Chapter 228 The Wedding Dress is Like Fire
On the eve of the wedding, the villa in the southern suburbs of Beijing was brightly lit, as bright as day.
According to the wedding customs of Dasheng, the bride and groom are not allowed to meet the day before the wedding.
Thus, Pei Yunjing was "ruthlessly" blocked from entering, while Tang Li was surrounded by a group of wedding attendants and palace maids for her final makeup test.
Inside the room, on a rosewood shelf, hung the stunning wedding dress that had captivated the world.
That was a peerless treasure, "Phoenix Soaring," which Pei Yunjing had created by employing three hundred top embroiderers from the Imperial Clothing Bureau over three months, working day and night.
"Your Highness, please change your clothes."
The matchmaker's voice trembled; she had never seen such a luxurious wedding dress in her life.
The entire piece is woven from precious "Luminous Brocade," a fabric that shimmers like flames under candlelight.
The skirt is embroidered with nine phoenixes spreading their wings as if about to take flight, with each phoenix's eye inlaid with a ruby the size of a grain of rice.
When Tang Li put on this wedding dress and stood in front of a bronze mirror as tall as a person.
A chorus of inhalations filled the room.
It's so beautiful, so beautiful that it's almost blinding.
The fiery red enveloped her exquisite figure, and the long skirt spread out on the ground like a blooming red lotus.
She turned her head slightly, and the woman in the mirror had beautiful features, yet she also exuded a composure and magnanimity that came from having experienced life and death.
She was no longer the trembling concubine's daughter who had just entered the royal palace.
Instead, it is Pei Tangli, who will soon stand shoulder to shoulder with the Regent.
"It's so heavy..."
Tang Li touched the heavy gold thread on her sleeve, but couldn't help but smile: "It's really beautiful."
...
Outside the window, the night was deep.
A tall, slender figure silently landed under the crabapple tree in the inner courtyard.
Pei Yunjing was dressed casually, yet his air of nobility was undeniable. He stared at the tightly closed, carved window, his usually steady heartbeat momentarily losing its rhythm.
"Your Highness..."
The guards standing at the door were about to bow when Pei Yunjing raised his hand to stop them.
"Shhh."
He made a shushing gesture and waved away the guards.
According to the rules, he shouldn't have come.
But he couldn't resist; he wanted to see her, even just for a moment.
Pei Yunjing walked to the window, stretched out his finger, and gently poked a hole in the window paper, peering inside through the small hole.
With just one glance, his breath caught in his throat.
As far as the eye could see, there was an overwhelming expanse of red.
The red wedding dress, illuminated by the candlelight, shimmered and glowed, like a blazing fire.
The woman standing in the center of the firelight was giving a shy yet happy smile to herself in the mirror.
Red, a glaring red.
Pei Yunjing stared at the splash of red, and for a moment, the scene before him seemed to distort.
The floodgates of memory were flung open, and he felt as if he had returned to the Valley of Broken Souls, where snow was falling heavily.
At that time, she was also wearing a red dress.
But that red was stained with blood.
It was the blood from her wounds, cut by the sword's energy, as she tried to save him. It was the blood she smeared on his face when she held him and cried out in the snow.
Back then, red represented death, despair, and the sin of almost killing her with his own hands.
That scene was a nightmare that haunted him countless times in the dead of night.
"..."
Pei Yunjing's fingers trembled slightly as he subconsciously pressed his hand to his chest.
There, the pain had once made it impossible for him to breathe.
But now, he looked out the window at the vibrant, smiling crabapple tree, which was twirling around admiring its skirt.
The suffocating pain gradually subsided.
Instead, a warm current flowed through his body, running along his heart meridian, making his eyes slightly hot.
This time, the red is no longer blood, no longer death.
It is joy and fulfillment.
It is proof that she will soon take his surname and become his only wife.
"very nice."
Pei Yunjing murmured softly, his fingertips gently stroking the window frame, as if caressing her cheek from afar.
He finally washed away the bloodstains from her body with his own hands and draped the most beautiful red in the world over her.
"Tangli".
Outside the window, in a voice only he could hear, he made a vow for tomorrow:
"tomorrow……"
"I have come to take you home."
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