Chapter 124 First Encounter with the Past
After Huaiyu was taken away, Xiao Chenglan looked at the neatly stacked memorials and rubbed his brows.
"Xuan Mo."
After a while, Xuan Mo's figure appeared in the hall.
"What are your commands, Your Majesty?"
"Send someone to Qingzhou to check what the Lu family's Erlang from Guizi Lane is doing now."
Xuan Mo took the order and left.
Xiao Chenglan felt upset. If Huaiyu hadn't mentioned their childhood sweethearts, he would have let go of this unpleasant past incident long ago.
Now when I think about it again, I always feel irritated.
If Lu Yuanbai can really achieve fame in the future, will he have to go to the capital to be an official?
No, that's impossible.
At night, Xiao Chenglan went to Zhaohua Palace with a heavy heart.
Jiang Yingli could tell that he had something on his mind after just a few words with him.
"What's wrong, Your Majesty? Are there any new difficulties in government affairs?" Jiang Yingli asked with concern.
Xiao Chenglan thought to himself that it was even more difficult than government affairs.
Seriously, this thing has no beginning or end.
After the Jiang family went to Beijing, they completely stopped communicating with Qingzhou. Jiang Yingli and Lu Yuanbai were only cousins, so they should have forgotten about this person long ago.
But he couldn't find peace when he thought of Jiang Yingli following others and calling them brother when she was a child.
He really wanted to hear Jiang Yingli say in person that she didn't remember this person.
However, if he asked, wouldn't it remind Jiang Yingli to recall this insignificant person?
Xiao Chenglan felt as if he was holding a piece of jade in his mouth, unable to spit it out or swallow it, and he was very upset.
He looked back at Jiang Yingli who was looking at him with concern, reached out and gently stroked her cheek, hesitated for a moment, and finally said only three words.
"nothing."
Jiang Yingli, however, didn't believe it. She leaned forward, staring at him with her dark eyes without blinking. "Your Majesty, you never told me your worries, and I will never tell you my worries again."
After hearing this, Xiao Chenglan's brows immediately fell. He stretched out his hand, put his arm around Jiang Yingli's waist, and forcefully pulled her in front of him. The sharpness in his eyes was a warning.
"Jiang Yingli, you are not allowed to keep any secrets from me."
"But His Majesty has secrets from all his concubines." Jiang Yingli turned her face away, pouting her lips and snorting in dissatisfaction.
Xiao Chenglan placed his warm palm against the side of her face, turned her face back, and made her look at him.
"I have only one secret for you."
Jiang Yingli was still unhappy: "Isn't a secret still a secret?"
Xiao Chenglan's long, dark eyes looked deeply into Jiang Yingli's. As if he had made up his mind, he said slowly, "You want to hear it? Then I'll tell you."
She should be told that they did not first meet after she grew up.
Didn't he and she have a childhood friendship?
Jiang Yingli's eyes suddenly lit up, and her ears almost pricked up. "I want to hear it, Your Majesty, please tell me quickly."
Xiao Chenglan lifted her onto his lap, pressing her upper body into his arms, and only began to speak after holding her tightly.
"Do you remember the painting you drew when you were a child in Changyang Palace?"
Jiang Yingli gently nuzzled Xiao Chenglan's hand as it kneaded her cheek. "I remember it, and I still remember it vividly, because it looks so much like me when I was little. Your Majesty's imagination is truly spot on."
Xiao Chenglan smiled faintly: "Because that is not my imagination, we have really met before."
Jiang Yingli was stunned for a second, very surprised: "...What?!"
She raised her face to look at Xiao Chenglan, her almond-shaped eyes filled with confusion. "But at that time, I had just arrived in the capital, and my family was just a humble flower merchant. Your Majesty was a prince, raised in the palace. How could I have met him before?"
"That happened to be my first time out of the palace." Xiao Chenglan said.
He asked again with some hope: "Do you remember anything?"
Jiang Yingli was lost in thought, but she had no recollection of what had happened that day or who she had met. She only remembered that she had saved up money to buy a candied haws and was very happy.
Thinking about how she had seen His Majesty as a child but had forgotten it, Jiang Yingli became a little anxious and shook his arm: "Your Majesty, if you tell me more, I might remember it!"
Seeing how anxious she was, Xiao Chenglan gently stroked her back soothingly.
"I'll tell you slowly, and you can think about it slowly. That happened in the 19th year of the Qingyuan era. My fifth brother met Su Jiulang outside the palace. We were like-minded and felt it was a pity we met too late. On Su Jiulang's birthday, my fifth brother invited a group of princes to celebrate, and I was among them."
Jiang Yingli thought of Xiao Chenglan's past and asked hesitantly, "Doesn't he always love bullying Your Majesty? How could he be so kind as to bring Your Majesty along to play?"
"At first, I thought he was kind-hearted, so I was very happy that day. I even forgot how he had humiliated my mother and me in the past. I only wanted to leave that gray and decaying palace and see the outside world."
At that time, his mother had passed away and no one cared about him. Although he was a prince, he was forgotten in a corner and could only depend on the old servants in the palace for survival.
He was used to being ridiculed and excluded, staying alone like an alien under the unchanging sky, smelling the musty odor emanating from the dilapidated palace walls, like a walking corpse.
He was flattered to receive the invitation from his other brothers and sisters suddenly. That day, he wore his most appropriate new clothes.
"But, my brother and sister brought me to Su Jiu's private residence simply to use me as a target for their own amusement. Tying ordinary people to pillars as targets and admiring their helpless and panicked expressions was no longer enough for them, so they thought of me."
Xiao Chenglan's tone was very calm. Such old events could no longer evoke any emotions in him.
But Jiang Yingli couldn't suppress the sadness in her heart, and her tears were about to fall in the blink of an eye.
She knew that Xiao Chenglan had a hard time in the palace, but she had never heard him talk about it. She held Xiao Chenglan's face in her hands, her voice choking with sobs: "How could they bully Your Majesty like this! A bunch of beasts!"
Xiao Chenglan originally wanted to describe himself in a more miserable way, but when he saw Jiang Yingli's tears, he really couldn't bear it.
"It's all in the past. I am a prince after all. They just wanted to see me scared and didn't dare to really hurt me."
Jiang Yingli felt extremely distressed. Thinking of His Majesty's childhood, she couldn't help but shed tears for a while, but gradually, a vague memory emerged in her memory.
She stopped sobbing and tried to remember.
That day, she was holding the candied haws that she had saved up money to buy, and she met a young man with blood all over his left face.
The young man was very dark and thin. His clothes were loose and ill-fitting, and after being stained with blood, he looked even more strange.
She was seven years old at the time, and the boy was about ten years old, which was exactly the same age as Your Majesty.
Is that young man His Majesty...
How can he be so thin and have so much blood on his body...
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