At dawn, Yinzhen stopped what he was doing and noticed a faint bluish tinge on her face. He then got up. Nan Yi didn't know when he left, and she felt very unwell when she woke up.
She hurriedly packed up and prepared to return to Wanyue Pavilion, but unexpectedly, the sun was already shining brightly outside. She could hear voices coming from outside the study, so she hid back inside. Unable to go out, she could only wander around the study, idly looking around to pass the time.
She wandered around for two hours, but Yinzhen still hadn't returned to the mansion. Nan Yi was so hungry that she felt dizzy and weak, and she slumped on the couch, her whole body covered in cold sweat.
The original body disappeared, leaving her with an unhealthy body. Later, she had an accidental ingestion incident. Although she didn't think it was accidental, her body's foundation was indeed damaged. She must have been exposed to a cold wind last night, and that person tormented her for half the night. She was hungry for half a day and felt indescribably uncomfortable all over.
"Yi'er?"
"Yi'er, what's wrong?"
She was half asleep, being carefully held in someone's arms. Her voice sounded a little unsteady. She opened her eyes and gave a pitiful smile. Yinzhen looked at her anxiously, his sword-like eyebrows slightly furrowed. She pouted and murmured, "I... am hungry."
Yinzhen was taken aback and quickly told Su Peisheng to prepare the meal. He had also realized that he had forgotten to ask someone to prepare the meal for her when he was leaving court. He wanted to rush back, but his father called him to discuss matters. He was anxious, but he could not show it at all. He could only count down the time.
She stuffed all three dishes and a soup into her stomach, leaving Yinzhen speechless. After a period of washing and fussing, it was already evening. The room was lit with a dim yellow light, and Nan Yi was still sitting on Yinzhen's lap, this time forced, and she was still angry.
Yinzhen frowned. "Are you still feeling unwell?"
Nan Yi glared at him, kicked her embroidered shoes far away, and said angrily, "If you feel uncomfortable but can't call the imperial physician, then you're just suffering for nothing." After saying that, she forcefully tugged at the buttons on his everyday clothes, making the clothes on his chest wrinkled.
He choked up, but still whispered, "Don't pull, or your hand will hurt." He held her five fingers in his palm, frowned and thought for a moment, "Yi'er, bear with it for now. Stay with me for a few days before you go back to the courtyard."
He didn't go into Wanyue Pavilion for the time being, but he was afraid that if he let her leave, she wouldn't come out. With her stubborn personality, once she got going, nothing could change her mind. Sigh.
She got up and stood to the side, hands on her hips, coldly saying, "A few more days? Do you even know that I'm sick?"
"I know, but it's not serious. I'll cover you with several thick blankets later, and once you sweat it out, your heatstroke will be almost cured."
"You..." She was so angry that her eyes rolled back, and she almost choked. Her body trembled twice, but she was quickly pulled into a hug, and someone was saying sarcastic things in her ear, "Look at you, you've got quite a temper. I didn't say anything wrong. You might as well go to bed and lie down properly now."
"Ouch~ you bastard," she bit Yinzhen's neck, and he only frowned slightly before picking her up and carrying her behind the screen. After a few hurried movements, he covered her up completely, so she could no longer complain.
Nan Yi was half asleep when he took the official documents and placed them on the bed to read, occasionally observing her sweating.
When Nan Yi woke up the next day, he was much more awake. He felt refreshed after sweating, as if he had been cleaned and his clothes had been changed.
Perhaps fearing she would be hungry when she woke up, Yinzhen instructed Su Peisheng to prepare pastries in the study early in the morning.
"You're awake," Yinzhen got up and came over to touch her forehead, raising his hand to stroke her cheek. Nan Yi brushed his hand away, rolled her eyes at him, and asked in a low voice, "When can I go back to my courtyard?"
Yinzhen embraced her, his tone indistinct: "We'll talk about it in a couple of days." After saying that, fearing she would pester him for the same question again, he stuffed some pastries into her mouth.
Nan was so focused on filling her stomach that she forgot about this incident, and afterwards, Yinzhen clung to her and cuddled for a long time.
During dinner, Su Peisheng seemed hesitant to speak, but Nan Yi assumed he had official business to report and avoided him.
She vaguely heard what Lady Nian was saying behind the screen, and she immediately became angry. Yinzhen told her to wait for him obediently in the study, but he didn't return for a long time, so she turned cold and slipped back to Wanyue Pavilion.
For three consecutive days, Yinzhen did not send anyone to look for her. She felt vaguely uneasy and was about to sneak into the study at night when Shunzi came to report that Consort Xiuning was gone. She sat there blankly for a long time. Her thoughts were in chaos, and when she came to her senses, she didn't even know what she was thinking.
After falling asleep at night, she had a dream in which she found herself standing on the Bridge of Helplessness, a bridge that had withstood millions of years of wind and rain, teetering on the brink of collapse, yet would never fall.
The wailing and howling of ghosts surged up from under the bridge, while the dead on the bridge jostled and pushed each other, sometimes falling into the river to be swallowed by the vengeful spirits. Their expressions were numb, seemingly unafraid, while the dead behind them still pushed and shoved their way across the bridge.
She vaguely remembered that she had been here before, and was puzzled as to why she was standing by the bridge for no reason. She didn't want to leave; she was waiting for someone. She had forgotten the person's name, but she would probably remember it when she saw him.
She stood there for half a day without seeing the person she wanted to see. She wandered around aimlessly, and then stood quietly in front of the Underworld Palace again. The Underworld Palace was empty because no one lived there. The loneliness and desolation in her heart came quickly and fiercely. Her eyes became hot, and warm tears dripped to the ground, condensing into small, crystal-clear green beads. A fair, jade-like hand quietly picked them up and hid them in its sleeve.
The owner of the hand held up a sleeve to wipe her slightly reddened eyes, and called out softly, "Qinglian."
Her face remained gentle and kind, unchanged for millennia.
Nan Yi grasped the silver-threaded cloud-like sleeve in front of him and looked at the jade-faced monk before him. "Bodhisattva, I'm looking for someone, but I can't find him. Can you tell me where he is?"
She always remembered that she was looking for someone, but unlike the person waiting by the Bridge of Helplessness, it was someone that Qinglian had been searching for for eternity.
A glint flashed in the jade-faced monk's eyes, but Nan Yi couldn't quite grasp it, only feeling a strange sensation slip through his heart.
"Qinglian, do you still want to persist?" the jade-faced monk asked kindly.
Nan tilted her head and thought for a moment. Following her intuition, she said firmly, "Yes, I need to. I've been looking for him for too long. You know I'm stubborn. I have to find out the answer. No matter where he is or who he is, I need to get an answer so I know whether I should continue to pursue him."
The jade-faced monk looked at the unwavering determination in her eyes, then gazed up at the eternally gray underworld.
Apart from the mandala, the blue lotus is the only color in the underworld.
Long ago, Jinlian disliked the lack of color in the underworld, so she brought seeds of the mandrake from Mount Ling. The sacred mandrake of the Western Paradise was tasked with blooming in the underworld, but after a thousand years, it bloomed into black flowers.
Dissatisfied, Jinlian fought a fierce battle with it. During the fight, her true form was damaged, and a mouthful of blood from her heart spilled out, dripping onto the stamen of the mandrake flower. The black mandrake flower, imbued with Jinlian's spiritual energy, instantly turned golden.
From then on, the mandrake flowers in the underworld all bloomed with golden flowers.
However, all of this stemmed from a joke he made with Qinglian when they were young.
"Qinglian, what you are looking for may not be what you can obtain. So, do you still want to continue?" the jade-faced monk suddenly asked.
Nan smiled faintly, "I can only decide whether to continue after I find it."
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