Chapter 60: Remembering Being Young

Only a few snow patches remained on the pavilion across the lake, warm and thinly divided into countless white flakes, like many patches on a dark-colored pavilion. The snow in Kyoto stopped on the 29th day of the Lunar New Year, and within three days, the servants within the King Jing’s Mansion had long since swept the snow off the grass on this side of the lake.

Just the cold weather, the grass naturally there is no fresh and tender grass tip, there is just dead after the stiff body of the white grass, bias but there is no one to take care of, looks a little barren.

Fan Xian quietly followed behind Prince Jing, traveling deeper into the garden, but his eyes glanced twice at Prince Jing’s slightly stooped back.

After entering the royal residence, Mr. Fan Shangshu stepped in and blocked Prince Jing’s slanderous attack, and there was a lot of hustle and bustle, but even before Roujia and Hongcheng could be seen, Prince Jing suddenly offered to let Fan Xian go for a walk with himself, and even though Fan Xian wasn’t clear about what the king’s intentions were with this offer, he saw that his father secretly nodded his head, and then he also went with him.

As they walked along, there wasn’t much to see in the garden, and even the beds of vegetables that Prince Jing served day and night were just a few streaks of mud. But since King Jing was walking in front of him and not speaking, Fan Xian could only follow in silence, surveying the king’s back while his thoughts drifted to other places.

This prince is unusual, history books have seen this kind of self-convergence and even self-pollution of the ridiculous prince, but like this King Jing did so dry, real for power without a trace of desire for the power of the nobility, really rare.

Especially this old look, I do not know what kind of spiritual blow was experienced.

The old and the young stopped at the edge of the vegetable field, and Prince Jing hissed, “The first time I saw you, it was in this vegetable garden.”

Fan Xian thought of that poetry meeting, thought of Wanli’s sad autumn frequent visitors, thought of how he was full of imagery of a smiling white woman in the vegetable field, but instead saw a farmer …… then he couldn’t help but laugh, and responded, “Your Highness always likes to tease his juniors.”

“I’m not the only one who grows vegetables in this capital.” Prince Jing said.

Fan Xian was stunned, thinking that this wasn’t a line of nonsense, although Kyoto was affluent, there were still many poor people, and it was very common for these people to fix up some vegetable plots under the walls in the corners of their courtyards to supplement their daily diets, but since King Jing had said this, he naturally had something to say about what was going on below him, so he listened quietly.

“That old man from the Qin family also likes to grow vegetables, only he only grows cabbages and radishes.” With a hint of a sneer at the corner of his lips, Lord Jing said, “The guy who is a soldier only knows how to fill his stomach, and doesn’t even know that growing vegetables is also an art.”

Fan Xian was shocked, savoring these two words of Prince Jing’s, and for a moment he didn’t know how to respond.

Prince Jing walked into the muddy vegetable field, his hands crossed, looking around at the desolate scenery, and said after a long moment of silence, “Did you find out who did the sniping in the valley?”

Fan Xian tightly shut his mouth. Nowadays, of course, he knew that the sniping in the valley was arranged by that old killing god of the military, Master Qin, the problem was that this was the biggest secret of the Qing country nowadays, except for Chen Pingping and himself, it was thought that not many people knew about it, and Prince Jing first talked about Master Qin planting vegetables, and then at this time, he talked about the sniping in the valley, could it be hinting at something?

But …… Prince Jing did not ask about politics for many years, and he did not have any too deep dealings with the civil and military officials in the court, so who is he …… to dare to say that the matter of the valley sniping was done by the old Qin family?

Just King Jing did not specify, Fan Xian also do not know whether his guess is correct, and he can not tell the other side of the Qin family, because that involves one of the deepest between the dead, only to say with a bitter smile, “The court has been checking, the courtyard is also checking, only to know that it must have something to do with the military, just that the witness is dead, there is no clue at all. ”

Prince Jing glanced back at him, seemingly a little surprised at his indifference, thinking that the boy hadn’t understood his meaning, and grunted in annoyance, “Stupid!”

Fan Xian laughed bitterly, thinking that he could not pretend to be stupid about this kind of thing.

“The city-guard crossbow belongs to the Ye family.” Prince Jing stared into Fan Xian’s eyes, “But don’t you forget the Qin family.”

The king’s words were too direct, and Fan Xian couldn’t pretend any more even if he wanted to, and his heart was extraordinarily touched outside of his suspicions, this old man, he was a little too kind to himself, and frowned as he asked, “I don’t have any grudges against the Qin family.”

The king grunted twice, did not continue to say anything, raised his steps out of the mud vegetable field, and then walked deeper into the garden.

Fan Xian looked at his back and vaguely guessed a little, the reason why the king dared to deduce that the Qin family would make a move was definitely because of what happened back then, only the connection between the Qin family and the bloodshed in the Taiping Buyeon back then …… was a secret that his father and the adults didn’t know about, and even Chen Pingping, who had been investigating the problem for another ten years or so after that, only then did she look into the matter.

Why does the king know?

Thinking about this section, Fan Xian’s heart was so hot that he could no longer care about that much, and directly caught up to the front and grabbed Prince Jing’s sleeve.

Prince Jing was stunned and slowly turned back.

Fan Xian looked at him and said with great sincerity, “What was going on back then? Why did no one in the world know that the Qin family was involved? Why wasn’t this matter lifted up during the night of bloodshed in Kyoto.”

“You ask too many questions.” Prince Jing sighed and said, “Although I’m just an idle prince who doesn’t do his job, you remember that I am, after all, also a member of the royal family……. As for why I know what those two old guys behind you don’t know, the reasoning is very simple, because back then, I was still young and was still following my mother’s side. ”

The corners of the king’s eyebrows twitched twice, revealing a very promising smile, “When you’re young, you always like to hide everywhere, so sometimes it’s very easy to hear something, and as for the contents of what you overheard, in all these years, no one else knows.”

Fan Xian smiled bitterly, wanting to say something, the king’s willingness to point out the Qin family had already been considered unusually loving towards himself, but if that matter involved the empress dowager, who was the king’s own mother, how could he still talk about it?

“Yunrui was young then, this matter has nothing to do with her.” Prince Jing was silent for a while then suddenly said, “This is something I still want to make clear to you, you have followed Fan Jian and the Supervisory Board since you were young, you have learned a lot, but there are many things that have become ridiculous.”

At this moment, the old and young were standing on a cold field, not far away was the wall of King Jing’s Mansion, and outside the wall was the unchanging bleak sky of Kyoto, while Fan Xian listened to the king beside him, but his heart was warm and fuzzy.

“What is it?”

“Whether it’s that old dog Chen Pingping or your father, they’re both masters of intrigue, so they always like to make things complicated, and …… the most crucial thing is that they don’t trust anyone, and the one thing they trust the least is each other.” Prince Jing sneered and said, “This is the most stupid thing, Chen Pingping even suspected Yun Rui in the past, and didn’t think about it, at that time of the year, Yun Rui was only how old.”

Fan Xian laughed bitterly, the mutual suspicion and precaution between his father and Chen Pingping had existed ever since his mother’s death, getting deeper and deeper until he himself entered the capital.

“I have swallowed the matter of the old Qin family for so long, and telling you about it today is not to ask you to take revenge.” Prince Jing said calmly, “I just think that you’ve offended the military enough, and since our Qing Kingdom was originally where the military was founded, if you don’t know who your true enemies are in the military, I’m worried that you’ll casually die.”

The four words casually dying were spoken with great weight by Prince Jing, who no longer wanted anyone to die casually like this.

Fan Xian bowed to the ground, then straightened up and asked a question that concerned him the most.

“Your Highness, why are you being so kind to me?”

Hearing this, Prince Jing was suddenly stunned, and after a long time of being stunned, he suddenly laughed. The laughter became louder and louder, sharper and sharper, and more and more mournful, and he laughed so hard that his stomach ached, and he squatted on top of the field, covering his belly, unable to raise his head for a long time.

Fan Xian’s heart was slightly confused, and he stood by the side in a somewhat wooden manner, looking at the prince beside him, looking at the white hair on his head, which was completely different from his actual age, fluttering in the cold wind, and looking at the tears squeezed out of the corners of his eyes because of his smile.

After a long time, Prince Jing straightened up, frowned and thought for half a day before saying, “I don’t know.”

Then he walked down the field.

Fan Xian remained silent as he followed him.

“His Majesty and I were both raised by Mummy.” Prince Jing said calmly, his face having long since returned to its usual vicissitudes and serenity, “At that time, the Chengwang Palace wasn’t very impressive and didn’t have much of a position in Kyoto, so His Majesty and I could still play around. Your father also followed us every day at that time, plus the companion reader Chen Pingping, who was invited by the palace …… palace, the four of us mingled together every day, and I was the youngest, and of course the most bullied.”

“Later, royal brother Fan Jian and Chen Pingping went to Mma’s hometown Tanyuzhou to play, and when they came back, they joyfully said that they had met a very interesting girl there.” Prince Jing laughed, “Then it wasn’t long before that girl arrived in Kyoto and found her way to the Cheng Wang Mansion.”

Fan Xian smiled as well, “That was my mother.”

“Yes.” Prince Jing leisurely thought about the past, “I remember when I was young, I pestered your mother to play every day, well, at that time, I called her Sister Ye …… your mother loved me very much, so my brother could no longer let Chen Pingping bully me, so that was good.”

An old and a young duo talked and walked, and in a short while they came to the outside of a study, and although Fan Xian had the intention to listen to more of the king’s old stories, he still put his attention into the study, because this study was obviously seldom visited, and since the king liked to garden on a day-to-day basis, he naturally didn’t like to read.

Prince Jing pushed the door in and hissed, “Sit.”

Fan Xian didn’t brush the dust off the seat and sat down very peacefully.

Prince Jing rummaged through the bookcase for half a day and finally turned out a thick book, then handed it to Fan Xian and said, “Look.”

Fan Xian was stunned and took it with both hands, and when he looked at the cover, it was an agronomy seminar, so he couldn’t help but give the king a puzzled look.

After a moment of silence, Prince Jing said, “I don’t have much to say about your mother, you asked me why I was so good to you …… Actually, it’s not true, I wasn’t good enough for you, or at least I was kept from them for almost twenty years.”

The king slowly walked out of the study, facing Fan Xian with a slightly rickety back, his voice a little disheveled, “I always thought she had no descendants.”

Fan Xian sat on the dusty chair, casually flipping through the thick book of agronomy lectures, but in his heart, he was thinking about what Prince Jing had said earlier, in fact, he could vaguely capture King Jing’s mind, that touch of youthfulness, that bitterness, that couldn’t be verbalized, but was remembered for the rest of one’s life.

When a young man is initially budding, with a gentle, beautiful, all-powerful, all-encompassing sister beside him, it is inevitable that a story like this will take place.

When he himself was reborn into this world, he was already a mature soul, but in his previous life, how could it be that he hadn’t had such an experience, all the men, who hadn’t had such an experience? It was only that normal people of the world, after growing up, would always have really sweet fruits that filled into their spiritual world.

The normal growth experience of King Jing was obviously interrupted by the great history of the Qing Dynasty. The Ye family was destroyed overnight, but King Jing could not be angry, and had no place to be angry, so he was born with Chinese hair early, and his body was slightly rickety, and he only honored the field and not the court.

Fan Xian’s fingers flipped through the slightly yellowed pages, and suddenly his fingertips stiffened.

He saw a few sheets of thin paper, sandwiched between the thick book, and his heart fluttered as he quickly flipped backward, turning over a few more sheets of thin paper.

The handwriting on the paper was unfamiliar and familiar, the writer’s brush was obviously not used well enough, the strokes were straight and frothy, like matchsticks building blocks.

The content of the paper, too, was not out of Fan Xian’s expectation; it recorded certain suggestions that someone had made to someone, such as the Supervisory Board, such as the merchant affairs, and a few notes about what they wanted to eat today, and where they all planned to go to play tomorrow…….

Fan Xian laughed and said to himself at the sheets of paper, “Everything else you wrote was probably burned up by the people of this world, and I didn’t realize that the little boy from back then had left a few of them behind.”

He inclined his head and added, “But your writing is really not as good as mine, and do your best to put your breath in the big places but not in the small places, if you can’t get used to using a brush, just use a goose quill pen, and by the way, I made a small workshop over at the inner library, specializing in making pencils, in these things, I’m a lot smarter than you… …”

After a few moments of silence, Fan Xian thought about it and took the sheets of paper into his arms, thinking that Prince Jing also needed this relief. He stood up, a quiet smile on his face, and walked out of the study.

Prince Jing was not outside the study, this royal residence Fan Xian had been here many times, and did not need a maid to show him the way, with his hands on his back, swinging, swinging, he arrived outside a row of large rooms, which were gathered together into a small independent courtyard, but there was a large brass lock hanging on the door.

Fan Xian couldn’t help but smile as he looked at the lock, walked up the steps and vigorously knocked on the door, shouting, “If you don’t come to open the door again, I’m leaving.”

“Don’t go! Don’t go!”

Inside the courtyard came a series of urgent shouts, someone ran over in a hurry, the big wooden door made a banging sound, it must have been the person who hit the door, from this you can imagine the urgency of this person.

The large door opened a small crack, Fan Xian squinted his eyes to look inside, and could not help but be startled to find that there was also an eye on the opposite side of the room looking out, and that person clearly had a few pieces of eye boogers in the corners of his eyes, and his hair was tied haphazardly, and he looked haggard.

“Hell!” Fan Xian spat.

“You’re the ghost!” Li Hongcheng, the son of King Jing who was locked in the room, cursed, “Why don’t you hurry up and fish me out!”

Fan Xian looked at him and couldn’t help but sigh, but before he finished sighing, he laughed again and scolded, “How can I fish you out when the king has banned your feet?”

“You give the old master to plead for mercy!” Li Hongcheng was already about to be locked up crazy, at this time it was not easy to see a guy who was not afraid of his father, how would he miss it, scolded, “You kid, do you still have a conscience? You Yin me black me, with dirty words spray me, I have recognized …… but I have been locked up for so long, you do not have some sympathy? When you first came to the capital, did I treat you badly? I’d take you to a brothel and let you pick up any girl you wanted. ……”

Fan Xian plugged his ears and listened to Li Hongcheng’s repeated curses, knowing that this guy was really too miserable, and said with a bitter smile, “The king is locking you up for your own good, or else if you go out and toss around with those two brothers, you won’t see a good end in the end.”

“Die then die!” Li Hongcheng sneered, “It’s better than being suffocated alive.”

Fan Xian retreated a few steps, looked at the layout of this courtyard, and couldn’t help but stare in disbelief and say, “Master Tian Lao …… wouldn’t, you’ve been locked up in this courtyard …… for a year, right?”

Li Hongcheng was stunned, spat and cursed: “That does not have to go crazy early, weekdays just not allowed to go out of the house. Though they are all in jail, this cell in the royal palace is always bigger.”

Fan Xian rubbed his nose and nodded his head, sighing in admiration, “With the royal residence as a prison, the heart cannot be free, Shizi’s sentence, it is philosophical.”

Li Hongcheng lamented, “You kid don’t stimulate me …… Originally, it was good for me to listen to the opera in the king’s mansion, but as a result, as soon as your kid returned to the capital, he was assassinated and went on a murderous rampage, and that old man in my house, without saying a word, immediately locked me back into the small courtyard again, so who did you say that I invoked and who did you say that I messed with? ”

Fan Xian looked at Hong Cheng’s poor appearance through the doorway, his heart also inevitably sympathized and apologized, of course, he knew clearly that the Jing Wang Fu made such a scene is why, it is not that Prince Jing did not want his son to be involved in those things, once he returned to the capital, he was a big fight against the second prince’s lineage, if Li Hong Cheng is still tied to the second prince in a single place, who knows how he will deal with him.

“Tak Tak.” Fan Xian looked around to see that no one was around and whispered, “I’ll get you out of there and take you to get away with it, but you have to promise me that you won’t go see those guys.”

Li Hongcheng was overjoyed and nodded his head, only to say skeptically, “You can’t break this lock, if I want to break out of jail, I don’t know how to fight my way out myself.”

Fan Xian pulled out a key from his belt and said mockingly, “Don’t forget, I’m from the Supervisory Court.”

The big copper lock was opened with a click, and Li Hongcheng, the son of King Jing who was locked up in a small courtyard without seeing the sun, finally got to see the sun, he took a big step out, looked at the open environment around him, took a deep breath, and heavily patted Fan Xian’s shoulder, “Counting on your kid still remembering the old feelings.”

In fact, making such a big commotion, where would the subordinates in the royal residence not know, just that since the person in charge was Little Lord Fan, and the one who saved his own son’s son, no one dared to go and stop him.

Just at this moment, suddenly a clear and bright, somewhat anxious, somewhat terrified voice rang out.

“Brother! How did you run out by yourself?” Not far from the bottom left of the stone steps stood a noble lady wearing an apricot-red coat, her little face red with anxiety: “Beware of father beating you to death.”

Fan Xian was stunned and turned back to look at the young lady, he saw that she was still in the same weak and meek appearance, but her eyebrows had a few more hints of purity and elegance compared to previous years, he could not help but be shocked, thinking that it was only a year since he had seen her, how did the young loli turn into such a pure and lovely young girl?

The young lady also saw Fan Xian’s face, and was so shocked that she covered her lips, and after the surprise in her eyes, she suddenly seemed to think of something, and immediately a mist of water grew, and she was ready to cry.

Fan Xian heart that fear, to say that this Kyoto he is most afraid of people, in addition to the emperor’s son in the palace, is in front of this to their deep-rooted love of the little girl, remember when the girl is young, will be wrapped up every day in their own side, well now has long since settled, he is her …… cousin, his heart will be relaxed quite a lot, but today suddenly see! The girl family sad appearance, the heart feel is also some not smooth.

The girl finally calmed her mind, walked to Fan Xian slightly a blessing, said with a mosquito voice: “See the idle brother.”

Hearing the three words “Brother Idle”, Fan Xian sucked in a breath of cool air, thinking, here we go again, here we go again, but there was nothing else he could do, and said in the calm and amiable tone of an elder brother, “Greetings to Sister Roujia.”