Emperor Phoenix

Chapter 279

When the gunpowder smoke of the siege drifted over the governor's mansion, it was already so light that there was no smell of iron and blood. In the quiet and heavily guarded governor's mansion, the sound of the piano was clanging, and the sound was clean and ethereal, as if the hand that plucked the piano had never been contaminated by that smell. The blood of 40 corpses; the elegant qin, was never shocked by the lingering resentment and sorrow.

In the middle of the water, there is an exquisite rockery, which is decorated with shade and green. Up the delicate stone steps, there is a pavilion full of vines and green vines, with an elegant charm. The name of the pavilion is Lingxu.

Bai Yuan was leaning on the pavilion railing, his pale gold robes were scattered in the wind, and a jade flute in his palm hung down a dark green silk sash, the strands of which were like willow silk.

With an intoxicated smile, he listened to the sound of the piano coming from the warm pavilion in front of him. There was a green screen window covering it tightly, and a faint shadow was faintly reflected on the window shadow, with extremely exquisite curves.

The jade flute in Bai Yuan's palm was tapped lightly.

The sound of the piano is long.

Been listening to this for many years.

Many years ago, the sound of the piano was not so smooth and ethereal. At the beginning, it was a little jerky, and there was a broken sound from time to time.

At that time, as soon as the sound of the piano was heard in Jingyang Palace, the people nearby would smile knowingly and say, "The little princess is practicing the piano again."

There will be people in twos and threes standing far away from the palace wall, guessing the little princess's physical condition from the intermittent degree of the piano sound.

He is also listening, listening, while selling cut cakes.

The cakes were cut by the mother, and the only thing the whole family depended on was the income from selling the cakes. The mother got up early every day at four o'clock, and soaked the glutinous rice in the cold water. The hands of a lady who were once slender and white had become ten. root radish.

It was very difficult to earn money, but it was just enough to eat. My three-year-old sister, who was displaced with them, got typhoid fever and had no money for medical treatment. She died in her mother's arms on a cold and rainy winter night.

He will never forget that night in his life, the bean-like light in the dilapidated lamp reflected the mottled dark wall, his sister's pale face, and his mother's expressionless but even more heartbreaking expression. Hugging my sister tightly, their thin shadows swayed gently on the broken walls with air leakage on all sides, such thin shadows bent like the petals of the moon at the last quarter.

The wind blew the door loudly, every time it hit his heart, he stared blankly at his mother, she just hugged her sister blankly and sang in a low voice.

"Good girl, go well, reincarnate, and be a blessed person."

The tune was vaguely an old tune from my hometown. When a person died, the guests would cry and sing in front of the house, but where did the strangers from their poor families come from?I can only sing by myself.

The wind lifted the mother's disheveled hair, revealing her pale face. The noble lady who used to be famous in the capital is now emaciated, and the good voice that was famous as a prince in the past is now singing a mournful mourning song.

She sang all night, until the end she couldn't make a sound, and she was still singing. At dawn, he felt that if he continued to listen, he would definitely go crazy. A hole was dug in the ground and the cold little body was buried in it.

The mother snatched it out, crying and took off his clothes to bury his younger sister, crying and saying how she could be buried naked and suffer from the cold forever, he bit his lip, and pushed the mother away——the two of them, only the clothes on their bodies were left. A piece of clothing is no longer enough to protect you from the cold, so if you take it off again, how will you survive?
The frozen soil was dug up, and shovels fell on the small white wax-like corpse. He gritted his teeth and watched his sister disappear forever in the soil, and swore in his heart:
Qing'er... I will burn a lot of clothes for you in the future, just like I used to have a lot of clothes, you first...be patient for a few years.

The wind that night was really cool, and the soil in the yard was so hard. After he buried his sister, he found that his hands were covered with blood blisters. He slowly squeezed out the blood blisters one by one. Cold, smiled a bit.

After the younger sister died, the mother who was not good at housework finally learned how to cut cakes with her neighbors to support him. The mother held him in her arms and said in a loud voice: "I want to support you, and I can't let you die again."

He turned around and hugged his mother, saying: "Okay, we don't want to die."

From then on, he became a kid selling cakes, holding the basket as soon as he could carry it, slipping around in the crowd, being scolded from time to time, because he is a foreigner, and the folk customs in Dongyan are tough, and he is born to be friendly to outsiders. In a hostile country, foreigners are equal to enemies.

He likes the moment when the princess plays the piano the most. If it takes more than half an hour, the people of Dongyan will feel that the little princess who is recuperating in the palace is in good health today, so they will be happy and buy him a few more cakes. Hold the basket and hide away early, or you will get kicked sooner or later.

That day, the little princess seemed to be in better spirits. After playing for an hour, his cut cakes were sold out early.

In the past, he had to sell it until dark before going back. That day he had an empty basket in the afternoon, and he was not used to such leisure for a while, so he sat under the palace wall in a daze to bask in the sun.

The sound of the princess’s zither is still going on, he has never listened to it carefully before, a little child who is hungry all the time, carrying a heavy basket and anxiously waiting for customers to buy cut cakes, so that he can exchange for copper coins to go home and buy rice for the pot. It is really impossible to get up and enjoy the sound of the piano.

These are the leisure and luxury of the nobles after they have enough food and clothing, not his.

However, the sun was so nice and warm that day. Normally, the clothes were thin and I couldn’t resist the cold, so I had to run around, but I was able to sit down quietly that day.

Perhaps, everything is just to fulfill that encounter.

He leaned against the wall and listened to the piano quietly. Before he was seven years old, he had also listened to the piano, and even learned it. The family's luthier once praised him for his extraordinary talent...but it was all over.

The sound of the piano is clear and clear, like exquisite jade beads rolling down, but it is a little sluggish, and the fingering is not yet proficient. I don't know how petite, soft, delicate and white are the hands that pluck the strings?

Maybe, like my mother did back then?
He rested his chin and listened to the piano, as if he heard a flower slowly closing under the moonlight, and a drop of dew glistened in his heart.

Or the light yellow warbler, jumping lightly on the green branches, with soft down and bright red beak.

The same delicate little princess who is said to have been in poor health since she was a child and often went to the Jingyang Palace to recuperate, is her life as bright as dewdrops and as beautiful as flowers?
Listening so quietly, the long-term fatigue hit him, and he gradually fell into a haze.

"Where did the dirty boy come from!"

A sharp sound reached his eardrums, and immediately, someone kicked him hard on the leg.

"Chasing away, chasing away, don't startle the princess!"

He was pulled up in a daze, and he was so sleepy that he didn't know what happened. He opened his eyes in panic, and saw his basket being kicked on the side of the road.

He rushed over and grabbed the basket cherishingly. It was the only one that was intact. If it was kicked apart and he spent money to buy it, the three-day cut cake would be sold for nothing.

He couldn't imagine coming home with a broken basket and seeing his mother's sad eyes.

Someone pulled him up viciously, and wanted to swing him out together with the basket.

He opened his eyes wide, looking at the direction where he was about to be swung, there was a huge rock there.

"stop!"

The warbler sings in the empty valley, the wind blows through the crystal curtain, and a flower blooms quietly.

The most beautiful voice in the world.

The hands that were about to throw him stopped immediately, and he turned his head hard in the guard's hands, his eyes turned upside down, and the first thing he saw was a pair of small pink embroidered shoes.

Exquisite and exquisite, embroidered with lily of the valley flowers, the flowers and leaves are swaying, fresh and real.

Then there was a pink skirt, hollowed out and embroidered, and the same lily-of-the-valley flower slanted upward from the corner of the skirt, gathered around the exquisite and slender waist, and turned into a moon-white satin inlaid glazed belt. It's so thin that people worry that the waist will be broken when the wind blows.

He suddenly didn't dare to take a closer look, and his eyes rushed directly to her face.

In this world, there are such beautiful eyebrows, as beautiful as the most beautiful Goddess Mountain in Dongyan in the distance; there are such hazy eyes, as hazy as the jade lake water under the Goddess Mountain that is always smoky and misty; with such a delicate face, it is so delicate. For the first time in his life, he understood what perfection is.

She looked at him, and he suddenly lost his breath.

Her eyes were also erratic like the water in a lake, but with just a slight glance, her eyes slid past him like silk, and landed on a place farther away.

She didn't even speak, she didn't ask and pay attention to him like he imagined, she just signaled the guard to put him down with her eyes, and then walked over without squinting.

Her skirt slowly dragged across the white stone ground, leaving behind a scent of lily of the valley.

He curled up under the corner of her fragrant skirt, and put his bare feet back, for fear of soiling her delicate clothes. For the first time in his life, he felt ashamed of his uncleanness and lowliness.

Her back, however, went away so relentlessly, like a ray of moonlight moving across the high wall, illuminating the darkness in the shabby house, and then disappeared in an instant, while he stayed in the darkness again.

He stared blankly at the direction she was leaving, and for the first time in his life, he felt very cold in his heart. It was different from the angry and sad coldness of the night when his sister died, but because of looking up to the too beautiful and delicate things, he felt the insurmountable gap. distant cold.

Such a chill enveloped his whole life.

So that later, by chance, he was apprenticed to a teacher, returned to Dongyan, and planned to meet her again. Starting from her bodyguard, he helped her step by step. Winning the throne, mastering the power of Dongyan step by step, becoming the national teacher under Dongyan alone, always following her side, still can't get rid of the cold that penetrates into the bone marrow.

He is above ten thousand people, but always below her.

He followed forever, but she was already accompanied by someone else by her side.

She was already a few years older than him, and when he was learning art, she had already accepted a noble son-in-law. When he heard the news, he ran down the Qingma Mountain and slashed his sword wildly on the jagged banks of the raging Qingma River. Wu, brazenly confronting the surging river tide time and time again, knocked down the huge waves time and time again, until finally he collapsed from exhaustion and was almost swept away by the river.

(End of this chapter)