Chapter 11
"Don't be so sarcastic, I'm doing this for your own good."
Zhu Mingji calmed his panicked mind, raised his head and quickly glanced at Zhang Xihua's face, then continued to look at the paper and continued to practice his calligraphy calmly.
"If you really want to do good for me, you should treat me as a human being, not as your own thing." Zhang Xihua took advantage of the situation and said, "You only allow me to play with you. If other men or women occasionally say a few words to me, you will give them a cold face. Those who know that you are the prince of Xiangwang Mansion and I am your childhood playmate, but those who don't know me will think that I am a dog raised by your Zhu Mingji."
The first few sentences were fine, but they were just a thorn in Zhu Mingji's ears.
The last sentence, however, broke Zhu Mingji's heart.
Zhu Mingji was so angry that he threw his pen. "How could I not treat you as a human being? To put it in a vulgar way, we are brothers who grew up wearing the same crotch pants. None of those gentlemen are worthy of being your friend, and those young ladies are all harboring ulterior motives. Do you think they are talking to you for no reason? They are just coveting you. Erlang, in my heart you are the best, but in your heart, I am afraid I am a very despicable villain, right?"
"Okay, now I know what you're thinking about all day." Zhang Xihua sneered, "You're the only one who deserves to be my friend, you're the only one who doesn't covet me. I actually hope that in your heart I'm just a mediocre person, not a god. Mingji, that's not how friends work. I'm a living person, you have to let me breathe and let me live my own life. If I blindly obey you and do whatever you say, then our friendship won't last long. And all good things must come to an end—"
Zhu Mingji knew that Zhang Xihua was going to lecture him again, so he quickly interrupted Zhang Xihua.
"Even if you become a high-ranking official in the capital, or even if you retire to the countryside to the ends of the earth, I want the feast between you and me to last, and it won't. A hundred years has 36,000 days. Minus the year before we first met at your first birthday celebration, there are still 35,635 days left. I will be your friend for 35,635 days, not a single day less."
"What will you do if I die? I'll turn into mud and ashes, and this feast will eventually end, right?" Zhang Xihua was also stubborn and refused to say what Zhu Mingji wanted to hear, so as to make Zhu Mingji feel a little proud.
"The year isn't over yet, and you insist on talking about death. Even if we're both dead, I want our names to be recorded on the same page in history books." Zhu Mingji crumpled up the paper on the table and threw it at Deqing. "Xihua's been here for a while, what are you doing standing here? Why don't you pour some tea? I'm already thirsty from talking."
Deqing, who was not satisfied with the fun, went to ask the maids for tea.
Zhang Xihua seemed to be touched by Zhu Mingji's words and recalled some past events.
In fact, on the day of the one-year-old baby's birth ceremony on November 11, the second year of Hongde, it was not the first time she met Zhu Mingji, but a reunion.
*
Before she traveled through time to the Ming Dynasty this time, she had traveled through time once before.
The first time she traveled to the Ming Dynasty was on September 23, the 16th year of Hongde.
Her identity was not Zhang Xihua, the second son of the Zhang family in the Yongjia Marquisate. That time when she traveled through the Yongjia Marquisate, there were only four young ladies, Zhang Shunning, Zhang Songning, Zhang Shining, and Zhang Yining, and two young men, Zhang Xuanhua and Zhang Anhua.
And she was reborn as a girl named Zhang Wanning from a branch of the Zhang family.
When she traveled through time, she was already fifteen-year-old Zhang Wanning. According to the maid who served her, she lost her parents when she was just one month old. Before her mother died, she entrusted her to the eldest grandmother of the Zhang family in the Yongjia Marquisate, that is, Madam Jiang. As an orphan, she was raised by Madam Jiang.
Also at the age of fifteen, Xu Baoyin, who married Zhu Mingji and became the wife of the Crown Prince of Xiang, asked her mother's family for someone because her mother-in-law, the Princess of Xiang, wanted to take a concubine for Zhu Mingji.
However, the Xu family had no girl of the right age, so Xu Baoyin's mother, Xiao Jiang, turned to Mrs. Jiang for help.
Therefore, the marriage fell on Zhang Wanning.
When Zhang Xihua transformed into Zhang Wanning, it was the night when Zhang Wanning was carried into Prince Xiang's mansion in a sedan chair.
Zhang Wanning had asthma, and there were many flowers in the bridal chamber, so Zhang Wanning died of an asthma attack, and Zhang Xihua just happened to occupy Zhang Wanning's body.
She was still wearing a red veil and sitting on the edge of the bed. When she raised her hand to remove the veil herself, someone grabbed her wrist.
She heard the man say, "Although you are only my concubine, tonight is also our wedding night. It is taboo for a bride to lift her red veil herself, so I will do it for you."
The red veil was lifted.
Zhang Xihua saw the look of amazement in the eyes of the groom, Zhu Mingji, and thought that the bride, Zhang Wanning, must be a beautiful woman with a pretty face.
Zhu Mingji fell in love with her almost at first sight, and it was a physical liking.
Zhu Mingji consummated his marriage with her that night, and they had sex seven or eight times until the second half of the night.
She kept a cold face during the marriage consummation, but the trembling of her body made Zhu Mingji happy.
Because she didn't speak and didn't cry even when she was in pain, Zhu Mingji called her "little mute" when he felt sorry for her.
Although Zhu Mingji was extremely beautiful and had an arousing figure, she had no feelings for the man who took her virginity without asking her whether she was willing or not.
Over the next two months, Zhu Mingji stayed at her house every night.
After she found out that Zhu Mingji was the historical Emperor Huiyuan, his cousin Emperor Hongde died in the Qianqing Palace soon after.
Zhu Mingji ascended the throne and became emperor, changing the reign title to "Huiyuan".
As Zhu Mingji's legal wife, Xu Baoyin was naturally enthroned as queen.
She also received an imperial edict canonizing her as a noble concubine.
Zhu Mingji's favor for her did not diminish at all. Even after the selection, new ladies entered the palace. However, the emperor's favors were still recorded on her the most times each month in the history books.
The emperor's favor is a double-edged sword.
In the palace, she even enjoyed better treatment than the Queen Xu Baoyin, and also endured the most vicious curses and deepest resentment from the concubines in the six palaces.
She asked Zhu Mingji why he liked her so much. Zhu Mingji said that she was beautiful and taciturn, and appeared to be submissive to him on the surface, but was actually unruly at heart. He liked her soft body like a cloud, and also liked her stubbornness.
But she didn't like Zhu Mingji, and she hated being trapped within these four palace walls even more, watching the concubines fighting each other to the death because of the emperor's jealousy, and turning the beautiful women into extremely hideous skeletons.
In the three years after she became a royal concubine, she gave birth to three little princesses.
Each of her daughters was born with asthma, but the medical level in the ancient imperial palace was backward, and each of her daughters died in her arms.
When her third daughter, Princess Penglai, died young, she fell seriously ill.
Empress Xu colluded with other concubines and bribed all the officials of the Imperial Observatory to tell Zhu Mingji that Baidi Mountain, just south of the palace, would be beneficial to the imperial concubine's recovery.
Zhu Mingji had no choice but to send her out of the palace.
She lived in an imperial villa at the foot of Baidi Mountain for more than a year, away from the gossip in the palace and without having to face people she disliked all day long. She felt much better and her illness was cured.
But in order to continue living such a stable and peaceful life, she pretended to be sick.
But the good times did not last long. The empress dowager saw that Zhu Mingji missed her so much that he had no appetite and no longer favored the concubines, so she issued another urgent decree to recall her to the palace.
She sighed about her miserable life. Since she couldn't escape from Zhu Mingji, she decided to be an unscrupulous concubine.
She asked Zhu Mingji for high positions and generous salaries for the men of the Zhang family, and even extended her hand to the crown prince.
It was Empress Xu who always provoked trouble and made her unhappy.
She told Zhu Mingji that she wanted to raise the eldest son born to the queen.
But one day, when the eldest prince was playing Cuju in her palace, he accidentally kicked the ball into her stomach.
She didn't know she was pregnant. When blood stained her skirt, she learned from the imperial physician that she had a miscarriage.
Zhu Mingji was furious about this matter and said many harsh words to the eldest prince.
The eldest prince was only six years old, and he developed a high fever that night because he was too worried.
Zhu Mingji summoned all the female doctors in the palace to her Chengqian Palace to take care of her.
Empress Xu held the eldest son in her arms and knocked on the gate of Chengqian Palace at night to seek medical treatment.
Zhu Mingji was still angry and refused to let the palace maids open the palace gates, nor did he allow the female doctor to treat the eldest prince.
It was only when she woke up from her dream in the middle of the night and persuaded Zhu Mingji that Zhu Mingji agreed to let the female doctor go out to treat the eldest prince.
But it was too late. The eldest prince could not even drink water in Empress Xu's arms and died at dawn.
Because of the death of the eldest prince, Empress Xu, who had disliked her to begin with, hated her even more.
She died on the first day of October in the ninth year of Huiyuan. It had been almost ten years since she traveled to the Ming Dynasty. During these ten years, there had not been a single day when she had not missed her family who lived six hundred years later.
She knew very early on who she was in history books and when she would die.
No matter how she changes history, history will automatically correct itself and lead her to that inevitable death.
It rained heavily that night. Zhu Mingji came to her palace in the rain. Before she died, she only said one sentence to Zhu Mingji.
"Your Majesty, a forced melon is not only not sweet, it is also poisonous."
She was poisoned to death by Empress Xu who ordered her to tamper with her daily diet, but she never told the truth to Zhu Mingji until her death.
After hearing her last words, Zhu Mingji smiled bitterly, pressed his forehead against hers, and kissed the corner of her lips again and again.
In the end, he cried uncontrollably.
He knew from the beginning that he couldn't force her love, but he still kept her by his side.
"Little mute, I hate you."
*
After Zhang Xihua's death, she traveled back to the modern era, but the time anchor of the modern era was not the same as before she traveled through time.
She traveled back to her infancy, and when she grew up she found that the content of the history books had changed.
Originally, Zhang Wanning should have been a famous favorite concubine of Emperor Huiyuan in history. After Zhang Wanning's death, she was posthumously named Empress Xiaochun by Emperor Huiyuan. Emperor Huiyuan only had two empresses in his life, Xu Baoyin and Zhang Wanning.
However, in history, Emperor Huiyuan had three empresses: Empress Xiaozhen Cheng, deposed Empress Zhang, and Empress Xiaowen Yuan.
Not only did there become changes in the empress during Emperor Huiyuan's reign, but there was also a new prime minister, Zhang Xihua, who was Emperor Huiyuan's playmate when he was the Crown Prince of Xiang.
She originally thought that when she grew up, she could live her modern life step by step.
My goodness, is God playing a joke on her? He sent her to the Ming Dynasty again.
This time, she traveled through time and space as Zhang Xihua, the Prime Minister of the Ming Dynasty when he was a baby.
And the girl named Zhang Wanning from the Zhang family's branch no longer exists.
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