[Still Waiting for Zhaoyang]
At night, it rained heavily.
A raging fire was burning in the prince's residence near the east wall of the imperial palace. The flames were higher than the palace walls and illuminated the sky red, which looked particularly strange on such a rainy night.
On the platform outside the Kangning Palace, a woman hugged the young man tightly in her arms in the rain, murmuring, "Rui'er, mother will make sure you get everything." As she spoke, the woman's hands were obviously shaking, and no one could tell whether it was because of the fear of killing or the excitement of the world that was within her grasp.
With a rolling and dull thunder, lightning suddenly streaked across the sky, illuminating the boy's face in that instant. He looked up to the east with a complicated expression, and the sky-high flames were reflected in his pupils, forming two bright lights.
It was a midsummer night in the thirty-first year of the Yongqing reign.