"It's to repay a favor."
Kang Fulai paused for a moment before continuing, "My mother was critically ill back then, but the Emperor was afraid the Emperor would discover my true background, so he kept it from me. After all... as a close bodyguard to Empress Feng, I must be without a mother or father, a wife or children."
"My master happened to be leaving the palace to visit his family at the General's Mansion. As a personal guard, I followed him out of the palace, and you even gave me half a day off. It was because of your kindness that I was able to secretly return to my mother's residence and see her for the last time."
"So, you let the prince go because of my unintentional act?" Feng Lingyan looked at Kang Fulai with a serious expression.
"Yes and no. Even if that incident hadn't happened, I wouldn't have been able to be so cruel to a newborn baby. Furthermore, my mother had already passed away at the time, so I had no ties to worry about. I wasn't worried that the Emperor would use my mother to threaten me."
"After the incident with the 'Civet Cat Princess,' the Emperor did indeed order the extermination of everyone in the Bixia Palace. However, Your Majesty, not wanting to see his hard-earned chess piece destroyed, suggested that the Emperor simply castrate me as punishment for failing to protect the Master. Thus, I was able to retain my life."
"Then you are really..."
Han Yichen glanced leisurely at Kang Fulai's lower body and made a knife-cutting gesture towards him, thinking to himself: His biological father, whose name he didn't know, couldn't be so unlucky, right?
"Ahem...no. The one who was castrated was actually someone else, and I was secretly arranged to snatch the princess away." Kang Fulai said awkwardly, feeling a little embarrassed.
"Achen, don't interrupt." Hua Qingcheng pulled Han Yichen aside speechlessly and motioned Kang Fulai to continue.
"Back then, after I smuggled the young mistress, who had fallen asleep from hunger, out of the palace in a food box, I didn't follow the emperor's instructions and throw her into the Lai River to feed the fish. Instead, I took the young mistress and fled overnight."
"To deal with the soldiers checking at the city gate, I even bought a coffin, punched a few holes in the bottom, and placed the bodies of my young master and my mother together. I also disguised my mother's face to look like a leper who had died. As a result, the guards at the city gate only pulled the coffin halfway and hastily closed it with disgust. Thus, my young master and I were able to escape from the capital."
"After hastily burying my mother in the woods outside the city, I took the young master south, sometimes by water, sometimes by land. Since the young master was just born, I didn't dare to walk too fast, and it took us five days to reach Fufeng County."
"The princess was just born, and you've already taken her all this way, and how did you even feed her?" Hearing Kang Fulai's words, Feng Lingyan felt a sharp pain in her heart. His poor daughter had been born into such a difficult life.
"To be honest, I have no experience taking care of a baby, so when I first offered her food, she refused to eat. At the suggestion of others, I had no choice but to feed her rice soup and sugar water instead. Whenever I met a farmer with a newborn, I'd offer him some money to help her with her milk production. When we were out in the wild and had no food, I also fed her goat's and dog's milk. Once, we came across a village, but there were no newborns. Luckily, a pig had just given birth, so..."
"You, you, you...you wouldn't have taken the prince directly to those sheep, dogs and pigs..." Feng Lingyan's throat rolled slightly, and she looked at Kang Fulai in horror.
"No! No! No! Don't worry, master. I squeeze the water into the bowl to feed her." Seeing that his master had misunderstood, Kang Fulai shook his head vigorously and hurriedly explained.
"That's good... That's good..."
Feng Lingyan felt relieved upon hearing this. The thought of her daughter as a child, feeding on goat, dog, and pig milk like an animal cub, was too horrifying to contemplate.
"After arriving in Fufeng County, I didn't know what to do for a moment. In my confusion, I happened to meet a white-bearded Taoist priest who was setting up a stall on the roadside and offering free fortune-telling. I thought it was free anyway, so I just wrote down a word and asked him to tell my fortune." Kang Fulai continued.
"Oh, I wonder what you wrote? What did the Taoist priest say?" Feng Lingyan couldn't help but feel a little curious.
"Although it was winter, the flowers in the south were still blooming beautifully, so I wrote the word 'flower'."
…
"Flowing water, falling flowers, and the passing of spring, heaven and earth." Xuantian, who was sitting in front of the fortune-telling stall, looked at the word "flower" written by Kang Fulai, stroked his gray beard, and said with an unfathomable look on his face.
"I don't know what you mean by this?" Kang Fulai, holding the baby in his arms, looked at Xuantian, who looked like an otherworldly master, with a confused look on his face.
Xuantian narrowed his eyes slightly upon hearing this, pinched his fingers in a formal manner, and then opened them again. "Layman, don't worry about what it means (after all, he'd forgotten it). Just remember that this baby has a connection with the word 'flower.' You must find a family with the surname 'Hua' to adopt her. Only then will she be safe. But please note that it's not enough to just have the surname Hua; the head of the family must also be a scholar."
Xuantian finished speaking, packed up his fortune-telling stall, and leisurely left, carrying the banner. (Pretending to be a worldly expert is so damn tiring! As a science and engineering graduate, he'd fortunately been through three years of college entrance exams and five years of mock exams, so he could still recite some ancient poetry to fool others.)
…
"Master, do you know what that Taoist priest meant?" Kang Fulai couldn't help but ask the doubts that had been accumulating in his heart for sixteen years.
"'Flowing water, falling flowers, and spring are gone, heaven and earth', which means heaven is in heaven and earth is in the world. The contrast between the past and the present is huge. This Taoist priest is indeed a hermit." Even the talented Feng Lingyan was amazed by such a wonderful sentence.
My dear, there is more to this chapter. Please click on the next page to continue reading. It will be even more exciting later!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
