only a whisper remained, echoing in Ji Xiaosong's ear: "The inheritance of the dragon vein carries a heavy responsibility..."
When the imperial carriage reached Qixia Ridge, Ji Xiaosong suddenly pressed her swollen belly, her face showing pain.
The pearls hanging from the four corners of the carriage shimmered with dazzling light due to the violent shaking, startling the eight snow steeds pulling the carriage so much that they simultaneously reared up.
The clouds on the horizon, affected by air currents, churned and boiled, eventually forming a vortex in the clear sky.
"Send it quickly..."
The lady in charge of the affairs abruptly stopped speaking as she lifted the curtain.
The empress seemed to radiate a glow from within, and the jade hairpin in her hair broke off on its own due to the turbulence, revealing the thousand-year-old ginseng root hidden inside.
That was a protective elixir for the fetus that Wu Chufeng personally sought out at Changsheng Mountain.
At this moment, inside the Xuanzheng Hall, Wu Chufeng's vermilion brush suddenly broke.
The spilled ink meandered across the memorial, and he abruptly stood up, knocking over the gilded lamp stand, and urgently ordered: "Prepare the dragon steed!"
Qixia Ridge is now shrouded in thick fog.
The accompanying imperial physician knelt outside the carriage, his voice trembling: "Her Majesty's pregnancy is unstable; the usual delivery method..."
Before he could finish speaking, the vegetation on the entire mountain ridge was swept away by a fierce wind and fell eastward.
"Everyone, stand down."
Ji Xiaosong pretended to endure the pain, biting her fingertip and drawing simple patterns on the brocade quilt. Her blood stained the quilt, looking somewhat shocking.
She couldn't make it seem like she had an easy birth, because she needed to create a buzz for the son she had.
The Wu family conquered the world later and were not people who followed the rules.
You can't expect to be bound by that little bit of love.
"Tell His Majesty..."
Just then, a strong gust of wind lifted the curtain of the carriage, and the baby's cries suddenly rang out.
As Wu Chufeng spurred his horse up the mountain path, he saw his wife standing before the carriage, holding a baby in her arms.
Her hair was slightly disheveled, but her eyes were bright.
At my feet, the unnamed wildflowers, after being washed by the wind and rain, appeared full of vitality.
"Sing-song!"
He stepped on and shattered the jade pendant at his waist as he dismounted, but froze when he touched the baby's swaddling clothes.
Beneath the bright yellow silk embroidered with the twelve symbols, there was a birthmark on the child's forehead, its shape resembling a faintly visible dragon scale.
Ji Xiaosong gently placed the child in his arms, her voice filled with the joy of becoming a mother for the first time:
"Your Majesty, can you hear the child's cries? They are so loud."
Before the words were finished, twelve bells suddenly rang out from afar, the bells that were rung at the imperial mausoleum every day.
The Imperial Astronomical Bureau official accompanying the emperor suddenly knelt down and exclaimed, "The birth of a prince is a great joy for the nation!"
He unfolded the divination board with trembling hands, as if he were calculating something.
Wu Chufeng gazed at the infant in his arms with its eyes open.
Those bright, expressive eyes reminded him of the way Ji Xiaosong bravely faced difficulties when he first met her.
"deliver an imperial order."
He took off his black cloak and wrapped it around his wife and children. After a moment's thought, he said, "Make the eldest son the crown prince and bestow upon him a name..."
Just then, a mountain breeze suddenly swept in a few dewy bamboo leaves, which spelled out the character "寰" in his palm.
Wu Chufeng's heart stirred, and he decided on the name of the Crown Prince.
That night, seven bronze lamps were lit at the Imperial Observatory's star-gazing platform.
The supervisor looked at a bright star that suddenly appeared in the south and bowed deeply towards the direction of Weiyang Palace.
Although the Empress's childbirth was difficult, she is gradually recovering under the careful care of everyone.
Under the sleeping prince's pillow lay Wu Chufeng's handwritten "Ode to the Nine Provinces," a testament to his earnest expectations for the prince.
At 3:45 AM, Wu Wanqing suddenly woke up in the ancestral hall.
The Wu family genealogy on the offering table turned in the breeze caused by her rising, and the latest page happened to stop at the place recording the royal relatives, which read: "Crown Prince Huan, born in Qixia Ridge, is the emperor's eldest son."
Her clenched fist was reflected on the wall by the candlelight, casting a lonely shadow.
Everyone has their own ending; cause and effect are a cycle.
Ji Xiaosong had ten children in her life, and each of them achieved great things in different fields.
Wu Chufeng was not someone who coveted the harem. Occasionally, someone in the court would try to win him over by offering their female relatives, but Ji Xiaosong would eventually deal with them.
She has always been picky about relationships; she doesn't want men who aren't "clean" (respectable or unreliable).
If she had no choice, that would be one thing, but she did have a choice; she wouldn't let her children be put in danger.
She lived long enough that after Wu Chufeng's death, she became Empress Dowager and Grand Empress Dowager.
He didn't leave until he was exactly one hundred years old.