It's quiet.

For a moment, the Emperor could hear nothing but his own breathing.

Maybe a few moments have passed, maybe a quarter of an hour has passed, and the emperor finally moved.

He woke up from a dream and looked at the young man who had the same appearance as him, and who looked as if he was just closing his eyes and taking a nap.

The great eunuch Wang An said softly: "Your Majesty, the prince of Pingnan, he is gone. He wanted to say "薨," but the emperor's attitude toward the prince was unclear at the moment, so he replaced it with a statement that was neither honorific nor too rude.

When the young emperor heard Wang An's words, he didn't make any expression on his face.

He didn't even cast a glance at Wang An, who was so disgusted with him.

"He's gone?"

The emperor didn't know if he should be happy, relieved, or relieved.

He felt that he should have these emotions that he should take for granted, but he didn't.

He believed that a person's eyes would not deceive people, whether it was when Huajiabao and Qiao Heng first met, or later before he was imprisoned, or just now.

When the other party was trapped in the national law and family rules, and could not show his strengths, there was no color in his eyes. And when the other party won the game, there was no smug arrogance in his eyes, and all he saw that night was a heavy desolation before he fell unconscious.

However, such a young man who seemed to have nothing to desire and nothing to ask for did not hesitate to commit the sin of rebellion.

If the other party is just a careerist who is good at disguise, why did he let go of all this without any nostalgia when the dust settled?

The young emperor finally lowered his noble head and looked at the prince of Nanwang, his cousin.

The emperor, who had tried his best to maintain an elegant and calm posture even when he was imprisoned, seemed to be frozen all over his body, and it took all his energy just to look at the prince of the south.

When the two talked to each other before, the other party's calm and calm atmosphere made people take advantage of it, so that the emperor subconsciously ignored the other party's own situation.

At this time, the other party's eyes were closed, and the bearing of the whole body returned to its essence, and the emaciated figure covered by the wide robe and big sleeves was revealed.

During the period of his captivity, even though he had no worries about food and clothing, he was anxious and depressed in his heart, and his body was unstoppably reduced.

Unexpectedly, the prince was even thinner than him.

He felt in a trance that something must have been overlooked by him.

From the snowy night when the king of the south and the prince of the south had a conflict, Wang Anxin felt that it was not good.

He didn't know what happened between the two, but the conflict came too suddenly.

It's not that there shouldn't be discord between the two, in fact, in his opinion, sooner or later, the prince will turn his face against King Pingnan, who rules over him. However, now that the government is just stable, and the king of Nan has a crucial handle in his hand after all, how can the prince not understand the principle of forbearance and appeasement for the time being? This is too strange.

He wanted to persuade the prince of Pingnan, but he didn't dare to persuade him.

When he met the emotionless eyes, his mind went blank.

The emperor is not terrible to be angry, he is calm and rational on his face, but he is burning with anger in his heart. This kind of hidden anger that cannot be extinguished and cannot explode, and then gradually accumulates is the most terrifying.

It was cold in the hall.

The scenes of that day are still very clear in retrospect, the ground in front of Shizi is a mess, and in front of his feet is a broken cup, and the shards are splashed everywhere.

On the table, there was another intact teacup, looking at the direction of the cup, it should have been prepared by the prince for the king of the south, but the tea inside seemed to be missing. The king of the south has completely disregarded the face of the world.

Then, the prince of Nanwang ordered Wenyuan Pavilion to speed up the restoration of the classics. Wang An knelt in front of the emperor, racking his brains to recall the scene and retell it.

He behaved as humble as ever.

The prince had long expected that the emperor would ask him questions.

He still remembered that the prince in the emperor's costume at that time said while reviewing the folds: "If you want to live, listen to him, and do whatever he says, even if he orders you to be put to death." As long as you want to live, you will survive. ”

At that time, Wang An's face was full of consternation, if the emperor wanted to put him to death, how could he talk about whether he could survive?

Immediately afterwards, the young man who was reviewing the recital raised his head, and his eerily quiet and inexplicably flustered eyes looked at him without blinking.

"You don't believe me?"

The tone was no different from Fang Cai, but Wang An shuddered to himself.

He had only experienced this kind of creepiness twice in his life, the first time was because he saw the prince imitate the emperor's words and smiles and demeanor exactly the same, as if he had completely erased himself, like a character reflected in a mirror, and he couldn't tell who was right and who was fake. The second time was when the Emperor questioned whether he trusted him.

He knelt on the ground and begged the prince to give him an explanation, and the prince was about to say something, but unfortunately a minister asked to see him, and the matter was diverted.

After that, the prince broke off contact with the king of the south. Wang An said.

The Emperor said, "I just want to know what happened between the King of the South and the Prince on that day. ”

Wang An prostrate on the ground: "I really don't know about this matter, and the slave has the courage to guess, Xu is the king of the south thinks that the prince is not very obedient." "This is not speculation, he served the prince of Nanwang closely, and he knew that there were not a few times when the prince was in disobedience.

Wang An, who was lying on the ground, listened to the young emperor suddenly say, "The king of the south wants me to die." "It's not speculation, it's certainty.

But the cousin he didn't want to.

"But because of this?"

"The slave of sin does not dare to draw conclusions. ”

For a long time the emperor did not speak again, he was silent, as if he wanted to say something, but finally gave up.

Everything seems to have been restored to its original state with the death of the prince of Nanwang.

Go to the court, listen to the government.

In the next court, the review is sparse.

It's as if everything is the same as it was.

The emperor looked at the Chen Tiao that Qiao Heng had corrected in the past, and the red on it was his own handwriting. If it weren't for the fact that he was completely unimpressed by these notes, he was sure that this was not written by himself, and he was afraid that even he would have thought that it was written by himself.

The furnishings in the dormitory were exactly the same as he remembered, nothing was added or subtracted.

Every once in a while, the Shangyi Warden would make new clothes for the emperor. The eunuch held the newly made clothes and showed the emperor to see if it was to his liking. The emperor knew that this was probably the clothes that Qiao Heng had cut when he was still there, and it had only been made in the style of Shangyi Supervisor's excellence until recently. These clothes were no different from his previous preferences, just like the various requests he himself told to the Supervisor of Shangyi.

In this huge palace, there seem to be traces of his cousin everywhere, but there seems to be no trace of his brother everywhere.

His cousin seemed to have completely lived himself as a different person.

The Emperor put down the music in his hand, and his gaze gradually emptied.

After a long time, he said, "Wang An." ”

In Wang An: "The slave of sin is here. ”

Emperor: "The prince of Pingnan has left, why don't you follow?"

Wang An took a deep breath, then bowed his head and said, "The slave of sin obeys the holy commandment. ”

Hua Manlou gently folded the letter he had just written, and then held a brush in his hand and wrote the words "My friend Qiao Heng personally opened" on the envelope.

Of course, he knew that the real name of Nanwang Shizi was not this, but no matter what kind of identity the other party was and what kind of name he used, Hua Manlou always remembered what the other party said when they first met: "The next surname is Qiao, and the single name is a Heng character." ”

Hua Manlou has listened to many people's self-introductions, some people are cowardly, some people are showing off without a trace, and more people are just making polite greetings.

But when Qiao Heng said this, he always felt that under that polite appearance, there seemed to be a little seriousness and solemnity that he didn't know how to describe.

Hua Manlou thought that the other party should prefer the name "Qiao Heng".

He handed the letter to the descendants of the Hua family.

The people of the Hua family took the letter, and their faces showed a little embarrassment: "Young master, where should this letter be delivered?"

Hua Manlou was stunned for a moment.

I don't know what happened to Qiao Heng, he didn't wait for a reply after he sent the letter twice.

Maybe the messenger and Qiao Heng just missed it, after all, he wasn't sure whether Qiao Heng was in Nanwangfu or went to Baiyun City again.

He said, "Forget it, leave this letter with me for now." ”

Seeing that he had nothing to do, the little maid saluted his seventh young master and left.

When Hua Manlou was about to put away the unsent letter, he seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then picked up a book, which contained several pieces of stationery, which were all replies that Qiao Heng had written to him before.

This was not the first time he had reviewed the letter Qiao Heng had sent him.

At the beginning, Qiao Heng would personally reply to every letter he sent, but later it was changed to someone else's ghostwriting, and now, he can't contact the other party at all.

How the changes in this period are not worrying.

He had to dig out the previous letters of the two and read them from time to time to feel at ease.

However, each time, the more he recalled, the more he could not feel at ease.

Previously, when I received a reply letter after a while, Hua Manlou never felt anything wrong when he read these letters.

However, when they are read together without gaps, the strangeness of the past that is concealed between the lines by the witty written language is nowhere to be hidden

The two wrote letters to each other, and naturally they inevitably recounted what happened around them.

In his letters, Qiao Heng would share what kind of dinner he had and describe the color and aroma of each meal in vivid language, but he would never say which dish he preferred to eat, and whether today's dinner was better than the previous days.

He would recount the songs he heard and the dances he saw in beautiful and moving words, but he never expressed his inner likes and dislikes for these songs and dances.

It's like he didn't do it for his own enjoyment, but just because he thought he should, he did it.

He is a truthful reteller, not an experiencer. His own feeling was not that he deliberately hid it and did not write it, but that he had nothing to write about at all, and he didn't even bother to make it up.

Hua Manlou said in his heart that he was really asking for trouble, but he was helpless, he sighed and put away all these letters.

He walked to the side of the flower stand, raised his hand to touch the bud that had not yet fully unfolded, and stood still for a while to calm down.

At this moment, he heard a slightly hurried footsteps, and it was the little guy who had just left half an hour ago.

He turned around and said gently, "Is there something wrong?"

The little guy said: "Back to the young master, there is news that there is a son." ”

Hua Manlou's eyebrows and eyes seemed to be a little brisk, and the little guy seemed to see what Hua Manlou was going to say, and hurriedly said: "Young master, the son of the world is gone!"

The author has something to say: chapter one