(a)

I lived in Yantangguan for a while. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Immersed in a place full of memories of you, your breath every day, I feel like a fish that has been struggling on the shore for a long time, and it is difficult to breathe, and it is back in the water.

Gradually, I forgot more and more about my identity as the queen mother, and returned to the role of Chen Qin'er.

I wish I had never married into the royal family, and I wished that I had always been an ordinary old woman from a middle-aged family, eating lightly every day, with children and grandchildren around my knees, and living happily together as a family.

I really want to stay here forever and never go back to Yunjing again.

But, as you said, you can't always stay where you like.

Because it was approaching the day of my sixtieth birthday, Cui Chengzhi, the king of Lingnan, cautiously came over several times and asked me when I planned to leave to return to Yunjing.

I felt that if I didn't go back, it would make my sons embarrassed, and it would also make the ladies in the palace talk a lot, so I arranged a trip back and notified Yunjing to welcome Luan's return.

However, I still didn't want to go back like this.

I had a thought in my heart: I want to go to Cheongcheon on the way back and see the place where you grew up. When we were young, when we sat side by side on the roof of the Cui family's mansion, when we sat in the woods in the back mountain, you often told me about this place, you were full of love and longing for it, it was the hometown of your soul, it was the source of your strength, it was an indispensable part of your life, and I have always only learned about it from your story, I have never been there.

Now, I can finally go freely.

I have to go, too. Because I'm afraid that no matter how old I get, I won't be able to walk.

The opinion of the emperor and Cui Chengzhi was that they wanted me to return to the palace directly from Yantang Pass, but seeing that I had expressed a strong desire to go to Qingchuan, they did not want to go against the wishes of the old mother, so they arranged a reception along the way.

When the first autumn leaves fell, my car left Yantang Pass without a haunt and embarked on a journey to Qingchuan.

When the carriage roared out of the majestic city gate of Yantang Pass, I quietly lifted the thick curtain, looked back at the city tower and city gate hole that were getting farther and farther away, and remembered that when you entered the grassland on Chinese New Year's Eve to explore the characteristics of the Khan's royal department, my uncle came to this city gate on horseback, trying to stop you from adventuring, but only saw the scene of your horse team disappearing far away on the horizon. My eyes moistened again.

Although Liu Shen's death and the removal of the status of the empress liberated me to a certain extent, after all, I am still the emperor's mother, and my normal residence is Shangyang Palace, and it is impossible for me to wander outside for a long time, nor can I return to Yantang Pass frequently to live. I don't know when I'll be able to come back.

Goodbye, Yantang Pass.

Goodbye, my vanished youth, never to return.

Goodbye, the haunting love of my life.

Everything we love in our lives, in the end, must be like this, and we will part with it.

(b)

The moment the carriage drove into Cheongcheon, I felt it.

Although I was leaning on the pillow in the car and drowsy, and the curtain was tightly covered, I suddenly felt a fresh energy, which seeped into me from all directions, penetrated into every cell and molecule of me, and I felt like countless butter lamps in my body, which were ignited in an instant. The body and mind are bright and transparent.

I opened my eyes and sat up.

I reached out and pulled the curtain, and my eyes lit up.

The bright landscape of Qingchuan unfolded in front of my eyes like a beautiful scroll painting.

It turns out that Kiyokawa is like this! Such a breathtaking beauty, such a breath-taking beauty! No wonder you miss it so much! No wonder when you came back to say goodbye to me, when we walked on the shore of Baojing Lake, you were still thinking about it.

Only such beautiful landscapes can give birth to characters like you! in order to nurture your compassionate soul! And your meticulous, selfless love.

(c)

Our group stayed in the Qingliu Taoist temple where you once lived.

In the era of peace, the scale of the Taoist temple was also expanded many times compared with that year, with heavy doors and courtyards, and endless corridors of buildings. According to the accompanying local officials, only the five courtyards in the core area are the old Taoist temple buildings where you lived before, and the courtyards on the front and back and left and right are all newly built.

Now the mountain chief in the Taoist temple is your little junior brother, a disciple of the new Dao Ji cultivated after your death. Although he is over half a hundred years old, he does not have the slightest old age, his hair is still black and shiny, the skin on his face exudes a baby-like luster, there is not the slightest wrinkle, he is muscular, his posture is straight, he walks lightly and elegantly, and he looks only about thirty years old, which reminds me of the first time I met Master Daoji.

The chief of the mountain, under the guidance of the magistrate, respectfully came to pay his respects.

During the greetings, I felt that his respect came more from the fact that I was your sister and the daughter of the old Daoji, rather than from my status as the queen mother.

He presented me with this spring's new tea, which was brewed with the clear spring water in the mountains, and the tea fragrance was overflowing, and the aftertaste was extraordinarily long.

While tasting tea, we listened to him introduce the development of the Qingliu Sect over the years.

Although the Qingliu Sect was also famous all over the world before, it was a sect that even the monarch could not ignore, however, because the ancestors of the past dynasties paid attention to seclusion and internal cultivation, and did not provoke the outside government, they have also maintained the mystery of the cloud and mountain fog, and the outside government and the opposition do not know much about the Qingliu Sect.

However, since you went down the mountain to join the army and became famous in the world, Qingliuzong has become the focus of attention of the government and the opposition. There is no better publicity and advertising than you, because of the worship of you, the scale of the disciples of the Qingliu Sect is expanding at an astonishing speed, far exceeding the scale that the Taoist temples far away in the mountains can manage, so in recent years, the Qingliu Sect has opened some new Taoist temples in various places, established rudders, has its own relatively developed and perfect organizational network, and its participation in external affairs is becoming more and more numerous.

For this increasingly secular development, Dao Ji is not very fond of it in his heart. But he did not intervene to stop it, he told the current mountain chief that the development of all things has its own destiny, and it should conform to nature and not force change. It is the law of nature that things are strong and old, and it will be true for a person, and it will be the same for a sect.

When the sect developed to a considerable scale, Dao Ji handed over the responsibilities of the mountain chief to the disciples of the sect, put down everything himself, only brought three or five attendants with him, and then went down the mountain to travel, he went to the court of Yunjing to see me for the last time, and went to Yantang Pass to meet Ding Youren, and then went west to Kunlun Mountain on the border, where he practiced in seclusion and cut off contact with the outside.

The mountain chief said that he did not know the whereabouts of Dao Ji for seven or eight years. (To be continued.) )