Chapter 294: Extra First Person, Beware
My name is Pei Heng, and I used to have a name called Jiang Chenglang.
I know that I am not Emperor Zhaoning's biological brother. Although everyone says this behind my back, I don't need them to remind me.
Because I was eight years old when I changed my name, I remember a lot of things.
Sometimes this kind of memory is painful. I remember that I had a second sister. Her name was Jiang Fei, not Jiang Rufei, but Jiang Fei.
After she changed her name when I was eight years old, she fell into a deep sleep and never woke up again.
She fell asleep quietly like that, and her brother-in-law stayed by her side, watching her chest gradually stop rising and falling and her hands grow colder.
I cried my heart out, but my brother-in-law didn't shed a single tear. It seemed like he had already expected this outcome.
When I was a child, I heard people say that when a person dies, it is like a lamp going out. I guessed that my second sister’s lamp was extinguished, and my brother-in-law would light other lamps in the dark night in the future.
But he didn't.
On the day of his second sister's burial, he sealed himself in the coffin. The whole palace was in chaos and no one could find him after searching for a long time.
It was not until they had to set off in time for the burial that the coffin bearers realized the weight was wrong. When they opened the coffin, they found that he was already lying inside.
My brother-in-law said to seal the coffin. No one dared to disobey the emperor's order, but no one dared to bury the emperor alive. The situation was at a stalemate until I took out the booklet written by my second sister.
I said your second sister left you a message, do you want to get up and take a look?
He did not leave the coffin, but sat inside, next to his second sister's body, and quietly turned the last page of the booklet.
There were two words written there: "Wait for me."
My second brother-in-law finally cried. He hugged my second sister's body and cried and laughed like a madman.
I thought he was going crazy, but he came out of the coffin before the auspicious hour of burial.
Sister Wen Zhu said that it was because he couldn't bear to see his second sister go in any bad way, so the journey would be smoother at that time, and he would be able to be reborn into a good family in the next life and live a safe and smooth life.
My brother-in-law stood outside the coffin, leaning over and looking inside. When I was a child, I didn’t know what he was doing. But when I grew up and recalled that scene, I suddenly understood it.
That was the last time he kissed his lover goodbye.
My second sister's coffin was lowered into the grave. My brother-in-law personally sprinkled the first handful of soil, then the second handful, then the third handful, then the fourth handful...
The last handful of soil.
Without asking anyone else for help, he buried his second sister and half of himself with his own hands.
He sat in front of his second sister's grave until dusk and then until dawn.
My brother-in-law said the ground was cold and your sister was afraid of the cold, so I suggested I heat a few quilts for her.
My brother-in-law said she was greedy and there might not be anything delicious downstairs, so I suggested I cook some snacks for her.
My brother-in-law said she would miss him very much, and I didn't dare to say anything else because I was afraid he would really burn himself.
From that day on, he seemed both alive and dead.
He began to look at the notebook over and over again.
I have seen that calligraphy. My second sister has practiced hard for several months and her handwriting is better than mine.
I didn't dare laugh at her, especially after seeing those two words, all the resentment I had towards her for abandoning me disappeared.
Because she even abandoned the person she was most reluctant to leave behind.
She probably has no other options, and she certainly doesn't want to die.
Let’s go back to that book. It’s strange that when I read it in order, I can’t understand the previous part.
But once you flip through the pages backwards, you can trace back from her neat handwriting, following the changes in pen strength and the evolution of character shapes, and you can understand it almost exactly.
I read it at that time, but I didn't have the patience because it was full of little details about my second sister and brother-in-law, which I thought was too disgusting.
When I wanted to read it, the book had been sealed up by my brother-in-law because it was too old. He could recite it by heart and there was no need to read it at all.
My brother-in-law saw from the notebook that my second sister was eager for him to live, so he did what she said. He always listened to my second sister, and I was the one who didn't listen.
Once he stared at me for a long time, which scared me so much that I thought he was going to eat children (that's what people outside said, not me). Then he looked away and said that I didn't look like my second sister at all.
He seemed to have forgotten that my second sister and I had no blood relationship at all. I was the only child she saved out of mercy when the entire Jiang family was executed.
My second sister treats me as her own brother, so he thinks so too. He always believes what my sister says.
So the words "wait for me" became the only meaning that kept him alive.
He lived a lingering life, living like a madman, not like an emperor.
He often took me back to the Qiandi Residence because my second sister lived there the longest and I could find many memories of the past there.
But every time he returned to his residence, there was always great sadness in his eyes.
My brother-in-law said that he waited for ten years and she came back to him. If he waited another ten years, she would come back.
I doubted it, but I couldn't bear to expose it.
My second sister spent such a short time with me that I can hardly remember her face.
But I remembered that there were many portraits of her in my brother-in-law's study, so I took some time to sneak in.
There were many portraits of my second sister hanging inside. As I looked at them one by one, I felt that they looked less and less like her. Then I heard the sound of rice paper being torn.
I didn't expect that my brother-in-law was here. I was actually a little afraid of him. I was about to run away when I heard him calling my name.
I had no choice but to walk over. Behind the bookshelf was a mess.
I don’t know how long he took or how much he drew. He drew and tore up the paper, tore it up and drew again, and the floor was covered with scraps of paper.
My brother-in-law's eyes were bloodshot. He said, "I can hardly remember what she looks like. Cheng Lang, do you still remember what your second sister looks like?"
What a joke! If I still remembered her clearly, would I come here to look at her portrait?
But I absolutely couldn't answer like that, because my second sister was my life-saving talisman, so I lied to him.
I coaxed him into saying that the one you drew six years ago was the most similar.
He took the painting down, spread it on the table and looked at it quietly. He said it was a resemblance, but she couldn't speak.
Look, does this sound like something an emperor would say? How come you sound even more like a child than me?
At that time, I was no longer afraid of him eating children, because I was no longer a child. It was the sixth year after my second sister left, and I was fourteen years old that year.
At the age of fourteen, I have already begun to understand a little bit about love.
I stood among the scraps of paper on the ground, watching my brother-in-law's trembling fingers stroke the eyebrows and eyes of the person in the painting, and suddenly I understood what it meant to be deeply in love.
That was the sixth year, and I knew every year after that would be harder than this one.
In the seventh year, my brother-in-law began to lose his memory. He started talking to himself, and when you listened closely, it sounded like he was talking to someone.
He said his second sister was right next to him and no one could see her except him.
I think he is really crazy. In fact, I hope he can light another lamp, forget about my second sister's lamp that has been extinguished, and live like a living person.
In the eighth year, my brother-in-law took me to Jiangnan.
That was the place where he and his second sister first met. There were apricot blossoms in the mist, flowing water under a small bridge, and the ordinary world she longed for.
As we stood by the West Lake, my brother-in-law suddenly said, "When we were poor, your second sister said that when we became rich, she wanted to take a small boat with me and listen to the rain on the lake."
The rain hit the lake, creating ripples.
My brother-in-law was holding a green bamboo umbrella with the umbrella slightly tilted, as if there was someone standing next to him. I saw that half of his shoulder was wet with rain, but he was completely unaware.
On the way back to Beijing, we stopped at a post station.
I got up at night and saw my brother-in-law sitting alone on a stone bench in the yard. The moonlight stretched his shadow very long, making him look particularly lonely.
"Brother-in-law." I couldn't help but call him.
He turned his head, the tenderness still in his eyes, and the moment he saw me, he regained his composure. "Why aren't you sleeping yet?"
I mustered up the courage to ask, "Will Second Sister...really come back?"
He was silent for so long that I thought he wouldn't answer.
Finally he said, "I'll wait."
These three words carry a lot of weight.
Thank God, in the dead of night, he finally realized that his second sister was no longer with him.
Later I gradually realized that my brother-in-law was not waiting for a miracle, but was fulfilling a promise.
He spent the rest of his life protecting everything my second sister left behind, including me, his useless brother.
He taught me how to read and practice martial arts, and how to govern the country.
Sometimes when I was lazy, he would frown and say that if your second sister came back and saw that you were so unmotivated, she would scold me.
These words are more effective than any punishment, even though I know she will never come back.
In the ninth year, on the winter solstice, a new maid came to the palace. She looked a bit like my second sister in her eyes and eyebrows.
The chief steward came tremblingly to ask if he should be transferred to serve in the imperial court. After hearing this, the brother-in-law crushed the teacup in his hand.
He had someone dragged him away and beaten with the stick 20 times. Anyone who dared to find a similar person in the future would be beaten to death.
At night, I went to the imperial study to deliver ginseng soup and saw him talking to himself in front of the portrait of my second sister: "Look, I can hold on. Xiao Cui, when will you come back?"
In the incense burner in front of the portrait, three incense sticks are burning quietly.
On my eighteenth birthday, my brother-in-law gave me a sword with a scabbard inlaid with a piece of emerald green jade.
"A stone was divided into three parts. One part was buried in your second sister's tomb, I kept one part, and this one was left to you by your second sister."
He said, "I haven't decided when to give it to you. Now that you're eighteen, it's probably time."
Eighteen is a special number, meaning that the person has been gone for a full ten years.
I held the sword and suddenly burst into tears.
After all these years, it turns out my second sister has never truly left me. She lives on in every look and every word of my brother-in-law, and in our shared memories.
Last winter, my brother-in-law was seriously ill.
The imperial doctors were helpless and said that he had a long-standing heart disease and that he would probably live for three to five more years.
When I went to see him, he was staring at the falling snow outside the window in a daze.
"Xiaopang," he called me softly, "I dreamed of your second sister yesterday. She said the plum blossoms over there were in full bloom and asked me why I hadn't gone to see them yet."
I was no longer fat at that time, but I didn't argue. I held his hand and cried so hard that I couldn't speak.
But he didn't last another three to five years, because that was the tenth year he had been waiting for her, and he finally realized that she would never come back.
Three days later, my brother-in-law drank a bottle of poison and died in his sleep.
He looked peaceful, and there was even a hint of a smile on his face.
I found my second sister's notebook next to his pillow. I turned to the last page and saw a new line of small words next to the words "wait for me":
"I'm here to keep my appointment."
The most painful thing in this world is not death, but the fact that the living have to walk alone with their memories. But the most beautiful thing is that those unforgettable loves will never be taken away by death.
In accordance with his wishes, I buried them together.
On the day of the burial, it snowed heavily.
I spread the first handful of soil with my own hands, and in a trance I seemed to see two figures standing side by side in the snow, their clothes fluttering in the wind.
I know they finally reunited.
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ps: The modern version has not been finished yet, there are probably four chapters left.
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