Reality (4)
Feng Yunian found out that he had a few white hairs, so he could only pull them out carefully, trying to make himself look younger.
Today was her death anniversary.
He took the cakes she liked during her lifetime and some incense candles and papers to burn as offerings.
Her mausoleum was built luxuriously, with a place reserved for himself.
The thought that a hundred years later, he would die and enter this chamber, made him happy.
Feng Yunian looked at the tombstone, and the snow falling on his head was like gray hair.
He burned the joss paper 1. “Weiwei, are you doing well?”
Only the cold wind whizzed past.
He was used to it. “You never told me that your favorability reached one hundred.”
She only said ninety-nine.
Feng Yunian showed a calm smile at the vicissitudes of life, “But when you slaughtered the ministers who were loyal to you and sent me to the throne, I knew it was your hundred.”
He still remembered that she was embarrassedly said, if the favorability reached one hundred.
He would win the country, so he wouldn’t want her.
The reality was, she gave him the country, and then didn’t want him.
“At the beginning of this year, there was a severe drought. There were so many memorials on my desk that they could bury me.”
He smiled and said, “They’re all scolding me, calling me a man who inherits the orthodoxy, and the law of nature is incomprehensible. Even if I lighten the taxes and pay more attention to water conservation and agriculture to make their lives easier, I am still an evildoer in their eyes.”
Whenever there was a natural disaster, it was his fault.
He also knew that she had taken out the most powerful critics.
She died, and those ministers who had killed their way out of a mountain of knives and a sea of blood, stayed loyal to only her.
When she died and he was enthroned.
These people had all opposed it.
Even when she had cleared so many obstacles for him, he still struggled all these years.
It was very toilsome.
Feng Yunian whispered while burning the joss paper.
It seems like this could reduce the pain in his heart by one point.
It could also make heavy burdens lighter.
“Weiwei, guarding the country and the state is really boring and interesting. How could I ever have the idea of becoming an emperor?”
When he said this, the tears finally couldn’t hold back, and they fell from his eyes.
He hurriedly wiped them, “It’s my fault, why do I always come and complain to you? I should say something happy.”
Then Feng Yunian choked up and laughed and talked about the many good things he had done to benefit the country and the people.
It was only until he stayed late into the night before he was willing to return to the palace.
As soon as he returned to the palace, he saw his confidant, who hurriedly reported.
“There are more than a dozen ministers who urged thousands of people to kneel at the gate of the southern palace, saying that after the one to sit on the throne became a man, natural disasters come every year. They hope that Your Majesty will abdicate.”
In recent years, there had indeed been more natural disasters than before.
A man ascended to the throne, illegitimately conferred, and all the women were suppressed.
And Feng Yunian started to promote male officials.
This simply ate into the pie2 of the parties of interest. He had been fighting with this group for a long time.
Feng Yunian was silent for a while before saying coldly, “I see, let them kneel. I will deal with it tomorrow morning.”
The eunuch retreated.
Then he sat in a chair alone for a long time in a daze.
Someone opposed him again.
“Weiwei…” He called softly.
“En.”
He suddenly raised his head and saw Bai Weiwei lazily leaning against the table, still smiling.
Feng Yunian was pleasantly surprised and rushed to hug her with shaking hands.
But the next moment, only the void was in his arms.
Feng Yunian was stunned. He looked at the room full of coldness, no sign of her to be seen.
He was possessed by a bone-deep yearning.
He chuckled, feeling sad and wronged.
Then he slowly walked out the door and into the hall.
1: 冥纸: paper made to resemble paper money. It is specifically used as an offering to the dead↩
2: Not a literal pie. Basically, Feng Yunian’s decision to bring more males into the court goes against the interest of the other ministers.↩