Chapter 157
Someone delivered a wicker box. The box was very clean, but it was obvious that it was old.
There was a box of books neatly stacked inside. The books were old and the pages had turned yellow.
Wang Jiazhi told him that she wanted to read the popular novels from his youth, the kind that belonged only to that generation and were rarely reprinted.
As she leafed through the books, it was obvious that they belonged to several people. She didn't even need to look at the names to know which ones belonged to the same person.
One is the ancient or fresh and sad type like "The Book of Songs"; one is the love novel that was once popular, with vows of love, love above all else, and love that is outrageous and exaggerated like a madman; and another is the bizarre novel like "The Count of Monte Cristo".
She was very surprised that the owner of the second type was actually a boy. Girls would find this kind of novel weird, because it was a grown man.
Because the signature reads: You Yuankai. It's definitely a man's name.
She thought that this surname was quite rare.
A grown man reading such a corny and childish book. Wang Jiazhi shook her head.
Moreover, the one or two blank pages at the back of each book were densely filled with reviews that were as corny as the contents of the book. Not satisfied with what was written at the back, the blank spaces at the front were also filled with writing. The book also had many long paragraphs of thoughts on every word and sentence, just like annotations. In several places, it was obvious that the author was too emotional when writing, and could not help crying, and his tears dripped onto the words.
The third type of book is filled with portraits of the same girl.
The first type, with dried leaves and flowers inside, broke at the touch. Others were hand-painted. One was particularly interesting: a large white rabbit, its large ears pressed down with its paws, covering its eyes. He recalled the story in "The Legend of Hulan River," where the wife of the reunion bride, after her death, transformed into a large white rabbit, wiping her tears with her ears. His signatures were not his real names; they were either "Lan Ji," "Yi Jing," or "Xiao Zhou" (a play on the first character of the Book of Changes). Clearly, like her, he was unhappy with his own name in his youth.
Wang Jiazhi opened his copy of "The Sound of the Flute at Weiyang Night." It was a new historical story.
The story tells of a young Emperor Hui of Han, Liu Ying, who fell in love at first sight with a girl and desired to marry her as his crown princess. However, Empress Lü was enraged by the girl's close relationship with Concubine Qi. Not only did she forbid the marriage, she also betrothed the girl to Concubine Qi's cousin, who was not only old enough to be the girl's grandfather but also ugly and tyrannical. However, Concubine Qi was pleased with the marriage and readily agreed.
Because her son was kindhearted and lacked the ruthlessness and cold-bloodedness of a proper emperor, Empress Lü wanted to use this incident to make him understand that under the power, anyone can be sacrificed and abused, and to make him hate Concubine Qi and Prince of Zhao Liu Ruyi as much as she did.
Liu Ying was extremely distressed by this, but after he succeeded to the throne, he did not harm the King of Zhao. Instead, he ate and slept with his brother to prevent his brother from being killed by his mother. However, the 11-year-old King of Zhao was still poisoned to death by Empress Lü.
Empress Lü wanted to punish Concubine Qi's cronies. Although Liu Ying had no real power, he was willing to go against his powerful mother to protect the girl and her son.
But in the end, the girl lost all her family, only she herself survived. She hated her husband so much that his death was not a pity. However, her family was wiped out, and her only child also died.
She had a first love, and he had told her to go with him. She couldn't bring shame to the family because of herself.
Her first love scolded her for being vain and broke up with her in anger. Later, in order to pursue his career, he defected to Empress Lü and became the most vicious henchman who attacked her family.
In the end she was left alone.
She vowed to live the rest of her life only for revenge.
She wanted to take advantage of the emperor's love for her. She wanted to become his favorite concubine, so that he could gain the real power of the emperor, rebel against her mother, and achieve her goal of revenge.
Liu Ying loved her, but he knew that she did not love him. Even if she took off her clothes and stood in front of him, he would not favor her.
Finally one day she roared, "If you could be a real emperor, I would love you."
He just smiled sadly and said, "If you don't love me, then you don't love me. Even if I become the emperor, you still won't love me."
"Why?"
He said to her calmly, "This is power. No one is wrong, someone just loses."
"I don't care, I don't care! I want revenge, I want revenge!"
Every time this happened, he would hold her in his arms, silent, letting her scream, make a fuss, and bite his arm until it was bloody, until she calmed down.
Finally she realized that she had only one way to take revenge.
She handed him the poisoned wine, and he drank it without a doubt. A flash of surprise crossed his eyes when the poison took effect, but soon, he lay calmly on her lap, spitting out large mouthfuls of blood, and died quietly in her arms.
In the last moments, he was not frightened. The pain brought by the poisonous wine was so light. He was finally... relieved.
Born into a poor family, he and his sister followed their mother to weed and farm.
When he was six or seven years old, his father rebelled and he and his sister were separated from their mother. They lived a life of displacement and uncertainty about life and death.
When his father was fleeing, he thought the carriage was running too slowly and pushed him and his sister off the carriage several times.
When his father finally became emperor, the family could be together. However, his parents were not on good terms, and his father favored Concubine Qi and wanted to depose him and make Prince Zhao the crown prince.
The girl he loved very much was married off to an old villain by her mother.
He married his niece as queen.
His niece also came to live in the palace on weekdays, played with him and needed him to coax her to sleep.
On the wedding day, she didn't understand anything and thought she would come to play as usual. She even asked him to tell her stories and sing songs before going to bed.
She said, "Uncle, tomorrow I am going to the Imperial Garden to pick papayas and ride the iron-eating beast. This time I want to play for a few more days before going home."
He said, "The iron-eating beast likes to bite people now, so don't ride it. If you like playing, don't go back. Remember to listen to grandma. Mom and Dad will come to visit you later."
He understood his mother's pain and hatred. He could sympathize with her turning Concubine Qi into a human pig, poisoning King Zhao, taking away his beloved woman, forcing him to marry her own niece, and ruining Zhang Yan's lifelong happiness.
But who among them could understand him?
He is just an incompetent and weak puppet in the eyes of the world and his parents.
The reason why he is unfortunate is that he did not inherit his parents' cold-bloodedness.
At least from Emperor Gaozu to Emperor Wu, except for him, these emperors were all known for being cold-blooded and ruthless. They even killed their own flesh and blood without mercy.
In the arena of power, without this necessary ability, he is destined to be covered in bruises.
She killed him to end Empress Lü's lineage. Even though she couldn't kill her while she was alive, and even the death of her only son wouldn't be enough to break her heart. But after her death, the successor wouldn't be her descendant anyway, and she wanted the Lü family to have a miserable end.
Eight years later, Empress Lü died. The kings and ministers massacred the Lü clan. Empress Lü's sister was whipped until she turned into a hedgehog and died tragically in the courtyard. King Dai, in order to seize the throne, killed his wife, Lady Lü, and her four children.
She finally got her revenge in her own way. But she was not happy at all, just as if she had accomplished something important that had to be done.
She did not commit suicide, nor did she attempt suicide. She just died quietly and for no reason a year later.
She didn't love her husband, nor her first love; that youthful affection eventually turned to hatred. She also didn't love Liu Ying, but he was the only person who never hurt her, the only one who always loved and protected her, the one who accompanied her and comforted her in her most painful and desperate moments. But she killed him.
She was innocent, and neither was he. The only innocent person killed another innocent person, to bring eternal damnation upon those sinners.
She would never understand what he said. Under power, they were not wrong, let alone guilty. Empress Lü was not wrong, and neither was Lady Qi. There was only winning and losing.
He loved to sit on the stone steps of the Weiyang Palace in the moonlight late at night, playing the same tune on his pan flute. People had never heard it before and didn't know the name of the tune, but they only thought it was mournful and sad.
Her life was even lonelier than his. Apart from deep hatred, she had no family affection, no love, and she couldn't even keep a child.
He said that a person's life is very long, so long that there are always endless things to go through and endless pains. A person's life is also very short, so short that there is not enough time to do what you want to do and not enough time to say what you want to say.
Wang Jiazhi read the book so intently that she forgot to eat and sleep, and she didn't even hear the little girl calling her to eat.
After reading the last sentence and thinking about it for a while, I couldn't help but burst into tears.
I thought to myself: How tragic.
Then I looked at the blank space on the last page, and saw the words "Too miserable" written in faded ink.
He also felt miserable.
She felt that this was reality. Most people, even if they banged their heads, couldn't paint a plum blossom. There was no comfort in those suffering tragedies.
If the story was about a girl falling in love with Liu Ying, then the story would be cliché.
He must have been very sad to write like this. But it certainly wasn't the state of mind she was in now. It was probably just the content of the sad story, not her current mood.
He was also 23 or 24 when he read this book, and she is also 23 or 24 when she reads it now, but they are completely different.
At that time, he was at the most ambitious and fearless. He was determined to serve his country, study abroad, take the lead, and shed his blood. He had infinite longing and hope for the future.
She is different. She is the same age, but is waiting to die. She knows that she probably has no future.
She walked to the window to look at the scenery outside, quickly dispelling her sadness.
"Will she come back today?"
She really wanted him to come back and share her feelings about the book with him, but she wondered if he still remembered it.
But she is much better than the people in the book. After all, she is not completely without anything.
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