Chapter Twenty-One
After the White Dew solar term, the weather gradually turned cold. Gu Leyao chose a sunny day and, together with Chun Tao, harvested the fruits, vegetables, and grains they had planted in the summer.
The cabbages, radishes, and potatoes that Chun Tao had planted were all harvested and stored in the Prince's mansion's cellar. The steward was quite surprised and amazed to see that Chun Tao's crops had such a high yield. "So much grain has been harvested from that small plot of land in our Prince's mansion?"
The steward was originally from a farming family. He later joined the army and rose to the rank of lieutenant general due to his merits. When he returned home, his family had all passed away, so Li Heng made him the steward of the Prince's mansion.
Therefore, the steward was also very knowledgeable about agriculture and knew how much grain could be produced per mu. He was amazed by Chun Tao's ability to take care of the crops.
Chun Tao was delighted to hear this and started chattering, "Back in my day, I could do the work of five mu of land all by myself. No one in the village had a higher grain yield than my family. Grandpa Steward, next year I'll set aside the two high-yield, high-quality grain varieties and plant them again. That way, year after year, our yield will only increase."
Chuntao then shared her tips on breeding, fertilization, and thinning with the housekeeper, becoming more and more enthusiastic as she spoke.
She didn't know that she was radiating light as she spoke those words.
Gu Leyao felt that besides liking to eat all kinds of delicious food, Chun Tao seemed to be very interested in planting.
Since farming was no longer a source of financial pressure for Chun Tao, she has been taking walks around the fields whenever she has a spare moment. Gu Leyao reasonably suspects that Chun Tao is born with a love for planting and is a natural-born agricultural talent.
Is this the mysterious bloodline of the descendants of Yan and Huang, the descendants of Shennong, the Chinese people?
However, since Chun Tao likes to do it, Gu Leyao supports her in doing it.
After gaining Gu Leyao's support, Chun Tao even gestured to Gu Leyao about her winter plans.
Chun Tao heard from other young maids that some people in the capital had built heated cellars so they could grow fresh cucumbers to eat in winter and cultivate some easy-to-grow green vegetables.
If the Prince's Palace also built a heated cellar, they could eat fresh leafy green vegetables and fruits in winter.
Gu Leyao was very surprised. Wasn't this just like the greenhouses of later generations? They already existed now?
In the original owner's memories, she did not see Chun Tao having such a talent for planting, but at that time, the original owner did not have the comfortable living conditions of the royal mansion.
It was already a great hardship for Chun Tao to accompany the original owner on her travels and barely survive together in the northern frontier. The sensible Chun Tao would not make such a luxurious request in such harsh living conditions.
Chun Tao, unaware of Gu Leyao's thoughts, finished speaking about the grain with a lively expression, her dimples barely visible, and even mentioned the grand Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations in the capital to Gu Leyao.
Less than a month after the Mid-Autumn Festival, the temperature in Beijing will drop and it will snow. The weather will be very cold then, and people will generally stay home as much as possible.
Therefore, the Mid-Autumn Festival can be considered the last grand festival of autumn. Every Mid-Autumn Festival, people in Beijing who can afford it will put on new clothes and shoes, dress up, and go out shopping. The streets and alleys will be filled with all kinds of lanterns, and street vendors will sell mooncakes along the streets.
Chun Tao's eyes sparkled. She had also heard about this grand occasion from others. She gestured to Gu Leyao, "Lv Liu said that the capital will be very lively on the Mid-Autumn Festival. There will be lantern festivals, acrobatics, fire-breathing, chest-breaking stone-breaking, and all sorts of other things! The streets will be packed with people, and everywhere will be decorated with lanterns and colorful decorations. It will be even more lively than the New Year!"
Gu Leyao lives in a future world with highly developed information technology. She has only seen the grand occasions of festivals in various places online, but she has never personally participated in such festival activities.
She was itching to join in the fun.
But then she thought again, Li Heng is in a wheelchair, so he definitely can't go to crowded places. She couldn't just go alone, leaving Li Heng all alone at home; he would be so lonely and sad!
Gu Leyao regretfully gave up her idea of going out to see the lantern festival during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
However, she can't go herself, but Chun Tao can go and broaden her horizons.
Gu Leyao took ten taels of silver from her monthly allowance and sent Chun Tao out to play with the maids in the mansion. "You can't go to remote places, be careful of kidnappers."
Chun Tao took the money pouch, and Gu Leyao also packed her a packet of molten cheese and a packet of jujube paste pastries, which Chun Tao took back to her room to share with the other maids.
Chun Tao had worked all day and was walking back to her yard when she got hungry. She took out a soft cheese from her oil paper package, casually sat down under a peach tree, and began to munch on it.
Li Qi happened to come out of Li Heng's courtyard and saw Chun Tao eating there, holding a money bag in her hand. He asked Chun Tao, "Why are you eating here? Why don't you go back to your room to eat?"
Chun Tao was a young girl who couldn't keep secrets. Knowing that Li Qi was from the Prince's mansion, she could trust him and was easily tricked into revealing her thoughts by Li Qi's few words. "Miss wants to go out and play, but doesn't want to leave the Prince alone at home, so she asked me to give her money to go out with Lv Liu and the others! The Mid-Autumn Lantern Festival is very famous, and there are all kinds of acrobatics, iron flower making, sugar blowing, it's so much fun, everyone wants to go, it's such a pity that Miss can't go."
Li Heng was pushed to the door by Li Jiu. He was originally going to the palace to discuss matters in the north with his elder brother, the emperor.
However, upon hearing Chun Tao's words, he felt a slight stirring in his heart.
Li Qi offered a few words of comfort, telling Chun Tao to eat her fill and then hurry back inside, as the weather was getting cold, "Be careful not to get an upset stomach if you eat in the cold wind."
Chun Tao was still a thirteen-year-old child. After listening to Li Qi's words, she dusted herself off and obediently went back to her own courtyard to rest.
*
In the evening, Li Heng returned from the palace and, as usual, had dinner with Le Yao.
The two of them had Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, braised beef in Shaoxing wine, blanched vegetables, and cabbage and meatball soup for dinner.
The Buddha Jumps Over the Wall dish was made by Gu Leyao. It used several ingredients such as abalone, sea cucumber, ham, pig tendons, dried scallops, quail eggs, and king oyster mushrooms, along with old hen soup. It was simmered over low heat for three hours before it was ready. Li Heng graciously drank a full bowl of it.
After dinner, Gu Leyao pushed Li Heng for a walk in the courtyard of the Prince's Mansion. The little dog, whose leg was healed, happily strolled around the courtyard as well.
At this moment, the apples on the apple tree turned red. Gu Leyao parked her wheelchair under the apple tree, reached out and picked two big, red apples, handing them to Li Heng.
"We'll each eat one before breakfast tomorrow morning, but we can't eat them tonight."
Gu Leyao vaguely remembered a saying from her past life: "An apple in the morning is a golden apple, at noon it's a silver apple, and in the evening it's a rotten apple." It seems that apples should be eaten in the morning.
However, it seems that the rumor was later debunked, saying that it's fine to eat apples anytime. But afterwards, Gu Leyao basically ate apples in the morning every time.
Holding a large, bright red apple in his hand, Li Heng asked casually, "What are your plans for the Mid-Autumn Festival?"
Gu Leyao stopped picking apples, turned to look at Li Heng, and carefully explained the Mid-Autumn Festival plan, "On that day, we want me to make mooncakes in the mansion, and then pick all the apples and put them in the cellar so that the apples can be preserved for at least a month."
"Sounds like you're very busy!" Li Heng reached out to touch Kaixin's little head. Kaixin's yellow tail swished wildly, and it rubbed its head against Li Heng's palm. Li Heng's palm became itchy from the rubbing, and he couldn't help but pull his hand back. He turned to Gu Leyao and said, "My brother told me that my sister-in-law is pregnant."
"Huh? The Empress is pregnant?" Gu Leyao thought to herself. Last time she went to the palace, the Emperor and Empress gave her very precious gifts. Now that they are pregnant, shouldn't she give them some gifts in return?
Li Heng seemed to have seen through her thoughts and said, "I have already instructed the steward to select some valuable items to send to the palace."
Gu Leyao picked a few more apples, intending to share them with Chun Tao and Li Qi.
On the way back, she did fall into her own thoughts. In the original owner's memories, she didn't seem to remember that the current emperor had any children other than the crown prince.
From the original owner's perspective, Li Heng died young, and the empress also seemed to have passed away early. The emperor raised the crown prince until he was a little over ten years old before passing away as well.
Gu Leyao learned from the original owner's memories that when Huo Pingyuan returned to the capital from the northern frontier, the emperor seemed to be only in his early twenties.
This emperor, who is in his early twenties, should be the young crown prince that Gu Leyao met in the palace before.
Gu Leyao couldn't possibly tell that the short, chubby boy would become the stern, icy new emperor more than a decade later.
Something must have happened in between, but the original owner's memories were mostly about Huo Pingyuan and the Gu family. The original owner was in a very low mood at that time and had no time to think about anything else.
Gu Leyao did want to change all of this, but she didn't know much about it and didn't know where to start. She could only vaguely remind Li Heng, "Let the Emperor spend more time with the Empress. I've heard that pregnant women are very vulnerable, both physically and mentally, and need to be extra careful."
Li Heng laughed, then, remembering something amusing, said to Gu Leyao, "Chong'er really likes the osmanthus, jujube, and yam cake you make, Leyao. Last time, he hugged my leg and kept saying he wanted to eat the cake made by his imperial aunt. What a little glutton!"
Gu Leyao pushed Li Heng forward, "We still have red dates at home, but the Mid-Autumn Festival is coming soon, so I need to make mooncakes. I'll make both kinds of pastries together and send them to the palace so that the Crown Prince, the Emperor, and the Empress can all have a taste."
Li Heng wasn't in a hurry, and after hearing what Gu Leyao said, he agreed.
*
Two days before the Mid-Autumn Festival, Gu Leyao got up in the morning and, without fail, began learning medicine from the doctor in the manor.
After he finished learning, he then made snow skin mooncakes with Chun Tao and the cook in the mansion.
Making snow skin mooncakes is not difficult. The main secret lies in using glutinous rice flour and starch extracted from wheat to make the mooncake skin. This makes the mooncake skin transparent, rather than the ordinary golden yellow mooncake skin.
However, Gu Leyao plans to fill the snow skin mooncakes she is making this time with custard filling. Gu Leyao also found some fresh mulberries in the kitchen, and she plans to use these mulberries to make another mooncake with mulberry jam filling.
Gu Leyao first made eighteen custard-filled mooncakes and eighteen mulberry-filled mooncakes, a total of thirty-six snow skin mooncakes, and ordered the servants in the Prince's mansion to send these snow skin mooncakes to the palace as quickly as possible.
These snow skin mooncakes can only be stored for three days and require refrigeration.
Gu Leyao specifically instructed the person delivering the mooncakes to tell the Empress and the young Crown Prince not to eat too many of these snow skin mooncakes, but the Emperor could eat more.
When the snow skin mooncakes were delivered to Fengyi Palace, the young prince was sitting at a small table in Fengyi Palace, completing his studies.
Upon hearing that the mooncakes were sent by his aunt, he immediately jumped up from the table and said he wanted to eat them.
The Empress opened the box and personally took out a custard-filled one for him.
The little prince took a small bite, and his eyes lit up when he saw the creamy yellow filling in the middle. "It's so sweet, and it has a faint milky flavor. It's so delicious!"
He reached out and took one for the Empress to eat, reminding her, "Mother, eat quickly, don't leave any for Father!"
Just then, the Emperor entered from outside the palace. "What delicious food are you eating now? Don't save any for me. Li Xiaochong, you little rascal, why are you always going against your father?"
The young prince was caught talking behind someone's back. He immediately wilted, pinched two mooncakes in his palm, and slunk away like a defeated rooster.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
