Emperor Yuanyou drank heat-clearing and fire-removing soup for three days in a row, and finally the blisters at the corners of his mouth disappeared.
However, complaints about the new policy continue to come from all over the country.
Emperor Yuanyou had a three-quarter-hour rest time in the morning. When he was in a bad mood, he would take a few young eunuchs to the imperial garden to play mahjong.
This habit was formed after he played shooting sparrows with Chen Jingzong in the autumn of the year before last. Empress Dowager Qi was worried that his arrows might accidentally hurt palace maids, so she asked him to use a slingshot instead.
After running up and down to stretch his muscles, Emperor Yuanyou felt much better and went back to class.
In a blink of an eye, Huayang had already lived in the palace for ten days, and the weather was getting hotter and hotter.
At noon that day, Emperor Yuanyou once again left his mother and ran to Qifeng Palace to have dinner with his sister.
Huayang: "It's such a long journey, you don't mind the hassle."
It takes more than a quarter of an hour to walk from the Qianqing Palace to the Qifeng Hall, not to mention how bright the sunlight is at noon.
Emperor Yuanyou took the towel handed to him by Chaoyun, wiped his hands and face, sat down opposite his sister, picked up the bowl and drank a few mouthfuls of the sour and sweet plum soup, and felt refreshed all over.
"You don't understand. I would rather be exposed to the sun than have meals with my mother." Emperor Yuanyou glanced at Chaoyun and Chaoyue, and spoke to his sister in a slightly lowered voice.
Upon hearing this, the two maids tactfully retreated.
Huayang glared at his brother: "If the Queen Mother heard what you said, she would be sad."
Emperor Yuanyou: "You underestimate our mother. She didn't seem to be very sad when our father passed away." There was a hint of resentment in his words.
Huayang couldn't always go along with his brother: "The Queen Mother definitely cares about you more than me. If you dare to dislike me like this, I will cry, let alone the Queen Mother. You don't have to compare it to the father. For a woman, children are definitely more important than her husband. For example, if you and the father fell into the river together, the Queen Mother would definitely save you first."
Emperor Yuanyou was amused by his sister's analogy. He paused and sighed, "I understand the truth, but I lose my appetite when I see my mother. If you don't believe me, go ask the prince consort if he is happy to have him eat with Chen Ge Lao every day."
Hua Yang smiled and said, "No need to ask, he would probably rather go on a hunger strike."
Emperor Yuanyou laughed out loud.
The food was served and the brother and sister ate and chatted.
Huayang: "It will be soon. Next year, the Ministry of Rites will hold a beauty pageant for you, and your mother will move to the Cining Palace. When your harem is full and you are surrounded by beauties, your appetite will naturally improve."
Unmarried girls will most likely blush when being teased about their marriage, but boys will have a different attitude.
Emperor Yuanyou didn't care: "I have watched you and my mother grow up since childhood. Which woman dares to call herself a beauty in front of me? They enter the palace to take advantage of me."
Huayang almost laughed to death.
Emperor Yuanyou was very confident: "Sister, why are you laughing? Do you dare to say that you have seen a man more handsome than me?"
Huayang looked at his brother carefully, nodded and said, "There are those who are taller and stronger than you, but in terms of handsomeness, my brother is definitely the best."
Emperor Yuanyou said in a dignified manner: "I just hope they can behave themselves and not cause me any trouble."
Huayang: "That depends on your queen's ability to manage the harem. I can't help you at all in this regard, and I don't want to get involved. The reason why I moved into the palace for a long time this time is that I wanted to be willful for a while before you get married. When you get married, you have to worry about state affairs and balance the harem. How can you have time to entertain me, your sister who is out of touch with you?"
Emperor Yuanyou: "That can't be possible. In my heart, all the concubines put together cannot compare to my sister."
Although it was clearly sweet talk, Huayang felt his teeth ache. He glared at his brother and said, "Keep these words to coax your concubines. I am not a teenage girl who will be easily fooled by you."
Emperor Yuanyou said sternly: "How can it be called coaxing? Concubines are all outsiders, and you are my only biological sister."
Huayang: "Okay, I'll remember what you said. If you show partiality to any concubine who bullies me in the future, I will go to my father's mausoleum and cry bitterly."
Emperor Yuanyou thought that his sister would never have such an opportunity.
Huayang did not take her brother's words to heart. Her only hope for her brother's marriage was that he would not follow the example of their father and indulge in lust and harm his body.
Emperor Yuanyou had lunch at his sister's place, rested for quarter of an hour, and then returned in a sedan chair.
Huayang went to the inner room to rest for a while.
In the afternoon, the weather became cooler, so Huayang accompanied his mother to the Imperial Garden to relax.
The mother and daughter walked in front, and the palace servants followed from a distance.
"You two siblings often get together. What do you talk about?" Empress Dowager Qi looked at her daughter and asked.
Hua Yang smiled and said, "Does the Queen Mother want to hear the truth or a lie?"
Empress Dowager Qi also smiled: "It's up to you."
Huayang said nothing.
Empress Dowager Qi did not urge her either.
Passing by a pavilion, Huayang supported his mother and walked over, asking the palace servants to wait outside at a distance.
There were stone tables and stone benches in the pavilion, but Huayang pulled his mother to sit on the beauty bench on the east side, then leaned over to his mother's ear and said, "We usually just chat, but at noon today, I asked my brother why he had to go all the way to my place to eat, and he said that he lost his appetite after seeing you."
Empress Dowager Qi wanted to keep smiling, but her heart felt like it was stabbed by her son's words, and she was caught off guard.
She looked at her daughter.
Huayang was also looking at her mother. She didn't know what her mother was thinking, but she saw a hint of sadness in her mother's eyes.
Huayang was also very sad. His mother was obviously devoted to his brother, but it was only because of the problem in the way she loved him that his brother accumulated so much resentment.
Huayang hugged his mother's arm, leaned against her shoulder, and whispered, "Mom, I know you always treat me like a child and think I don't know anything. I really don't understand political affairs, but I have my own experience of family affairs. Why are my brother and I closer to the emperor? It's not because the emperor is better than you, but because he is willing to indulge us. Children are the easiest to coax, and of course they all like a loving parent like the emperor."
Empress Dowager Qi just looked across the pavilion expressionlessly.
"Mother, I am grown up now and can understand your hard work and that you hope that my brother will grow up to be a wise ruler. When my brother was young and his temperament was not stable, you should have been strict. Your efforts have not been in vain. Look at how well my brother is doing now. He gets up early and goes to bed late to study hard. He also takes the initiative to learn how to handle court affairs from the ministers. He has the courage to implement new policies and is not timid when summoning those princes. He is calm and measured."
"Mother, all this is your credit. You are a smart person, but some things are more clear to the bystander. I sincerely feel that my brother is getting older and older, and you should slowly let go. If you continue to interfere in his every move so harshly, he will get tired, irritated, and will become more and more resistant to you. Mother, do you really want it to become increasingly difficult for you and your son to be close to each other, and in the end only be filial piety on the surface?"
They are all her family, and Huayang doesn't want to see her mother and brother become like they were in her previous life.
Huayang remembered that when she went to her brother to plead for the Chen family, her brother refused to see her. Huayang had no choice but to ask her mother, but her mother seemed to have aged ten years at once, full of helplessness about the matter. Her mother did not say much, and the palace maid beside her told her in tears that her mother had already gone to see her brother, who coldly warned her not to interfere in government affairs.
The tone is cold, how cold can it be
At that time, Huayang couldn't figure it out, nor did she have the mind to think about why her mother and brother became like this. But as time in this life got closer to the time of her rebirth, all of Huayang's previous puzzles were answered.
My father-in-law’s seventh sin is deceiving the emperor and committing treason.
But this crime cannot be entirely pinned on my father-in-law.
It all started in May of the previous life, not long after the Dragon Boat Festival. One day my younger brother held a banquet in the West Garden. It wasn't a formal banquet, but he just had a sudden impulse and asked the palace servants to place his lunch there. It was just a meal, and my mother didn't care about him.
At that banquet, the younger brother got drunk and called two singing girls from the Jiaofang Division to sing him new songs from the folk music hall. However, the queen mother had set rules for the Jiaofang Division, not allowing them to use lascivious music to seduce the younger brother. The new folk songs were all vulgar, so the two singing girls dared not sing. The younger brother got angry and took out a sword to kill the two girls. He was stopped by Cao Li and others, but he was spared the death penalty. The younger brother still cut the hair of the two singing girls.
In fact, most of the playboys in the society may have done such things, and even worse things.
But the queen mother, who wanted her brother to become a wise ruler and had disciplined him strictly since childhood, would never tolerate this.
When the news reached the ears of the Queen Mother, she was furious. She called her younger brother to kneel as punishment and asked her father-in-law to draft a confession of guilt for her younger brother. She ordered her younger brother to read out his mistakes in front of all the civil and military officials at the court meeting and to inform all the officials in the world.
It was the height of summer and Huayang was enjoying the heat in the Princess's mansion. By the time she got the news, her brother had already publicly admitted his mistake at the court meeting.
Huayang hurried into the palace.
In the past, whenever her brother had something bothering him, he would complain to her. But that time, he kept silent. When she wanted to ask him, he just walked away.
The queen mother believed that her brother had brought this upon himself and that she had to teach him a lesson in this way so that he would not do such foolish things again.
The Queen Mother has always been good at preaching, and Huayang couldn't refute her. Besides, it didn't take long for his brother to regain his former cheerfulness, so Huayang didn't think much about it.
Only now did Huayang understand that his younger brother hated his mother and father-in-law at that time.
He is a son, and he can never punish his mother. He can only vent all his resentment on his father-in-law who has always cooperated with his mother to treat him harshly.
To deceive the emperor and commit treason, deceiving means to deceive or mislead, and committing treason means to seriously offend the emperor.
Chief Minister Zhang Pan and others did not mention the incident of the edict of confession of guilt. Instead, they listed many memorials from local officials that their father-in-law had concealed from their younger brother. They criticized their father-in-law for often scolding his younger brother loudly for unnecessary trivial matters when he was teaching his younger brother to read.
But everyone understood that the real cause of this crime was the edict of repentance that was personally drafted by the father-in-law and announced by his younger brother at the court meeting.
This time Huayang went to the palace just to see if her brother would drink again and force the singers from the Music Bureau to sing. If it happened again, she would stop her mother.
But it was already past the time when this incident happened in the previous life, and the younger brother had no intention of listening to the music. His favorite pastime became playing mahjong.
Huayang believes that his brother has changed and will not make such a mistake again.
But people always have times when they feel bored and irritable, and times when they make mistakes impulsively. Huayang hopes that his mother can change. There are obviously better ways of persuasion. She should not be so harsh anymore, and should not hurt his brother's feelings anymore. She should also not let his brother completely regard his mother as the queen mother, a decoration that he must be filial to but does not want to.
Huayang raised his head and looked at his mother who had remained silent all the time.
As she moved, Empress Dowager Qi also lowered her head and saw a line of tears rolling down the corners of her daughter's eyes.
Empress Dowager Qi smiled and wiped her daughter's tears with a handkerchief: "I didn't cry, why are you crying?"
Huayang said sadly: "Because I feel sorry for you. You are my mother. If you feel bad, I feel bad too."
Empress Dowager Qi sighed slowly.
Huayang began to worry: "You won't be angry, will you? You won't confront your brother?"
Empress Dowager Qi sneered, "Isn't it too late to worry about this now? If I confront him, the first person he will hate is you."
Huayang was a little scared, but not too scared. She hugged her mother and acted like a spoiled child: "I've been worried for a long time, but for the sake of you and your brother, I'm willing to take this risk. Besides, if you really go to find your brother and he hates me, then I will hate you too. I don't believe you're willing to never see your daughter again in your life."
Empress Dowager Qi was indeed reluctant to let her son go. Her son already resented her, and now that she had even lost her little cotton-padded jacket, she became a truly lonely person.
After a while, she touched her daughter's head and said, "Don't worry, I'm not that stupid. I listened to what you said."
Hua Yang asked curiously, "Will you change it?"
Empress Dowager Qi said helplessly, "It's impossible not to change. I don't want my own son to not even want to eat with me. At least you have a consort by your side. What's the point of living in this deep palace if even your brother doesn't come to see me?"
Huayang suddenly remembered something and a smile appeared on his face.
Empress Dowager Qi thought her daughter's smile was not serious and asked, "What are you laughing at?"
Huayang leaned close to his mother's ear again and whispered, "I heard from my aunt that she gave you a gift specifically to relieve your boredom."
Empress Dowager Qi: …
She grabbed her daughter's hand and hit her hard: "I told you a long time ago to stay away from her!"
Huayang: "If you hit me, I'll go complain to my brother! We are much closer than you two!"
Empress Dowager Qi: …
(End of this chapter)