Huayang slept for a full night. When he woke up, he found that it was already dawn and Chen Jingzong was sleeping under another quilt.
The bed is so big that there is more than enough space for another person to sleep between them.
Huayang looked at his face in surprise.
Chen Jingzong must have come back in the middle of the night, but she didn't notice it at all. He kissed her so deeply when he left, but he was so well-behaved and honest when he came back.
Is it because keeping watch all night is too tiring
Huayang tried to move as quietly as possible and slowly stood beside the bed. It was a neither too hot nor too cold morning at this time of year. Huayang went to the bathroom wearing only a lotus green silk dress.
Chen Jingzong opened his eyes and saw her slender back.
Her silk dress was as thin as a cicada's wing and soft in texture. She walked so lightly, and her loose sleeves and hem fluttered slightly, as if she was an immortal about to fly away on the wind.
In the bathroom, Huayang stood beside the screen and washed his hands carefully with clean water.
If I ask the maid to come in and serve me now, it will definitely wake up Chen Jingzong, so I might as well go back to bed and lie down for a while.
After the thought came to an end and his hands were washed, Huayang dried them with a clean white towel, tidied up his messy hair, and walked towards the door with curtains hanging.
As soon as she came out, a big hand suddenly reached out from the side, covered her mouth, and pressed her against the wall from behind.
Huayang was so scared that his heart almost jumped out, and the first thought that came to his mind was the assassin!
As she struggled and looked back in horror, she met Chen Jingzong's teasing face. His eyes were clear and his spirits were high. How could he not look sleepy at all
Fright turned into anger, and Huayang glared at him fiercely.
Chen Jingzong turned her around and said, "I have rinsed my mouth."
Before Huayang understood what he was saying, Chen Jingzong grabbed her waist, almost lifted her toes off the ground, and then bent down to kiss her.
Huayang didn't dodge.
When he finally let go of her lips and kissed her neck instead, Huayang gritted his teeth and said, "Not here."
Only a rough guy like him would choose to do this at the door of the toilet.
Upon hearing this, Chen Jingzong held her upright in his arms, walked to the bed, and threw her onto it somewhat roughly.
The bed was thick and soft, so Huayang didn't feel any pain. When she turned over, Chen Jingzong also pressed down on her.
When the sound of maids walking around outside was heard, Chen Jingzong finally let go of Huayang, jumped off the bed, and put on his clothes one by one.
Huayang grabbed the quilt to cover himself and asked him, "Are you okay last night?"
She was still panting, and her voice was soft and weak.
Chen Jingzong glanced at her and said, "Can you still sleep comfortably for a whole night if something happens?"
Huayang knew this, he was just asking casually.
Chen Jingzong fastened his belt and said, "Take your time to pack. I'll go pick up the Crown Prince first."
Huayang nodded.
They and the guards had to dress up as ordinary people when going out today, but Huayang still wore silk inside and fine cloth outside.
"Is the princess still dressed as an unmarried girl?"
Chao Yun asked with a smile while holding the princess's soft long hair and gently stroking it.
Huayang hummed.
Girls from ordinary families have fewer rules to follow before they get married than married women. It can be said that it is cute if a girl is playful and lively. However, if a young woman wanders around and goes to crowded places, she will appear to be unsteady, and the elders will criticize her, and outsiders will think she is frivolous.
If Huayang went out as a princess, no one would dare to comment on how she acted, and she was not afraid of being talked about these details, but she concealed her identity. In order to reduce the attention of the people around her, it was more convenient for her to dress up as an unmarried girl.
Besides, she is only twenty, not much different from being seventeen or eighteen years old.
Chao Yun: "Princess, you are so beautiful. Not to mention that you are only twenty, even if you are ten years old, you will be no different from a fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl. Your Majesty is the best example."
Huayang smiled.
In her previous life, she only lived to the age of twenty-four before being reborn, and she had never seen what she looked like at the age of thirty.
I think it will be as Chaoyun said, right? The Queen Mother worked so hard to maintain such a good condition, not to mention that she has a much easier time than the Queen Mother.
After everything was packed up, Chen Jingzong and the prince also came over.
The prince also changed into casual clothes. When he saw his sister dressed as a girl, he looked normal. After all, the sisters he had seen before were all girls, just dressed more noblely.
Chen Jingzong looked at Huayang with ambiguous eyes.
"How should we address each other?" The prince looked at his sister and his husband and asked curiously, "My sister and I are still brother and sister, but what about your husband?"
If my sister dresses like a bride, he can naturally call the prince consort brother-in-law. Now...
As soon as the prince finished asking, he thought of something and said with a smile, "The prince consort can pretend to be our cousin."
He and his sister are both of royal blood, so even if he is pretending, it is not appropriate for the prince consort to pretend to be their biological brother. Cousin is just right. Anyway, he does have a cousin who is of the same age as the prince consort.
Chen Jingzong: "I dare not. I will just pretend to be your highness's attendant."
The prince looked at his sister and said, "Is this too unfair to you?"
Chen Jingzong lowered his eyes and said, "It is a blessing for me to be able to accompany Your Highness and the Princess on a trip."
It was just a name, and Huayang really couldn't call Chen Jingzong "cousin" in such a close way, so he decided, "It's settled."
What the prince felt was the hierarchy between his sister and the prince consort. It must be because his sister was too cold towards the prince consort that the prince consort did not dare to pretend to be their cousin.
This was similar to the relationships between adult men and women that the prince had seen in the palace. His father's concubines were all very respectful to him, with his mother being the only one who was not so humble and restrained.
The three of them had breakfast and then set out incognito.
Chen Jingzong walked beside Huayang, while Cao Li and a guard sent by Emperor Jingshun always kept a distance of about three steps to protect the prince. Other guards such as Zhou Ji were secretly distributed on the left and right to ensure that they could respond to any accidents at any time without disturbing their masters' interest.
For Yu Huayang and his sister, this was the first time they walked so freely in the streets of the capital.
Although the brother and sister are eight years apart in age, they have the same playful spirit at this time. When Huayang sees something interesting, she will pull the prince over to it, and when the prince sees something rare, he will also pull his sister over to it.
Chen Jingzong followed silently, keeping watch on the surroundings while observing the siblings. He felt that accompanying the siblings out was similar to accompanying his nephews.
The people in front formed a circle. It turned out that some gangsters were performing the art of breaking rocks with their chests.
The prince pulled his sister in.
Chen Jingzong, Cao Li and others surrounded the brother and sister in a semicircle, with guards surrounding them behind them.
Chen Jingzong looked at Huayang.
Huayang's ears turned red and he deliberately stared at the stone placed beside him.
The performance began. The strong man lay on the ground, and two helpers lifted a big stone and pressed it on his chest. The people cheered at first. When one person smashed the stone with a hammer and the strong man stood up unharmed, the people began to cheer again.
The prince's eyes sparkled, and he turned around and asked Chen Jingzong: "Can you handle it?"
Chen Jingzong smiled and said, "Any strong man can do it, because the strength of the hammer is borne by the stone, and the man only bears the weight of the stone."
The prince didn't believe it, so he randomly asked a guard to go and try it.
The strong man is unwilling. Isn't this just ruining his place
Cao Li snorted and threw a silver ingot to him.
The strong man then went around to the side.
When the guard also broke a large stone easily, the smile on the prince's face disappeared and he walked away with little interest.
After that, the prince would lose interest in all the tricky street acrobatics after Chen Jingzong explained the techniques involved. He thought it would be more fun to watch the women bargaining at the stalls.
After strolling for a long time, the prince had a meal at a restaurant at noon. He sat by the window, looking at the bustling crowd below, and said disappointedly: "Outside the palace, it's just like this."
Hua Yang smiled and said, "That's because my brother has seen all the truly rare treasures and skills in the palace. The common people have little experience and are more likely to be pleased by those acrobatics."
The prince looked at his sister and asked, "Do you like these, sister?"
He was referring to the hustle and bustle on the street, which seemed lively but was actually all ordinary and trivial.
Huayang: "I like it. This is the flavor of life in the human world."
The prince said: "But they are having fun, it has nothing to do with us."
The prince has no interest in matters that have nothing to do with him.
Huayang: "How can it be irrelevant? The people don't have to worry about life and death, or about food and clothing, so they can think about eating, dressing up, and going out for a stroll. Father and the ministers have to deal with a lot of political affairs every day, just to let these people live such a leisurely and ordinary life every day, instead of being displaced and homeless. The people of the world are all the people of the father, and they are also our relatives. Seeing that the relatives are living well, my sister is also happy and proud of the father."
The prince looked at the ordinary smiling faces on the street again, and thought of the people who had been oppressed by the King of Xiang for many years and whom his sister had rescued in Lingzhou City. He also thought of how the people in the entire town of Chen Ge Lao's hometown had moved to the mountains in the rain to avoid the flood, and he suddenly realized something.
Chen Jingzong looked at Huayang.
Huayang picked up a dish for his brother in a friendly and natural way: "I'm getting off topic. Try the spareribs here. They are crispy and tender, and melt in your mouth. I think they will suit your taste."
The prince actually understood that his sister was taking the opportunity to teach him a lesson.
But he didn't mind such a reminder. After all, what his sister said was true and it happened in front of him.
We watched the fun in the morning and Huayang took his brother to buy things in the afternoon.
However, the brother and sister were both raised in a world of wealth and luxury. They looked down upon the good things that ordinary people loved but could not afford. The shopkeeper looked at them with unkind eyes, which hindered the momentum of the brother and sister as well as Chen Jingzong and others, so he could not get angry.
As they walked, they passed by a small grocery store with several colorful paper kites on display.
Both spring and autumn are suitable for flying kites.
The prince recalled that when he was a child, he liked flying kites, but his mother would never allow him to fly them for too long and hoped that he would focus on studying.
"Sister, I want to buy two kites and fly them at your house."
He had almost finished walking around Qianmen Street, but at this moment, the prince wanted to find a quiet place to fly a kite to his heart's content.
Huayang would of course satisfy his brother's simple request.
The brother and sister each chose one. The prince looked at Chen Jingzong and also picked one for him. It was a big black eagle.
After returning to the princess's mansion, the three of them went straight to the garden without changing into silk clothes.
There is a green meadow beside the lake in the garden.
After the kite flew high, the prince lay on his back on the grass, facing the sunlight, staring at the tiger-head kite whirring in the sky.
He felt like a kite, with the axis sometimes in the hands of his father and mother, sometimes in the hands of the cabinet ministers.
The prince suddenly wanted to cut the thin thread.
"Prince Consort, does the Lord Minister still care about you now?" The prince tilted his head and asked the Prince Consort who was sitting on his left.
Chen Jingzong: "He is in charge of his own affairs. I will listen to what is right and ignore what is wrong."
The prince: "Then are you right more often, or wrong more often?"
Huayang was sitting on the other side. She didn't look at the two of them, but she was a little nervous, afraid that Chen Jingzong would say something wrong.
Don’t think that my younger brother is just playing around and seems like he is just a little kid. In fact, he has a lot on his mind.
Chen Jingzong looked at Feng Zheng and said, "It's hard to tell right from wrong when we were kids. He was more rule-conscious and I was more playful, so our personalities just didn't match. Now that I'm an adult, he doesn't discipline me much. Plus, I rarely make mistakes, so he doesn't have the chance to discipline me. In the past two years, he's been telling me to be polite in front of the princess and not to offend her like he did before. And when His Highness left the palace this time, he called me to his study and gave me a lot of instructions, asking me to make sure His Highness is safe."
At this point, Chen Jingzong shook his head helplessly, "He is just too long-winded. It seems that without his reminder, I can leave Your Highness out."
The prince laughed. His mother did the same, as if he would definitely get into trouble if he left the palace.
However, when he grows up, will his mother let him take care of himself and stop interfering in his affairs
"Sister, I want to go back to the palace." The prince sat up.
Huayang was surprised and said, "It's still early for sunset, why don't you play for a while?"
The prince said: "I have had a great time. Go back soon so that mother can rest assured."
Huayang asked someone to prepare a carriage, and she and Chen Jingzong sent her brother back to the palace.
On the way back, Chen Jingzong rode in the same car with her.
Hua Yang looked at him and said, "You are quite good at talking in front of your brother."
Chen Jingzong sat upright, his eyes fixed on her bright red lips: "Not as good as the princess, your tongue is as beautiful as a lotus flower."
Huayang: …
(End of this chapter)