Chapter 127 The Sixth Miss Returns Home

A few days later, the autumn hunting party set off to return to the capital.

It was September when I left Beijing, and now it's October. The maple leaves are ablaze with red, and the ginkgo leaves are a carpet of gold, adorning the capital with beauty.

Qiu Heng and the Princess of Jiayi rode in the same carriage. Along the way, they chatted about incense and the future, which made the journey less boring and tiring.

"Thank you so much for taking care of me these past few days, my godmother. I'm sorry to have troubled you."

"No trouble at all, no trouble at all. Your family must be worried about you since you've been away from home for so long. Go back soon." Princess Consort Kang instructed someone to send Qiu Heng back to the Yongqing Marquis's residence, secretly relieved.

Finally, we got rid of that girl.

The carriage of Prince Kang's mansion stopped in front of the Yongqing Earl's mansion, and the servants hurriedly went to report.

"Sixth Miss is back!"

The old lady gracefully picked up her teacup: "Let her in."

A short while later, Qiuheng walked in and bowed to the old lady, saying, "Grandmother, your granddaughter is back."

"Yes, it's good that you're back." After carefully examining Qiu Heng for a few moments, the old lady asked, "You haven't caused any trouble for the Kang Prince's residence, have you?"

"No."

The old lady instinctively didn't believe it and was about to ask for details when the Earl of Yongqing strode in.

"Heng'er is back. Tell Grandpa about the interesting things that happened in the hunting grounds."

As the only person from the entire Yongqing Marquisate to go on the autumn hunt, Qiuheng is now the person Yongqing Marquis finds most pleasing to the eye.

"Something interesting?" Qiu Heng thought for a moment. "It's pretty much the same every day, nothing particularly special. Except the Crown Prince's residence caught fire, and the Crown Prince is trapped in a high-rise building—"

"Pfft—" The Earl of Yongqing spat out a mouthful of tea, tea leaves clinging to his beard. "The Crown Prince's residence is on fire?"

Isn't that special?!

"And then what happened?"

"Lord Xue has rescued the Crown Prince."

The old lady hurriedly asked, "Is it that Imperial Envoy Xue Han?"

Qiu Heng nodded.

The old lady couldn't help but laugh: "Lord Xue is quite capable at such a young age."

Yongqingbo glanced at the old lady with a puzzled look in his eyes, thinking to himself, "That Xue fellow is quite capable, what's the old woman so happy about?"

"Grandfather, Grandmother, your granddaughter has been away for so long, and now that she's back, she wants to pay her respects to Father."

"Go ahead." The old lady nodded, and after Qiu Heng left, she said indifferently, "The Lord is always thinking about going on the autumn hunt. See what's so good about it. Even the Crown Prince's residence was flooded. If something happens, who knows how many people will suffer..."

Uncle Yongqing felt uncomfortable listening to this: "When has anything ever happened before, and it just happened to be Liu Yatou who was caught in it?"

The old lady was stunned: She had forgotten about the sixth girl's strangeness!

Not long after, a servant came in to report: "Master, Madam, people from the Prince of Fu's residence have arrived."

Prince Fu's Mansion?

The Earl of Yongqing and the old lady exchanged a glance, then hurried off to meet with the people from the Prince of Fu's residence.

The man who came was a steward. Upon seeing the Earl of Yongqing and the old lady, he politely bowed and explained his purpose: "Your sixth daughter saved our little princess. The prince and princess specially ordered me to bring a gift of thanks."

The Earl of Yongqing was both excited and puzzled. After the people from the Prince's Mansion left with their gifts, he immediately summoned Qiuheng.

"Heng'er, what happened with you saving the young princess of the Prince of Fu's mansion?" The Earl of Yongqing asked eagerly as soon as he saw Qiu Heng.

"You mean Princess Rongning? That day, Princess Rongning went to play in the mountains and forests, but she encountered an injured and wandering black bear, so I went and lured the bear away..."

The old lady felt suffocated by what she heard, and seeing Qiu Heng's nonchalant attitude, she felt even more suffocated: "You wretched girl, you're simply—"

"Heng'er did a great job!" Uncle Yongqing laughed heartily.

He didn't dare to be happy when he saw the thank-you gift sent by the Prince of Fu's mansion, for fear of making a mistake. He never expected that the sixth girl would really save the little princess!

After the initial excitement subsided, the Earl of Yongqing felt that the gift from the Prince of Fu's residence was insufficient: "Such a thing must have reached the Emperor's ears by now, right?"

"When the emperor heard about this, he summoned me and asked me what reward I wanted."

Yongqingbo tensed up: "What did you say?"

“I said I wanted to come with my family next year, and His Majesty said then we should come together at the Yongqing Marquis’s residence during the autumn hunt next year.”

The Earl of Yongqing fell silent for a moment, and even felt like crying.

He'd been thinking about this for so long, and it was all achieved so easily?

"Heng'er has truly brought honor to the Earl's mansion," the Earl of Yongqing exclaimed. "Why didn't you say that when you first returned?"

"It's nothing serious, I just couldn't think of it for a moment."

"You silly child," Uncle Yongqing shook his head, still worried, and asked, "Is there anything else?"

"There's one more thing."

Even though it was the Earl of Yongqing who asked the question, he was surprised to hear Qiuheng's response: "Is there something else?"

Are autumn hunting days always this colorful? I've never heard people who came back from hunting mention it before!

"Consort Yu arranged for someone to send Lin Chengfeng a wooden doll shaped like an older sister—"

"What?"

Before Qiu Heng could finish speaking, the Earl of Yongqing and the old lady exclaimed in surprise.

"Then, in front of everyone, they searched Lin Chengfeng and took the wooden doll out of him, and brought him before the Emperor."

Yongqingbo's vision blurred, and his voice trembled: "And then?"

At that moment, Yongqingbo was extremely grateful that he hadn't been there.

That pressure was too much for his old bones to handle.

“I told His Majesty that the wooden doll was a gift from me to Lin Chengfeng, and he believed me.”

The old lady breathed a sigh of relief, then her expression changed again: "Sixth girl, would His Majesty not, would he not have bestowed a marriage upon you and Lin Chengfeng?"

The eldest granddaughter's husband became the sixth granddaughter's husband?

What a terrible thing!

The Earl of Yongqing breathed a sigh of relief: Thank goodness, the Earl's mansion is not in dire straits.

As for which granddaughter's husband is the grandson-in-law, that's a trivial matter compared to the family's overall situation.

"No. Lord Xue and Young Master Cui told His Majesty that they were fond of me, so His Majesty may be finding it difficult to choose at the moment."

The old lady slapped her thigh hard.

That's it, Sixth Sister is alright again!

After that brat was gone for over a month, she almost forgot this familiar feeling!

Yongqingbo glanced at the old lady: Has this old woman been driven mad by Sixth Girl?

"Grandfather, has our Earl's family offended Consort Yu?" Qiu Heng was honest with the Earl of Yongqing and his wife about fraudulently claiming the wooden doll because they were all in the same boat, and their heads would fall together.

"No, how could the Earl's mansion have the opportunity to offend Consort Yu, unless your eldest sister—" When Consort Qiu was mentioned, the Earl of Yongqing only felt disgust.

"What about the Lin family? Did the Lin family offend Consort Yu?"

“The men of the Lin family are stationed on the border year-round, and only Lin Chengfeng, the youngest son, remains in the capital. How could he have offended the Imperial Concubine?” Yongqing Earl was filled with lingering fear. “It must be that your eldest sister received a reward for going on the autumn hunt this time, which displeased the Imperial Concubine.”

Qiu Heng silently picked up a pear and started munching on it.

“Heng’er, do not tell anyone about the wooden doll except your grandmother and me, not even your father.”

"Granddaughter understands."

Before dinner even started, the story of the Sixth Miss's battle with the black bear had already spread throughout the Earl's mansion thanks to the generous gift sent by the Prince of Fu's mansion.

Qiu Song pulled Qiu Feng to Qiu Heng's side, his eyes filled with a mixture of excitement and awe as he looked at her: "Sixth Sister, I heard you killed a black bear with a single slap, is that true?"