Quick Wear: The paranoid beauty grabs the waist and spoils her

Xiao Yue replied in a gentle voice: "I can still manage by studying and doing my homework every day."

Li Yuefu knew that her senior brother was very frugal with words, so she was secretly delighted to receive such a response from him.

Suddenly, he recalled the ambergris faintly visible between his senior brother's sleeves, and thought that he had never investigated his identity in all these years, so now he particularly wanted to know.

She pursed her lips and asked tentatively: "Brother, are you... a noble from the Heavenly Family?"

Xiao Yue's eyes moved slightly, and after a moment of silence, she sighed, "Yes. Fu'er is indeed a woman of great virtue."

He raised his eyes and looked into Li Yuefu's eyes, his voice became more gentle: "I should have told Fuer in person earlier, but I just didn't have the opportunity before."

"Senior brother?"

Li Yuefu saw that his eyelashes were drooping and there seemed to be a dark tide surging in his eyes.

I was too young to fully comprehend it then, but I gradually understood it as I recalled it over the years.

"Fu'er has just arrived in the imperial capital. What do you think of the current crown prince?"

Xiao Yue asked calmly, but the small movement of his slender fingers stroking the jade ring unconsciously revealed his mood at the moment.

The sunlight poured in through the window outside the courtyard, illuminating the man's face, making it look dreamy and unreal.

His fingertips unconsciously stroked the ice cracks on the celadon teacup, and after a long while he whispered, "Fuer, I... am the prince."

Li Yuefu's breathing stagnated and she suddenly raised her eyes.

The breeze outside the corridor blew in the window lattice, bringing with it the fragrance of lotus. Xiao Yue's sleeves were blown up slightly, revealing a gilded jade pendant with a dragon pattern around her waist - it was a shape unique to the Eastern Palace.

She suddenly felt her eyes sore, but she forced herself to curl the corners of her lips, and gently pulled the cloud pattern on his sleeve with her fingertips, and said crisply:

"So Senior Brother is the Crown Prince? Then Fu'er will be able to walk around freely in the Imperial Capital in the future, right?"

Xiao Yue was stunned, and the frost in her eyes melted away instantly.

He reached out and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, and said softly:

"If Fu'er wants to walk sideways, I will have the Imperial Guards clear the way and lay ten miles of red silk as a cushion for your feet."

Before he finished speaking, Li Yuefu had already fallen on his shoulder with laughter.

The silver bells on her wrist tinkled, and she seemed to be catching butterflies in Baitong Academy when she was a child.

Xiao Yue lowered his eyes to look at the pearl flower on the top of her hair, and his throat suddenly tightened - that pearl flower was a giant clam shell carving that he had asked someone to bring back from the South China Sea last year. It was as white as the moon, but not as bright as the brightness in her eyes.

"Fuer." He suddenly held her fingertips, the chill sinking into her bones, "In three days, I will go to Jingbei to provide disaster relief."

The sound of the silver bell stopped abruptly.

Li Yuefu shuddered all over, and when she looked up, her lips were completely pale: "Jingbei...Tong'an Town?"

She once secretly flipped through the secret report on her father's desk, which clearly stated "Nine out of ten houses are empty, and bones fill the river."

"Brother, don't!" She threw herself into his arms, the rhino horn pendant on her jade belt jingling.

"Two doctors who were infected with the disease have died... Please don't go, please!"

Xiao Yue staggered half a step after being knocked by her, and his back hit the red lacquered pillar. The man in her arms was crying and shaking all over, and her tears soaked the dark gold dragon pattern embroidered on his collar.

He raised his hand to stroke her back, but it remained in mid-air for a long time, and finally turned into a sigh:

"I won't leave Fu'er."

Li Yuefu seemed not to hear.

She tightly grasped the jade belt around his waist, her fingertips almost digging into her palm.

Suddenly, I felt that the surrounding scenery was swaying like reflections in the water - the carved lattice fan turned into the bamboo curtain of Baitong Academy, the lotus lantern on the table turned into the moonlight on the lotus pond, and even the ambergris on Xiao Yue's cuffs was mixed with a bit of bitter medicinal smell.

——It was just a dream.

It was late autumn when twenty-year-old Xiao Yue returned from Jingbei.

He was still wearing the moon-white brocade robe, but the cuffs were frighteningly empty.

Li Yuefu ran towards him holding a pink jade lotus, but froze when she touched his fingertips - his hand was as cold as if it had been soaked in snow water, and even the purple and black poison marks on the wrist exuded a sense of death.

"Fuer has reached the age of marriage."

He smiled as he tied the ban for her. The jade pendant made a clear tinkling sound when it touched the hem of her skirt.

"Be more cautious in the future."

She stared at the blood foam coughed out of his sleeve, and suddenly, like a madman, she pulled off the forbidden step and held it in her palm. The cold edges of the jade pendant pricked her painfully.

Xiao Yue sighed softly, pried open her trembling fingers one by one, and tied the forbidden step back around her waist:

"Fuer, it accompanies you just like I accompany you."

Three years later, when the death knell rang throughout the capital, she was trying on her wedding dress.

The cinnabar-colored silk stung his eyes so much that they hurt, and his heart ached as if it were being stabbed by a knife, but he could not shed a single tear.

The bridesmaid held the phoenix coronet and muttered, "The concubine is blessed with great fortune," but she was staring at the bronze mirror in a trance - the person in the mirror was wearing her wedding dress, and the pink lotus at her waist swayed as usual, but there was no one to help her adjust the jade pendant.

During the years she spent in Chengwang Mansion and the ten years she stayed in the Imperial Palace, every time Xiao Yue's death anniversary came, she would shut herself in, burn incense, and sit in silence all day long.

The gold thread wrapped around the jade pendant had lost its luster, but she never took it off.

When Xiao Ye drunkenly pulled at her collar, the forbidden steps made him frown and curse, but she stroked the patterns on the jade and sneered - what her senior brother left behind eventually became the blade she used to stab her enemies.

It was another New Year's Eve palace banquet. She held the tablet tightly and walked closer in the snow.

The sight of Emperor Chengming slumped on the dragon throne and vomiting blood looked very much like Xiao Yue when he was poisoned.

She suddenly wanted to laugh, but tears started pouring down her face when she touched the four words "Prince Huixian" on the tablet.

From now on, she is no longer Emperor Chengming's Concubine Li. She is just an ordinary woman who can't wait for her lover to return. She spends the rest of her life sighing repeatedly in dreams and reality, falling into old memories and absorbing a little sweetness.

"Girl, we have arrived at the imperial tomb."

Ranhe lifted the carriage curtain, and the snow wrapped around the dead branches hit the window lattice. Li Yuefu pulled the fox fur coat tightly and got out of the carriage, and suddenly saw a petal of red plum covered with snow falling into her palm.

It was just like that year at Baitong Academy, when Xiao Yue plucked the first branch of plum blossom in early spring and handed it to her: "Fu'er is more beautiful than flowers."

She gently placed the plum petals on the spirit tablet and rubbed the forbidden area around her waist with her fingertips.

The jade pendant was as warm as ever, as if it still retained the warmth from his fingertips.

The tombstone in the distance was so silent, with only the wind and snow whistling past, as if someone was humming an unfinished song of "The Lotus Picking Ballad".

The bright moon shines on the lotus, but I dare not express my longing for you.

I send my deepest thoughts to the flowing water, and my dreams of you linger around me.