029. Dream

Rong Se held the oil lamp and led Liang Shenyu to the stove room with his heart in turmoil all the way. Unfortunately, it was too late and there were no servants on the road, so there was no one to ask for help.

Liang Shenyu was leisurely. He sat on the pony in the yard and looked at the busy figure in the kitchen with deep eyes. He felt the fireworks of the world for the first time in a long time, as if a firefly was flying freely in the dark abyss.

Even if it's just a spark, it's worth it.

After collecting the bodies of his father and brother from Guzhuling, Liang Shenyu rarely had a good night's sleep. In fourteen years, he had never recovered from the wind and snow that day.

I woke up suddenly from a dream in the middle of the night and couldn't fall asleep again.

After the incident in the Daytime Palace, he was so disgusted that he didn't even eat a few bites of dinner. After waking up from the nightmare again, Liang Shenyu was in a trance of hatred and murderous thoughts. All he could think of was Guzhuling fourteen years ago, his mother whom he failed to see for the last time, and those calculating and hypocritical faces. The endless calculations and responsibilities made him feel suffocated, and the desire to destroy her almost burned his sanity.

It was not until this moment that I came to my senses.

A small bowl of thin noodles with clear soup was placed in front of him. Rong Se put his chopsticks in place, a little surprised: "Eat it."

Liang Shenyu was silent for a moment, looked at his face, then looked at him again, seeming to want to say something but stopped himself.

Rong Se thought he was unhappy, and quickly explained: "It's too late. Eating too much oily food is not good. You should fill your stomach with food and have a good breakfast after daybreak."

Liang Shenyu had calmed down. He said "hmm", picked up the noodles and started eating.

Thin noodles in clear soup, crisp vegetables, and a round poached egg on top, it is light and refreshing.

A small bowl of food was finished in two mouthfuls. Liang Shenyu put down his bowl and chopsticks and looked at the man who was only wearing a thin shirt. His black hair was tied up with a curling cloud ox horn hairpin, and a few strands of hair hung at his temples. When he was nervous, his originally bright and ruthless appearance softened a lot, and he looked more delicate and beautiful, but also thin and frail.

This is the Regent who has all the power in the government and the country. He endured for years and killed the emperor to seize power. The new emperor is obviously two years older than him, but he is suppressed to the point that he can't raise his head. Liang Shenyu recalled what he did tonight. According to the Regent's temper, he might have slapped him twice, but the result...

He was so surprised that he made a bowl of noodles, and even said kindly that he shouldn't eat too much oily food.

Liang Shenyu frowned slightly as he wanted to grab the rabbit and hold it under his sharp claws, but was afraid of hurting its soft fur.

Rong Se felt his scalp tingling at Liang Shenyu's thoughtful look. He couldn't figure out Liang Shenyu's intentions. As for malice, he certainly didn't feel it. He was extremely sensitive to this. He could feel that kind of disgusting malice from anyone who had bad intentions towards him, but Liang Shenyu... always seemed a little off.

The expression in those eyes was dark and struggling, pulling out a cold and strange complexity, like rolling black clouds, with unknown thoughts brewing in the layers of clouds.

Rong Se has never been good at dealing with such complex emotions. His social circle used to be very simple, and his way of solving problems was rough, fighting violence with violence and risking his life.

...These two points are not very practical for Liang Shenyu.

Because I can't beat him.

Rong Se hated this world view where everyone possessed peerless martial arts!

The two of them stood in opposition for a moment.

"Don't look at me like that." Liang Shenyu suddenly said.

"What?"

Liang Shenyu looked deeply, "Prince, don't look at me like that."

Rong Se was in a fog.

Liang Shenyu looked at him and said, "The way you look at me is as if I will hurt you at any time, as if you are looking at a poisonous snake or a ferocious beast, or something else. It is definitely not a good thing."

He liked being feared. When he first went to the battlefield, he was young and was frightened by the corpses all over the ground and couldn't sleep. All he smelled in his nose was the smell of wind and snow mixed with blood. But he was the only one left in Dingbei Marquis Mansion, the third son of the Liang family, only he was left.

He had to support the Marquis's Mansion and avenge his father and brother, so he endured it all the time and did not allow anyone to get close to his commander. He endured night after night by himself, and when the day came, he was the cruel and fierce Third Young Master Liang again, so that neither the enemy nor his own people dared to look down on him.

He knew that he would go crazy sometimes, and the desire to kill would make him vicious and cruel. He would even want to bite Rong Se's fair and delicate throat when he spoke timidly.

But fear makes people alert and causes prey to retreat again and again. Liang Shenyu learned to show weakness without any instruction.

Rong Se was silent for a moment, and couldn't help yawning. His eyes turned slightly red and tears appeared in his eyes.

"...Okay." Rong Se just wanted to send this ancestor away quickly, so he asked tentatively: "You've eaten the noodles, so it's time for you to go back, right?"

Liang Shenyu lowered his eyes, suddenly stood up and walked into the stove room.

Rongse:?

Rong Se followed him in, his eyes were dull for a moment, and he took a deep breath in disbelief.

Liang Shenyu is washing dishes.

"You..."

Rong Se touched the tip of his nose. He had a problem: cooking was fun, but washing dishes was a nightmare.

Every time he cooks, he tries to use as few plates and bowls as possible. The fewer plates and bowls he has to wash, the better. He plans to ask the helpers to wash them tomorrow after they start their shifts.

I didn't expect Liang Shenyu to be so polite and take the initiative to wash the dishes after dinner.

Liang Shenyu moved quickly and cleaned up all the traces of his cooking noodles, which made Rong Se look amazed.

"Are you surprised?" Liang Shenyu asked with a smile.

Rong Se nodded sincerely.

Liang Shenyu said: "There is no one to serve me during the war. Do you think I am a young man in Jinjing who has never had to deal with women?"

Rong Se fell silent again.

No one knew when Liang Shenyu came, and he left very quickly. Rong Se returned to the room holding the oil lamp, still wondering why Liang Shenyu came.

It didn't look like he would break into the Prince Regent's palace at night to beg for food just because he was hungry.

The attitude is not the same either.

No matter how you look at it, he doesn't look like the elegant and scholarly general Wen Run Saburo.

What went wrong?

Rong Se was at a loss.

Before he fell asleep on the couch, he was still thinking that he might have read a fake original book.

Who knew that after this awakening, Rong Se would fall into a long and chaotic dream.

In the dream, there were mountains and plains covered in white, endless snow, corpses everywhere, and a skinny young man wrapped in armor, running in the snow and then falling down. He looked so small, as if he was about to be swallowed up by the endless snow.

Rong Se watched him fall again and again, struggle to get up again and again, and finally staggered to his knees in front of a towering figure standing in the valley.

He cried out with a broken heart.

"Dad!! Big brother! Second brother!"

"Dad, Sanlang is here to take you home. Sanlang is here to take you and your big brother and second brother home!"

"Mom, Mom learned how to make dumplings from Aunt Qing. This time, the fillings are not exposed. She, she is waiting for our family to eat together."

The boy raised his head, his eyes were red, his jaw was clenched, and the sadness and anger in his eyes were shocking.

It was Liang Shenyu, as a teenager.

The facial features were much softer than they are now.

But what made Rong Se feel familiar was not only the face, but also the expression, because it had appeared on him before, the brutality mixed with hatred and despair, a hatred that could destroy everything, including himself.

Then the face of the young man in front of him gradually changed, his facial features blurred, and it became Rongse's own face, his teenage self.

Only his expression did not change.

The surrounding scene changed in an instant, and it became a cramped and damp rental house, filled with the pungent smell of alcohol. The drunk man punched again and again, leaving bloodstains on the ground. The woman lay on the ground screaming in pain until the violence ended. The woman's curled up body gradually stretched out, like a thin and tall ghost.

The young Rong Se was lying on the ground, with blood running down the corners of his eyes. His eyes were all red and he couldn't see anything clearly. In his blurred vision, the woman crawled towards the window step by step.

Rong Se remembered this scene. He was drunk again that day and wanted to sell his woman to his creditor to pay off his debts. His mother refused, so he beat her again. He wanted to rush up to stop her, but was hit on the head with a wine bottle. He could only lie on the ground helplessly and watch everything happen.

The last memory she had was of her leaping down without looking back.

He watched coldly. At least, he hadn't had this dream for a long, long time, until the man came to his house after being released from prison.

Rong Se knew all the details of this dream by heart. Even in his dream, he could not change anything. So he waited for that day to replay itself over and over again.

But in this dream, after she sat on the windowsill and turned her head, it was not the face of Rong Se that was thin, old, and often covered with bruises in her memory.

It was the image in the photo of her youth, with picturesque features and black hair like clouds.

She opened her mouth slightly and said something.

Rong Se rushed forward suddenly, and all the scenes disappeared in an instant, and he woke up.

The moment one wakes up, one will quickly differentiate between dreams and reality, and sometimes even forget what they were. But Rongse remembered it clearly. He dreamed of Liang Shenyu collecting the bodies of his father and brother in the snow, and he also dreamed of his mother jumping off a building and committing suicide.

He reached out and gently touched the corner of his eye, his fingertips feeling wet.

Rong Se understood her final lip movements.

——My child, live well.

It was still dark, and Rongse lowered his eyes and said, "I am living well."

He looked outside again. The room outside the tent was clean and tidy. The man who had been sitting in the dark and watching him for who knows how long was not there.

Rong Se found it a little ridiculous that in this world where he didn't know anyone, he actually met someone so similar to himself.

Liang Shenyu is not the pure and flawless gentleman in the original novel, nor is he the good-tempered and gentle protagonist who only cares about love, nor is he a character who only exists in the book and can only be glimpsed between the lines.

Here, he is a flesh-and-blood person who will be enraged and despaired by the tragic death of his father, brother and mother. He will learn to restrain himself and become strong in one war after another, and he will be unable to escape from the past and obsession.

Two people separated by space, time, inside and outside of books, two people who are so similar, met in such a coincidence and inconceivable way in the vast universe where it is impossible for them to overlap.

Rongse thought about Liang Shenyu's eyes filled with stubbornness and madness last night, and how he stubbornly asked for a bowl of dumplings.

Rong Se didn't know why he dreamed these things, but if they were true, he would understand.

It was a young man who was lost in the snow, searching for his way home in this vast world.