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After enjoying the splendid and dreamlike Praying Lanterns, Yin Muxue and her group went to Yongdu’s largest restaurant, Four Seasons Pavilion.
The Duke of Anguo’s mansion had a reserved private room at Four Seasons Pavilion, so even though seats were in high demand on the Lantern Festival, they were greeted by a waiter and led to the second floor as soon as they arrived.
The private room on the second floor was not only spacious, but also had a great view outside the window. Yin Muxue and the other girls played by the window for a long time before returning to the table to sit down when the dishes were served.
Yin Zheng followed them the entire time. When they were by the window, she was by the window. When they returned to the table, she returned to the table. Even when they gathered by the window to joke around, not including her, she could stay by the window alone, quietly admiring the scenery outside.
An Rujian, the younger sister of the Son of the Duke of Anguo, felt pity for her being deliberately ignored by everyone, so she specially sat next to her when taking her seat and started a conversation with her.
Then An Rujian discovered that, personality aside, Yin Zheng was actually a good person to confide in. She wouldn’t interfere with other people’s speeches, but that wasn’t because she was perfunctory. On the contrary, she was very patient. She would take every word you said to heart, and then, when you thought she wasn’t listening at all, she would give you feedback.
That little bit of feedback seemed insignificant, but it just so happened to touch An Rujian’s heart, making An Rujian couldn’t help but get more and more involved and talk more and more deeply.
An Rujian wasn’t without wondering if she had said too much, but once she met Yin Zheng’s eyes full of focus and tolerance, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of trust rising in her heart.
Of course, she also discovered that Yin Zheng’s eyes were blue, and asked curiously.
Yin Zheng told her, “My mother is a ‘Hu’ Concubine.”
Yongdu was prosperous, and there weren’t few overseas people doing business back and forth. Moreover, “Hu” Concubines were good at dancing and had unique styles. Not to mention ordinary wealthy families, even the Emperor’s harem had several “Hu” Concubine concubines. Therefore, An Rujian wasn’t too surprised, and only thought that Yin Zheng’s eyes were really beautiful.
The Son of the Duke of Anguo couldn’t stand his sister being so close to Yin Zheng, and interrupted their conversation several times on various pretexts, but not only did he fail, but he was also glared at fiercely by An Rujian, and couldn’t help but feel a little depressed, and became even more disgusted with Yin Zheng.
The atmosphere at the banquet gradually became lively, and more and more empty wine pots piled up. The young masters and young ladies talked about the past and the present. As they talked, they began to talk about the female officials and female generals since the founding of the country – the reason why the Daqing’s social atmosphere could be so easy going now, where girls could show their faces and freely go out on the streets, and eat and drink at the same table with men, was all thanks to these women who were destined to be remembered in history.
Everyone chatted enthusiastically, and praised these women to the skies. For example, the Son of the Duke of Anguo, he especially admired Emperor Tian Zu’s niece – An Wu junzhu.
This junzhu had extremely high talent in martial arts, and fought her way to the title of An Wu on the battlefield. If she hadn’t died young, the troops under her command would definitely have become the eighth great base of Daqing.
Influenced by her brother, An Rujian also knew a lot about An Wu junzhu’s life. Seeing that Yin Zheng didn’t know much about it, she told Yin Zheng in detail, from how An Wu junzhu joined the army, to the famous battles An Wu junzhu had fought, and then to An Wu junzhu’s righteous act of killing her own relatives, besieging and suppressing her biological father, Prince Qi, who intended to rebel.
But this time, Yin Zheng didn’t act as a perfect listener, but said, “If she didn’t have military power in her hands, Prince Qi wouldn’t have had the intention to rebel.”
Hearing this, the Son of the Duke of Anguo finally couldn’t bear it anymore, “What do you know!”
His tone was cold and hard, causing everyone at the table to stop talking and laughing unconsciously.
The atmosphere became a little awkward, but the Son of the Duke of Anguo, who was in a fit of anger, didn’t realize it at all, and even said directly, “How can a weak and easily bullied woman like you, with no opinions of her own, be worthy of evaluating An Wu junzhu!”
“Brother!” An Rujian loudly stopped her brother’s words, then turned to Yin Zheng and said, “Second Miss, don’t be offended, my brother is drunk and spoke carelessly. Please don’t take it to heart.”
Yin Zheng’s face was pale and unsightly. Her lowered eyebrows and trembling shoulders let people know how embarrassed and scared she was at the moment, but she still shook her head and forced a smile, “It’s okay, it’s also my fault. I shouldn’t have evaluated others without knowing anything.”
Being belittled in person and still being able to be so wronged and accommodating really confirmed the Son of the Duke of Anguo’s comment of “weak and easily bullied,” making people feel pity, and also making people… look down on her.
The contempt for Yin Zheng made them quickly forget about this episode, and after everyone had forgotten about her, Yin Zheng said to An Rujian, “I’m not feeling well, I want to go back first.”
An Rujian stood up, “I’ll send you.”
…
The carriage with the Yin Residence mark carried Yin Zheng away from Four Seasons Pavilion. An Rujian turned around and returned upstairs. Before she could push open the door, she heard criticisms and rejections coming from the private room, all directed at Yin Zheng, and even Yin Muxue’s voice was among them.
An Rujian had a headache. The interaction just now had made her feel very fond of Yin Zheng, and she didn’t want to talk about Yin Zheng’s faults with the people in the private room, but she also didn’t want to make the situation ugly for a Yin Zheng she had just met. In the end, she had no choice but to leave a message with her brother’s guard, and then took her maidservant and left Four Seasons Pavilion, returning to the Duke of Anguo’s mansion.
On the other side, Yin Zheng returned to the residence in a carriage, and went to greet Old Madam Yin and Madam Yin in a proper manner after arriving home.
Old Madam Yin noticed that she was in a bad mood, so she specially kept her in the courtyard to eat a bowl of sweet fermented rice soup with dumplings.
Madam Yin asked her why she didn’t come back with Yin Muxue. Yin Zheng said that she suddenly felt unwell and didn’t want to burden her sister and cause her to miss the Lantern Festival celebrations, so she came back alone.
It wasn’t a matter of just a year or two that Yin Zheng’s body wasn’t in good condition, so Madam Yin didn’t suspect her of lying and let her go back.
This could be considered a disappointing return. Feng Nian and Guo Jie also lost the joy they had when they went out, and were particularly silent when distributing things to the sweeper maids in the courtyard.
Yin Zheng took a bath and went to bed to sleep. In her dream, she dreamed that she was being pinned to the ground and strangled. The person strangling her had disheveled hair, and most of her appearance was blocked, only revealing her red lips with a crazy smile. Those red lips were very beautiful, so beautiful that Yin Zheng could recognize them at a glance. Those red lips were exactly the same as herself in the mirror before going out today…
Yin Zheng woke up from a nightmare.
When she opened her eyes, she found a piece of paper with words written on it covering her face. The paper rose and fell gently with her breath, and the fine touch rubbed against her cheeks, just like the feeling of that person’s hair falling on her face in her dream.
Yin Zheng took off the piece of paper with one hand, and blocked her eyes with the back of her other hand, and said, “Don’t do this next time, it’s scary.”
The mysterious black-clothed boy squatting by the bed chewed on an unknown fruit, and grunted noncommittally.
The nightmare made Yin Zheng’s hands and feet go numb. Yin Zheng took a long time to sit up, picked up the paper to read.
There were only two lines of words written on the paper, saying that the Crown Prince had ordered a search of the Sitian Tower early tomorrow morning.
After Yin Zheng finished reading, she handed the paper back to the boy. The boy twirled the paper and ran to the candlelight, staring at it earnestly until the paper was burned to ashes, and then returned to the bed and continued to squat, waiting for her instructions.
However, Yin Zheng leaned on the head of the bed and closed her eyes, not knowing whether she was thinking, or had fallen asleep again.
The boy was silent and patient. His legs went numb in the middle, and he even got up and stomped his feet twice. After a long while, he heard Yin Zheng say, “Hide the gunpowder in the dungeon, and have all our people withdraw from the Sitian Tower.”
The boy tilted his head, a little puzzled, “Why?”
They had planned to use the Praying Lanterns as a cover to transport a large amount of gunpowder into the Sitian Tower, and once the seventeenth day of the first lunar month arrived, they would blow up the Sitian Tower. To prevent the gunpowder from being discovered during this period, they had dug a place to hide the gunpowder under the Sitian Tower’s dungeon. Even if someone came to search, they only needed to hide the gunpowder in the dungeon. Why did they have to withdraw their people from the Sitian Tower?
It was important to know that the Sitian Tower was not easy to enter. They had spent a lot of effort to place people inside. To withdraw them so rashly would inevitably arouse the Sitian Tower’s vigilance.
Yin Zheng opened her eyes, her eyes full of sleepiness, “I have a bad feeling, let’s withdraw first.”
The boy suspected that Yin Zheng was perfunctory, after all, this wasn’t the first time. Last time he asked Yin Zheng why she chose to blow up the Sitian Tower on the seventeenth day of the first lunar month, Yin Zheng said it was because it was her birthday that day, and it was a good day.
It was the Female Instructor who had infiltrated the Yin Residence to give Yin Zheng lessons who told him that the seventeenth day of the first lunar month was the first day that Yongdu resumed the curfew. The Yongdu guards, who had been on edge for three days and three nights in a row, would inevitably relax their vigilance, making it the best time to act.
Before leaving, the boy asked Yin Zheng a question, “Do you hate An Wu junzhu very much?”
The boy was Yin Zheng’s close-body guard. Unless he was dispatched as a messenger pigeon, he would always follow Yin Zheng. He had also seen Yin Zheng’s encounter at the Four Seasons Pavilion, so he was very curious.
Yin Zheng lay down and covered herself with the quilt, “I don’t hate her, I just don’t want to stay there anymore.” So she deliberately said the wrong thing to anger the Son of the Duke of Anguo.
After the boy left, Yin Zheng closed her eyes and fell asleep again.
She didn’t tell the boy that what she had just said wasn’t perfunctory. She really had no reason at all, and made the decision just now based on a strong and somewhat evil premonition in her heart.
As for whether this decision was right or wrong, Yin Zheng planned to decide tomorrow.
Her body was also really not well. Not sleeping in the middle of the night caused her head to ache as if a hand was stirring in her skull, making her so uncomfortable that she just wanted to slit her throat.
…
The next day, the sixteenth day of the first lunar month, the third and last day that Yongdu lifted the curfew.
Yin Zheng woke up late that day. When she woke up, there was no one in the room. The clear chirping of birds could be faintly heard outside the window, as well as the rustling sound of a broom sweeping across the ground.
There were no second-class maids in Yin Zheng’s courtyard, only Feng Nian and Guo Jie, two main maidservants. In addition, there were three sweeper maids who were responsible for managing the courtyard. They couldn’t enter her room, and naturally didn’t dare to come in and wake her up without permission.
In other words, she and Feng Nian and Guo Jie, the three mistresses and servants, had all overslept.
The morning sun fell on her dressing table through the window lattice, and the fresh and cool air made people feel particularly comfortable. Yin Zheng got up, changed her clothes, walked to the door, and called a maid in the yard to bring her hot water to wash her face.
As for Feng Nian and Guo Jie, they must have not slept well last night. Yin Zheng planned to let them sleep a little longer, and call someone to wake them up later.
While Yin Zheng was putting on makeup for herself, Feng Nian ran over. She was probably quite frightened by the fact that she had overslept. Feng Nian didn’t even put on her clothes properly, and her hair was disheveled.
Yin Zheng laughed at her, told her to put on her clothes and comb her hair first, and then go to the kitchen to get breakfast for herself.
Seeing that Yin Zheng wasn’t angry, Feng Nian was once again in awe of how good her young lady’s temper was!
“By the way,” Yin Zheng asked Feng Nian, “Where’s Guo Jie?”
Unlike Feng Nian, Guo Jie was the most attentive and punctual. Usually when Feng Nian couldn’t get out of bed, Guo Jie would wake her up. Why was it Feng Nian who woke up first today?
“I called her, but I just can’t wake her up no matter what.” Feng Nian combed her hair at a very fast speed, and said as she walked out, “I’ll go to the kitchen first. I’ll have Cui’er take another look at Guo Jie’s side.”
After speaking, Feng Nian ran away. Yin Zheng continued to sit in front of the dressing table, fussing with her hair and face.
At this time, Yin Zheng didn’t know what a chaotic day she was about to face.
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