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Yuan Cixian moved the small stool towards her and leaned over to signal her to speak quickly.
Lu Shuangyu confirmed with her, "We agreed on three baskets, and not a single one can be left out."
She nodded: "If you speak well and vividly, I can teach you the technique of cutting tofu strips tomorrow."
This was what she had studied very hard in Shuzhou.
Lu Shuangyu calmed down and slowly told the story: "My brother is afraid of dogs because of an accident when he was fifteen years old. Seven years ago, my brother passed the imperial examination and was ranked third in the imperial examination. According to the regulations, he had to ride a horse in a parade. I heard about it and came to Chang'an from Luoyang just to see my brother show off. As the saying goes, "A horse gallops fast in the spring breeze, and you can see all the flowers in Chang'an in one day." This parade was really a grand event, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the streets were deserted."
"The No. 1 and No. 2 candidates who rode with my brother that day were both elderly. The young ladies in Chang'an all stared at the young brother and threw flower branches and silk handkerchiefs to him along Zhuque Street to show their affection."
Yuan Cixian listened silently. For some reason, she suddenly felt that the story sounded familiar, but she couldn't remember what it was. She asked, "Did your brother accept it?"
She waved her hands: "Brother, you've been thrown all over the head and face, how can you catch it? There are too many!"
"Then what caused the accident you mentioned?"
Lu Shuangyu gritted her teeth when she said this: "Even at such a glorious moment, I don't know which naughty girl actually used a slingshot to hit my brother's horse! The horse was startled and galloped away. After all, my brother was still young at the time and his horsemanship was not good enough, so he couldn't stop the horse no matter what he did."
Yuan Cixian bit her lip quietly. The story was so familiar that she felt like she had experienced it herself.
She thought about it and asked hesitantly: "Did your brother... fall from power later?"
"That's right!" Lu Shuangyu said indignantly, "My brother was thrown down by the bump. As luck would have it, someone's dog was not tied up properly. Before he could get up, the dog came over to sniff him, then licked his mouth with its fat tongue!" Lu Shuangyu felt sorry for her brother. "It's embarrassing, but my brother has loved cleanliness since he was a child. He vomited all over when he came back, and he has been traumatized ever since. He feels uncomfortable when a dog approaches him."
Yuan Cixian looked pale and asked, "Wasn't the number one scholar that year an old man in his fifties, with gray hair and who could hardly ride a horse?"
Lu Shuangyu nodded: "That person is Zhang Pushe, one of the prime ministers now. He has always been at odds with my brother." After she answered, she asked curiously, "How do you know this?"
How did she know this? Because she was the naughty girl who shot Lu Shiqing's horse with a slingshot!
At that time, she was just nine years old and was about to move to Yaozhou with her parents. The day before she left, she heard about the grand event of the No. 1 Scholar Parade. Thinking that she would never see it again, she ran to join in the fun. She was really naughty when she was young. In her memory, the No. 3 Scholar that year looked particularly arrogant, so she wanted to play a trick on him, so she took out her slingshot and shot him a small stone.
But can she tell this? No, she can't. Lu Shiqing will strangle her to death if he finds out.
"I just guessed." She stood up indignantly, "This is really too much. This evil girl is simply outrageous! Your brother saw her face clearly. I'm going to seek justice for him!"
Seeing her intense reaction, Lu Shuangyu blinked twice and said, "There were too many people. My brother said he couldn't see clearly. He only knew it was a little girl of eight or nine years old."
Yuan Cixian was delighted, but her face showed regret: "Alas, that's a pity, such a pity."
*
In two days, it will be the winter solstice. As the saying goes, "the winter solstice is as important as the New Year." According to the tradition of the Great Zhou Dynasty, a ceremony to worship the heaven must be held in front of the Jinshui Bridge in Daming Palace on this day. The sage will preside over the ceremony, and all officials will gather to pray for peace and prosperity in the country and good weather in the coming year. After that, all civil and military officials in the court will take a seven-day vacation.
Lu Shiqing went to the Daming Palace early in the morning and came back after a busy day. For dinner, he ate the soup made by Yuan Cixian herself, as well as the wontons she made with Xuan and Lu Shuangyu.
Yuan Cixian's soup was edible, but her wontons were ugly. Most of them were crooked and many of them had their fillings exposed. They were even worse than Lu Shuangyu's. Lu Shiqing could tell which one was hers at a glance, but pretended not to know. When his sister got angry and asked him why he only ate Yuan Cixian's wontons, he said in surprise, "I thought you made such bad wontons. I wanted to save your face, but it turned out you didn't."
Lu Shuangyu was so angry that she ate all the wontons she had made. Afterwards, she kept crying to Xuan, saying that her brother had forgotten her because he had a sister-in-law.
However, Yuan Cixian was a guest after all, and there was no need for her to do these things. However, ever since she learned about what happened seven years ago, she had been feeling guilty, fearing that Lu Shiqing would look at her face too much and remember the past one day, so she tried to please him in every way and prepare for a rainy day. And being praised by Xuan as "virtuous", making soup and wrapping wontons was really a good deal.
But Lu Shiqing couldn't help but feel that there was something fishy going on. After all, he could tell when Yuan Cixian was sincere and when she was pretending. So after finishing a dinner full of flattery and going to the ancestral hall to make up for the ancestral worship ceremony he had done during the day, he began to wonder if she had something to ask of him again. He waited for her in the study for a long time, but she didn't come. Thinking that she might find it difficult to speak, he prepared to take the initiative to go to her door.
Lu Shiqing took a shower, walked out of the room, and was about to go to the east courtyard separated by a wall. When he looked up, he saw a person sitting on the dark wall - Yuan Cixian, wrapped in a frost-colored winter coat and his dark blue crane cloak. His feet in lotus shoes were shaking, and he was leaning on the edge of the wall with his hands and looking at the sky. He looked very bored and wanted to climb over the wall to go out and play.
He paused, thinking that her habit of climbing the wall was bad. After all, walls have been a very dangerous existence since ancient times. The poem "Spring fills the garden and cannot be contained, a branch of red apricot comes out of the wall" is not without reason.
He frowned and asked, "Why do you always climb the wall?"
It was quiet all around. Although Lu Shiqing was far away, Yuan Cihan still heard it. She turned her head and saw that he was standing at the stone steps in the courtyard, looking at her from afar.
She jumped down from the wall carefully and walked towards him, answering: "I'm so bored..."
Why don't you look for him if you're bored
Lu Shiqing wanted to say something sarcastic to her, but he felt that her voice sounded depressed, not as cheerful as she had been at the table just now. It was obvious that she must be missing home in the middle of the night during the Winter Solstice.
In previous years, she spent the winter solstice in Yaozhou with her father and mother. Now, with her brother's company, she would not be so lonely. However, she had to stay in his Lu Mansion because of Jiang Birou's trouble.
After all, she had not yet considered this place her home. During the daytime ancestral worship ceremony at the ancestral temple, she would not have taken the initiative to participate due to her awkward status. Although his mother treated her well, she was reluctant to take her to "see the ancestors" before she got married. During the worship ceremony, she probably tacitly agreed that she should stay in the east wing.
She never seemed to tell him about these things that might have made her feel a little aggrieved, and even during dinner she seemed to be in a good mood and didn't show it at all.
Lu Shiqing secretly regretted that he was careless for a moment and did not take her emotions into consideration. His tone was a little softer than usual and he asked her, "Bored? Then what do you want to do?"
Yuan Cixian thought he would say "I'll go to bed if I'm bored", but was surprised to hear that: "Will you accompany me?"
He subconsciously prepared to nod, but thought about what if she asked him to hold the dog again, so he left some room: "Tell me, I'll think about it."
When she heard there was a play, she said bluntly: "I want to play five woods."
Lu Shiqing choked. Wumu is a kind of gambling game, and people often use it to gamble in folk gambling houses. This idea is really a waste of money.
Seeing him choke, Yuan Cixian said aggrievedly: "During the winter solstice in previous years, my father and I played Wumu."
When Lu Shiqing heard this, his heart softened. It just so happened that Zheng Zhuo also liked to play with this thing earlier and left a set of five woods with him. He sighed and agreed, then said, "Don't let my mother know."
She nodded three times: "Let's go to your study and play secretly."
The two of them slipped into the study and took out the wooden furniture. Lu Shiqing asked her, "Do you have any copper coins on you?"
Yuan Cixian shook his head: "No, gambling with money is so boring. My father and I used to compete in drinking."
Lu Shiqing choked again. When he was Xu Shan, he had experienced her terrible drunkenness. At that time, he was forced to calm down because of his status. But if she used the same trick again and pretended to be drunk to tease him as Lu Shiqing, he might not be able to bear it.
He made an excuse, "Do you want my mother to find out that I'm drunk when I wake up tomorrow morning?"
Oh, that's a problem.
Yuan Cixian shook her head: "Then let's use tea instead of wine."
Lu Shiqing continued to refuse: "Drinking tea at night can easily cause insomnia."
She was annoyed by him, so she simply gave him the opportunity to set the rules: "Then what do you say?"
Of course, Lu Shiqing had several ideas in mind, but it was hard to talk about them at the moment, so he decided to wait until he could talk about them later. He said, "Those who throw 'Cai' will record one, and those who throw 'Gui Cai' will record two. The one with more records wins, and you can ask the loser to do something tomorrow."
Yuan Cixian was very generous and immediately slammed the table: "Okay, you go first."
The so-called "five woods" are actually five almond-shaped double-sided dice, one side painted black and the other side painted white. Two of the woods have patterns on both sides, a calf on the black side and a pheasant on the white side, while the other three woods have no patterns on both sides, so there are four different results: calf, pheasant, black, and white.
The so-called "cai" is a combination of five double-sided dice thrown together. There are twelve combinations that can be called "cai", of which four are the most difficult to throw and are called "guicai", which can generally double the silver money.
Lu Shiqing threw out five woods slowly and said, "Two calves and three blacks, all black."
Yuan Cixian's eyes went dark. This was a lucky number with only a one in thirty-two chance of success.
She looked at him blankly: "You cheated me, didn't you?"
He shook his head seriously: "No." Then he held out his hand and gestured, "Please."
She threw away her doubts, a pheasant and four mysterious birds, not even an ordinary "Cai".
Lu Shiqing picked up his pen to take notes: "I'll take notes of two questions in the first round."
The two of them threw five pieces of wood in a round under the candlelight. Yuan Cixian became more and more unbelievable. After an incense stick of time passed, she glanced at the paper at hand and saw that Lu Shiqing had written down eleven, while she only had three.
She didn't believe it and tried desperately to check his hands and feet, forcing him to slow down the throwing speed, and even suggested that they switch positions, but no matter how she jumped up and down, the result was the same.
Half an hour later, Lu Shiqing remembered thirty-two questions and she remembered ten.
Yuan Cixian's face turned green: "Lu Shiqing, do you hang out in the gambling house every day?"
Lu Shiqing drank the water calmly and said calmly: "Do you think I look like someone who has that time?"
She was so angry at his indifferent attitude that she felt a pain in her lungs: "It was me who suggested playing with Wumu, can't you let me?"
He was a little helpless: "It's hard for me to lose this kind of gambling game. It's too much trouble for you."
"… "
He is so capable, why doesn’t he go to the gambling house to make a fortune
Yuan Cixian gritted her teeth and said unconvincedly: "Come again!"
"It's late, time to go to bed."
"You have seven days off in a row, so you can sleep in a little later! Come again!"
Seeing this, Lu Shiqing taught her seriously: "Such a mentality is really not advisable. Many gamblers like you have gone down the road of no return because of this. They lost all their family fortunes but were unwilling to accept it, so they borrowed money everywhere. In the end, they were in debt and their creditors came to their door and broke their legs. They did not have a good end."
"… "
Is he implying that she will not have a good ending in the future
Yuan Cixian pinched her face and looked like she was about to cry: "If the creditor comes to my door, won't you pay the money for me?"
Lu Shiqing just wanted to use the gamblers as an example to persuade Yuan Cixian to give up and give up competing with him. He didn't know that the thoughts in her head were jumping like a galloping horse. She was stunned for a moment, and then said seriously: "My salary is not high, I guess I can still afford it."
Yuan Cixian was so angry that she wanted to hit him.
Lu Shiqing glanced at her tragic defeat and said, "Okay, the winner has been decided. Go back to sleep. We have important things to do tomorrow."
Yuan Cixian stopped making a fuss this time. She blinked her eyes, as if she understood something, and asked, "Could it be that your letter will work?"
He nodded: "The Saint may summon you to the palace early tomorrow morning."
She still didn't know what Lu Shiqing was up to. She had asked him several times these days, but he kept it a secret. So she asked again, "If that's the case, tell me what's in the letter. I'll know so I can be mentally prepared."
He shook his head: "No need to be mentally prepared. Not being mentally prepared is the best preparation. Knowing too much will only reveal your true colors."
Yuan Cixian curled her lips: "Are you questioning my acting skills?"
Of course Lu Shiqing questioned it, but since she was unwilling to go to sleep, he had to say something nice: "No, accompanying the emperor is like accompanying a tiger. It is good to reduce the risk, even if it is just a little bit."
Well, that was a pleasant thing to hear. Yuan Cixian felt relieved and went back to her room. However, she stood up and walked a few steps before turning back again, pouting and saying, "It's so dark outside, won't you see me off?"
Send it, send it, little ancestor.
*
Lu Shiqing ordered the servants to bring a lantern, and personally carried her back to the courtyard, waiting until the candle in her room was lit before leaving. The next morning, Emperor Huining really sent someone to the Lu Mansion to inform Yuan Cixian to enter the palace.
When facing the emperor who is always suspicious, it is best not to hide things that can be concealed, so as to avoid the old emperor from thinking something wrong when he finds out. Therefore, Lu Shiqing had already told him about Yuan Cixian's stay at Lu's house.
When the imperial edict arrived, Yuan Cihan had just finished her breakfast and hurried out, got on the carriage and went to Daming Palace. Lu Shiqing, who was on leave at home, sent her to the gate of the mansion. When he turned back, he suddenly felt that something was wrong.
It was as if a wife living in seclusion at home was sending her husband to court.
He frowned, said "tsk", and went home to read some books and enjoy the winter solstice holiday.
Yuan Cixian arrived at the Purple Palace with some trepidation. When Emperor Huining saw her, he smiled and said, "Cixian, I summoned you to the palace during the winter solstice holiday. You won't blame me, will you?"
The person who was on holiday during the winter solstice was Lu Shiqing. The old emperor meant that he had ruined the rare leisurely time that the two of them had been able to spend together.
Yuan Cixian smiled and said, "Your Majesty, what are you talking about? Minister Lu and I have a long way to go. It's okay! You are anxious to find me, is there something important?"
"It's quite important." He sighed, "Ci Xian, I have found the real murderer who assassinated you in Shangzhou that day. I misunderstood Shao He before. This was actually done by the Jiang family."
Yuan Cixian was stunned. As early as when she was discussing with Xu Shan, she already knew that the people who assassinated her were Prince Ping and Nanzhao, but they were too clean and she couldn't find any evidence. And now Lu Shiqing's letter has caused a huge uproar, dragging the Jiang family into it
Her perfect moment of surprise was exactly what Lu Shiqing meant by "not being mentally prepared is the best preparation." Emperor Huining saw this and explained, "Cixian, you and your sister-in-law don't have a very harmonious relationship. If I had known this, I should have stopped this marriage." After saying this, he sighed in great pain.
Yuan Cixian pretended to be ignorant and said, "Your Majesty, what you mean is that my sister-in-law sent someone to assassinate me because of her long-standing personal grudge against me? But she never leaves the house, how could it be possible..."
Emperor Huining really thought she was naive, and sighed, "Your sister-in-law really can't do it, but the Jiang family still has your sister-in-law's second uncle."
Yuan Cixian seemed even more surprised: "Your Majesty, this happened too suddenly. I need to figure it out." After saying that, he began to scratch his head, pretending that he couldn't figure it out. After a while, he said, "Your Majesty, are you not lying to me?"
"Why would I lie to you?" Emperor Huining showed her the evidence. "This is a secret letter that my informant intercepted yesterday."
Yuan Cixian took it and took a look. This was not the letter that Lu Shiqing had given to Yuan Yu earlier, but it was indeed from the Jiang family. The destination of the letter was Shangzhou, and the content was to instruct a local official to pay attention to the actions of the Yuan family in the near future, and also taught him some ways to deal with it in case of emergency.
Yuan Cixian roughly understood after reading the letter. The reason why the assassins were able to escape successfully despite the comprehensive blockade of Shangzhou must be because there was a spy in the local area, and the official in the letter was probably their contact person.
Jiang Min discovered that this official might be exposed recently, so he sent someone to write this secret letter to remind him. However, he did not expect that it would be intercepted by Emperor Huining.
Yuan Cixian returned the letter to Emperor Huining with a gloomy look, sighed, and pretended to be a little frustrated.
Seeing that she was unhappy, Emperor Huining naturally had to make the decision for her, so he asked, "Cixian, how do you want me to deal with this matter?"
She thought for a moment and said, "Although Jiang Siqing targeted me out of personal grudge, he was loyal to Your Majesty. Cixian must have made things difficult for Your Majesty this time."
This was a very reasonable statement. The old emperor was pleased and said, "It is my duty to make the decision for you. I will do whatever you want me to do."
Yuan Cixian sneered in her heart. Emperor Huining might not be willing to give up a third-rank official for her, so he was just trying to coax her.
At this juncture, the best thing she should do is to retreat in order to advance.
She shook her head and said, "Your Majesty, this matter is ultimately a grudge between my sister-in-law and me. Jiang Siqing is just doing things for his family. I don't blame Jiang Siqing. If you really want to make the decision for me, please deal with my sister-in-law."
This considerate remark is very pleasing to the ear.
Emperor Huining asked, "What do you want?"
"Since my sister-in-law treats me like this, then it's either she or me in our Yuan family. My brother is soft-hearted and may not be able to do it. I hope you can help me kick my sister-in-law out. That way I will feel relieved."
Emperor Huining seemed to think that her angry look was cute, and laughed loudly, "How difficult is that? I promise you."
*
Yuan Cixian chatted with Emperor Huining for a while before leaving Daming Palace. The Jiang family's affairs were not over yet. Her seemingly generous concession today was actually a preparation for the future. Driving Jiang Birou out was only the first step.
She returned to the Lu Mansion with great satisfaction, and the first thing she did was to run to Lu Shiqing's yard to express her gratitude.
Lu Shiqing seemed to have expected that she would come to thank him. He opened the door of the study room and prepared to accept her praise. He pretended to be indifferent and said, "Are you happy? Are you satisfied?"
Unexpectedly, Yuan Cixian's praise really surprised him. She pounced on him and hugged his neck, hugging him and saying, "Lu Shiqing, you are so amazing!"
Lu Shiqing was flattered and was speechless for a moment. He heard her whisper in his ear: "How about I give you a reward? I heard that the reason you are afraid of dogs is because you were kissed by a dog seven years ago..."
Before he could react, he suddenly saw her release his neck, then stand on tiptoe, put her mouth close to him, licked his lips with her tongue, and asked with a smile: "Is that so?"
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