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“Doctor Yu, when will my elder sister wake up?” Wei Mingxuan hurried forward, his voice laced with anxiety as he saw Doctor Yu emerge from the room.
Since dawn yesterday, when they moved into this small courtyard, his elder sister had been in a deep sleep for nearly twenty hours!
In the outer hall, the eyes of the others also fell upon Doctor Yu.
Under the gaze of a dozen pairs of eyes filled with hope, Doctor Yu, though reluctant to dash their expectations, could only shake his head helplessly. “I don’t know,” he replied.
The atmosphere in the room immediately grew heavy.
Doctor Yu’s voice softened as he offered comfort, “She’s been extremely anxious and exhausted for a while now. If it continued, it could have caused problems. Now that she’s fallen ill, it’s better to have all the hidden ailments in her body surface sooner rather than later. As long as she can pull through, it’s ultimately more beneficial than harmful.”
But the question was…
“Can she pull through?”
Logically, a physician shouldn’t speak without certainty, but Doctor Yu truly didn’t want to discourage the family. He stroked his beard, his expression resolute as he replied, “Miss Wei has a strong spirit. She will surely overcome this.”
“……”
In a haze of confusion, Wei Yunlan seemed to hear many voices.
At first, it was Mingxuan’s panicked helplessness, followed by the concern and worry of others. There seemed to be a low, masculine voice as well, a voice that had whispered in her ear at the moment she collapsed.
But what it said, she couldn’t recall. She only remembered that the voice had called her “Miss Wei.”
In her hazy state, it felt as though many people had come to her side. She heard her mother’s soft murmur, asking her how long she intended to sleep and if her wounds were painful.
She heard her father’s self-reproaching tone, blaming himself for not protecting his family, for making her worry about so many things.
She also heard Mingxuan inquiring about when she would wake up, and her sister-in-law’s suppressed sobs.
Several times, she heard these voices, and Wei Yunlan wanted to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt heavy. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t open them.
In her final struggle, her consciousness suddenly sank into the space. Unexpectedly, the space wasn’t its usual form, but rather the scene she had seen in her dreams – her grandfather playing with Heiyun.
Mist swirled, the grass was lush, and clear streams flowed, as if injecting life into the space.
However, this scene didn’t last long.
Through the mist that enveloped the space, Wei Yunlan seemed to catch a glimpse of the scene outside. In the image, her great-grandfather, clad in white robes and radiating an air of celestial wisdom, stood on a high altar, observing the stars and divining the future. His expression then changed drastically.
And then, standing on the altar…
Outside, the man in the bright yellow robe whispered for a while, and together they made a difficult decision.
She faintly heard her grandfather ask, “Your Majesty, have you truly made this decision?”
To which the man in the bright yellow robe firmly replied, “To exchange my lifespan for the peace and health of the common people, I have no regrets.”
Immediately afterward, her great-grandfather took out a piece of jade, and the man in the bright yellow robe pricked his fingertip, letting ten drops of blood fall onto the jade tablet depicting the Guanyin lotus platform.
The images shrouded in mist gradually dissipated, and the space underwent a tremendous change. After the earth shook and the mountains trembled, the grass and streams vanished completely. The once vibrant space turned lifeless, and the black dog that had been running in the space was now surrounded by white mist in a small area, falling into a deep slumber.
At that moment, the appearance of the space had become nearly indistinguishable from what she usually saw.
Recalling the dramatic changes and the scenes glimpsed through the mist, Wei Yunlan suddenly understood why the space had transformed in such a manner.
She remembered having heard that the year she was born, there had been a natural disaster in Great Yong. However, the late Emperor quickly issued a self-reproaching edict and distributed a large amount of disaster relief grain and silver to appease the heavens and soothe the hearts of the people. Under his governance, the natural disaster did not bring insufferable suffering to the common folk.
The people all said it was the late Emperor and the celestial master who worshipped the heavens and calmed the wrath of the heavens.
Now, it seemed there was more to it than that.
The man in the bright yellow robe in the earlier image was none other than the late Emperor.
The disaster was quelled so quickly, evidently because he and her great-grandfather had used their own lifespans and this ancient jade of space to protect all of Great Yong from calamity!
She never expected that this space held such a great secret.
In shock, Wei Yunlan’s hazy consciousness seemed to awaken significantly.
In her daze, she sensed something wet beside her. When she opened her eyes, she saw Heiyun squatting at the edge of the bed, continually licking her fingers.
The wetness beside her was its drool.
Ningshuang entered with a wooden basin, and upon seeing her young lady awake, she nearly dropped the basin in surprise. “Miss, you’re finally awake!”
“How long have I been sleeping?” Wei Yunlan thought about the voices she had heard and felt that it must have been quite a while.
“For three whole days.”
“Tingxue, quickly go tell Master and Madam that the young lady has woken up!”
Ningshuang wrung out her handkerchief and approached the bed, wiping the beads of sweat that had formed on Wei Yunlan’s forehead. She continued to share what she guessed was the matter her young lady most wanted to know. “Miss, we are still in Lianzhou. Master and Madam have rented a small courtyard in town…”
“We were thinking that if you hadn’t woken up today, we would have left and headed straight west towards Cangzhou. They say there’s a very renowned Yaowang Valley there.”
Cangzhou was still five or six hundred miles from Lianzhou. Wei Yunlan thought to herself, thank goodness she had woken up in time. Otherwise, with such a detour, getting to Beiguan would likely be delayed.
“What about the mine situation?”
“Everyone was apprehended. You wouldn’t believe how lively Lianzhou has been lately. Even here in this small town, we heard that the heroes of the martial world have hung the Northern Barbarian leader and the corrupt officials who colluded with them on the city gate of the prefectural city. It’s not just Lianzhou, the entire Northland probably knows about these officials in Lianzhou colluding with the Northern Barbarians and illegally mining iron. Even Concubine Ling couldn’t protect them. Lianzhou’s Provincial Governor, Pei Jiang, has been ordered to be executed soon!”
Upon hearing this, Wei Yunlan understood. The news had spread so quickly, it must have been the work of Tianshu Pavilion.
The Pavilion Master of Tianshu Pavilion played this beautifully, using the common people to pressure the court. Even if Emperor Xiaoming didn’t believe that Pei Jiang and the others had rebellious intentions, as long as he cared even a little about his reputation, he had to deal with the matter seriously.
“Ningshuang, help me up.”
Wei Yunlan noticed that she had more strength than before. As she was about to get up, she saw Madam Gao and the others enter from outside.
Each of them was no less joyful and excited than Ningshuang.
The room, which was quite spacious, was suddenly filled with people. At this moment, they didn’t pay as much attention to etiquette as they did in the capital. Wei Maolin and Wei Mingxuan also entered the room.
Seeing Wei Yunlan awake, Wei Mingxuan finally breathed a sigh of relief. These past few days, he had felt that it was his fault that his elder sister was sick.
“Big Sister, you’re finally awake!”
Wei Yunlan smiled reassuringly at him, then turned to Wei Maolin and asked, “Father, this place is quite far from Beiguan. Shouldn’t we start preparing to leave?”
“No need to rush. We bought a map of the Northland from Xiao Huwei and replanned our route. We still have enough time to get there. You can rest for a few days, and then we will depart.”
“Xiao Huwei?” Wei Yunlan couldn’t remember such a person.
Wei Maolin nodded. “A few of the people originally escorting us were injured in the fight with the wolf pack. Tianshu Pavilion sent a few more people. Xiao Huwei is the one who saved you on the slope that day.”