Chapter 76: Well Fence
When Qiandeng arrived, he saw Shi Jingning's body lying on the withered reeds under the bleak sunset. The gurgling blood dyed the remaining snow red, making him look like he was lying on a piece of bright red satin.
Ji Linyou immediately stepped forward, turned his body over and checked the situation.
Shi Jingning's face was bruised, his body was still trembling, and even his eyes were still wide open, showing a glimmer of consciousness. But because his throat had been cut, he could only open his mouth in vain, opening and closing it with difficulty towards them.
But his lips were already ulcerated, and now even the breath was leaking out from his neck. He could not say anything except looking at Qiandeng and making hoarse sounds.
Qiandeng knelt in the reeds, her knees soaked with cold blood. She hugged Shi Jingning, her eyes reddening. She held his hand tightly, desperately asking, "Who? Who hurt you like this?"
The prince walked to Qiandeng, looked at them for a moment, then turned to look at the East Palace guards who had discovered Shi Jingning.
The guard shook his head and replied, "When we heard the noise and came over, he was the only one lying here, his throat cut. There was no sign of anyone else."
Shi Jingning's pupils had already blurred. In the last illusory light and shadow, he looked at Qiandeng, stretched out his trembling hand with all his strength, pressed it on her palm, and wrote the word "Madam" with difficulty, stroke by stroke.
He knew that he had no way out and only had a short time left in this world, but he did not write who his murderer was. Instead, he wrote these two words.
"Madam... which madam?" Qian Deng hugged him blankly, extremely hurt, and asked in a trembling voice, "My mother?"
Shi Jingning looked at her with his already blurry eyes and nodded with all his strength and difficulty.
Qian Deng was shocked and sad. She subconsciously leaned over to his mouth and asked in a trembling voice, "Is there any secret behind my mother's death? Do you know... who the murderer is?"
Shi Jingning was breathing hard, and blood foam kept spurting out of his severed throat, splashing on Qiandeng's cheek.
The warm blood quickly turned cold, like crimson snow on her cheeks.
Qiandeng woke up as if from a dream, raised her hand and pressed his neck tightly, trying to make him speak the rest of the words smoothly.
But Shi Jingning's scarred face showed only a look of misery. His chest heaved violently, but he could no longer breathe in air. The blood and water that choked into his lungs made him suffer as if he were drowning.
Cui Fufeng half-knelt silently, pulled Qiandeng's hand away, and asked him, "Do you know the inside story of the death of Madam Qi? If there is a suspect, please tell us!"
Shi Jingning panted violently, looked at Qiandeng with a distracted and desperate gaze, raised his trembling fingers, and wrote a horizontal stroke on her bloody palm.
But after writing this first stroke, he stopped again, and his illusory eyes swept over the figures surrounding Qiandeng.
The shadows were so blurry that he could no longer see anyone's face, which only made his dying breathing more disordered.
He gave up on that stroke, and his bloody finger scratched Qiandeng's palm, vaguely seeing the words "brother and sister-in-law".
Qian Deng gritted her teeth and resisted the urge to burst into tears. She nodded and said, "Don't worry, I will definitely take good care of your brother and sister and help them grow up well."
He stared at her intently. When death came, the severe pain in his chest and lungs seemed to have faded away, and the cold winter around him turned into a quiet and gentle spring breeze.
He seemed to see that spring day, when the six-year-old county princess was still a little girl, wearing a thin spring shirt and riding on a small horse. When she saw him, the smile on her round face was more innocent and lovely than the newly sprouted spring grass.
In the almost numb warmth and softness, he looked lovingly at the county lady in front of him who had grown into a young girl. Finally, he raised his hand and wrote two words on her palm with his bloody fingers, using his last bit of strength.
rabbit.
Everyone gathered around them, not knowing what these two words meant.
Even Qian Deng, who was hugging him tightly, was at a loss as to what was going on.
Shi Jingning knew that he was about to sink into that place of eternal loneliness and silence.
In her final spasm, he saw her dazed face. Even though he knew he shouldn't say anything more, in the end, he still grabbed Qiandeng's sleeve tightly, as if he was reluctant to part with the last thing in the world. With his festering lips and broken throat moving, blood spurting from his neck and mouth, he tried his best to squeeze out the vague and indistinguishable word "井蘭" from his broken throat.
Well curb, like rabbit, is a word that is meaningless.
His hands had fallen down, and the blood from his neck was still flowing, but it soon stopped.
The blood had dried up, and her body had grown cold. Only Qiandeng still held her. The warm blood and the icy snow water merged together, melting and freezing again, leaving her lower body as if she were kneeling in a large, eerie, blood-red ice flower.
It must have been freezing cold, but she was so grief-stricken and confused at the moment that she felt nothing.
Shi Jingning's body was horrible, and it was obviously impossible to send it to the Shi family and let his brothers and sisters face such a brother.
Cui Fufeng asked Yizhuang to come and collect the body and keep it there temporarily.
After returning to the Changhua Palace, Qiandeng walked through the backyard in a daze and stood for a while in front of the Liuhua Mountain House where Shi Jingning and his younger brother and sister-in-law lived.
On the empty hillside, there was no longer the sound of childish laughter. The pomegranate trees, which belonged to summer, had lost all their leaves, leaving their branches bare, thin and dry.
Qiandeng slowly walked across the slope of dry grass, pushed open the gate of Liuhua Mountain House and walked in.
There had been repeated incidents in the mansion, and the children had moved away. In the outer hall, the children's handwriting was still on the table.
Shi Jingning left the large room to his younger brother and his wife, and lived in the adjacent wing. The room was small, with only a simple bed, a box, and a small cabinet.
The cabinet door was carved with latticework. Qiandeng saw some things neatly arranged inside, so he raised his hand and opened the cabinet door.
The small cabinet is divided into rows of spaces by wooden boards, on which are neatly arranged many rabbit carvings, both wooden and stone, with different postures and textures.
Qiandeng's eyes slid across the various rabbits one by one, and he saw that the carvings in the front appeared rough and clumsy, while the carvings in the back appeared more delicate and smooth.
Obviously, the rabbits were placed according to time, and the sculptor improved day by day, and the rabbits became more and more exquisite.
Qiandeng picked up the first rabbit. It was a very old wooden rabbit. The craftsmanship of the person who carved the rabbit at that time was very poor. The wooden rabbit looked like a potato egg. Only from the outline of the long ears could you tell that it was a rabbit.
Qiandeng took it in her hand and looked at it, and suddenly remembered that this was the first rabbit she had pestered Shi Jingning to carve for her.
He was still a beginner at that time, and she thought the rabbit was too ugly. After playing with it for a few times, she threw it away without taking it to heart at all.
But the rabbit that she threw away was still kept by Shi Jingning, and over the years, he had continued to practice, and the rabbits he carved became more and more exquisite, with both form and spirit.
Qiandeng took out the unfinished little jade rabbit that he had picked up from the kitchen ruins from his sleeve and placed it behind all the rabbits in the cabinet.
She raised her hand and gently stroked the rabbits one by one, thinking about how Shi Jingning had carved these rabbits one by one under the lamp and in the sunlight over the years, as if she was looking at Shi Jingning's life over the past ten years.
Rabbit. Well curb.
Before her death, Shi Jingning pointed out that it was indeed the rabbit that was related to her mother's death.
What did he know? How did he know it? What was the connection between the rabbit, the well curb, and her mother?
Her mind was in a whirl of thoughts, and the complicated thoughts made her temples ache again, beating uncontrollably.
She pressed her temples, walked out of the room and across the hall.
On the desk under the window, there were still a few pieces of calligraphy left by the children practicing their calligraphy. The top one was clearly written with "Ancient Erotic Song" -
The lonely white rabbit looks around east and west, the clothes are not as good as new, and the person is not as good as the old one.
Childish strokes and correct structure.
This handwriting that shocked her appeared in the pens of the Shi family's younger siblings, in her and Shi Jingning's hands, and even on the piece of paper hidden by Uncle Fu.
Is it because of this that Shi Jingning suffered the fate of being brutally murdered?
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