His Royal Highness the First Prince of Daliang

Kang Ning walked out of the Qinghe Hall slowly, and all the attendants he met along the way held their breaths and did not dare to raise their heads.The tears on his face had already been wiped away by himself, only the end of his eye was still slightly flushed, which made him even more delicate and weak, making people feel distressed for no reason.

Although she shed a lot of tears just now, the little prince now has a kind of dazed relaxation, like a traveler who has trekked in the desert for a long time, keeping the last little water in his bag, even if he is thirsty, he only dares to wet his lips slightly .And when he finally gave up hope and drank all the water desperately, he could feel a short-lived, self-harming satisfaction and release.

Over the years, the Hall of Qinghe has undergone major and minor repairs, but it is not fundamentally different from the huge palace that Kang Ning remembered when he was a child.

He remembered that when he was young, he often loved to run around the beams and pillars on this wide corridor in the palace. He did not know from which year Emperor Hui had laid rattles on the east corridor of his living hall—so the time When a minister was interviewing the emperor in the Wenzheng Pavilion of the Hall of Qinghe, he could hear the faint "dong dong dong" and the soft and tender laughter of children.

When Kang Ning was a child, he didn't pay attention to rules and etiquette. In the early summer afternoon, when he was tired from running, he lay down on the cool wooden floor with his buttocks up, pretending to go to sleep.After a while, there will always be a pair of big hands picking him up and carrying him all the way to the door of the palace: "Ning Ning is too noisy, so noisy that the father can't do anything, and the father is going to throw you away now! "

It was the emperor who left his courtiers and political affairs and came to see his son.

Of course the little prince knew that his father was trying to scare him.But usually he would laugh and be handed over by Emperor Hui to the nuns who took care of him in Yongchun Palace, and then sent back to his mother to take a real nap in his little bed.

It has been so long, and many decorations in Qinghe Hall have undergone major and minor changes, but the rattle wood in this corridor has not been replaced, even though there have been no children running on it for many years.

Kang Ning breathed a sigh of relief and stepped out of the palace gate.

He immediately saw Qi Changfeng standing quietly not far from the steps.

Coming out of the Xiangmu Corridor is the east door of Qinghe Hall, facing a century-old pine.Qi Changfeng waited there without saying a word, and instantly met the eyes of the little prince who glanced over——

What did General Qi look like at that moment?

It looks like a big dog that has done something wrong and is rejected by its owner. It looks sad and funny when it looks like it wants to lean in but dare not.

Corning smiled.

Did I scare him?he thinks.

He walked down the stairs, fluttering like a fairy stepping on clouds, and slowly walked in front of Qi Changfeng.

The little prince wanted to say something—to comfort Qi Changfeng, or to pretend to be angry and coquettish, but as soon as he opened his mouth, a streak of bright red and glaring blood slowly overflowed from the corner of his light pink lips.

The continuous intense emotional consumption has almost emptied the little prince's last bit of energy that supported the heartbeat. His internal organs are churning at the moment, and his mind is full of laxity and bewilderment after the intense emotions have been vented. Everything around him is in a trance. Floating in the clouds and mist, and finally turning into nothing.

Kang Ning tried his best to maintain a moment of sobriety, but almost instantly, he fell limply under Qi Changfeng's horrified eyes.So he only had time to leave a word in Qi Changfeng's arms.

Qi Changfeng caught the limp in his arms with a broken mind, just in time to hear those two words that were so light that they were about to escape in the cold winter: "Don't go..."

"I won't go," Qi Changfeng held the thin weight in his arms, and for a moment he could hardly feel his sweetheart's breathing.His eyes turned black, and he felt as if a blunt knife was being stabbed into his chest, and even his heart was smashed into a bloody mess.At that moment, he was really going crazy:

"It's clear that I'm begging you—Kang Ning, please, don't leave me, don't go."

——But his pleading didn't seem to have any obvious effect.

The coma that day seemed to be an ominous beginning. Since that day, the little prince's physical condition has deteriorated rapidly, and the symptoms caused by his viscera being damaged by the poison have become more and more severe.At the beginning, he still vomited blood, drowsiness, and severe lung spasms from time to time, but soon, he woke up less and less, and then he was in an unstable coma for days.

Kang Ning began to pale and lose weight extremely quickly, and in just a few days, he was already as thin as a piece of paper - everyone was almost going crazy, Emperor Hui had no other intentions at all, and only guarded Wangshu Palace with Concubine Zhao for several days in a row strike down.

Under such circumstances, the news that His Highness was poisoned could no longer be concealed.

For three or nine days, the capital city in the cold winter was full of mourning. The pilgrims of Yuantong Temple, the most famous temple in the suburbs of Beijing, lined up from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain day and night. Thousands of people spontaneously prayed for their beloved little Highness.

But at the center of the sadness, the little prince is confined to a continuous dream.

Sometimes he seems to be smaller in his dreams, he runs around, and all he sees are the legs and feet of adults, so he raises his arms for his parents to hug.

Emperor Hui has always been responsive to requests. As soon as he lifted his youngest son and put it on his neck, Kang Ning instantly became taller than anyone else.

Sometimes Kang Ning seems to be already very big. Under the breeze and sunlight, he rides his horse and runs in the endless field with ease.

A strange, happy and bright young girl rode past him-"Little Emperor, hurry up!" the beautiful girl shouted, "We are too slow! Hurry up and catch up with the father! The father is too late!" We're almost at the foot of the mountain!"

"Who are you?" Kang Ning looked at the girl, his heart filled with strange joy and sadness.There was a name on his lips that was about to come out, but he couldn't say it.

The girl didn't seem to find it strange, so she just answered him with a smile, "Uncle Huang, I'm Awan! When I grow up, my father took me thousands of miles across the North China Plain. He said: I want to go too!" Walk the road that the emperor's grandfather walked!"

So all those strange and inexplicable sorrows dissipated in Kang Ning's chest at once. He stood up on his horse and looked forward, and he saw the distant back of his elder brother—he remembered everything, and A Wan had grown into a man. After seeing the eldest girl, the elder brother said that he would take his daughter out of Beijing and walk around the land of Daliang himself.

In some dreams, Kang Ning was eighteen or nineteen years old.He and Qi Changfeng went south from Beijing to go boating on Moon Night Lake in the south of the Yangtze River in midsummer.The two of them stayed together day and night. During the day, they fanned themselves under the open window of the small rented courtyard in the town to enjoy the shade. At dusk, they heard that there was a seller of cold melons outside, so he sent Qi Changfeng out to buy them and put them in the well. Eat that cool and sweet bite.

If he honestly sleeps at home at night, there are no good spices and gauze nets to sell in the small town, and Qi Changfeng has to get up to catch mosquitoes for several nights.Or just laying on the boat like this, and occasionally there will be a gentle breeze blowing by the water, he held Qi Changfeng's big head on his knee and studied it carefully-"It just grew back after shaving, how did your beard grow so fast? !"

Qi Changfeng wiped his chin indifferently, "It's long, what's the matter?"

Corning said truthfully: "... a bit ugly."

Qi Changfeng bit him angrily.

But the next morning, Kang Ning woke up on the bed in the small courtyard house—I don’t know when Qi Changfeng brought him back—Qi Changfeng dragged two rolls of gauze that were obviously made of clothing, As a mosquito net, when he put down the two large rolls of cloth, his face was cleaned up, and it was the handsome face of General Qi again.

-

When the little prince accidentally woke up from a deep coma, he still had a happy smile on his face, and then he faced a face that was much more haggard than the sloppy boatman in his dream.

"Qi Changfeng," the voice of the man who had been on the sickbed for a long time was as thin as a mosquito, "...how did you become so ugly?"

"You dislike me as soon as you wake up again," Qi Changfeng wanted to laugh, but he managed to contort a less scary expression, "You woke up, how do you feel? Is there anything particularly uncomfortable? Do you want to drink some water? ?”

His series of questions directly confused the little prince who hadn't woken up yet.

At this time, Kang Ning's thoughts were still immersed in those soft and gentle dreams.After a while, he was finally able to distinguish the dream from the reality—then the little prince sighed slightly.

"Well... I'm fine," he answered casually, only thinking about one important request, "Qi Changfeng, you have to stay with me, stay by my side, don't leave!"

Qi Changfeng could no longer shed tears.Every time Kang Ning woke up in the interval of groggy, he grabbed his hand and said the same words, asking him to "don't go".

And Qi Changfeng always answered him the same thing every time:

"I'll be by your side, I won't go," Qi Changfeng clenched the little prince's fingers, "but please do it too, okay? You have to be fair, you have to be fair—Kang Ning, it's you Don't leave me, it's you who don't go."

It's just that I still don't know if the little prince heard clearly.Perhaps Kang Ning's state at that time did not allow him to understand and digest the pain, hopelessness and pleading of others.Often he fell quickly back into stupor, into his uninterrupted, tenderly delighted dreams.

Qi Changfeng took a deep look at him, then gently stuffed his hands back into the quilt, stood up and kissed the little prince's forehead dearly.

Then he turned around and strode away from the dark inner hall, and quickly walked to the main hall reserved for the prince to discuss matters in Wangshu Palace. At this time, the emperor and concubine were sitting on the right seat with ugly faces, Meng Baifan didn't look up, as if he was thinking deeply What, and all the elite consuls, the most useful elite soldiers, and the chiefs of the secret guards have gathered in the hall.

"Why, haven't you brought it back yet?" Qi Changfeng asked expressionlessly.

"Geng Fei, you brought the news yourself, tell me." Emperor Hui sighed heavily.

"General," said his confidant with a conspicuous new wound on the side of his neck, "the Chi people said that they still have Gui Quezi. But as long as they don't want to give it to them, we can't find it no matter how hard we search—" Even if the people from the imperial court kill them all, the Chi clan will be wiped out from then on."

Geng Fei raised his head, "Take care of the matter urgently—we drove the entire [-]th army from the left this time, and indeed tied up all the men, women, and children of the Chi people, but they didn't hurt them, just searched One pass. But we turned Wushan upside down, and we didn't even find the shadow of the ghost magpie."

"And the Chi people are yelling that if they want to hand over Gui Quezi, they must meet the general in person!"