Chapter 51 Separation

The dark and empty palace gate was like a giant beast lurking in the darkness, quiet, cold and depressing.

Li Fu has left.

It was clearly spring, but Chu Ran seemed to feel the barren coolness of autumn.

When Chu Ran returned to the yard where he lived, he fell directly onto the bed with a scare.

When I woke up again, it was already the next morning.

The early morning sunlight shone through the gap in the door and fell on the back of Chu Ran's head, feeling warm. Chu Ran turned over, with his arms and legs spread out, lying on the bed with his arms and legs spread wide. His face was illuminated by the sunlight, which made Chu Ran unable to open his eyes.

Chu Ran just lay there lazily. He raised one arm and placed it over his eyes. After a long time, he slowly opened his eyes.

He didn't want to move at all.

So Chu Ran lay alone in bed for a long time until he heard footsteps outside the door. Chu Ran thought it was someone coming to urge him to go to duty at Qiluan Palace.

He only took yesterday afternoon off, so logically he should have gone this morning.

But now, it was obviously more than half an hour late.

He had to force himself to open his eyes; the other person had already entered the room and closed the door.

Blocked from the sun's rays, Chu Ran could finally see the person in front of him clearly.

Zhao Zhongyi sat on a stool next to the round table, looking at Chu Ran, and couldn't help but sigh.

Chu Ran saw that no one was there to urge him to report for duty, so he turned over and planned to continue sleeping.

From behind, Zhao Zhongyi's voice clearly reached Chu Ran's ears, "Why, do you really want to leave the palace?"

Chu Ran didn't want to answer him.

Zhao Zhongyi had spent his entire life in the palace, so it was not necessarily possible that he could understand why he wanted to leave the palace.

"Look at you." Zhao Zhongyi said with disdain, and then said: "Early this morning, someone outside the palace sent a message. We didn't open it and put it here. If you want to see it, you can get up and read it later."

Zhao Zhongyi stood up, put his hands behind his back, and was about to leave. When he reached the door, he turned his head and looked at the half-dead Chu Ran, and then said, "There is still a long time to go. Who knows what will happen in the future? Now that he has become like this, what can he do in the future?"

"Someone from Concubine Li's side has already asked for a few days' leave for you."

After saying this, Zhao Zhongyi slowly left Chu Ran's room.

After Zhao Zhongyi left, it was a long time before Chu Ran struggled to get up from the bed.

He walked to the table and opened the envelope on the table with some trepidation.

There was a letter inside.

The moment he saw the letter, Chu Ran's dull eyes lit up slightly, and he read it carefully, word by word.

He recognized it at a glance; it was Li Fu's handwriting.

The handwriting was even more sloppy and brief than usual. One could tell at a glance that it was written in a hurry.

"I have heard the imperial decree. If you have anything to say, please find Xing Ji."

After that was a string of addresses. Chu Ran guessed that it should be where Uncle Xing lived, but the address was in the capital.

This is strange. Uncle Xing was actually left in the capital by Li Fu? Didn't he go to Yunzhou with him?

The last sentence Li copied was: "Looking forward to your reply."

Chu Ran stared at the words "Looking forward to your reply" for a long time in confusion.

Does this mean that they can continue to communicate frequently in the future?

This timely letter made Chu Ran's body, which had been dead for a long time, gradually warm up.

Although it still feels very uncomfortable, it seems not as uncomfortable as before.

Li Fu left, but it seemed that he did not leave completely.

Moreover, although Li Fu left, he left Uncle Xing behind. Chu Ran seriously thought that Li Fu left Uncle Xing in the capital because there might be something important that he wanted to entrust to Uncle Xing, because Li Fu was not confident in entrusting it to anyone else, so he had to entrust it to Uncle Xing.

However, Chu Ran suddenly thought of something else.

In the original text, Xing Ji was assassinated while accompanying Li Fu to Yunzhou, and died while trying to save Li Fu. But now, the development of the matter has deviated from the original text, and Xing Ji was left in the capital.

It seems like Uncle Xing doesn’t have to die, but...what about Li Fu?

Will Li retaliate against him...

Chu Ran shook his head anxiously.

Probably not.

He had already reminded Li Fu last night, and Li Fu would definitely pay attention to his own safety. Li Fu was so smart, he would definitely be able to escape this disaster.

Yunzhou was a long way away, and Chu Ran was worried for as long as Li Fu took to return. To the point that he was completely focused on whether Li Fu could reach Yunzhou safely, and he no longer cared about whether he could leave the palace again in his lifetime.

However, along the way, Chu Ran did not receive any news about the team being attacked until several months later when he learned that they had returned to Yunzhou.

In the past few months, in addition to worrying about Li Fu's safety, Chu Ran also asked Zhao Zhongyi to find someone to go out of the palace for him to meet Xing Ji according to the address Li Fu wrote in the letter to him.

During this meeting, Chu Ran confirmed one thing, that Uncle Xing was indeed left in the capital by Li Fu, but Chu Ran did not ask what Uncle Xing was doing there. However, Uncle Xing also said that if Chu Ran wanted to send a letter to the Dingbei Palace in Yunzhou, he could send the letter to him, and Chu Ran would not have to worry about the rest.

However, before Chu Ran had time to write to Li Fu, a few months later, Chu Ran received another letter from Li Fu.

Li Fu said in the letter that everything was fine in Yunzhou and that he had been adopted by his uncle. Although they were nominally father and son, they still referred to each other as uncle and nephew.

After talking about some of his recent events, Li Fu asked him how he was doing at the end of the letter.

After reading the letter written by Li Fu, Chu Ran put it back into the envelope and put it away carefully. Then he picked up his pen and wrote a reply to Li Fu.

Chu Ran had never written a letter before. Even when he was writing an essay in the past, he felt that it was difficult to fit in 800 words. Before he started writing, Chu Ran also thought so, as if there seemed to be nothing to write. But as he wrote, Chu Ran had more things to write and more words to say. Then, they were densely packed and fluent. When he finished writing, he looked at it again and found that he had written as many as seven or eight pages.

No wonder he sat down and wrote for the entire afternoon before finishing the letter.

Chu Ran felt a great sense of accomplishment when he saw that he had written so much, but he didn't know whether Li Fu would think he had said too much, so he decided to delete some of it.

Chu Ran bit the tip of the brush and wanted to delete some of the words, but when he started writing, he couldn't bear to do it.

It took a lot of effort to write so much, never mind, I'll just keep it.

Chu Ran felt that although the letter was long, it looked old-fashioned with just the words on it, so Chu Ran was smart enough to draw a round smiley face at the very end of the letter.

After finishing drawing and writing, Chu Ran folded the seven or eight pages of paper and stuffed them into an envelope.

Not long after, Li Fu, who was far away in Yunzhou, sat in a bright study. At the desk by the window, he opened the letter written to him by Chu Ran.

Chu Ran's handwriting still looks like dog crawling. You have to read it carefully. If you are not careful, it will be easy to fail to recognize what the word is.

Chu Ran's letter was written like a running account, or like an old lady's foot binding, with everything about eating, drinking, defecating and urinating written on it.

Even so, Li Fu watched patiently.

He has always been a very patient person.

Although the letter was long, no matter how long it was, it would take at most two quarters of an hour to finish reading it. But this letter, which had no main points and no important points, took Li Fu a full hour to read and he still hadn't finished it.

Finally, at the end of the letter, Li Fu saw the round, brilliant smiling face that Chu Ran had drawn at the very end.

It was as if Chu Ran was laughing at him playfully in front of him.

A ripple slowly appeared in Li Fu's deep, calm eyes, and then the corners of his straight lips bent upwards subconsciously, revealing a faint smile. But as he smiled, the smile became fainter and fainter, and then, it disappeared.

Li Fu stroked the last page with his fingertips. The raised part looked as if some water had dripped onto it, smudged the words, or as if someone had rubbed it off with something.

Li Fu was silent for a long time.

"Fuer."

Until his uncle knocked on the door and called him.

Li Fu put the letter back into the envelope and pressed it neatly into the book. Then he stood up and walked over to open the door.

Qin Yuxiao was startled at first when he saw Li Fu's strange expression, then he looked around the room, but there was no one else in the study except Li Fu.

"Uncle, what's the matter?"

"Oh." Qin Yuxiao retracted his gaze, "The food is ready, let's go and eat."

"good."

Li Fu walked out of the door, turned around and closed the study door, then followed Qin Yuxiao towards the dining room.