"Your Majesty," the Queen Mother's lips trembled violently, but the sound she made was as soft as a mosquito. Zhong Zhiheng was busy putting his ear close to her, and then he heard too many intermittent words, "Mingwei... Where is Mingwei? I want to... want to see Mingwei..."
"Mother, you are confused. Mingwei is now in Ningguta, not in the capital." Zhong Zhiheng looked at the empress dowager's cloudy eyes with complicated eyes. At this moment, his mood was also very complicated. He thought that the empress dowager must be thinking about the Xu family in her last days, and even asked him to promise to revive the Xu family before she died. After all, the empress dowager has been worrying about the Xu family all her life. On the way here just now, he had thought about how to deal with the empress dowager, but he never expected that at this time, the empress dowager was most concerned about Zhong Mingwei.
"Heng'er...you have to take good care of Mingwei. He...he is so pitiful," the Queen Mother suddenly held her hand tightly, with such force that Zhong Zhiheng felt pain. She panted and propped herself up, looking at Zhong Zhiheng anxiously, "Heng'er, no matter how many sins the Xu family has committed, they...have nothing to do with Mingwei. Now that the Xu family...the Xu family has fallen, I am also going to die. You should...you should be relieved about Mingwei, right? Don't...don't let him suffer in Ningguta. Let...let him return to Beijing, okay?"
"Mother, I have always been very clear about my fate, and it has never been because of the Xu family." Zhong Zhiheng felt as if his throat was burning. He swallowed hard and spoke with some difficulty.
"Then... why is that? Why do you... do you hate... hate Mingwei so much? I... I don't understand," the Queen Mother stared at Zhong Zhiheng, panting more and more, "Don't you like Si... Siyao the most? Siyao... only left Mingwei as her only son, how could you... how could you bear to treat him like this? Aren't you afraid that a hundred years later, in the underworld, you will see Siyao, how... how are you going to explain to Siyao? It is said that even a tiger will not eat its own cubs. Ming, Mingwei is your own flesh and blood after all!"
"No, no..." Zhong Zhiheng shook his head slowly, and said bitterly, "If he is, it would be great. I will hand over the whole world to him."
“Heng’er, promise your mother that you will treat Mingwei well,” the Queen Mother seemed not to have heard Zhong Zhiheng’s words and continued to ramble, “When Siyao was pregnant with him, she suffered a lot. In the first few months, she ate… vomited everything she ate. She almost vomited out her gallbladder. Later… later she stopped vomiting, but the heat was too severe and she, she couldn’t eat anymore. She was such a thin girl, her arms and legs were as thin as sticks, and her belly kept getting bigger. I felt so distressed when I saw it. It was not easy for her to… to hold on for eight months… Just consider that Siyao risked her life to give birth to Mingwei for you, and you… you can’t treat him like this…”
Zhong Zhiheng's whole body suddenly froze. He stared at the lifelike peony flowers embroidered on the quilt. Suddenly, he held the empress dowager's shoulders with both hands, and then lowered his voice and asked anxiously: "Mother, you just said that Siyao...she is Mingwei who was born prematurely?"
The Queen Mother was no longer able to speak. Not only did she fail to speak, her pupils began to dilate.
"Mother! Tell me! Tell me!" Zhong Zhiheng kept asking, shaking the Queen Mother's shoulders with both hands, until her chest stopped rising and falling, and he finally stopped.
…
January 20th, the 34th year of Jiasheng
The Queen Mother died.
His Majesty, along with a group of princes and concubines, performed the ceremony of three kowtows and nine bows in the Cining Palace.
…
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