Due to some reasons, a large number of users are suddenly unable to open the webpage to access this site today. Please remember the domain name of this site (first letter + org.dot.co) to find your way home!
Lu Shiqing glanced at her finger bones that had turned white from pinching, not understanding where her nervousness came from, and frowned, "What's wrong?"
Yuan Cixian choked.
She originally didn't want to disturb Shao He anymore, and she had also decided not to mention the secret between them. After all, there were too many people in this world who wanted to know about the future, and if someone with ulterior motives noticed Shao He's rebirth, it would easily bring her disaster.
But the current situation is that Xi Ju may have guessed Shao He's secret and is planning to use her. If Yuan Cixian continues to remain silent and even Lu Shiqing conceals it, it is hard to guarantee that it will not lead to a bigger mistake.
For now, Shaohe is indeed not likely to be easily persuaded by Xiju, but she has indeed endured too much. From now on, the road ahead is long and the changes are even more unpredictable.
People's hearts are complicated and changeable, so she didn't dare to take the risk.
She looked at Lu Shiqing steadily, and after a long silence, she asked, "Have you ever thought that Shaohe might be a little different from us?"
Lu Shiqing blinked lightly, motioning her to continue.
"Last winter, she seemed to have anticipated this and sent you a secret letter reminding you to be careful when you go north. On the first day of the first lunar month this year, I asked her for the jade ring, and she waited for me at her house as if she knew it in advance." She pondered for a moment and tried to explain in a way that most people could accept. "You also said that she had no chance to get in touch with those court secrets. In this case, isn't she a little too predictable?"
Lu Shiqing narrowed his eyes slightly.
Yuan Cixian knew that he had probably heard some of it, so she waited for him to think for a moment before continuing, "If she already knew the future, then all these things can be explained."
Lu Shiqing glanced at her and saw that she looked serious and had no intention of joking. He shook his head and said, "If she had known earlier that the Crown Prince of Nanzhao wanted to ask the Saint to marry her, there would be no way to avoid it."
"Because the future has changed." Yuan Cixian said firmly, "Perhaps the future she knows is only the future that once existed."
Lu Shiqing pulled the corner of his mouth, as if he still disagreed: "You mean to say that she has lived through a life and lived it again, and now, the world has become different from the life she experienced. If so, who changed this life? If she is the only one who knows, why didn't the world develop in a direction that is beneficial to her, but instead made her embark on the path of marriage? And you..." He paused, "Why are you so sure about such a strange and incredible thing?"
Lu Shiqing was so smart that his three questions hit the nail on the head, causing Yuan Cihan to freeze in her tracks.
He just stared at her with an expressionless face, as if he could see through her.
She opened her mouth, but the answer that was about to come out of her mouth was choked back in her throat by his sharp gaze.
Yuan Cixian swallowed, lowered her eyes and recomposed her emotions. She looked up and was about to muster up the courage to tell him about her dream, but she saw that his expression had returned to normal. He smiled and said, "You can't be the one to change the world. If you knew the future like her, would you still be deceived by me for a year?"
Yuan Cixian was slightly stunned, and said quickly: "I am different from her, but I also..."
"Okay." Lu Shiqing interrupted her, "I know about Shaohe's matter. I will try to keep an eye on Nanzhao. Go to sleep."
After he said that, he quickly packed up the case files, and for some reason, he even turned off all the lights in the room. He went back to his bed in the darkness and lay down quietly without saying anything else.
Yuan Cixian's heart suddenly started beating very fast.
She had a hunch that he had guessed something, so he deliberately didn't give her a chance to speak. He didn't want to hear her say it herself, that she had approached him in the beginning just to use him to change the future she knew.
Lu Shiqing... such a sober and self-controlled person, what kind of emotion could make him choose to live a self-deceiving way
He lay flat beside her, a foot away from her, neither hugging her nor holding her hand.
A bed, so close yet so far away.
Yuan Cixian suddenly felt uncomfortable and depressed in her heart, as if blocked by a huge rock weighing tens of millions of pounds, and even breathing became difficult.
After being so depressed for a while, she finally couldn't help it and leaned towards him. Seeing that he seemed to be asleep and had no reaction, she reached out and tugged at his sleeve, whispering: "Lu Shiqing, I can't sleep, hug me..."
Lu Shiqing still did not move.
She waited for a while, afraid that he was disgusted by her approach with ulterior motives, and she did not dare to bother him anymore. She turned her back without saying a word, and huddled back into the bed with her arms as a pillow. Suddenly, she heard a sigh from behind her, and then an arm wrapped around her.
Lu Shiqing hugged her tightly from behind, put his face close to hers and whispered, "Hold me tight, go to sleep."
Yuan Cixian felt a lump in her throat, and she turned over to face him, put her arms around his waist, and nodded, "You go to sleep too."
*
There was no sound around. Yuan Cihan was in a daze, her mind full of Lu Shiqing. She was afraid that he would remain silent and struggle in secret, which would make her feel awkward. She was also afraid that he would question her and make her feel uncomfortable.
Thinking like this, it was already the middle of the night. Yuan Cixian was finally tired and sleepy, and fell into a drowsy sleep. However, it was not a restful sleep, and even in her dreams was Lu Shiqing.
She returned to Lu Bridge. It seemed to be drizzling, and the raindrops made subtle noises on the surface of the Lu River. In the dark and damp bluestone bricks, she heard faint and mournful cries coming from the bridge, as if a team was slowly approaching Lu Bridge.
There were not many people in the group, and it took them a long time to walk from one end of the bridge to the other. From beginning to end, only a few people could be heard sobbing quietly.
Yuan Cixian seemed to know what all these noises meant, and she was so anxious that she almost broke free from her shackles and ran out.
But she was still trapped in the stone. When they walked away and everything became quiet, she heard an old man passing by sighing and saying with emotion: "He was once a very rich and powerful person, but he is gone without enjoying a few days of happiness. What a sin, what a sin."
Another old man replied: "I'm afraid he was taken away by the wronged spirits."
A young man was also discussing: "Where did the wronged ghost come from? So many people died on the day of the coup, it's not impossible that one of the family members got bold enough to come and seek revenge."
"But I heard that Lu Zhongshu died of illness. It is said that he was stabbed in the chest a few years ago, and then he developed the disease."
"Who cares? It's murder after all! It's pitiful for Madam Lu. Not only did she send her son away, but the Lu family didn't even leave any descendants!"
The more Yuan Cixian listened, the more anxious she became, her heart almost jumping out of her throat, but suddenly she heard someone calling her name, and each voice seemed to pull her out of the abyss.
"Ci Xian."
She suddenly opened her eyes and saw that it was bright all around. It was probably early morning. Lu Shiqing was sitting beside the bed, dressed neatly, staring at her with a frown.
Her head was covered in sweat, her hair was wet, there were still traces of tears on her face, and her eyes were bloodshot.
Seeing her wake up, he seemed relieved, reached out and touched her cold forehead, and asked, "What's wrong?"
She seemed to have finally come to her senses. She grabbed the hand he extended to her, climbed up with him, and slammed into his arms very fiercely without saying a word.
Lu Shiqing was slightly stunned, hugged her back, looked down at the top of her head, and asked, "What did you dream about?"
Yuan Cixian was choked by the question and kept shaking her head.
Lu Shiqing stopped asking questions and just held her in silence, rubbing her shoulders with his thumb. When she calmed down a little, he said, "It's Chen time. Get up, wash up, and have some breakfast."
Yuan Cixian seemed not to hear it, and kept thinking about what he heard in his dream. Suddenly he looked up and asked him anxiously, "Did the doctor really say that you were fine when he examined you last time?"
Her voice was hoarse and slightly nasal.
Lu Shiqing didn't know what this sudden question meant, and after a pause he guessed a little: "Are you talking about my knife wound?"
She nodded anxiously. Last time she learned the truth, she had carefully examined his wounds, and later forced him to invite the doctor who treated him last time for another examination. The doctor said that he had recovered well and had no underlying illness, so she was relieved.
Lu Shiqing frowned: "It's really nothing." He couldn't help it and asked her, "What did you dream about?"
Yuan Cixian didn't know how to start.
How could she tell him that she dreamed that he died, and there were only a few people attending his funeral, and that the people were mocking and gossiping about him. How could she tell him that Xuan Shi had to bury her son before her, and in the end, she didn't even have a grandchild.
She gritted her teeth, shook her head, and climbed onto his shoulder, saying, "Let's get another doctor to take a look at us."
Lu Shiqing was really a little amused, but he quickly calmed down. After a long silence, he sighed and stroked the tears on her face: "Tell me everything you know. What you wanted to say last night but didn't say, tell me now."
Originally the timing was right last night, and Yuan Cixian had also mustered up the courage to speak out. However, this new dream disrupted her thoughts, and her head felt like a ball of twine, and she couldn't make sense of anything for a moment.
She frowned, pressed her slightly swollen temple, and said, "Let me think about where to start."
Seeing how exhausted she looked, Lu Shiqing didn't want to make her recall the painful past, so he said, "Just let me ask you the questions and you can answer them."
She said "hmm".
"I thought about it for a long time last night, and I think, maybe what you said is true. You, like Shao He, know some things that ordinary people don't know. For example, when you brought down the Jiang family last time, you were able to reveal the key information of 'Lingnan'. It was not something you learned by eavesdropping, but there was another secret. Another time earlier, you told me that you had a dream in which you died miserably. In the dream, the Bodhisattva told you that there was a young man in Chang'an City. If you could find him as a backer, this dream would not become a bloody reality. These are not empty words, are they?"
Yuan Cixian bit her lip, hesitated for a moment, then nodded, lowered her eyes and said, "Not only me, but the entire Yuan family died tragically."
She transformed herself into a stone and told him little by little what she had heard from the people, from the rebellion of her father and brother to the tragic death of the entire Yuan family, and then to the redress of the case many years later.
After hearing this, Lu Shiqing slightly tightened his hand on her waist and asked her, "Who redressed the Yuan family? What have I been doing all these years?"
Yuan Cixian shook her head: "I don't know."
"Then how do you know that the young man is me and that he should look to me for support?"
She then explained how he had initiated a palace coup, forced the saint to abdicate, and assisted the Thirteenth Prince to ascend the throne.
Lu Shiqing's face changed slightly when he heard this. He was silent for a while, and asked as calmly as possible: "Is this what you said once, that you dreamed of me becoming a high-ranking official?"
Yuan Cixian didn't expect that he remembered her joke so clearly. She nodded and said, "They call you Lu Zhongshu, so you must be the Zhongshu Ling, the prime minister, and the emperor's teacher."
Lu Shiqing frowned: "What about the Sixth Prince? Your hostility towards him is because he failed to ascend the throne in the end?"
She shook her head. When she was describing the Yuan family case just now, she didn't mention Zheng Zhuo's case, fearing that Lu Shiqing would have trouble accepting it for a while, and wanted him to take his time before bringing it up later. But now she had to answer, "It's because someone said that I was once the Sixth Prince's fiancée, but later, my father and brother both died under his knife."
Lu Shiqing choked up, and it took him a while to come back to his senses, but he didn't immediately make a conclusion. He continued to ask: "After the Thirteenth Prince ascended the throne, have you found out where he is?"
Yuan Cixian frowned: "The information is too vague. I only vaguely judged that he died after me and before His Majesty the Thirteenth Prince ascended the throne. Some people said..." She found it a bit difficult to speak here and paused.
Lu Shiqing seemed to have guessed it: "They said I killed him?"
She nodded. "That's roughly what they mean. They said that you overthrew several princes in the court over the years. Maybe the sudden death of the Sixth Prince was also related to you."
She frowned after she finished speaking, fearing that this matter would really offend people, so she added: "But everything I dreamed about was what I heard, and most of it was just casual talk from ordinary people who had no political acumen, so the big things may be credible, but the details may not be true."
"I know." Lu Shiqing frowned and said, "I will make a judgment."
Just as he finished speaking, he heard a knock on the door. It was Cao An who said that there had been some progress on Cai He's matter and he wanted to report to him.
He was silent for a moment, then let go of Yuan Cixian and said, "I'm going to go out for a while, you get up and eat something."
Given Yuan Cixian's personality, she would have naturally told him to leave quickly, but now she was a little embarrassed as she had just woken up from a nightmare, and she held on to his sleeve and refused to let go.
Lu Shiqing looked down and said helplessly: "Don't worry, your backer won't fall for the time being."
She felt even worse after hearing this, and threw her two snow-white arms around his neck: "It's not just for now, and you can't fall down in the future."
Lu Shiqing nodded: "It won't fall in the future."
She hummed, stared at him for a long while, and said seriously, "Lu Shiqing, if I were given the chance to go back to a year ago, I swear I would treat you sincerely from the beginning, but I may not be so lucky to start over again, so from now on, I will also be your backer, will you feel better?"
Lu Shiqing sneered. He was already quite comfortable. There were so many powerful people in the capital, and she chose to use him. This was his ability, and he was happy.
But he didn't want to give up this opportunity to be repaid by her, so he said: "I don't need a backer, let's change something."
"What do you want?"
He lowered his eyes and looked at her and smiled.
He wanted lots and lots of hills.
If you like "Holding on to My Dear Lover", please collect it: () "Holding on to My Dear Lover" has the fastest update speed.