Chapter 186
Jiaojiao pursed her lips as she walked out of the palace gate. As soon as she left the palace gate, she saw a figure walking towards her in the distance. Her eyes lit up immediately, and the calmness she pretended to have disappeared in an instant. She rushed forward with her short legs, "Daddy!"
Yin Zheng looked over when he heard the voice. Although Jiaojiao had grown a lot taller, Yin Zheng still recognized him at a glance.
He bent down to catch Jiaojiao who was rushing towards him, lifted her up and held her in his arms as if she were a child. When Jiaojiao fell into his arms again, Yin Zheng suddenly felt as if he had stepped back into reality from a layer of nothingness that was separated from reality.
"Dad!" Jiaojiao stretched out her hands, hugged Yin Zheng's face and rubbed it hard. Her still red eyes curved into a big smile. Her dark and clear eyes seemed to be twinkling with broken stars. Her tender voice was filled with undisguised joy: "Dad, Jiaojiao missed you. You are finally back!"
"Yeah." Yin Zheng lowered his eyes and looked at Jiaojiao, responded in a low voice, raised his hand and pressed him against his chest, and his rough big hands stroked the back of his head again and again.
Jiaojiao leaned in her father's arms, raised her fair and tender face and looked at him, her eyes full of excitement: "Dad, do you miss Jiaojiao?"
"Yes." As if feeling that this was a bit cold, Yin Zheng looked down at Jiaojiao and added seriously, "I really do. I really do!"
Jiaojiao was so happy that she immediately buried her head in her father's arms and rolled around, twisting her little body around with her eyes squinting, looking very restless.
This was the first time Jiang Haifu saw Jiaojiao's father. He was unusually tall, with a wheat-colored complexion, sharp brow bones, and a scar running through the left side of his face. His complexion was sullen, and his aura was restrained and restrained. The occasional hint of emotion that leaked out made people feel nervous.
But when Jiaojiao buried her head in his arms and rolled around and acted coquettishly, his expression softened visibly. If he was like a beast eager to hunt before, now he was like a beast that was full and lying in its nest, leisurely teasing its cubs. His aggressiveness dropped sharply.
Jiang Haifu looked at Jiaojiao's happy face and couldn't help sighing in his heart. It was rare to see the young master so happy. He seemed to have become much more lively.
"General Yin." He completed all these observations calmly, walked forward, and bowed to Yin Zheng with a smile: "His Majesty has ordered you not to enter the palace for the time being."
Yin Zheng nodded to show that he understood, then left with Jiaojiao in his arms.
On the way out, Yin Zheng raised his hand and gently wiped the corners of Jiaojiao's red eyes with his fingertips: "What's wrong, are you wronged?"
When her father asked her about it, Jiaojiao remembered what happened in the palace. Her happy mood immediately dropped. She grabbed her father's clothes with her little hands, raised her fair and tender face, and told her father what happened before with grievance.
Listening to what he said, Yin Zheng patted Jiaojiao's back soothingly. He didn't say much, only saying, "There is the best imperial physician in the palace."
Hearing this, Jiaojiao lay listlessly in her father's arms, shaking her legs from time to time.
Seeing that he was unhappy about this, Yin Zheng's eyes moved.
After returning to his residence in Suiyu Bridge, he carried Jiaojiao to the warehouse, which contained the wealth he had accumulated for Jiaojiao over the past few years.
Jiaojiao, who was put down by her father, looked at the boxes piled up in the warehouse, looked up at her father, and pointed at herself: "Jiaojiao's?"
"Yeah." Yin Zheng gently pushed his shoulder and asked him to take a step forward: "They are all Jiaojiao."
Jiaojiao went forward to open it out of curiosity. The first thing she saw was a pair of fist-sized Dongzhu pearls that sparkled in the sunlight filtering through the window lattice. Next to it was a red coral that was not very tall but had a bright color, as red as fire. There were also many delicate, transparent, and smooth-as-coagulated mutton-fat jade handles, a box of Hainan pearls, sets of gemstones, jade heads, and some gold and silver.
However, Jiaojiao's favorites among these boxes are the two half-person-high boxes in the corner. Inside them are toys for children of various ages that Yin Zheng has collected from all over the country over the years, as well as many eighteen kinds of weapons and small wooden horses that he has carved out of wood, and there is also a statue of Jiaojiao.
The statues of Jiaojiao are palm-sized and take up an entire box. A rough estimate is that there are several hundred of them. These were all carved by Yin Zheng himself in his spare time. However, most of them are of Jiaojiao when she was between two and four years old. Although there are some after the age of four, they are all semi-finished products.
Because Yin Zheng was not sure whether Jiaojiao had changed in the past few years, such as whether her eyes were bigger, her nose was straighter, whether she had grown taller, gained weight, or had her hair tied up, he imagined what Jiaojiao would look like when she was one, two, or three years older while carefully trying to carve.
Yin Zheng was not sure whether Jiaojiao would look the same as he imagined in his mind, so he repeatedly imagined what Jiaojiao would look like when she grew up in his mind, but every time he carved it, he would give up in the end, and so many unfinished products were left over.
Jiaojiao tiptoed and took out a small wooden sculpture of herself when she was two years old from the box and couldn't let it go.
Yin Zheng's return made all the calmness he had pretended to have disappear completely. He immediately ran back to his father with the little wooden sculpture in his arms, and rubbed his head against his father's waist coquettishly.
Yin Zheng lowered his eyes and looked at Jiaojiao. He gently stroked the back of his ear and rubbed the back of his round head. He looked at Jiaojiao without blinking, then lifted his chin and looked around. After a long moment, he said, "You've lost a bit of weight."
The fleshy double chin he had developed was gone.
Jiaojiao rested her chin on her father's palm in a relaxed manner, looking up at him with her round eyes: "I'm not thinner, Jiaojiao has grown taller."
"What do you want to eat tonight?"
Jiaojiao touched her stomach and said, "Sugar cakes, braised pork, roasted chicken, and dumplings."
Jiaojiao happily rolled up her sleeves and said, "Jiaojiao and Daddy will make them together."
Dad is back, and we have to eat dumplings to get together.
"Okay." Yin Zheng agreed, reached out and touched the two small bumps on Jiaojiao's head, and treated him as if he was three or four years old. He picked him up, held him in his arms and walked towards the kitchen.
Jiaojiao also lay in her father's arms like she did when she was a child, with her eyes curved with joy and her chin resting on her father's shoulder.
I don’t know when it started raining, but the lingering rain in early autumn brings with it a special kind of melancholy.
In the kitchen, Jiaojiao was carefully cutting the kneaded dough into pieces of the same size with a wooden knife. Now Jiaojiao no longer needed to stand on a stool to reach the table like before, but she still had to use a wooden knife.
It would be a lie for Yin Zheng, who missed his growth, to say that he had no regrets. But no matter how much regret he had, it could not change the facts of the past. He took the rolling pin and quickly rolled the dough into thin dough. When the dough was rolled out, the two began to make dumplings.
Yin Zheng, who has many years of cooking experience, makes very good-looking dumplings, but Jiaojiao is not. Sometimes she puts too much stuffing in, causing the dough to swell up; sometimes she puts too little stuffing in, and the dumplings turn out flat, as if they were hungry.
The boiling water on the stove was bubbling, and the burning firewood in the stove occasionally burst into crackling sparks. Jiaojiao, standing in front of the table, looked at the round and beautiful dumplings made by her father, then looked at the crooked and ugly dumplings made by herself, and couldn't help but smile.
Yin Zheng turned his head to look at him, and suddenly stretched out his hand and tapped a small white dot on his chubby face.
Jiaojiao blinked, raised her hands and drew three very symmetrical beards on her father's face.
The wind was howling outside, and the imperial physician in Chongde Hall was trying to stop the bleeding from the wounds on Emperor Yongzheng's hands and chest with a pale face.
Strictly speaking, Emperor Yongzheng's injury was not very difficult to treat. Although the wound was on his chest, it was a little distance away from the heart and the wound was not big. The wound on his hand was almost to the bone, which was indeed a bit serious and looked scary. But these alone would not have frightened the imperial physician to the point of turning pale. The main reason why the imperial physician broke out in cold sweats on his back on this cold day was that His Majesty's wound could not stop bleeding.
Yes, no matter whether it is a wound on the hand where the bone can be seen, or a small wound on the chest, no matter how much hemostatic powder is sprinkled, it cannot stop the bleeding.
Unable to stop the bleeding, the imperial physician's hands began to tremble.
Emperor Yongzheng's face became paler and paler as he lost blood. He held a pen in his uninjured right hand and wrote something quickly. Occasionally he glanced down at his wound, but there was no emotion in his dark eyes.
He didn't have this problem before, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to survive on the battlefield. The reason he had this problem of unstoppable bleeding was because he was later imprisoned in Liangyiyuan.
The late emperor wanted to take the blood of the princes and grandchildren as medicine. Every time he wanted to bleed them, he would make a cut. However, the blood in the wound would often clot after a while, and he would have to make another cut to get more blood. Sometimes, when the amount of blood was large, he would have to keep cutting the wound. Some princes could not bear such torture and simply committed suicide.
Unable to bear the pain of the princes and grandchildren, or perhaps in order to have fresh blood anytime and anywhere, the late emperor summoned doctors and alchemists from all over the world to the palace to cooperate with the exiled Taoist priest. His purpose was to ask them to find a way to prevent the princes and grandchildren's blood from coagulating so quickly.
After taking a bunch of medicines, medicated baths and poisons, the body's ability to repair itself became weaker and weaker over time, until the blood coagulation rate became visibly slower and slower.
Huo Chenke lost control of himself when his blood was being drawn one time, and was cut with two deep wounds. He bled for a whole day and night, and died from the loss of all the blood in his body.
The two Taoist boys who cut the wound were dragged away and beaten to death. Later, when the Taoist boys wanted to draw blood, they would cut a very small cut on their bodies and hang them up to bleed day and night. Although the blood coagulated slowly at night, fortunately it would eventually coagulate. As long as it was controlled within a small range, the person would not die even if the bleeding lasted for two days.
As people's bodies became weaker and weaker due to bloodletting, they would be given priority to have their hearts and bones gouged out to make elixirs of immortality. Fortunately, Emperor Yongzheng had earned his reputation on the battlefield, and his body was the strongest among all the princes. This strong body allowed him to live for some more time until he killed the previous emperor first.
Bleeding doesn't feel good, he even feels a little disgusted with bleeding. Every time he sees the bright red blood representing the Huo family flowing out of his body, he feels disgusted, so Emperor Yongzheng has always been careful not to let himself bleed.
But he didn't expect that his mother would inexplicably have murderous intentions towards him?
The imperial physician, who was being watched by Emperor Yongzheng, trembled slightly, and the medicine bottle in his hand fell to the ground and shattered.
The imperial physician knelt down in panic, his voice trembling: "Your Majesty, please forgive me. I..."
Emperor Yongzheng waved his hand to interrupt him. The candlelight in the room couldn't illuminate his dark pupils. He tossed the imperial edict he had just written to pardon the patient at the feet of Imperial Physician Chang. "This ordinary, conservative method won't stop the bleeding. You should treat it with all your might, using everything you've learned throughout your life and exhausting all the methods you have. If you can't cure it, I won't implicate you."
Doctor Chang knelt on the ground for a long time, then tremblingly picked up the imperial edict from the ground. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, "Since Your Majesty has said so, I will give it a try."
At night, the Chongde Hall was brightly lit, and basin after basin of blood was brought out from the hall. The strong smell of blood floated throughout the hall. Emperor Yongzheng had silver needles stuck all over his body and was soaking in that strange bubbling medicinal bath, enduring the severe pain like burning fire in his body, but still had the leisure to eat dumplings.
These dumplings were sent by Jiaojiao from outside the palace. I heard that they were made by Jiaojiao herself. Although they are a bit ugly, they are still edible.
Emperor Yongzheng thought about it, with a slight smile on his lips, and handed the empty bowl back to Jiang Haifu. The muscles on his face twitched slightly from time to time because of the pain.
This medicinal bath is quite painful!
He turned his head to look at the dark night outside the window, and suddenly felt that he missed Jiaojiao a little. It had only been two hours since they last saw each other, so why did it feel like they hadn't seen each other for a long time?
He withdrew his gaze and looked down at the wound on his hand that was sewn up with needle and thread but was still bleeding.
He has never cared about life or death. Life and death are the same to him. It’s just that he suddenly doesn’t want to die now. He wants to live, live well!
He had planned long ago to take Jiaojiao out for a stroll during the Lantern Festival this year, and to appoint a crown prince in the spring to have him govern the country. He would then take Jiaojiao to race horses outside the Great Wall, to see camels in the desert, to take a boat trip south of the Yangtze River, and to eat all sorts of food from stalls in the market, which sometimes tasted good and sometimes weird. He also wanted to see if he could remove Yin Zheng from the first place in Jiaojiao's heart and replace him with himself.
Thinking of Jiaojiao, he remembered all the times when he deliberately made Jiaojiao cry, and then resigned himself to comforting her. While wiping Jiaojiao's tears with a handkerchief, he secretly compared in his heart whether she had cried more than last time.
In fact, it is quite fun to make Jiaojiao cry, but it is a pity that Jiaojiao became less and less fond of crying.
Emperor Yongzheng always had handkerchiefs in the sleeves of his daily clothes, but as Jiaojiao grew up, the handkerchiefs were rarely used, which was a bit of a pity.
Thinking about this, Emperor Yongzheng suddenly recalled the first time they met, when Jiaojiao was so small and soft that she was staggering while running. His heart, which was as cold and hard as a stone, softened uncontrollably. He didn't know what kind of demon could give birth to such a child who specialized in softening people's hearts.
However, Jiaojiao grew so fast that it seemed like in the blink of an eye she was as tall as his waist.
Emperor Yongzheng frowned and endured the severe pain spreading from his limbs to every part of his body. His sweaty hair stuck to his cheeks, and his fingers, which were gripping the edge of the wooden barrel, turned white from the force he had exerted.
After enduring this burst of severe pain, he continued to think about Jiaojiao with his head down, as if only then would he have the desire to fight to live.
He thought, he still wanted to watch Jiaojiao, whom he had carefully raised for three years and held in his heart, grow up; he still wanted to see Jiaojiao riding a horse through Chang'an with high spirits; he also wanted to accompany Jiaojiao to grow up, and then grow old with him by her side!
Time passed by bit by bit. After experiencing all kinds of strange medicinal baths, the wounds on his hands and chest were stuck together by being burned with a red-hot iron, and he drank a lot of strong medicines and poisons. In the end, he even used poison. For a moment, Emperor Yongzheng even felt that he was back in Liangyiyuan.
The pain caused his body to spasm physiologically. Emperor Yongzheng, who rarely looked so embarrassed, gritted his teeth, and a trace of terrifying cruelty flashed across his brows.
It all ended when the sky was about to brighten.
Emperor Yongzheng was half-lying on the bed, his face so pale that not a trace of blood could be seen. A light and hoarse voice came from the bed curtains: "How long can you live?"
Doctor Chang knelt on the ground, resting his head on the ground, and said through gritted teeth, "Your Majesty, it will take between two and four months."
Although the bleeding was stopped, the already damaged interior of Emperor Yongzheng became even more shattered.
"Four months!" Emperor Yongzheng sighed inexplicably. He closed his eyes in the tent, and opened them again after a long moment. He lowered his eyes and looked at his left hand wrapped in gauze. "Go away!"
"yes!"
The light footsteps gradually became farther and farther away, and Dian Lie gradually became quiet, so quiet that it felt like death.
Four months!
Emperor Yongzheng took a stack of handkerchiefs from his sleeve, lowered his head and looked at them, then suddenly chuckled softly, the sound echoing in the huge bedroom.
Now these handkerchiefs will come in handy. I don't know if they will be enough by then, but Yin Zheng probably won't let Jiaojiao cry for too long. After all, Jiaojiao is very delicate. If he doesn't apply ice to his eyes after crying, his eyes will be swollen and painful when he wakes up the next day. So every time he coaxes Jiaojiao who makes her cry, he has to apply ice to her without complaint.
But... there's no other way. When raising a child, what else can I do if I don't spoil him?
Emperor Yongzheng had a smile in his eyes as he lay on the bed, ready to skip today's morning court session and have a good sleep. He would then go to Suiyu Bridge for dinner in the evening. He was not afraid that Yin Zheng would not let him in. With Jiaojiao around, he could pretend to be sick and weak, and then Yin Zheng would have no way to do anything to him!
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