Chang'an is good

Ayun approached the old man and kept three steps away.

The white-haired old man smiled and praised her: "You are very smart."

"I'm not very smart." Ah Yun's small face was full of seriousness: "I am only a little smart, it's because my mother, father and teachers taught me well, and I learned well."

The admiration in the old woman's eyes grew stronger, and she slowly asked, "Can you call the emperor mother?"

Ah Yun was puzzled: "The emperor is my mother, why can't I call him that?"

The child's natural question hides infinite intimacy and trust.

The old woman didn't answer this question. She looked at the girl in front of her carefully, especially her tender eyes and eyebrows, and couldn't help but say, "You look a lot like her, just like her when she was a child."

"Of course, my mother always says so." Ah Yun was a little proud, and suddenly realized something: "How do you know what my mother looked like when she was a child? Have you seen my mother?"

The old man nodded slightly without giving any detailed explanation.

Ah Yun had figured it out on his own: "That's right, my mother is the emperor. Since you live with her in this imperial city, you must have seen her."

As soon as Ayun finished speaking, she couldn't help but lean forward slightly and look at the dragon staff in the old man's hand. The little girl carefully counted the number of dragon claws carved on it and couldn't help feeling surprised - this kind of dragon could obviously only be used by her mother, the emperor.

Ah Yun couldn't help but look at the person in the bamboo chair with curious eyes: "...Are you also the Son of Heaven?"

The old man's voice was very light: "It used to be."

Ah Yun blinked: "So, your last name is Li too? Are we a family?"

"We are a family." The old man said, "But my last name is not Li."

Ah Yun said, "Ah!" "Then why did you become the emperor?"

"This is a long story..." The old man asked the girl, "Do you want to listen to it?"

Ayun thought about it and nodded honestly.

The old man asked the palace maid to bring a chair for Ayun.

Among the palace servants who came to look for the princess, a eunuch walked over quickly, bowed to the old man, and then said respectfully to the princess: "Your Highness, please follow me back. I'm afraid the master must be waiting anxiously..."

"Then go back and tell the teacher that he doesn't have to wait any longer." Ah Yun sat down on the high chair, with his feet not even touching the ground, and spoke simply and swiftly: "I don't want to listen to classics and history today, I want to listen to stories."

The eunuch knew the princess' temper and did not dare to persuade her any further. He just said "yes" and left. He asked two eunuchs to guard the palace gate and two palace maids to go back and pass on the message.

The palace maids who delivered the message left in two groups, and the eunuchs who were on guard lowered their heads and concentrated, not daring to be careless.

Over the years, the people living in this palace never appeared in public, and they never set foot here. Over time, this palace and its owner became a kind of taboo, and no one dared to mention approaching without an imperial decree.

At this moment, the former emperor was slowly telling an old story to the next emperor in his old voice.

This story begins with a minor official's family in Luoyang.

The family's surname was Ming. One day, a loud cry of a newborn baby was heard in the inner house of the Ming family.

A young Taoist priest passed by and knocked on the door, claiming that your house was surrounded by auspicious aura.

People nowadays value Taoism, and although this Taoist is young, his tall and thin figure somehow gives off an immortal aura. The disciples did not dare to neglect him, and after asking for permission from the host of the house, they invited the man in with great courtesy.

After seeing the newborn baby, the Taoist's expression gradually changed. He was no longer as calm and composed as he was at the beginning. He even expressed his good news to the owner of the family. When asked what the good news was, the Taoist said "very happy" and even said: This girl has the appearance of an emperor.

However, these words did not surprise the Ming family, but only frightened them - the Li dynasty was so stable that if these words were spread out, it would bring disaster.

Ming's father immediately frowned and scolded the Taoist for talking nonsense and deceiving others. He immediately expelled the man and ordered no one in the family to mention the matter.

Ming's father, who was busy with official duties, soon forgot about the matter, but his wife, the mother of the baby, remembered it clearly.

She was a mother who was different from ordinary people.

The mother believed in Taoism and wanted to leave home to practice Buddhism several times, but her husband tried his best to stop her.

She didn't want to be trapped in the backyard and keep giving birth to children. Her ambitions were at odds with real life, which made her extremely painful.

After giving birth to her second daughter, less than two years later, she was forced to give birth to her third child. She finally went a little crazy, practicing in the backyard, wearing Taoist robes, and even making elixirs.

One day, she went mad before her practice was complete. She stared at her little daughter's face and touched her bones. Suddenly her expression changed drastically and she shouted at her little daughter, saying that she was indeed a disaster-stricken girl.

From then on, she would often force her little daughter to kneel before the statue of the Heavenly Lord and make her reflect and swear never to bring harm to the world, or she would repeatedly hit her little daughter with the whisk in her hand, claiming that she would eliminate her daughter's sins.

The girl grew up slowly, from crying out of fear at first to calmly enduring afterwards.

The girl's father was transferred to work in another place and could only come back for a few days a year.

The girls' elder sister was afraid of their mother, and although she felt sorry for them, there was little she could do to help.

One day, the elder sister hugged her younger sister and cried with heartache. Then she told her younger sister the reason why her mother did this. She said that it might be related to the Taoist who came to the door that year - the elder sister told her sister the Taoist's prophecy about the emperor's appearance.

The girl just thought it was ridiculous. Would her mother regard her as a disaster or evil spirit just because of such an unfounded statement?

Because her hard practice had made no progress, her mother became increasingly insane.

One day, her mother pressed her head into a water tank, gnashing her teeth and saying that she was a curse and that she must wash away her sins.

But she was suffocating, and her mother seemed to have forgotten that she was already fourteen years old.

The fourteen-year-old girl struggled to raise her head and pushed her skinny mother away.

The girl's head was covered in water, which dripped down and soaked the blue bricks under her feet.

Her mother fell down, her head covered in blood, and the blood rolled down, staining the stone steps in front of the door red.

Even so, the mother struggled to stand up and still wanted to hit her.

Her mother stood up and fell down again, and she watched quietly, without any panic or guilt.

What is maternal love? She has never experienced it for a day.

And if there really is such a thing as cause and effect in this world, then since her mother has planted the cause in her, she should have to bear the bitter fruit.

She calmly walked away, allowing the servants to hurriedly help her mother up.

Her father, who had always been absent, finally came back, slapped her in the face, and grounded her. Although her father was always absent, it did not affect the implementation of patriarchy in the slightest.

Her sister came to see her and cried, saying that she was their mother after all.

She asked her sister if she had ever experienced being strangled or drowning in water.

My sister was silent, so I had to ask her again if there was anything she needed me to do.

She naturally would not raise those unrealistic requests to embarrass her cowardly elder sister, she just said that she wanted to read books and practice calligraphy. So her elder sister brought her a lot of paper, ink, and books, and asked her to copy carefully.

Those books were either Buddhist scriptures, telling her to let go of all the delusions of love, hate, anger, ignorance, etc.;
Or it could be something like the Women's Commandments, teaching her to be a virtuous woman who abides by the rules and regulations.

She looked around and felt that it was all a conspiracy. All the theories she had heard were just shameless whitewashing.

But she had no ability to resist this conspiracy.

Looking at the locked door, she suddenly thought of the Taoist's prophecy, and for a moment she hoped it was true, even though it sounded ridiculous and she didn't even know what the imperial city looked like.

She was fourteen years old that year. Through the closed doors and windows, she crudely imagined what the imperial city should look like.

Soon, she was finally released because her mother died.

Died of illness. To be precise, my mother refused to take the medicine prescribed by the doctor and drank the talisman water and ate the elixir, so she died.

She knelt in the mourning hall, feeling that her mother's death was entirely her own fault.

At that time, she could never have imagined that just two years later, she would actually arrive at the imperial city she had always imagined.

She was selected by the imperial court and sent to Beijing by her father who had no other way to get promoted.

Before going to Beijing, she reached out to her father for money, saying bluntly that she needed some help.

Her father looked at her for a moment and asked someone to bring it to her.

Being chosen to stay was expected, but this was just the beginning. Even though she didn't believe in the prophecy, she would never be willing to stop at being just a small talent.

Her background was too ordinary, and she didn't have the stunning beauty to outshine all the other girls, but she felt that the latter was a good thing.

She put away all her cold and hard edges, and was willing to be a supporting role for others. She behaved like a woman who was well-versed in the Commandments for Women, not fighting or competing. Even when she was kneeling to pay her respects, the concubines stepped on her fingers with their embroidered shoes as a warning and protest, but she still just lowered her head even lower, and seemed to think that she was so humble that she posed no threat at all.

Some people were killed, some died from killing others, and she is still here.

She has also killed people, using a knife to kill people, and the people didn't know it was her doing until they died.

Yes, she had been killing people a long time ago. She was not a good person, and she had never thought about being a good person. She wanted to be a living person, a living person with dignity.

She has been waiting, waiting for an opportunity.

Empress Changsun was heartbroken after suffering another miscarriage. The opportunity she had been waiting for had finally arrived.

One day it rained heavily. She, who seldom went out on her own initiative, came to the Queen's palace and delivered a handwritten scripture to pray for the Queen.

"Coincidentally" the emperor was there too.

She knew that the young emperor was obsessed with calligraphy and painting.

The emperor saw the handwriting of the copied scripture at a glance.

Her handwriting is extremely outstanding, which is the result of copying scriptures since she was young.

The emperor noticed her for the first time and asked her what her name was.

She gave her name - Mingzha.

The emperor added more interest, and the word "cover" was rarely used for women.

She said: My father said that the word "Ming" is too bright and should be covered.

The emperor summoned her to sleep with him that night. When he undressed her, he smiled and said, "I want to see what kind of precious light she was hiding."

She seemed flattered, but in fact she was sneering in her heart.

The so-called deep love between him and the Queen as a young couple is nothing more than this.

The so-called emperor is nothing more than this.

Every time she slept with the emperor was not accidental, and getting pregnant was natural.

After she became pregnant, she avoided all kinds of attacks, and took the initiative to put herself under the wing of a childless imperial concubine. She avoided all the human calamities, but who would have thought that fate would be against her.

On the day she gave birth, there was a strange weather phenomenon. There were thunder and lightning but no rain.

It happened that there was a severe drought in Shu, and due to the instigation of some concubines with ulterior motives, ominous rumors spread to the court and the public.

The emperor was very troubled at that time and did not even look at her two children. After that, he ignored and forgot about them for a long time.

She became Huipin, who was in a miserable situation. As for how to be a good mother outside of this identity, she didn't know and had no interest in it, and her mother never taught her.

She loves Axiao more because he is a boy and has the potential to become her helper.

But fate still refused to stand on her side, and even seemed to be determined to go against her. Ah Xiao was born weak, and no matter how she was taken care of and cherished, she still saw no improvement. On the contrary, Ah Shang was exceptionally strong and intelligent... She sometimes thought, if there really was fate in this world, then this fate was really damnable.

In order to leave that remote and haunted place, she tried every possible way, asking for help from others or asking for help from herself, but all were in vain. She was either ignored and sighed at, or humiliated and trampled upon.

The days gradually became like a stagnant pool of water, and Ah Shang was like a brightly colored little fish, swimming, jumping, and bumping into things.

She never imagined that this little fish would accidentally find a way to survive, changing the lives of both mother and daughter, and even changing the situation in the world.

Empress Changsun, who had suffered a miscarriage when she was in the Eastern Palace, found it difficult to have children again. The Changsun family and the emperor jointly selected the third prince to raise under the empress's lap. However, as the third prince grew up, he was not as capable as they had imagined.

But the child was still young and there was still room for improvement, so the emperor chose a whetstone for the third prince - Li Shang, who pretended to be Li Xiao.

From the first day, she knew that the emperor knew the truth.

That was the first time that Ah Shang pretended to be Ah Xiao. Ah Shang himself seldom appeared in front of the princes. He might be able to fool a group of young children in the chaos, but he could not fool the current emperor.

A whetstone that is of humble origin, willful and bold, and hides such a huge lie is the most qualified whetstone, because it can be discarded at any time, and just one sentence of deceiving the king can throw it into the abyss.

Ah Shang had been walking on the edge of the abyss since the first day. As a mother, she was well aware of this, but she did not rush to tell Ah Shang, because the more afraid a child is, the more likely he is to make mistakes.

This is a huge gamble with her life at stake, but she has to do it.

And Ashan was better than anyone had expected. The child was like a seed. At first, people thought it was just an ordinary grass seed, but when the seed finally had the chance to be irrigated by the sun and rain, it quickly grew into a towering tree.

She had to make the emperor believe that Ah Shang was still controllable, and she played the role of a fearful and uneasy concubine very well.

However, the Third Prince was not sharpened by A Shang. On the contrary, A Shang's excellence almost ground the child to pieces.

Perhaps when no one was around, the emperor would have thought with regret how great it would be if "Li Xiao" was the real Li Xiao.

People from all walks of life in the court were urging the appointment of a crown prince. There were still many interest groups headed by the Zhangsun family who supported the third prince, but the emperor was a little hesitant. He felt it was too early and that the third prince and other princes still needed to be tempered.

She thought that at this time, what she had to do was to cut off the most stable connection between the Third Prince and the Emperor - Empress Changsun. (End of this chapter)