Lord Liu even personally escorted her there, riding a horse, carrying a book box on his back, and bowing to the teacher at the academy gate.
It is said that "women of Zhaoning should live the way of Zhaoning. They should no longer be confined to the embroidery room and do needlework. They should go to study and see the world."
If this had been said ten years ago, Lord Liu would never have said it. Back then, he had even criticized the "girls' enrollment" as "disrupting the established order."
Now, however, it has become the reason for him to personally send his daughter to school, and even the teachers at the academy say, "This is the change that Zhao Ning has brought to them."
No more getting up in the dark to attend the morning court session, no more standing outside the palace in the cold wind, wearing a fur coat, waiting for the ministers to line up, their hands and feet numb with cold.
No more listening to the Ministry of Revenue and the Ministry of Works arguing heatedly over the "salt and iron monopoly."
One of them slammed his fist on the table and said, "Only government-run enterprises can prevent corruption. Otherwise, all the money will flow into private pockets, and ordinary people will have to pay double the price for salt, making it unaffordable for them."
One of them stroked his beard and said, "Only trade can benefit the people. Otherwise, cloth will not fetch a good price, weavers will go hungry, and no one will weave cloth."
There's no need to stay up until the wee hours facing mountains of memorials, drinking three cups of strong tea to keep yourself awake, rubbing your sore wrists as you continue reviewing them, and finally having to listen to the rambling of the remonstrating officials.
The Regent used to sit with me on snowy nights, with plum wine warming in a bronze stove, the aroma of wine mingling with the fragrance of snow filling the room.
She said, "The power of role models can last for centuries. For example, if your family members all like to act as retired emperors and hand over their responsibilities early on."
Unlike me, I was on edge until the very last moment and never even got to enjoy a moment of peace.
He smiled as he said this, fine lines appearing at the corners of his eyes, his fingers stroking the rim of the wine glass as if touching an old object. His tone was slightly joking, yet it made my nose tingle.
Actually, I believe more in her unspoken words: Who doesn't love a peaceful life?
Take a stroll with the birds, admire the flowers, and watch the pigeons on the eaves flap their wings and fly across the blue sky. Their wings sweep across the glazed tiles, leaving a few gray-white feathers that drift into the flowing water and float away with the waves.
Watch the water in the Imperial Garden flow slowly around the white marble railings, flowing over the moss and fallen flowers.
Take the peony petals to the lotus pond in the distance and feed them to the koi. The koi peck at the petals and wag their tails.
Look at the current emperor running around in the garden with his little grandson. The little grandson has pigtails, wears a light yellow jacket, and rushes over shouting "Grandmother!"
She was still clutching a freshly picked daisy in her hand, its petals crumpled, but she smiled brightly and jumped into my arms, rubbing the fragrance of the flower onto my clothes.
Such days are better than spending your life pouring your heart and soul into memorials to the throne, your hair turning white in the imperial court, and your back bent from endless disasters, wars, and taxes.
I was so exhausted that I didn't even have the strength to look at the Imperial Garden.
Only when I had some free time did I slowly savor the meaning: when the regent was in his early thirties, there were already specks of white hair at his temples, like a few specks of frost, which was the result of his hard work.
She couldn't bear to see people displaced and homeless. When she saw refugees in the suburbs of Beijing in the dead of winter, she would take off her black sable coat and put it on an old woman who was shivering from the cold.
He was wrapped in a thin cotton robe and held a meeting in the cold wind. His nose was red from the cold, but he didn't say a word about the cold. He just urged the officials to "hurry up and set up the soup kitchen so that the people don't get cold and hungry."
Unable to bear the constant fighting on the border, when barbarians invaded, he would personally don armor and go to the western frontier, pitching his tent in the snow. The tent was drafty, and he couldn't sleep at night because of the cold.
He ate frozen flatbread with the soldiers. The flatbread was so hard it hurt his teeth, so he swallowed it with snow water.
At night, he would carry a lantern to check on the soldiers, making sure their blankets were thick enough and that no one was shivering from the cold, and he would give his own hand warmer to the young soldiers on guard duty.
From grain and taxation to border defense, from the imperial examination system to students' enrollment, he had to personally oversee every single matter.
He would read every single secret report sent by his bodyguards, leaving annotations in the margins.
The text was densely packed with details: where to investigate corrupt local officials, where to guard against barbarian raids, and where to comfort disaster-stricken refugees. The ink was layered and thick.
It's like weaving a net on paper, without a single flaw.
That taut string, it seems, has never been relaxed for a single day since she became an eighth-rank Imperial Household Attendant.
He even slept with one eye open, afraid of missing anything that might endanger the country or the people.
When people are idle, their thoughts tend to wander far away.
Lately, I've been thinking about her a lot, about how she taught me to hold a spear in the palace's martial arts arena. Her rough palms covered my hands, and her fingertips had calluses from years of holding swords, which made the back of my hands itch a little.
She said, "You need to be flexible in your wrists to maintain a steady force; otherwise, the gun barrel will wobble, you won't hit the target, and you won't be able to protect the person you want to protect."
You are a child of the Ning family. You must protect yourself, protect the people, and protect this country.
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