After transmigrating into the book, I helped my mother reconcile with her divorced husband.

Brother Dong was blind and unaware of the specifics of Lu Zhiyuan and the Crown Prince's relationship; he only knew from Sister-in-law Dong that they were a newlywed couple. Hearing them discussing children, he couldn't help but say, "There's no need to rush things with children; they'll come when the time is right. In my opinion, it's better to have children later."

The crown prince instinctively asked, "Why?"

Brother Dong laughed and said from his own experience, "Because having children means losing your own life! With children, you are no longer her husband, but the father of her child, and you need to divert some of your attention to the child. With children, she is no longer your wife, but the mother of your child, and she will focus all her attention on the child for a long time. As a husband, you will feel lost."

The Crown Prince: "Brother Dong has four children."

Brother Dong sighed, "I was too naive when I was young, and now I regret it. If I had been more restrained, Ya'er and I could have had a couple more years of peace. Ever since we had a child, Ya'er and I have been revolving around the child."

In a few years, I might be spending all my time taking care of my grandchildren. Life is only a few decades long, and it just flies by like that.

The Crown Prince grasped Lu Zhiyuan's hand: "My wife and I don't want children."

"That won't do either!" Brother Dong advised, "You should still have children. A family without children is incomplete, and the happiness and joy that children bring is irreplaceable."

Lu Zhiyuan changed the subject: "Did Brother Dong have a fever because of a cold?"

Brother Dong paused for a moment: "Is Madam asking about the high fever that caused my blindness?"

Time has passed, and there are many things that Brother Dong can no longer remember, but he does remember that he went to a friend's house to stay overnight the night before the incident. He met his friend at the academy, and the two got along very well.

"Where does Brother Dong's friend live?"

“Over there at the West Gate,” Brother Dong said. “I don’t know if you two have been to the West Gate. There’s a two-story building there that’s a hundred years old, called the Misty Rain Pavilion.”

"Is the Misty Rain Pavilion owned by Brother Dong's friend?"

"No, my friend is just an ordinary person," Brother Dong continued. "Next to the Misty Rain Pavilion, there's a small building, and next to that, a slightly shorter low building..."

I don't know what they do now, but they used to sell fish porridge. The owners were my friend's parents. The father fished, and the mother made and sold the porridge. They lived in a small alley behind a low building. The third house, the one with the fish carved on the doorpost. I remember carving the fish with my friend when we were kids, being mischievous. I remember drawing feet on my fish—chicken feet, kind of weird.

"Is Brother Dong's friend still around?"

“They moved away. The night I stayed at their house was their last night in Ganzhou. His mother was the only daughter in the family, and his maternal grandfather was seriously ill, so his mother needed to go back to inherit the family business. They left Ganzhou and went back to Shuozhou.”

Something happened that night?

Brother Dong nodded: "I was staying with my friend in the second-floor room with a window, facing the street. The bed was small, and the weather was a bit stuffy, so I didn't sleep very well and woke up several times during the night. Around the middle of the night, I heard some strange noises. Being a teenager, I was full of curiosity, so I opened the window and looked out. The moon hung in the sky, its light a hazy white. There seemed to be a lot of clouds in the sky, pressing the sky down very low."

Brother Dong paused for a moment and explained, "These are scenes from my memory, memories from when I was a teenager, they may not be true."

Lu Zhiyuan said, "It's alright, Brother Dong, please continue."

“You can’t see anything from inside the building, you can only hear some strange noises. I’m brave and curious, so I quietly went downstairs, opened the door and ran out. The streets were deserted, there wasn’t a single person there. Just as I was dozing off and preparing to go back, I saw four people carrying a strange sedan chair.”

"A strange sedan chair? Brother Dong, could you please describe it in detail? What kind of sedan chair is it, and how strange is it?"

Brother Dong shook his head: "I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just feels very awkward and strange. Madam, have you ever seen one of those simple pavilions, the kind with thatched roofs and pillars at the bottom?"

They were usually set up five or ten li away from the city, for travelers to rest.

Lu Zhiyuan said she knew, and Brother Dong breathed a sigh of relief. He said the sedan chair looked a bit like a pavilion, with a roof and a door at the front, which was closed.

The sedan chair bearers were very tall, walking with their heads down and their steps somewhat unsteady. They didn't seem like real people, but rather like ghosts from the stories his grandmother told him.

He looked at it and was terrified, standing frozen in place. The sedan chair passed by him, and he saw the windows on it. The windows were half real and half fake; the outlines were drawn on, but the squares in the middle were real, like little eyes. It was very dark inside the sedan chair, but through those eye-like squares, he could make out the blurry outline of a person.

When Brother Dong looked up at the sedan chair, the people inside also looked at him through the eye-like latticework.

"Is there a man sitting in the sedan chair?"

Brother Dong shook his head: "I don't know, I can't see clearly. I only know that the hair is loose and the eyes are red."

Red eyes, a monster?

Before Brother Dong could get a good look, the sedan chair "floated" past him. A little while later, a mysterious caravan appeared on the street. They were dressed in uniform black clothes and wore white masks. The masks had no frightening patterns, only two dark holes revealing the masked person's eyes. The carts were the kind used to transport grain, carrying boxes, sacks, and some items covered with dark tarpaulins; it was unknown what was hidden under the tarpaulins.

The car is very heavy and requires two people to push it.

He stood there, watching the convoy leave, until the street returned to calm, before sleepwalking back upstairs.

He had many dreams, in which there were sedan chairs and masks, and he could only open his eyes with difficulty when he heard his parents' voices.

He had a high fever, so high that he was delirious. His friend noticed and notified his parents, who in turn notified his parents. His parents took him home and cared for him carefully for three days. On the day he recovered, he went blind and could no longer see.

"Besides the sedan chair and the mask, what else has appeared in your dreams?"

Brother Dong frowned as he thought.

Many years have passed, and I can't remember many things, but I still remember things related to this matter fairly clearly.

"Footsteps, breathing sounds, and in my half-awake state, I seemed to see a face. That face was very close to me, and it seemed to say something to me before quickly moving away. I don't know if I was delirious from the fever, but I think I saw a pair of eyes in the sedan chair, red eyes, in the corner of the wall, staring at me without moving. After I recovered, I told my mother about it, and she said I had a nightmare. Why are you asking these questions, Madam? Is it related to my eyes?"

“Brother Dong’s eyesight wasn’t caused by illness; he was murdered. The perpetrator’s methods were extremely sophisticated. They were either a doctor skilled in medicine or a killer proficient in murder techniques.” Lu Zhiyuan emphasized, “Brother Dong, you may have stumbled upon someone’s secret! The reason they didn’t kill you was because you were just a child at the time, a half-grown child who was so frightened that he developed a high fever.”