Chapter 47 Chapter 47 Li: "Ying'er, come, Liu Lang...
Therefore, before Ji Yanlang's letter was delivered, the women of the Ji family were gathered in Li's room, excitedly discussing Zhang Xiong's case.
"He has more than one life on his hands, yet he managed to escape the death penalty. The Kaifeng government must be afraid of him." An said, glancing at Fang Ying.
"Hey, Third Sister-in-law, are you really taking this seriously? Cases like this are usually handled by handing over a servant. How could you really let the Imperial Concubine's nephew pay for his life for those commoners?" Cheng said, smiling and shaking her head. "Even if you don't consider the Imperial Concubine, you have to consider Prince Yan."
"You're right. I heard that Prince Yan made great contributions in the army. Who knows, he might come back... No wonder Kaifeng Prefecture only sentenced Zhang Xiong to twenty strokes of the cane and exile a thousand miles away, considering that he raped a woman." As An spoke, she glanced at Fang Ying again.
Yue Qing'e, annoyed by the two sisters-in-law's repeated, sarcastic remarks, continued, "I see that Third Brother's wife is very upset. This case is currently under review at the Court of Criminal Justice, and the verdict hasn't been finalized yet. Why don't you send someone to the Court of Criminal Justice to beat a drum and protest their grievances? Who knows, they might even get the case sent back for a retrial."
An was astonished: "Why should I ask people to beat drums to complain? What does this have to do with me?"
"Is it irrelevant? I saw my third sister-in-law was filled with righteous indignation just now, as if she had many complaints about Kaifeng Prefecture. I thought this case had something to do with the An family..." Yue Qing'e also looked surprised. "Did I misunderstand?"
"..." An was so angry that she was about to retort when someone came in and reported that a letter from the Duke of the County had arrived.
Li was overjoyed. When the thick stack of letters came up, she smiled as she unwrapped them, saying, "These must be letters from several people."
Sure enough, after opening a letter, several letters fell onto the small table one after another. Li didn't rush to read them. She spread out the letters first, read the words written on the back of each letter, and then picked up one and opened it with a smile.
When An saw so many letters, she no longer cared about being angry with Yue Qing'e. She and Cheng stretched their necks to look at the small table - her husband had been gone for more than a month, and he only sent a letter to his family to report that he was safe. There was not a single word from her, and she had been worried about him for a long time.
Li quickly finished reading the letter in her hand, then picked up another one. This time, she shook her head as she read, "Liu Lang's handwriting is getting worse and worse. It's so flamboyant and I can hardly recognize what it's writing."
At such times, Fang Ying never said much - because she knew that her mother-in-law was actually happy in her heart and would not really blame Ji Yanlang.
Yue Qing'e smiled and replied, "Maybe the military situation is urgent, so I don't have that much time to write properly."
"Yes." Li replied casually, put down the letter, looked down at the three unopened letters, picked up one and said, "Sanniang, this is from Sanlang."
An happily agreed and stepped forward to take it. Seeing this, Cheng also became expectant. She looked at her mother-in-law eagerly as she picked up the next letter, waiting for her to call her.
Unexpectedly, Li called out, "Ying'er, come here, there's Liu Lang's reply."
Cheng froze in place, watching Fang Ying walk forward and take the letter, her eyes inevitably falling on the last unopened letter.
Fang Ying walked forward from the side and didn't notice Cheng's expression. Li, who was sitting at the top, saw it at a glance. She felt a little embarrassed, picked up the last letter, revealed the words on it, and showed it to her daughters-in-law.
"Sanlang and Silang even wrote me a letter to say hello," Li said, opening the letter and glancing at it. "Silang is so lazy. I see he just signed his name here, but the whole thing at the beginning is written by Sanlang."
Cheng felt both ashamed and wronged, but after hearing her mother-in-law's words, she forced a smile and spoke up for her husband: "Silang has been lazy since he was a child and he hates writing, but he still thinks about his mother and is filial to her."
Li nodded. "I know he feels the same way as Sanlang. He's just lazy because he's with his brother. Don't worry, the letter says Silang is doing well. He even captured the enemy's head during the battle with the Hu people."
Cheng agreed and then sat there quietly until Li asked them to leave and go back to her room. Only then did she realize that her mother-in-law had said these two sentences to comfort her and smooth things over.
"What a heartless person!" Cheng became angrier and angrier the more she thought about it. She picked up the teacup beside her and threw it to the ground.
The sound of porcelain breaking to the ground was so sharp that the maids were all frightened like quails, lowering their heads and shoulders and not daring to say a word.
The maid who had just lifted the curtain at the main hall door to reply was so frightened that she dared not move. She did not dare to move until someone was ordered to sweep the floor. Then she turned and slipped out to the side room to reply to Aunt Liu: "My lady is angry about something. Aunt, you'd better save yourself the trouble and call the doctor tomorrow."
The pregnant woman leaning on the bed, her face haggard and her voice weak, said: "But I... really have a stomachache."
"Why don't you ask a nanny to massage it? Wait a little later, and when you see that the lady is no longer angry, I will go and reply. Otherwise, in this situation, even if I tell her, she will be rejected." The maid advised.
Aunt Liu had no choice but to agree.
The maid hurried to find the nanny assigned by Cheng, but the nanny said she was busy and asked her to wait for a long time before slowly following her to the side room. When they reached the door, the maid lifted the curtain and let the nanny in first. She heard voices outside the courtyard gate and looked over. It was Sanniang.
She knew that Sanniang looked down on Aunt Liu even more, so she hurried into the side room and lowered the door curtain.
Over there, An came in and heard the noise from the side room. Seeing Cheng, she asked, "Is the one in your room still behaving well?"
"What's wrong with her? She's pregnant." Cheng was still angry and didn't bother to entertain An. She wasn't as cautious as usual in her words.
An knew what she was angry about, so she took out a piece of letter paper from her sleeve and slapped it in front of her sister-in-law. "Okay, don't be angry. Silang is just like that. I asked your third uncle to write a few words here. But I am more angry with this letter than if there was no letter at all."
Cheng didn't move her hands. She glanced at the letter on the low table, then at An. "What? What did Third Uncle say?"
"What?" An sneered. "Let me take care of Concubine He and that slave girl. How else can I take care of them? They ask me for money and things every now and then, and when have I not given them? Everyone has given birth to a child, but why is that slave girl so spoiled? She wants to eat this and that, huh! I want to see what she can give birth to in the end."
She pushed the letter toward Cheng and said, "Hurry up and take a look. After you've finished reading, let's go to Aunt He and tell her."
Cheng picked up the letter and saw that it was written to ask An to take good care of Concubine He and Liu, as well as the fourth brother's wife and children. It also asked An to pass on a message to her saying that Si Lang was also thinking about her and the children. Fortunately, it didn't mention Liu from their family.
She calmed down a little, talked to An for a few more words, put on her fur coat, and went to see Aunt He with An.
Meanwhile, Fang Ying was sitting in her room, looking out the window, and said to Lichun, "He said it was snowing heavily outside when he wrote the letter. How come we haven't had a good snow in Beijing yet?"
"Yeah, it's already the coldest time of the year, and there hasn't been a serious snowfall. But snowing in the north isn't a good thing, is it? Can we still fight the war?"
"He said the snow was so heavy that the sky and the earth were completely white, and he couldn't see anything, so he took advantage of the truce to write home. But, if we were both in the same snow, it wouldn't be a good thing for us, or for the enemy either."
Fang Ying said this and retracted her gaze. She straightened the letter and wanted to read it again from the beginning, but she was once again made to feel a chill on her scalp by the opening sentence "Ying'er, I wish you all the best" - can't this person write a proper letter?
Ji Yanlang wouldn't. Not only would he not, he also told her in the letter that when writing to a husband and wife, they didn't need to be so formal. They could just say whatever came to their mind, especially when giving examples of how much money she spent at home and how she spent it. She didn't need to write it down in detail and write it down to him. She could just spend it.
Then, as if to teach Fang Ying how to write casually, he wrote in half-literary language a few interesting things he had seen during the march and battle. At the end, he wrote shamelessly: "As I write this, it seems as if I can see you sitting across from me, your smile as beautiful as a flower, radiant and charming."
Fang Ying read it again and no longer felt flushed, but she still felt that this person was extremely audacious - hadn't he considered what would happen if the letter was opened and read by someone else before it reached her?
There were several letters delivered to her mother-in-law at once! Fang Ying broke out in a sweat just thinking about the possibility of opening them by mistake.
Fortunately, there were not many such inappropriate words. In the remaining space, Ji Yanlang wrote half a reply to Fang Ying's letter, asking her to thank Zhou Congshan and invite him to her home more often; then he wrote to the mother and daughter of the Deng family, saying that the weather was cold and Aunt Deng was not as well as she looked, so he asked Fang Ying to send someone to check on her every day, and to call a doctor as soon as possible if she had a headache or fever.
The last paragraph was obviously not written on the same day as the previous ones. It said that he had just heard about Zhang Xiong's case. The emperor was not very happy. He called Prince Yan and scolded him. He asked Fang Ying whether her father-in-law was involved in the case. He also asked her whether the case had been concluded when she received the letter.
But this case really cannot be discussed in detail in the letter. When Fang Ying wrote the last letter, she hesitated for a moment and ultimately did not mention it. As for now, the case has been brought to the Court of Criminal Trial, and it is still hard to say whether it can be successfully passed.
Ji Yanlang finished writing this letter on the sixth day of November. It has been ten days now. I guess he should have heard more details, right?
Fang Ying thought about it for a while and didn't rush to write a reply. When Li mentioned it at dinner, she also said there was no need to rush, and it might take a few days before the letter could be sent.
"Liu Lang said in the letter, right? The emperor is also going north to Zhenzhou. Maybe he has already met up with your father and others by now." Li said.
Fang Ying nodded. "They say there's no more obstacles in the south. Although the Zhangde Army has dealt a heavy blow to the Hu cavalry, they're still short on manpower. The Emperor wants to personally reinforce and oversee the battle, encircling Taiyuan from the north and wiping out Northern Zhao before the New Year."
Li smiled and nodded, "That's right. Your second uncle said that a batch of winter clothes will be sent from Jingji to Zhenzhou in a few days. I will send the letter along with it when the time comes."
Fang Ying inexplicably felt that her smile seemed to have other meanings, but Li did not mention it anymore. She continued to talk about someone's wedding in a couple of days, and how she wanted to take her to the wedding, and gossiped about what clothes and jewelry she should wear.
She didn't dare ask any more questions. After she finished her words and said goodbye to her mother-in-law, she pulled Fang Gui, who had come out with her, and asked, "What were you laughing at just now, Madam? Did I say something wrong?"
"No," Fang Gui replied with a smile. "I guess Madam probably laughs at Liu Lang for telling you everything."
“…Is that so?”
"Well, you've explained it in such detail." Fang Gui covered her face and smiled secretly, "It's obvious that he cares about Liu Niang."
“…” She asked this question unnecessarily…
-----------------------
The author has something to say: Thank you to the little angels who voted for me or irrigated nutrient solution between 2021-01-29 00:37:36 and 2021-02-01 23:56:06~
Thanks to the little angel who irrigated the nutrient solution: avahgao 674 bottles; the supervisor ate feces 5 bottles;
Thank you very much for your support. I will continue to work hard!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
