Shengjing Noble

In the early morning, sixty-three-year-old Fu Wuyang stood under a peach tree, with a few petals on his graying temples.

He stood on tiptoe to reach the highest branch of peach blossoms. His cold legs made him stagger a little, but he still stubbornly refused to use the bamboo pole.

Lan Yin said that broken branches will not bloom next year.

"Shame on you, Grandfather!"

The five-year-old granddaughter Wanwan covered her mouth and laughed.

"Yesterday I was told not to climb trees!"

Fu Wuyang handed the newly picked branch to the child: "This is different. Your grandmother likes to see the peach blossoms from this angle."

He pointed to the doctor's house by the stream in the distance: "From the window where she is consulting, you can just see..."

In front of the doctor's window, Su Lanyin, with snow-white hair, was taking the pulse of a woman in labor.

The sunlight filtered through the green bamboo curtain behind her, casting tiny spots of light on her plain dress.

The golden needle that could bring the dead back to life was now trembling slightly, so she held her right wrist with her left hand and placed the needle steadily on the acupuncture point.

"Grandma Su," the woman in labor asked timidly, "I heard that you were a princess when you were young?"

Su Lanyin smiled and shook her head, the pearls on her earrings swaying gently: "That was a long time ago."

She turned her head to look out the window and saw Fu Wuyang holding Wanwan's hand walking across the small bridge, with fresh peach blossoms pinned on her granddaughter's pigtails.

The afternoon sun makes people feel lazy.

Fu Wuyang was lying on a rattan chair in the yard, and Wanwan was lying on his lap learning to read the Three Character Classic, but she fell asleep after reading a few sentences.

He patted the child's back gently, but his eyes followed Su Lanyin who was drying medicine.

“What are you looking at?”

Su Lanyin asked without turning her head, but the medicine sieve in her hand did not stop.

"Look, there's something on your head."

Su Lanyin subconsciously tried to brush him away, but he suddenly hugged her from behind.

Fu Wuyang's white hair hung on her shoulders, mixing with her own, unable to distinguish one from the other.

“It’s a lie.”

She nudged him with her elbow but couldn't help laughing.

He used this trick for forty years, and his hair went from being as black as ink to having gray hair on his temples.

Fu Wuyang took out a peach-pit-carved boat from his sleeve like a magic trick and put it into her palm: "Just now there really was a promise in your hair, and I helped you catch it."

That was the first gift he carved for her when they first arrived in Taoyuan Village forty years ago.

Su Lanyin stroked the almost smoothed-out marks on the bottom of the boat - "Wu Yang Lanyin, we are in the same boat."

As dusk deepened, the village suddenly became noisy.

Xiao Tao's grandson came running over holding a letter: "Mr. Fu! Good news from the capital!"

Fu Wuyang unfolded the letter and found it was written by the new emperor himself.

Zhao Mingtang, who had studied in Taoyuan Academy, was now the top scorer in the imperial examination. The letter also contained a land deed - the late Emperor Fu Mingchuan had given them the entire Taoyuan Mountain to "live out their old age".

"Do you want to go back to the capital to take a look?" Fu Wuyang folded the land deed into a kite, and Wanwan chased it around the yard.

Su Lanyin put the dried angelica into the medicine cabinet: "Your legs hurt, and I am afraid of the cold, why not wait until spring..."

Before he could finish his words, he was picked up and carried sideways.

"Fu Wuyang! Put me down!"

She hit his shoulder but didn't dare to use too much force - he had sprained his waist while carrying water last year and it took him three months to recover.

"Your Highness Princess is right." Fu Wuyang deliberately staggered two steps, frightening her so much that she quickly hugged his neck, "Your husband will go and boil the ointment right away."

……

In the end, neither of them went to the capital.

After winter came, Wanwan caught a cold. Su Lanyin took care of her for three days without taking off her clothes, but she fell ill instead.

Fu Wuyang stood by the couch and used all the acupoint massage techniques that she had taught him.

"Your technique has deteriorated." Su Lanyin's voice was hoarse, but with a smile, "When you massaged my feet..."

"Back then, the princess' feet were as white as snow. Now..." He held her calloused feet and gently kneaded them, "Now they are even more beautiful, shining like ancient jade."

……

The day I recovered from the illness was the Lantern Festival.

Fu Wuyang hung a revolving lantern in the yard, depicting the scene when they first met.

Su Lanyin added a medicine bag lamp, which was filled with calming herbs. When the fire lit up, the whole yard was filled with fragrance.

Wanwan clamored to hear a story, so Fu Wuyang told her the legend of how Su Lanyin saved people with her golden needle.

The little girl was so fascinated by what she heard that she suddenly asked, "Why doesn't grandma want to be a princess anymore?"

"Hush--" Fu Wuyang lowered his voice mysteriously, "In fact, your grandmother has always been my queen..."

A golden needle flew over from Su Lanyin and stuck firmly into his collar.

Fu Wuyang fell down, hugged his granddaughter and started to act: "Wanwan, help me! Your grandmother is trying to murder your husband!"

……

In the dead of night, the old couple sat under the peach tree and warmed their wine. The buds on the branches were already bulging and would bloom after another spring rain.

Fu Wuyang suddenly took out a stack of yellowed paper from his arms: "This is a love letter for you."

Those were the prescription notes he had secretly written over the past forty years, with his thoughts hidden on the back of each note.

The earliest one has already faded: "Today I see Lan Yin teaching a village kid to identify medicine, her smile is like wine, she is so drunk that there is no ripple."

"So corny." Su Lanyin said with disgust, but she carefully put them into her purse.

"Stretch out your hand," she whispered.

Fu Wuyang obediently spread out his palms.

As her fingertips moved, the words "all right" gradually took shape - not the prince's title, not an elegant alternative name, but just the name she called him most often.

"It's a good thing to reciprocate." She bent down and kissed his palm, "We were so young back then... We missed so many years..."

Fu Wuyang suddenly leaned over and kissed her.

The spring breeze swept across the treetops, and the first blooming peach blossom gently fell on their clasped hands.

"I just want to grow old with you."

【end】