Night. Small upstairs.

I took out the silver key again, opened the dark compartment under the dresser, and pulled out the brocade bag.

I opened the bundle of the brocade bag, poured out all the contents and spread them in a makeup box. Then the lights were blown out.

The unlit room was instantly filled with a soft silver light.

In the box, there is a full layer of night pearls, although the beads are not very big, but they are all perfectly round, and have a very good gloss, clear and bright.

I held them in my hands and watched them leak through my fingers.

This was given to me by the old king when I was 12 years old. They are my dowry. They were bought in exchange for my father's life and my mother's ups and downs.

On the day when the decree was issued posthumously conferred on my father as a second-class lord, the old Han king gave me this bag of night pearls with the edict as a consolation to my father's orphans.

In the future, the man who can get this bag of night pearls will inherit my father's title.

In the dead of night, I often take them out and look at them, thinking about them alone. However, it never occurred to me to use them.

I'd rather never see them in exchange for my parents still living in the world.

But those words you said to me during the day reminded me of them.

I remembered Wu Shun's saying that you took out the income of the fiefdom to subsidize military spending, and I thought of Fu Tianliang's visit not long ago. Obviously, even if you put all your income into it, your military expenses will still be tight.

Maybe they can be used in one place. That's where they're supposed to be used rather than as a dowry.

I think my parents, if they were still alive, would have agreed with me to use it the same way.

I turned the lights on again. I counted them carefully. No more, no less, exactly 500 pieces. It's the same as the number of new Han troops you raised in the first batch. Isn't it providential?

I carefully poured them back into the bag, and then tied them up in a larger leather bag, and carefully tied the mouth of the bag.

In this chaotic world, there is no more precious treasure than the reappearance of peace.

Taiping is the real light in this dark long night.