The two hundred and fifth round

Liu Yun turned his head, his eyes flashing with a luster that made Qin Ying unable to see clearly. He silently stared at her who would never see her again, and finally said slowly, "Are you interested in listening to me tell a story?" ”

Qin Ying nodded in response to him.

He sat cross-legged in the corner of the porch with his robe on his swing, and turned his head to signal her to come over as well: "This story is very long, you will probably have to listen to it for a long time." ”

Qin Ying also sat under the porch with his invitation. Since Xindao has a long story, it is not good not to have a pot of refreshing tea around, if he hears half of it and falls asleep, it will be too shameless to give him face.

And Liu Yun heard her heart, and with a casual wave of his sleeves, a low case appeared between the two, and a set of fine glazed tea sets was placed on the small table.

This was Qin Ying's dream, but he was able to do it at will.

The transparent glaze on the tea set was deeply loved by Qin Ying, and she immediately reached out to take a teacup and put it in front of her eyes to observe it carefully. A red clay stove appeared next to Xiao Ji, and the copper teapot was boiling with half-boiling tea soup.

"Now you have everything?" Liu Yun is not only satisfying her, but also giving herself a farewell and drawing an ending that is about a happy ending.

Qin Ying saw the tea soup boiling sharply, and got up to take the handle of the teapot, Liu Yun handed her a cloth towel in due time. It's like a very tacit scene. Her hand paused in the air, and suddenly it felt familiar.

Liu Yun didn't look up, helped her pour a cup of freshly brewed tea, and asked, "...... Have you ever heard that there was a witch curse in the Han Dynasty? ”

Qin Ying hummed stiffly, thinking of a dream she had had in the past. A man in a dark robe asked her: Is the paulownia puppet buried in the courtyard of the Jiaofang Palace made by you? She couldn't remember how she answered, and woke up with tears on her eyes and the occasional half of her pillow.

The paulownia puppets gradually declined after the witch curse. She felt that her dream was related to the witch curse, but she couldn't find any deeper clues.

Qin Ying has never embarrassed herself, and if she can't figure it out, she will put it aside for two years. She hadn't dreamed of the man in the dark robe for two years, she thought she had forgotten, and now that she heard the scourge of witchcraft, the question in the dream came to her mind again.

Liu Yun, who was sitting across from her, noticed her change in mood, and waited for her to calm down a little before saying, "--The story begins eighteen years before the witch curse. ”

When he was just born for 100 days, Taibu in the middle of the court just used the tortoise shell to calculate the prosperity and decline of the country. Liu Che thought that this bad omen was related to the imperial grandson who had just been added to the East Palace, and he didn't make a noise on the surface, but he was already disgusted with the grandson who had not seen him a few times.

When he was three years old and could already walk and talk, Liu Che asked the prince to set up a separate room for him, and no longer let him live with his mother. He was placed under house arrest in that small courtyard, and only a few palace people came and went every day, and his parents would only show up once a decade. He grew up to eight years old in such a terrible situation. [Note]

Everyone in the East Palace was secretive about his existence, and even the crown prince and the crown princess did not dare to pronounce the word Liu Yun in front of people. Even the imperial grandson didn't know that he had a younger brother who was two years younger.

One day, a strange woman came to the palace, holding a token and asking to meet the queen of the dynasty, Wei Zifu. She is wearing a plain curly dress, and she can't see her specific age on her face, but her appearance is slender, which makes people unforgettable at a glance. What's even more amazing is that she also has a child named Qin Ying with her.

She took the token and entered the palace as she wished. Wei Zifu saw that it was his old friend when he was young, and wanted to keep them for a few days, but he was refused. The woman knew that her life would not last long, so she entrusted Qin Ying to the queen's care and left. Before leaving, she told Wei Zifu that Qin Ying had inherited her witch doctor bloodline and would definitely be able to use it in the future.

When Wei Zifu was young, he was a singer in the Pingyang Princess's Mansion, and he was favored by Liu Che at a banquet and served the holy driver, and later rose to the top, from his wife to the mother of a country.

And the turn of her fate has nothing to do with this old man. If Wei Zifu hadn't met this person back then, this person had made a fortune for herself, and calculated that her life was by no means mediocre, she would not have applied for the singer of the princess's mansion, and tried her best to climb to that height that she never dared to imagine.

She was very grateful to this person, and even took care of the son of the deceased, put Qin Ying by her side, and was very pampered, if Qin Ying wanted the moon in the sky, she could call someone to pick it off.

Qin Ying was so favored by the queen that the emperor's grandsons and granddaughters in the East Palace who were about the same age as Qin Ying were a little jealous. They came up with a way to tease Qin Ying.

First, he asked Qin Ying to go to the East Palace to play hide and seek with them. After that, he led Qin Ying to the abandoned courtyard at first glance, deliberately left her here, and reappeared at night to take her back to her grandmother's Jiaofang Palace.

Qin Ying was only seven years old at the time, and she was very curious about everything. I was not afraid to see the abandoned yard, just like a newborn calf was not afraid of a tiger and broke in, not to mention that there were no guards here.

She found a room and groped in, and saw Liu Yun sitting there with her back to her, looking very lonely. When Qin Ying entered, there was a movement on the floor, but he didn't look back at her, and Qin Ying became even more curious. Kneeling on the mat unruly, he took the initiative to report his name, and waited for him to answer.

It was not that he had never been in contact with strangers because he didn't want to pay attention to Qin Ying, but because he didn't know how to speak.

Turning awkwardly, he handed over a plate of snacks on his desk. This small act bought Qin Ying, who didn't worry about eating and drinking after entering the palace, and also made her go to this seemingly abandoned courtyard every once in a while to find him.

Seven-year-old Qin Ying and eight-year-old Liu Yun slowly established a relationship between playmates.

A month later, she heard about Liu Yun's life experience from her grandmother, and learned that he was the second imperial grandson of His Majesty, and he was placed under house arrest in a corner of the East Palace because of the prophecy calculated by Taibu with tortoise shells.

Qin Ying, who was a little indignant in her heart, shook Wei Zifu's long sleeves and muttered dissatisfiedly, "Does grandmother know any way to let him out?" "She is relying on her grandmother's affection to start being coquettish.

The elderly queen mother was dizzy by her, but she didn't blame Qin Ying for being ignorant, she just sighed: "Your Majesty asked Taibu and the divination master to place a ban in that courtyard, unless Your Majesty ordered Taibu to untie it, he will be trapped there for the rest of his life." ”

Qin Ying let go of the hand holding the queen's sleeve in a dejected manner: "But I have no obstacles in and out, is there really a ban around the courtyard?" ”

Wei Zifu supported his forehead with one hand, regarded her as a little adult, and communicated with her on an equal footing: "Your mother is from one of the best witch doctor families in Chudi, you have a bloodline inheritance, and those prohibitions can't stop you from being born a witch doctor." ”

At that time, the old man entered the palace and had already disclosed all her affairs to Wei Zifu. It turned out that she was the eldest daughter of the eldest daughter of a witch doctor family in Chudi, and the witch doctor's talent was well-known in the local area.

She abandoned her family and eloped with him to Chang'an, but the two were married for many years without children, until her husband died, she found out that she had a posthumous belly. After giving birth to the child, she took Qin Ying alone for a few years, and her body gradually reached its limit. Before he calculated the bad omen for his divination, he took the token that had been kept for decades to find Wei Zifu.

Qin Ying got a point, and suddenly she was overjoyed: "In this way, I can try to lift the ban by myself?" ”

[Note] When I was writing this, I suddenly remembered the Japanese anime "Fruit Basket", where the protagonist is ostracized by someone and then gets redemption.

There is no such person as Liu Yun in history, and I set the second grandson of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to be named Liu Yun. Of course, the stories about him and Qin Ying were all made up by me. (To be continued.) )