Since ancient times, scholars and poets have loved describing the sounds of time passing: the withering and flourishing of grass, the waxing and waning of the moon, the flying geese south, and the eastward flowing river.
Xiao Nanhui had never taken these words to heart before.
But at this moment, she suddenly felt that those soft and delicate words were so vivid and appropriate.
More than half an hour had passed, and the moonlight outside the window had turned from bright to faint. She kept her eyes open and hardly moved.
She lay on her side on a large, cloud-patterned bed. Her sight was focused on his gently rising and falling chest, and on the blurry darkness beyond. Her ears echoed with his shallow breathing, mingled with the crackling of the burning charcoal in the room, which only served to make the night seem quieter and longer.
If the passage of time really has a sound, this must be it.
The arm beneath her body felt numb, and she didn't dare move. She had lost her hairpin, and the loose ends of her hair were tangled with the man's scattered hair on the pillow, making it impossible to separate them or sort them out.
The warmth from my skin had a soothing power. As the pain in my legs gradually subsided, the fatigue after leaving Quecheng came back.
But she couldn't sleep at all.
She wasn't sleepy. She didn't want to close her eyes. She didn't want to waste even a moment lying next to him. She didn't want to miss even a single moment.
Unfortunately, the way he slept was too straight. Even if an ordinary person was awake, it would be difficult for him to maintain this posture for so long.
How could someone be so impeccable even when sleeping?
Xiao Nanhui narrowed his eyes and looked at him carefully again, and finally found a hair that had escaped from the corner of his forehead.
She quietly freed one hand and her fingers moved closer eagerly. Just when they were about to touch the hair, the man suddenly spoke.
"Aren't you going to sleep?"
She was startled and pulled her hand back as quickly as she could, then hid it under her head to cover up her mistake.
She didn't know when he woke up, and she wasn't even sure if he had been asleep just now.
After observing nervously for a while, she answered honestly.
"I can't sleep."
He seemed to smile softly in the darkness.
"After two hours, it's not so easy to fall asleep."
Two hours later, at daybreak, the emperor opened the hunting grounds, and the spring hunt officially began. According to imperial rules, once the spring hunt began, it would last for two days and one night. The hunting guards would drive the prey into the enclosures throughout the night, and before sunset the next day, they would count the spoils. The winner would receive a personal reward from the emperor, which was actually gold.
Hey, what a great opportunity to make money. She should have conserved her energy and hunted more musk deer tomorrow instead of indulging in beauty and wasting her time here.
She forced a smile, but it was a bit forced.
"It's okay, I'm not sleepy."
"Really?" The man's tone seemed to contain some genuine doubt, and then he pondered for a moment, "Xiao Qing is so energetic, it's really a pity for him to just sleep."
Um?
A strange picture suddenly appeared in Xiao Nanhui's mind. While secretly cursing Yao Yi, the pervert who had poisoned her mind with pornographic movies since she was a child, she tried hard to recall Xu Shu's annoying face and his horse that was very good at shitting during the day.
Finally, her pounding heart calmed down, and she was just about to recite a Buddhist mantra to end her distracting thoughts.
Seeing that she didn't reply for a long time, the man asked again.
"Why, don't you want to talk with me by candlelight at night?"
Turns out... just chatting.
Xiao Nanhui shrank back into the quilt awkwardly.
He propped up one arm, rested his fingers lightly on his forehead, and looked at her with half-closed eyes.
"Or... do you want to do something else?"
No! Of course not!
She instantly fell into a state of panic, glanced at the thing that fell on the man's wrist, and finally spoke quickly as if she had grabbed a life-saving straw.
"Um, what is the origin of the Buddhist beads in your Majesty's hand?"
She was so anxious that her tone was hurried and unrestrained. How could it be like she was talking to the emperor?
She still called him His Majesty, but the etiquette between the monarch and his subject had long been thrown out of the window.
There was silence in the air for a while before his voice rang out.
"Do you know who Yikong's master is?"
Xiao Nanhui shook his head, looking puzzled.
"He has a master? Isn't it rumored that he's a remarkable person who walked on water from the Boyu Sea?"
Su Wei's mouth curled up in a sarcastic arc.
The monk's struggling look when collecting incense money flashed through his mind, and then he looked at the serious yet innocent face of the woman in front of him. He decided to put aside the monk's bad behavior of "erecting a monument and gilding his body" for the time being.
"Yikong was a disciple of Wushan, who was also my teacher. To be honest, Yikong and I are considered brothers in the Buddhist community. Before his passing, Master Wushan gifted me eighteen relics, each from eighteen highly accomplished monks. Adding the three he left after his passing, there are a total of twenty-one Buddha bone relics."
She didn't expect him to answer her, let alone answer in such detail.
The string of relics was clearly extremely valuable, and its origin must be extraordinary. Her previous experience in the Dream Cave also made her vaguely guess at the significance of the beads to him.
only......
"Why...give me the relics?"
He paused for a moment and asked instead of answering.
"According to your inference, what is the purpose of these Buddhist beads?"
After swallowing her saliva, she replied honestly, "Actually, I always thought that Your Majesty was the reincarnation of a living Buddha..."
Her voice became smaller and smaller, and her whole face was buried deeply, with only the top of her head exposed.
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