Chapter 69: A hastily given birth to a baby
According to my aunt, it is not easy for a woman to get pregnant.
Some people suffered from morning sickness to the point of excruciating pain, some ate sour plums as meals, and some even fell into deep depression after giving birth. My aunt said that once she went to visit a distant cousin who had just given birth. The cousin had dull eyes and suddenly burst into tears when she looked at her, saying, "What should I do, cousin? I want to strangle this child to death."
My aunt, who was a newlywed at the time, was so frightened by the scene that she almost fell off the couch, and she had a shadow on the possibility of having children for a while.
I listened quietly to her story: "...So Auntie only gave birth to Xiaochuan?"
"That's not the case," the aunt said, "It's mainly because your aunt is not in good health. She almost died in the delivery room after giving birth to one child. She doesn't dare to go through it again. To be honest, if possible, I also want to have a little girl."
I smiled. "Little girl? Like me?"
My aunt rolled her eyes at me and said, "Forget about someone like you. We have enough troublemakers like you in our family."
After chatting for a while, the aunt suddenly saw something dropped by the bed. She took it out and saw that it was a small wooden top, polished into a round shape and painted with bright paint, looking very impressive.
She couldn't help but take another look and asked, "This toy is really well made. Which official gave it to you as a gift?"
I poked half of my head out of the bed and said, "This, this was made by the emperor himself."
My aunt widened her eyes in surprise and quickly placed the spinning top gently on the small table, fearing that she would break it.
"It's okay. He made six of the same spinning tops. If one breaks, he can always replace it," I added.
The aunt was even more surprised: "The emperor can do this?"
I nodded. "He lived in the Yunting for a few years and knows everything. Auntie, do you want to see other toys he made? I'll show them to you."
"No need!" Auntie waved her hands repeatedly: "It seems that he is very concerned about your pregnancy."
As everyone knows, the men in our Shen family respect women very much and have become the model of a good husband in Chang'an City. My aunt used my gentle and considerate second uncle as a reference and was able to conclude that Li Siyan was concerned about her, which shows how much effort he put in.
However, although he cared about me, he never asked me whether I wanted this kindness.
As the due date approaches, I always tend to have wild thoughts. As I stroked my bulging belly, I suddenly thought of my mother.
My mother who passed away young.
"Aunt, do you still remember my mother?" I grabbed two pillows and placed them behind me, then sat sideways on the couch and started chatting with my aunt.
My aunt was sewing non-stop. When I asked her this, she hesitated for a moment before answering, "Of course I remember, but my sister-in-law's personality is nothing like yours. She has a gentle nature and speaks softly. No one in Chang'an has a bad word to say about her."
"I've kind of forgotten what she looked like," I gestured in the air. "I only remember her voice, so soft and peaceful, and the delicious sticky rice cakes she made."
My aunt smiled. "Your mother is the daughter of a prominent family in Jingchu. She's the best at preparing these strange-tasting pastries. I asked her to help me manage the household, but she kept refusing, saying she didn't know how to manage it and only wanted to take care of her husband and children. Fortunately, she met your father, otherwise, with her personality, she would be easily bullied."
I shook my head. "You can't say that. I have a pretty fierce temper. If I deserve to be bullied, I won't get away with it."
When talking about this, my aunt's face was gloomy.
After a moment of sadness, she sighed deeply and said, "The lawsuit between you and the emperor is not something I, an ordinary woman, can interfere with. You say he is unreasonable, but sometimes think about it, isn't he the only one who is reasonable in this land?"
"No, auntie, don't flatter him. He is just a complete rotten person." I said seriously.
Most women are soft-hearted, including my weak-willed aunt.
After witnessing Li Siyan's meticulous and careful care for me, her attitude towards Li Siyan became much softer.
Once, Li Siyan was verbally reviewing memorials while massaging my swollen calves. My aunt happened to see us. Li Siyan immediately and warmly invited my aunt to sit down and showed her his newly made Baijia Paddy Field Clothes.
I have seen the Dog Emperor smile in many ways: three parts cold, three parts sarcastic, and four parts indifferent, but I have never seen him smile so flatteringly.
When the aunt saw the murderer of her husband, she naturally did not look happy. She looked at the paddy field shirt with a serious face: the stitching was okay, but the details were rough. She looked up at his hands and saw obvious needle holes on his ten fingers.
At that moment, I could feel the anger in my aunt's heart dissipate.
Her eyes were tired and relieved, as if to say, forget it.
At dinner, the aunt served Li Siyan a bowl of chicken soup for the first time.
Li Siyan was flattered and didn't dare to move. He immediately pushed the golden bowl of soup towards me and said with a wink, "Yingying is heavy, give it to Yingying."
I pushed it back: "I don't like drinking this stuff."
His voice was so soft that water could drip out of it: "Yingying, be good. Drink some to replenish your body."
Fuck you.
Look at this polite scene, if you don’t know, you would think this is Phoenix Soup.
After dinner, I drove Li Siyan back to the imperial study and frowned as I said to my aunt, "Aunt, what's wrong with you today? You actually treated him so well. Does he deserve it?"
My aunt gathered the cloth in silence and said slowly, "I was just wondering, are you planning to keep doing this for the rest of your life? He is an emperor after all, and it's extremely rare for him to achieve this."
I was shocked. "He killed our whole family, and now I've only poked a few holes in my fingers. Is that how Auntie forgives him?"
"Let's put it this way," my aunt said. "It's true he's a jerk, but it's also true he's been kind to you. Tomorrow the decree will come down to crown you queen, and your future will only be more glorious."
"So what if she becomes the queen?" Tears welled up in my eyes. "Why does he get everything he wants, women, children, and the kingdom, while I can only be locked up here and accept his charity?"
"There's no such thing as fairness in this world." Auntie sighed, "You've read so many books, don't you understand this?"
"There's no choice anyway, so we might as well go with the flow. Yingzi, people's eyes are born in front, so they are destined to look forward."
After saying that, my aunt got up and left. I sat beside the couch for a long time in silence, my eyes falling on the exquisite spinning top.
The next moment, the spinning top was thrown into the charcoal fire basin and gradually became charred and curled up.
The heat of July is scorching, and the clothes are being given out in September. As the seasons change and things change, my belly becomes bigger and bigger, and it becomes more and more inconvenient for me to walk.
After losing mobility, the days of pregnancy became extremely boring.
Li Siyan has finally learned his lesson. He no longer controls me personally or restrains me in a ferocious manner. Instead, he directly moves the only woman I fear, my aunt, into the Zichen Palace.
Although my aunt disliked him, she loved her unborn nephew, so she put me under strict military management. I was not allowed to run around, cry, eat snacks, or touch cats and dogs...
With my aunt in charge of me, Li Siyan only had to flatter and please her, send warmth to Xiaochuan every few days, and reward me with things. To be honest, I have read history books for so many years, but I have never heard of an emperor who rewarded things in units of warehouses. Basically, whatever others gave him, he would give it to me. Later, he found it troublesome and simply put the warehouse key at the head of my bed, so that I could get it anytime if I needed it.
There is also a massage service three times a day, which made my pregnancy pretty painless.
You have to know that he was an emperor with a lot of things to do every day. He had to sacrifice all his personal rest time to be able to report for duty three times a day.
Seeing this, my aunt was extremely shocked and asked me, "Was he so nice to you before? Or did he become so nice only after he knew you had a child?"
I thought about it carefully and said, "...It was like this before, but our needs never matched. I just wanted to leave the Inner Courtyard, but he was willing to do anything except let me leave."
My aunt commented mercilessly, "What a rotten fate this is. The Immortal Sima Ming must have slipped when he wrote your horoscopes."
“Who says it’s not…”
Li Siyan tried to coax me back by spending money, but later, he vaguely discovered that I had very little desire for material things, and spending money had almost no effect. I used to be interested in calligraphy and painting, but since he caught me and brought me back, I have lost the mood to read and write.
This made him very uneasy.
Feeling uneasy, he did many things that he thought would make me happier, such as pressing the head of the ceremonial officer to have my father's tablet placed in the Taimiao.
Entering the Taimiao and enjoying a hundred years of worship from the royal descendants is the highest honor for a minister of a country. If you are not one of the Three Dukes and Nine Ministers, you cannot even touch the threshold of the Taimiao. When my father died, he was just a small historian, but he was forced in on the grounds of loyalty and righteousness.
It's not difficult to imagine how much effort he put into accomplishing this.
It’s a good thing that there are only a few people left in my family. Otherwise, considering Li Siyan’s level of flattery, I don’t think that in just two years, the Shen family will be able to transform from a shabby and small family into the largest foreign-related family in the country.
But these are external things, I don’t care about them at all. What makes me most sad is his apology which came many years late.
The beginning of our story was so terrible. He killed innocent people indiscriminately and I hated him to the core. We kept making mistakes until today. Before we stepped into the door of death together, he finally lowered his arrogant head to me.
In the warm tent of Hibiscus, he held my hand and said sorry, it was all his fault. He had done many irreparable things in the past and had hurt me. He had started to regret it a long time ago, but he was unwilling to tell me and unwilling to give up this pitiful self-esteem. He only dared to tie me to him in the most tragic way.
He also said that he never dared to look back at what he had done, because every time he looked back, he became more desperate: a cruel and despicable bastard like him could not and did not deserve my heart.
What could I say? I didn't even feel like scolding him. I was just overwhelmed with a deep sense of loss.
After all, I am not a god or Buddha. I am not responsible for accepting his confession, nor do I intend to forgive him.
He actually understood that it was impossible for me to forgive him.
Li Siyan looks arrogant on the outside, but he is actually very capable inside.
Because he is very self-aware, he has never asked me stupid questions like "Have you ever loved me?" "Why don't you love me?" "How can you love me?" He doesn't understand what love is, and he doesn't expect it. Since he can't get it, he simply doesn't expect it and just uses his power to keep me by his side.
This saves a lot of trouble, but also causes a lot of harm.
But now the damage is done and I don’t want to bother with it anymore.
"Yingying?" he called me softly.
My eyelashes twitched slightly.
Under the brocade quilt, he rubbed my swollen calves from pregnancy, his voice was ethereal, as if coming from far away.
"You know what? All the things I told you about my mother were actually lies."
He curled his lips into a faint smile, "It's true that she gave birth to me, but she doesn't have the warmth and affection of an ordinary mother towards me, only disgust and fear."
"Before the late Queen died, she asked my mother to take me to the Imperial Court. Without her support, she was in constant fear. So, as soon as the Queen died, she threw me into the job of pouring night incense without hesitation. She never asked about my well-being again, probably hoping that I would die quietly there."
I see.
...Is it because you were once an abandoned child that you are so afraid of being abandoned again?
I can guess why he lied to me. At that time, I had a happy and harmonious family and was loved by my family, but he was alone and had nothing.
He probably told this harmless little lie to appear less pathetic in front of me.
But times have changed, and those little bits of arrogance he had back then have all disappeared in front of me.
I opened my eyes and said, "Your Majesty, why are you telling me this? Are you blaming her?"
"I have never blamed her. I understand her suffering," Li Siyan said. "It was my son who brought her so much misfortune. How could she love a disaster?"
"I just feel sad. She could have lived a peaceful life in the palace, but because she gave birth to a son of noble blood, she was forced to drink a cup of poison wine and end her life."
I didn't know how to respond. Comforting me seemed insincere, while kicking someone when they're down seemed harsh. After thinking for a long time, I could only say, "My condolences."
He stared at me silently for a long time before he whispered, "The first time I met you was in Xuanzheng Hall. You scolded me and, incidentally, my mother. I was furious at the time, but later I felt a sense of regret. If she had been as fierce and aggressive as you, perhaps many things wouldn't have happened."
I understand what he means. If his mother was as fierce as I am, she certainly would not allow the late emperor to do what he wants, and there would be no Li Siyan in this world.
Without him, our family would not have suffered such a devastating disaster.
He knew his birth was a mistake, which was why he felt so inferior. He chose a grave for his mother, burned paper money, and stubbornly tried to prove that he was more than just a stain on her life. But what was the use? Death was like the extinguishing of a candle. No matter how much he acted, his mother would not be able to see it.
It's ridiculous that he actually wants me to repeat his mother's mistakes. Human beings are really strange creatures. It's not that they don't reflect, but they will repeat the misfortunes of their ancestors generation after generation, as if it were fate.
Looking into his eyes, I said calmly, "I'm certainly not as weak as your mother, but don't expect me to go through thick and thin for this child."
I pushed his hand away and said indifferently, "No matter what, giving birth to him was not my original intention. I am sorry to disappoint Your Majesty. To be honest, if I were in the same situation as Your Majesty's mother, I wouldn't be so protective of an unexpected child."
His face turned pale and he stood frozen beside my bed like a stone statue.
Seeing him like this, I didn't feel any joy, only sadness.
Why have things come to this?
After closing his eyes and calming down for a long time, Li Siyan took my hand again, buried his face in my palm, and suddenly asked in a hoarse voice: "Yingying, I want to ask you, if I had not killed your father and brother, but had taken a fancy to you at a literary gathering and selected you into the palace... or if I had gone door to door with the pearl flowers you gave me to repay you, would we have had a better start?"
"Of course," I said, "then at least I wouldn't hate you as much as I do now."
Seeing he was about to ask more, I looked him straight in the eye and said calmly, "But it was just a slightly better start. Even if you hadn't done all this, I wouldn't have truly fallen in love with you, Your Majesty. We are two completely different people. Our hobbies, personalities, and ways of dealing with things are completely unrelated. Forcing ourselves to be together is a torture to ourselves and each other."
The room was silent except for the sound of a dripping water clock.
After a while, Li Siyan showed a self-deprecating look on his face: "How could I forget your character? You are an upright scholar of Confucius and Mencius, and I am just a despicable villain in the gutter."
Since he has scolded me so harshly, there is no need for me to retaliate. In fact, Li Siyan's temperament is not the type that I hate the most. Although he is violent, he is still upright. At least he uses his power to oppress others openly instead of using despicable tricks behind their backs.
It can be said that he is a scumbag openly and obviously bad.
Even when he forced me to get pregnant, his methods were so brutal and effective that it made me feel powerless even if I wanted to hate him - he didn't care at all whether I hated him or not. Even if I hated him, he still thought that I was at least willing to put my heart into him, and he was very happy.
I'm tired, let him be, I thought as I closed my eyes drowsily.
The day of delivery was getting closer and closer, and everyone in the Zichen Palace was on high alert. No matter where I went, Su Xi Hui Yue had to support me on both sides. I felt uncomfortable, but they said that these were the emperor's orders and they must not let anything go wrong.
Li Siyan was also very scared, afraid that I would accidentally bump into myself. Now I have two bodies and am in a trance. If I fall, it will be very serious. If I am not careful, there will be two deaths.
So he took all the official business back to the inner hall to handle it so that he could take care of me nearby.
I don't think this is a good habit.
Just like when I was a kid doing homework, if I did it in the study, I would probably finish my homework properly before going out to play, but if I did it in my own room, then it would be over, and I would have to play with my toys from time to time, and it would often take until dark to finish my homework.
Li Siyan did the same. As he was reading the letter, he inexplicably saw my bedside again.
I was reading a collection of poetry casually. When I heard he was coming, I didn't even raise my eyelids and completely ignored him.
Li Siyan coughed lightly, perhaps because he felt the night air was too cold. He pulled the quilt up a bit and pushed a plate of steamed pears towards me. "It's dry today, so eat more fruit."
"I have no appetite."
The sweet smell of steamed pears made me frown.
"Forget it if you don't want to eat it." Li Siyan has always been reasonable in small matters.
After sitting idly for a while, his eyes dimmed and fell on the protruding part of the quilt. He licked his lips and carefully and tentatively placed his palm on it.
I looked at him in surprise.
He was afraid that he might have hurt me, so he hadn't touched my belly for a long time. What happened today? Did he suddenly want to communicate and bond with his child?
Li Siyan hesitated for a long time and asked a very unprofessional question.
"Yingying, do you think he will be a boy or a girl?"
I gave him an even more unprofessional answer: "I don't know."
He concentrated on thinking for a moment, and suddenly, his hand moved slightly, as if the child in his belly punched out from the inside.
He was startled, looked at me bewilderedly, and asked hurriedly, "What's going on? Is the fetus unhealthy?"
I cursed him for his lack of common sense, stretched my aching waist, and explained to him, "Fetal movement is a normal pregnancy reaction."
It seems that there is a girl in my belly, and she is as martial and strong as me.
Hearing that it might be an active child, Li Siyan was delighted and couldn't help wanting to communicate with his child again. However, I yawned, intentionally or unintentionally avoided his stealing hand, and turned to the other side.
Li Siyan showed obvious masochistic tendencies. After being kicked by a girl or a boy, he was in a good mood for the whole day. According to the ministers' report, the emperor was in a very good mood today. He was very accurate in his suggestions and was surprisingly easy to talk to.
Jinlian told me, "Everyone out there is praying to the fertility deity. It would be best if the goddess could get pregnant every year so that they can have a good life every year."
A bunch of questions popped up in my head: "Pregnant every year? Even pigs are that fertile!"
Another half month passed and my scheduled delivery date was approaching.
One gloomy afternoon, I felt a pain in my abdomen. I put down the book in my hand, turned to my aunt calmly and said, "Aunt, I might be giving birth soon."
My aunt was shocked and her voice changed: "Quick! Call the midwife and send Yingzi to the delivery room!"
Only my aunt was panicking. The midwives and doctors who had arrived at the Zichen Hall in advance were all experienced and observed the fetal position eight hundred times a day. Now that the big test was approaching, they were quite calm. They worked together to transport me to the delivery room in an orderly manner, and then - ruthlessly drove my aunt out.
Despite all preparations, the birth was not smooth.
I am young and healthy, but for some reason I still felt severe pain. From the afternoon until the early morning, the pain came in waves, like huge waves washing me into an endless abyss.
Don’t be afraid… Don’t be afraid… I comforted myself, it doesn’t matter, if I can give birth, I will give birth, if I can’t, the worst that can happen is that there will be two lives, anyway, my future is so bleak, there is nothing worth looking forward to.
It’s better to die. I can leave a corpse to Li Siyan and reunite with my family in the underworld.
What would happen to him? Would he cry over my corpse? Or would he, like those tyrannical emperors in the novels, have the Imperial Hospital buried with me?
——It’s ridiculous that I still have the mind to think about these irrelevant things when I am on the verge of life and death.
The midwife was shouting: "It's five fingers open──"
No, I should say how to open five fingers.
How long will it take?
I'm in so much pain.
The delivery room was filled with the smell of blood and sweat, the lights were dim, and I was clutching the mattress with my fingers, feeling like I was dying.
It was not until this moment that I clearly understood that the birth of a young life really came at the cost of tearing the mother's body apart. Look at what a terrible monster Li Siyan planted in my body, and how much suffering he made me suffer.
Tears welled up in my eyes, and I suddenly thought of my mother. I whispered, "Mom, I miss you so much."
But my mother will not come. She died when I was six years old. Since then, the important family members in my life have left me one by one and never returned.
The noisy sounds swayed back and forth in my ears, everything was blurry, the candlelight and the flames, the basins of white towels and the deep red blood, my world was shrouded in a layer of red.
I hate it here, I want to go home.
Another terrible dull pain cut through my body. I stared at the top of the tent with wide eyes. My limbs spasmed unconsciously. A figure appeared vaguely in front of me. She was crying, and her tears fell on my neck, mixing with my sweat.
My aunt held my hand tightly, her eyes red, but her voice was as hard as iron: "Yingying, you have to hold on. You are a girl from the Shen family, born to hold a pen and become an official. You will not die giving birth to a child, not at all!"
She pointed outside the door and said, "Your parents are blessing you in heaven. You are their only daughter. You still have to hold up the Shen family's door lintel. How can you fall on this threshold?"
Is that so? But I feel like I'm always falling, tumbling along the way to get to where I am today.
My consciousness seemed to have fallen into a deep lake. In front of me were many little figures holding hands and dancing, singing hoarse funeral music for me. I thought to myself, I might really be dying.
In the intense pain, tears welled up in my eyes, and all I could say was, with trembling lips, over and over again: "...I want to go home."
A pair of larger and drier hands grabbed my wrists. I struggled to open them a little, and through the gap I saw Li Siyan's fox-like eyes. The usual gloom and cruelty had long gone from these eyes, leaving only anxiety and panic.
His hands were shaking violently, and he fumbled for several times before he was able to hold my hand. He tried in vain to warm my hand with his big palm, but it was no use. I was covered in cold sweat and was dying. I almost didn't have the strength to scream.
Seeing how miserable I looked, his tears fell on my face, as if it was raining hot rain.
He was crying, silently shedding tears. My aunt said he was not good at comforting people and that I hated him, so he didn't dare to speak to me, not even a syllable.
I could hardly hold on any longer, and there was only one thought in my mind: I wanted to go home.
Return to my home deep in Anyifang.
"...Let me...go home..."
The more I spoke, the weaker my breath became. The midwife saw that the situation was not good and quickly put a ginseng slice under my tongue.
"My queen, please hold on!" she said anxiously, "If you faint, it will be terrible."
The ginseng slices were so bitter that I turned my head away.
The aunt's resentment suddenly erupted, revealing her long-suppressed shrewish nature. She angrily pushed Li Siyan away and cursed, "Your Majesty, you still have the nerve to cry in front of Yingzi! Without Your Majesty, would Yingzi have to suffer so much? Get out of here, don't you understand? She doesn't want to see you at all!"
Yes, from beginning to end, he just can't live without me.
Li Siyan's tears fell even harder, like a trapped beast in a panic, and a tearful kiss landed on my wrist. Between life and death, he finally understood what family and freedom meant to me. Without these two things, I really would not have the will to live. He thought I was recuperating during this period, but in fact, I was running out of energy.
He expects to grow old with me and have children with me, but all this is based on the premise that I am still alive.
And now, I'm abandoning him.
After his father, mother, and loyal servant abandoned him, I, the only thing he cherishes, will also leave him. He will become that lonely man again, sitting on the vast land but without anyone around to share his joy.
A tear fell on my ear, and he cried inconsolably.
"I'm sorry, it's all my fault. If you want to go home, go home. I won't force you anymore."
"Do whatever you want. I will transfer Meng Xu back to Chang'an and release your brother... Please don't die, don't die..."
He said please beg me.
It turns out that he also knows how to say the word "please".
The medicine and ginseng slices flowed into my mouth. I didn't know how long I struggled. The noise in my ears was buzzing and I could no longer hear what Li Siyan was saying.
Suddenly, the midwife's surprised voice sounded sharply, and my body seemed to be cracked open, and some things flowed out from its original place.
"It's born! Congratulations, Madam Queen, it's a little princess!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
