Mu Chun is a weirdo, who treats his daughter as his biological father and his biological father as his enemy. Due to filial piety, he cannot physically attack his biological father, so he tries every means to mentally attack his biological father Mu Ying 10,000 points, and takes pleasure in angering his father. He feels that he was born without the ability to be a son.
But ever since he started treating his daughter A Lei as his biological father, Mu Chun has proven through practice that human potential is infinite. He really can be a filial son - as long as the object is his daughter, not his biological father.
Summer is here, and my daughter likes to watch fireflies. In order to catch fireflies, Muchun sacrificed himself to feed mosquitoes. His head was covered with mosquito bites. He caught more than fifty fireflies in the chrysanthemum field and put them in a mesh bag, which he hung above his daughter's cradle. Looking at his daughter's round eyes showing a surprised expression, Muchun forgot the itch on his face.
However, when Hu Shanwei woke up in the middle of the night, she was frightened by the acne-like mosquito bites on her husband's face, which made him look like a child again. She tossed and turned, and couldn't even sleep. She was very irritated, so she kicked Mu Chun off the bed and asked him to sleep on the floor.
Mu Chun was kicked off the bed, but he still did not change his bad habits. He went to catch fireflies the next day and refused Shi Qianhu's help. He insisted on catching them by himself to show his father's love (filial piety). He is truly a fighter among foolish filial piety.
Hu Shanwei felt sorry for her husband and recalled the time when Madam She Xiang used the juice of some herb to apply on her skin to repel mosquitoes when they went to Guizhou. She asked the Yi people about the name of the herb, found the herb, crushed it and applied it to Muchun. Only then did Muchun's face avoid being disfigured by mosquito bites.
In front of A Lei, Mu Chun had no moral principles at all. He barked like Da Huang (the family's pastoral dog) to make his daughter happy. He put a handful of green peacock feathers on his waist, then lay down on all fours and spun around like a cat to catch his own peacock tail.
Imitating a cat chasing its tail is Mu Chun's unique skill. A Lei likes to watch it the most. She lives up to her reputation and her laughter is as loud as thunder.
Seeing his daughter happy, Mu Chun spun even more crazily, like a filial son "entertaining his parents with colorful clothes".
When the captain saw this, he shook his head and said repeatedly, "How can a dignified Duke of Qian behave like this? How can this be so? Madam, the Duke only listens to you. Please stop him immediately!"
Since having A Lei, Hu Shanwei has gone from wanting to beat Mu Chun once every few days to wanting to beat Mu Chun several times a day. This is a rapid improvement. However, when she saw Mu Chun tying a peacock feather behind his waist and chasing his tail like a cat, Hu Shanwei did not get angry. Instead, she had a look of pity in her eyes: "Let him be. He is actually... just healing himself."
Hu Shanwei is worthy of being Mu Chun's confidant. Mu Chun lacked parental love when he was a child. Even though he was favored by the emperor and empress, the emptiness in his heart still existed. When he returned to his family at the age of seven, he "smeared feces on the wall" in the ancestral hall and was beaten unconscious by his father. The father and son fought whenever they met. The emptiness in his heart grew bigger and bigger and turned into an abyss.
He stared into the abyss, and the abyss stared back at him.
This void stopped expanding after he met Hu Shanwei, but it still existed. When Hu Shanwei came into his life, he stopped staring at the abyss and tried to embrace happiness, growing his own shell and avoiding being dragged into the abyss. However, the abyss would not disappear just because of happiness. It was there and always there.
Human emotions are so complex yet simple. Childhood trauma affects a person's behavioral patterns throughout his or her life.
The more something is lacking in a child, the more he or she will be deprived of it, the more he or she will unconsciously try to get it back when he or she grows up, and he or she will have to satisfy it. Or, he or she may go to the other extreme and deprive his or her children or others of the same things, so that his or her children or others will also taste the pain of what he or she lost in childhood, thus forming a vicious cycle that will be passed down from generation to generation.
The brave choose the former and give happiness to others. The cowardly or mediocre choose the latter and copy pain, after all, copying pain is much easier than creating happiness.
A Lei's laughter was like the five-colored stones that Nuwa had trained, filling up the abyss in Muchun's heart piece by piece. As his daughter grew up day by day, the emptiness in Muchun's heart was filling up at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Rather than giving his daughter fatherly love, it is better to say that he is giving it to himself. He gives A Lei as much fatherly love as he desires in his heart. What is the point of learning to bark like a dog? What is the point of learning to circle like a cat? What is the point of sacrificing one's life to feed mosquitoes? He is willing to do it even if it means cutting off his own flesh.
Therefore, Hu Shanwei did not stop Mu Chun from raising his daughter as her father, and the pattern of a family of three with a kind father and a strict mother was already established.
Chen Xuan, an insider in the capital, brought news that Emperor Hongwu was running out of energy and did not seem to be in good condition.
Mu Chun quickly wrote a secret letter to the emperor, saying that he had been ill for three or four years, and had tried his best to think hard, but his energy and blood were increasingly depleted." Anyway, he was too weak to govern Yunnan, so he asked the old emperor to fulfill his promise and kill him.
Having a daughter is everything. Mu Chun doesn't want to work anymore. He just wants to go home to be with his wife and children. He is eager to go home.
Emperor Hongwu agreed and asked him to make a perfect farewell and transfer power smoothly.
What could be more perfect than avenging one's father
Mu Ying died at a surrender ceremony when he was pacifying Silunfa in Luchuan. At that time, Silunfa was handing over a letter of surrender to Mu Ying, but his subordinate Dao Ganmeng had set up an ambush and persuaded his confidants to act as human bombs. At the moment of the explosion, Mu Ying used his body as a shield and jumped into the river holding his son Mu Chun. His lumbar vertebrae were broken and his lower body was paralyzed. He died on the same day.
Before his death, Mu Ying instructed Mu Chun not to avenge him, to spare Dao Gan Meng's life, and to let Si Lunfa's son Sixingfa avenge his father, creating internal strife to consume Luchuan's strength, and wait until the two sides had fought each other to the point of killing each other.
Mu Ying was a bad father to Mu Chun, but he was an excellent governor.
Now six years have passed, and just as Mu Ying had expected, Luchuan's six-year internal strife has caused it to fall from being the most powerful chieftain in Yunnan, and it is no longer able to rebel.
Mu Chun then extended an olive branch to Sixingfa, expressing his willingness to send troops to help Sixingfa completely eradicate Dao Ganmeng's forces and avenge their fathers.
Si Xingfa of course agreed, and the two of them joined forces to attack Dao Gan Meng. They successfully captured the murderer of their father alive, and beheaded him on the spot as a sacrifice in front of the battle line.
However, in this battle, Mu Chun, who had been ill for three or four years, and had exhausted all his heart and thought, and his energy and blood were increasingly depleted, suffered a relapse of his old illness, and he died on the way back from the march.
Upon hearing the tragic news, people in Yunnan were in mourning and sang sad songs to commemorate Muchun:
"Who is my father? Who is my mother? Without a mother, where can I live? Without a father, where can I go? Is this just a dream? Don't you care about my poverty
In the ditches and in the fields, I till the fields and sow the seeds. I only grow millet and rice, and use them as food. I have parents who are the sons of the previous kings.
This ballad was composed by Mu Chun after the death of his father Mu Ying. Now everyone in Yunnan who can speak can sing it.
Mu Chun had no children, and his last words before his death were that his soul was attached to the land of Yunnan, and that after his death he did not want to be buried in the Mu family cemetery at Guanyin Mountain in Nanjing, but should be cremated and turned into ashes and scattered in two landmark projects that he personally supervised the construction of: the Yunjin Bridge that connects the north and south of Yunnan, and the Tangchi Canal that irrigates thousands of hectares of farmland.
In fact, Mu Chun just didn’t want to go back to Guanyin Mountain and be neighbors with the father he had fought with all his life forever - he would feel disgusted even if it was a fake cenotaph!
The better Mu Chun treated A Lei after becoming a father, the more he felt that his father was too cold-blooded. He would feel so distressed even if his little A Lei was bitten by a mosquito and got a small bump. He was worried that the nanny was not doing his best, so as long as he was at home, he would hold a mosquito lamp every night to shine on the mosquitoes all over the house.
Mu Sheng also knew that there was a deadlock between his elder brother and his father, and they were simply enemies from the previous life, so he had no choice but to obey his elder brother's "last wish". He took some wood ash from the stove, divided it into two parts, and scattered it into the surging river from the Yunjin Bridge and into the canal of Tangchiqu respectively.
On the day of scattering the ashes, hundreds of thousands of Yunnan people came to see him off, crying loudly and singing the song "Who is my father? Who is my mother" loudly.
Muchun really put in a lot of effort in Yunnan. Not to mention the immigration of people, the stationing of troops and the reclamation of wasteland, the construction of roads, bridges and water conservancy projects had a profound impact on the economy which was mainly based on agriculture.
Yunnan was known as a barbarian land. Before the construction of the Yunjin Bridge, there was not even a solid stone bridge in such a vast land!
The bridge connecting the north and the south was the Dade Bridge built in the Yuan Dynasty. It was made of wood and was badly damaged. It could not even bear the weight of a cannon cart weighing more than 1,000 kilograms and was on the verge of collapse. Mu Chun ordered the repair of the bridge. Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians worked day and night to "cut huge rocks, stop the flow of rivers, and measure the length and length" to build an eight-hole bridge, which was the first stone beam bridge in Yunnan.
Because it connects the north and south of Kunming, Mu Chun personally named it "Yunjin Bridge". This bridge "stands like a golden embankment, stretches like a hanging rainbow, and people walking on it feel like walking on flat ground."
After the construction of the "Yunjin Bridge", due to convenient transportation, both sides of the river became important commercial areas and suddenly became the central CBD, which is one of the eight major landscapes in Kunming. There are poems recording the grand scene on both sides of the river:
"Looking from Yunjin Bridge, I see thousands of lights. I ask the night man to sell wine, and look for the innkeeper to tie up the raft. The city is far away, the night has passed, and the moon is full, and the market is bustling. At dawn, I am tired of going out, and the sparse bell rings at Taihua."
This commercial boom is comparable to the ones on both sides of the Qinhuai River in Beijing. The material, spiritual and happiness of the people of Kunming have all been improved.
If Yunjin Bridge made Muchun famous in the market, then Tangchiqu made Muchun a god-like existence in the hearts of farmers.
Before Muchun built water conservancy projects, people here completely relied on the weather for their livelihood. There was "water right next to them, but people didn't know how to use it." So he ordered the construction of a canal to distribute the water to irrigate the fields. "They built embankments based on mountains, chiseled stones and carved wood." It took more than a month to open a canal that was 36 miles long and two feet wide. Thousands of hectares of farmland benefited from the Tangchi Canal.
Common people love Mu Chun, farmers love him, and scholars love him too. If Mu Chun hadn't fought for a place for a Jinshi degree for Yunnan, I'm afraid there wouldn't be a Jinshi degree here for at least ten years. Culture needs to settle down. For example, the Shidun Bridge, the Central Plains has a thousand-year history of stone bridges, but how many years has it been since stone arch bridges were built here? Civilization must come bit by bit.
Therefore, no matter whether they were highbrow or lowbrow, they were all extremely grateful to Mu Chun. After Mu Chun left a will to leave his ashes in Yunnan forever, they spontaneously built a ancestral hall for Mu Chun and worshipped him like a god, so that he would always enjoy the incense and offerings of the people of Yunnan.
Mu Chun and Hu Shanwei dressed up and attended their own "funeral" to scatter their ashes. Seeing the people in the city mourning for him, Mu Chun couldn't help crying. "I'm just doing my duty. Since I'm stationed here, I have to do something, right? But they are so grateful just for doing my duty. Alas, it's because they lived a hard life for too long and were locked up here, never seeing the colorful world outside. If I make a slight change, such as repairing a canal or building a bridge, they will be grateful. Seeing them cry makes me feel embarrassed to die."
Hu Shanwei said: "It's too late for you to regret now. It was you who insisted on doing this. Now you can't even find an excuse to come back to life."
A 35-year-old man, still naughty, even naughtier than his own daughter, he is still naughty before dying, will he be happy by being naughty? Look at your unlucky state now, it's too late to regret.
Mu Chun wiped away her tears and said, "I don't regret it. I want to spend more time with you and A Lei for the rest of my life. I just feel that I am unworthy of so many people coming to see me off. I feel that I could have worked harder when I was in office and made their lives better. Unfortunately, there is no medicine for regret in this world. From now on, the important task of revitalizing Yunnan will fall to Mu Sheng."
Seeing that he was truly moved, Hu Shanwei comforted him, "Your two brothers, Mu Sheng and Mu Ang, are very good. They really treat you as their elder brother. When you were beaten by your father before, they came out to ask for mercy. These two have been in Yunnan for many years. They have no problem fighting wars or caring for people's livelihood. You can rest assured and leave everything to them."
At this point, the fate of Yunnan is in the hands of the Mu family, and it will be passed down from generation to generation. Mu Chun is somewhat relieved, "That's right, no one can keep doing this forever, there will always be a day when they will take over. I am now worried that the emperor has not issued an imperial decree for Mu Sheng to inherit the title. The last time I inherited my father's title was after a hundred days of bereavement leave, and now I don't know how long Mu Sheng will have to wait to inherit the title."
Hu Shanwei said confidently: "It's almost there, I'm sure you're faster."
Mu Chun was puzzled and asked, "How do you know?"
With fifteen years of experience as a palace lady, Hu Shanwei speculated: "The emperor is deliberately delaying the enthronement, waiting for the new emperor to ascend the throne, and then the new emperor will enthronize the new frontier ministers. This is a favor, which is the easiest to win the hearts of the ministers. After all, the title is given by the new emperor. The emperor really has planned everything for the crown prince."
"Also, the emperor must be in poor health, and he is afraid of complications, so he readily agreed to your fake death and handing over power. The ministers guarding the border cannot be delayed for too long, so the emperor must be very weak now, and I am afraid he is already waiting to die. After the emperor dies, the new emperor will take the throne and issue a general amnesty. I guess he will make Mu Sheng the Duke of Qian."
It’s different to have a wife who used to be a court lady. Mu Chun suddenly understood.
However, Hu Shanwei frowned at this time, "You got away so smoothly this time, just like the last time I finished the selection and left the palace. The emperor was uncharacteristically agreeing to us so easily. Could it be that it was really because of Empress Xiaoci's last words?"
"The emperor is a man who values power above all else, and Empress Xiaoci has to come second. I believed it before, but the emperor ultimately wanted to send me out of the capital so he could deal with Mao Xiang and Ji Gang, and not let me get in the way in the palace. As soon as I left the palace, the emperor executed Mao Xiang and issued a warrant for Ji Gang's capture. Now that the emperor has let you go, what will you do next? It's terrifying to think about it."
Once bitten by a snake, one will be afraid of ropes for ten years. Serving the king is like serving a tiger. Hu Shanwei really knows this king too well. He is not the kind of person who will worry about lovers finally getting married. Everything he does has a purpose, but it is not for love, or to protect love.
Mu Chun couldn't figure out why, so he comforted his wife, "Anyway, my father-in-law and his family have been taken to Kunming. I can ensure their safety."
The day when Muchun scattered the ashes was the tenth day of the fifth month in the thirty-first year of Hongwu.
The imperial palace in Beijing, the Palace of Heavenly Purity.
As Hu Shanwei had expected, when the Hongwu Emperor was about to die, Concubine Cui Shu read out a secret report, "Mu Chun's last wish was to have his ashes scattered over Yunnan, and not be buried at Guanyin Mountain in the capital. Mu Sheng built a shrine for him, and it is very popular. Mu Chun has been deified in Yunnan."
After hearing this, Emperor Hongwu nodded slowly, "I finally lived up to Empress Xiaoci's instructions and helped this pair of lovers to be together. Today, I am going to the underworld and reuniting with Empress Xiaoci. I can give her an explanation."
Concubine Cui Shu put down the secret report, handed over a bowl of ginseng soup, and said, "Your Majesty, don't let your mind wander. Drink some ginseng soup and rest for a while. When you have enough energy, I will read the secret report to you."
It was just a bowl of ginseng soup, but Emperor Hongwu took several mouthfuls before swallowing it. Perhaps it was because the century-old ginseng was so nutritious, Emperor Hongwu's cheeks turned red and his eyes were bright, as if he had recovered from his illness all of a sudden.
Only Emperor Hongwu himself knew that it was just a last gasp and that the end was near.
The author has something to say: Another sweet chapter~~~~I am still an angel today.
Happy April Fools' Day to you little angels o(n_n)o ha!