"I will help you!" Gu Yanfei said with a smile, with a confident arc at the corner of his lips.
A few strands of messy hair were blown by the cold wind onto her jade-like cheeks, making her look elegant and majestic.
Wei Jiaoniang and Lu Qin looked at each other again, and they both burst out laughing almost at the same time, their laughter as loud as bells.
Both of them snuggled intimately on Gu Yanfei's shoulders, allowing Gu Yanfei to deeply feel what it means to be hugged by two people.
Many eyes around looked towards the three of them.
Chatting and laughing, the group arrived at the Imperial Garden.
The head maid Liu Shuangzhi brought the girls to a three-room water pavilion by the lake.
The Tinglan Water Pavilion had been decorated in advance. The room was filled with the scent of incense, and the floor was covered with wool carpets. It was equipped with a piano desk, tables and chairs, a desk, a chessboard, etc. There were several silver frost charcoal basins burning inside, and the temperature was just right.
As soon as the girls who were almost frozen entered, they felt as if they were alive again and took off their cloaks.
"Girl!"
Wei Jiaoniang, Gu Yanfei and others just walked to the door of the water pavilion, and a girl in green clothes inside waved to Wei Jiaoniang happily.
Wei Jiaoniang put away the tung oil umbrella and handed it to a palace maid next to her. She turned around and whispered to Gu Yanfei, "The eldest prince will definitely come soon."
She also imitated Gu Yanfei's gesture of calculating, as if to say, I just figured it out.
Gu Yanfei and Lu Qin were amused by her, and laughed happily, and stepped over the threshold together.
In the water pavilion, most of the girls have already taken their seats. There is still a clear distinction between the nobles and the aristocratic families, with the nobles sitting on the east side and the aristocratic families sitting on the west side.
Behind a rosewood piano table inlaid with shells against the west wall, a dignified and beautiful girl from an aristocratic family sat elegantly with her hands on the strings. She first tested the sound, then plucked the strings with her slender fingers and played a piece of "High Mountains and Flowing Water".
A mountain stream meets a soulmate.
The purpose of playing "High Mountains and Flowing Water" is naturally to wait for a soulmate.
Wei Jiaoniang signaled with her eyes that Gu Yanfei and Lu Qin should go to see the girl playing the piano, and whispered, "They must have heard the news, otherwise why would they be playing the piano in the middle of winter?"
As they were talking, they came to the girl in green clothes, and Wei Jiaoniang asked with a smile, "What shall we play?"
"Let's play hide and seek." suggested the girl in green clothes.
Lu Qin rejected the idea without thinking: "How can we play in such a small place? It's snowing outside now."
As she spoke, she pushed open a window and looked out at the lake outside the water pavilion. The clear lake water was sparkling in the wind and snow.
"Let's feed the fish." Lu Qin's eyes rolled around and she suggested with a smile, "I heard that there are a lot of gold and silver scale koi in this lake. Their bodies are covered with golden or silver scales, which are very beautiful."
Lu Qin enthusiastically called the palace maid to get fish food.
Wei Jiaoniang pointed at Lu Qin's forehead and told Gu Yanfei with a smile: "Yanfei, Ah Qin just doesn't like the cold weather and is too lazy to move."
Lu Qin stuck out her tongue playfully and smiled at Gu Yanfei with a wink, not feeling embarrassed at all as her true feelings were revealed.
Two boxes of fish food were soon brought up. The girls fed the fish, admired the fish, ate snacks, and talked and laughed.
At the door, a middle-aged eunuch with a fair face and no beard was ordering several palace maids to pour tea and water, and occasionally adding fruits and snacks to the plates, while he himself would occasionally look out.
After a long while, a young eunuch finally arrived with a tray.
The middle-aged waiter took the tray and personally carried the white porcelain wine jug and several wine glasses on the tray over.
Wei Jiaoniang's nose moved, she smelled the hint of alcohol in the air, and blurted out, "Jade Flower Dew."
As she spoke, Wei Jiaoniang touched her chin, a thoughtful look on her face.
When these foreign ministers and their wives enter the palace, they are not allowed to drink alcohol casually except when attending palace banquets. They are afraid of being disrespectful in front of the emperor. This is the rule, so the palace servants will not serve them wine casually.
Wei Jiaoniang narrowed her eyes, looked up and down at the palace servant who was serving wine, and her imagination ran wild: Could this be some kind of conspiracy? In an instant, all the scripts of palace fighting that Wei Jiaoniang had seen before appeared in her mind.
But the next moment, Gu Yanfei raised his eyebrows and said to the middle-aged servant: "It's you."
"Yes, I am a servant." The middle-aged servant was a little flattered and said hurriedly, "My surname is He."
This eunuch He was the eunuch who brought the sedan chair to Xihuamen to pick up Gu Yanfei.
Eunuch He said respectfully, "This Qionghua Dew was given to Second Miss Gu by His Royal Highness the First Prince."
He lowered his head and brought the pot of wine to the table, and then quickly poured a glass of wine for Gu Yanfei.
"It's really the Qionghua Dew, Jiaoniang, your nose is still so sensitive." Lu Qin praised in amazement and exchanged a tacit glance with Wei Jiaoniang, meaning that the eldest prince is really a thoughtful person.
"That's right." Wei Jiaoniang touched her nose proudly and blinked her right eye, making a double entendre.
Wei Jiaoniang's grandfather, Duke Weiguo, loved wine. Although Wei Jiaoniang's alcohol tolerance was average, she had a keen nose and could tell the identity of any wine she had drunk before just by smelling it.
The wine in the white porcelain cup is light amber in color, crystal clear and has a pleasant fragrance.
Gu Yanfei squinted her eyes and savored the clear aroma of wine, remembering that she once casually mentioned to Chu Yi that she wanted to taste the Qionghua Dew. She had forgotten it after she mentioned it, but she didn't expect that he still remembered it.
"Eunuch He, please thank the Crown Prince for me." Gu Yanfei smiled and said to Eunuch He in a generous manner.
"Would you like a drink?" Gu Yanfei smiled and poured a glass of wine for Wei Jiaoniang, Lu Qin and the other three girls at the table.
As the wine poured from the pot, the aroma of the wine filled the air, and the pleasant aroma of the wine dispersed some of the sweet and smoky fragrance around it.
Wei Jiaoniang and Lu Qin were the first to raise their glasses, and the other two girls, who were also casual in nature, also raised their glasses one after another. Only a girl in pink was a little hesitant, thinking that it was inappropriate to drink in the palace.
Wei Jiaoniang took a sip of the wine and savored it carefully: "Ganoderma lucidum, honey, wolfberry, and..."
She tilted her face and concentrated on savoring the taste in her mouth. She always felt that there was an indescribable taste in the wine.
"Peony." A smiling voice sounded in Wei Jiaoniang's ears.
Wei Jiaoniang's eyes lit up and she nodded hurriedly, "It's peony."
"Yan Fei, your tongue is more clever than mine!"
Lu Qin added: "With the addition of peony, the Qionghua Dew becomes fragrant but not gaudy, with a mellow and elegant fragrance, and a long and sweet taste."
"Good wine, really good wine!"
The girls praised with great delight.
The crisp and lively sounds of laughter can be clearly heard in the water pavilion, adding a bit of vitality to this cold winter.
“It’s so noisy!”
On the west side of the water pavilion, a young girl in yellow sitting next to the piano table said coldly, not hiding her displeasure on her face.
"I can't even appreciate the piano properly." Another girl in blue also frowned and looked at Gu Yanfei, Wei Jiaoniang and the others. She pursed her red lips and snorted coldly, "It's not decent to make a noise in the palace!"
The melodious sound of the piano continued endlessly. The girl in purple was stroking the piano with her ten fingers flying, looking down at the strings intently with her brows slightly furrowed.
Several other ladies from aristocratic families also nodded in agreement, thinking to themselves: These ladies of noble birth have really vulgar manners and are not worthy of being in a refined gathering.
The noisy noise ruined their good mood of listening to the music and appreciating the snow.
Only Yu Chaoyun remained calm. He stroked the aromatherapy ball in his sleeve and reminded her calmly, "Maybe they are planning to do the same as they did last time in Shanglin Garden..."
As soon as these words were spoken, the faces of the other people present changed instantly. They couldn't help but remember that day outside the hunting ground, when Wei Jiaoniang and others deliberately used the sound of gongs and drums to disrupt the sound of the piano.
At that time, I accidentally broke the string when I was playing the piano. It was really abominable! Miss Zeng, dressed in yellow, stroked her fingers gently, and her fingertips recalled the pain of the broken string that day.
Miss Zeng repeatedly stroked her trembling fingertips, bit her lower lip with her jade teeth, and squeezed out four words from between her teeth: "This is too much."
After all, wasn't it because Wei Jiaoniang relied on the support of the Duke of Wei that she dared to be so arrogant? "Miss Yu is right, they must have done it on purpose!" The blue-clothed girl lowered her voice, barely maintaining the demeanor of a girl from an aristocratic family.
The purple-clothed girl who was playing the piano naturally heard their conversation as well. Her fingers trembled, and the sound of the piano became disrupted.
She frowned tightly and simply pressed the strings, and the sound of the piano stopped abruptly.
The surroundings became quiet, and the laughter coming from the right seemed to become even harsher.
"I see..." Yu Chaoyun said again, and these two words attracted the attention of all the girls from noble families.
Yu Chaoyun continued slowly, "Why not compete with them in playing the qin?"
Piano duel?
All the ladies from noble families were stunned and looked at each other.
Playing the zither is a tradition of the Dajing Dynasty.
It is rumored that during the reign of Emperor Taizu, he often visited the people in disguise to understand their sentiments.
One year when Emperor Taizu went to Yangzhou, he encountered a pleasure boat while traveling on the Qinhuai River. The two sides had a dispute over whether to give way, and the two large ships blocked the river, making it difficult for other ships to pass.
When Emperor Taizu saw a stunning beauty on the pleasure boat, and heard that the beauty was Hua Qingyi, the most talented woman in Yangzhou, who was outstanding in playing the zither, he proposed to compete with her in playing the zither, and whoever lost would give way.
Hua Qingyi accepted the challenge, and after the song, Emperor Taizu sighed and said, "This song should only exist in heaven, how many times can it be heard in the world?" He felt inferior to the emperor and admitted defeat without even playing the song.
Emperor Taizu was a man who valued talented and beautiful women, but unfortunately Prince Xiang was interested in her, while the goddess was not. Hua Qingyi politely declined Emperor Taizu's kindness and devoted her life to studying the art of playing the zither. Later, she became a master of her generation and was famous throughout the world.
Since then, women in the Dajing Dynasty have had the tradition of competing in playing the zither.
The competition of playing the qin is not about "spirit" but "talent".
Miss Zeng raised her eyebrows and glanced at Wei Jiaoniang and the others, and said with a hint of sarcasm: "Can they play the piano?"
"How can the light of a firefly compete with the brilliance of the sun and the moon!" The purple-clothed girl said with a smile, casually plucking a string of a zither with an elegant posture, her slender fingers as white as orchid and jade.
The same sneer and disdain were also revealed on the faces of several other girls from aristocratic families.
It is said that the ladies of these noble families can draw a bow when mounted on a horse and wield a sword when dismounted. However, with their clumsy hands and feet, even if they have learned the piano for a few days, they are only half-baked!
It would be better to let them beat drums and gongs!
(End of this chapter)
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