Shen Weiwan rolled her eyes at him and stuffed the lychee into her mouth. The sweet juice made her squint her eyes: "Your Highness, just give me the silver directly, so I don't have to think of poems every time."
After the lychee banquet, Shen Weiwan's "lychee poem" spread like wildfire throughout the capital. Children in the streets and alleys clapped their hands and sang, "The Seventh Prince knows how to feed, basket after basket of lychees; Miss Shen knows how to write poetry, and even after eating, she still wants money!" Storytellers in teahouses and taverns even embellished the story, spinning it into a joke that made the people laugh.
Liu hid in the mansion, listening to the servants' stories. She was so angry that she smashed all the porcelain in the room, even breaking her most beloved jade bracelet in two. But the angrier she got, the more famous Shen Weiwan's poems became. Even the eunuchs in the palace secretly sang "I want another one after I finish eating it."
In the General's Mansion, Shen Weiwan counted the three hundred taels of silver notes sent by Xiao Yu, her teeth showing and her eyes not seeing. Chun Tao, who was collecting the notes, couldn't help but ask with a blushing face: "Miss, the Seventh Prince is so kind to you, does he...does he want to marry you?"
Chen Weiwan paused, gazing out the window toward the Seventh Prince's residence. The familiar aroma of sweet-scented osmanthus duck seemed to waft in from there. She picked up her brush and began scribbling across the rice paper: "The prince feeds me non-stop, and I'll give him silver and poetry as well. If I ever marry a prince, I'll make sure he opens the treasury!" After she finished, she collapsed onto the couch, laughing, causing Chuntao to giggle as well.
At this moment, in the Seventh Prince's study, Xiao Yu looked at the newly delivered poem manuscript by Shen Weiwan. It even had a cartoon figure with twin buns nibbling on a lychee, and he couldn't help but shake his head and laugh. Mo Shu whispered beside him, "Your Highness, I'm afraid Liu Shi won't let this go. I heard she's gone to ask Minister Liu for help again."
Xiao Yu put down the manuscript, his fingertips tracing over Shen Weiwan's crooked handwriting on the rice paper. A cold glint flashed in his eyes: "Just in time, it's time for me to give her a 'big gift'." He picked up a cinnabar pen and wrote a line on the back of the manuscript, the ink as bright red as lychee juice: "When I marry you, you can open the national treasury at your will."
The summer breeze blew through the courtyard, carrying the sweet scent of lychees and ink, drifting slowly toward the General's Mansion. Shen Weiwan lay on the windowsill, counting the clouds in the sky. Suddenly, she felt that the days of being "fed" by the prince seemed to be drawing ever closer to the day she would marry him. And Liu's little tricks were nothing more than grasshoppers in the autumn compared to the tacit understanding between her and Xiao Yu.
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