9
Only after feeding Xie Xuanchen did Mu Mingtang eat the remaining food herself. The feeding had taken so much time that by the time she sat down to eat, the dishes had already gone somewhat cold. Mu Mingtang inwardly lamented—unfortunately, she was under surveillance and couldn’t use the kitchen. Otherwise, not only could she reheat food at any time, but she could also change up Xie Xuanchen’s daily supplements.
He had slept for so long that his body had wasted away severely. His wrists were nothing but hard, bony frames, all the flesh gone and seeing this pained Mu Mingtang. A sick person shouldn’t be treated so harshly. If she could move about freely, she would find ways to nourish his body.
Back when she had been utterly destitute in Chenliu, she had managed to forage for wild vegetables and find ways to nurse Granny Zhou back to health. Yet now, with no worries about food or clothing and ample money at hand, she couldn’t even prepare a proper meal for Xie Xuanchen.
She let out a silent sigh, quickly finished her meal, placed the bowls and dishes back into the food box, deliberately making it look like she had eaten a large amount, and carried the food box to the door of the hall.
This was the one advantage of being under surveillance: she didn’t have to worry about her three daily meals, and even the dishwashing was taken care of by others.
After setting down the food box, Mu Mingtang deliberately waited until the person collecting it arrived. Then, she detailed exactly what soup, meat dishes, vegetable dishes, and congee she wanted for the evening meal before finally letting them leave. Her requests were extremely detailed, fully embodying the stereotype of someone who lets a little power go to their head, of a country bumpkin suddenly transformed into a noblewoman.
The young soldier responsible for collecting the items frowned deeply when he heard her many demands. Seeing this, Mu Mingtang immediately raised an eyebrow. “What’s the matter? You’re unwilling? Don’t forget, I am the Princess Consort. If you find it too troublesome, then let me out, and I’ll cook it myself.”
The young soldier looked back at the guard captain. The captain had been frowning all along, but at this, he waved his hand forcefully. “Go. Do as the Princess Consort says.”
“You heard him—do as I say!” Mu Mingtang raised her brows triumphantly. Then, emboldened, she pressed further. “It’s too much trouble to explain every day. From now on, I’ll leave a list on top of the food box. After you take it back, prepare the dishes according to the list. I don’t understand the Prince’s medicated meals, so just follow the original procedure. But my daily dishes cannot be neglected. Otherwise, I will…”
Mu Mingtang racked her brain for a threat. She couldn’t leave the residence, couldn’t petition the emperor, and threatening to harm herself would just make her look foolish. Suddenly, an idea struck her. “Otherwise, I won’t feed the Prince his meals. Figure it out yourselves!”
Sure enough, the young soldier’s face changed at her words. He stiffly agreed and then hurried away with the food box. Even after he had walked a considerable distance, Mu Mingtang continued calling after him, “Don’t forget the dishes I ordered for tonight! Deliver them on time!”
The soldier’s back stiffened, and he seemed to walk even faster. The guard captain, who had watched the entire scene from the corridor, felt considerable admiration for Mu Mingtang. When people learned they were to be confined, they usually trembled with fear and couldn’t stomach their food. Yet Mu Mingtang, of all people, still had the appetite to order specific dishes.
How could she be so optimistic when her very life was in someone else’s hands? The guard captain stared at Mu Mingtang with a probing gaze. Sensing it, Mu Mingtang couldn’t be bothered and slammed the door shut.
People who had never struggled to survive on the edge of starvation wouldn’t understand—as long as there was food, a person could get through anything. Right now, she had meals delivered on time, clothes handed to her, a roof over her head to shield her from wind and rain. These were luxuries she wouldn’t have dared to dream of during her days as a refugee. Being confined was nothing in comparison—what was so hard about enduring that?
Besides, noble households were different from common folk after all. Even as desolate as Prince Qiyang’s residence had become, the cooks were still extraordinarily skilled.
After ordering her evening menu, Mu Mingtang stood in the hall and once again found herself with nothing to do. Bored out of her mind, she resumed the morning’s work, cleaning each eastern side room one by one.
As dusk fell and the appointed time arrived, she indeed heard noises outside. Mu Mingtang put away her cleaning supplies and opened the door. The food box was already waiting at the threshold.
She immediately washed her hands and prepared to feed the evening meal. As usual, she poured the bowl of medicated congee into the flowerpot, muttering to herself as if in casual conversation: “Your Highness, right now you’re completely depending on my food to keep you alive. Who would have thought that after half a lifetime of amounting to nothing, I would one day be keeping the famous Prince Qiyang in style? With this one achievement, I’ll have something to brag about to my ancestors when I meet them.”
Mu Mingtang had been cooped up all day with no one to talk to, so now that she could finally speak, she really let loose. Taking full advantage of the fact that Xie Xuanchen couldn’t hear her, she rambled on wildly, saying whatever came to mind, thoroughly indulging her urge to talk. After her monologue, she propped Xie Xuanchen up to feed him congee as usual, only to find that he was again not very cooperative about eating.
…Looking after a pretty-boy was too difficult.
Mu Mingtang summoned all her patience and fed him the congee bit by bit. By the time the bowl was empty, a thin layer of sweat had formed on her back.
Just feeding him—it was more exhausting than cooking a meal from scratch.
She wiped the corners of his mouth clean, laid Xie Xuanchen back down flat, and only then ate her own meal. After sitting out for so long, the dishes had gone cold again.
The congee Xie Xuanchen drank was actually hers, and this was a long-term arrangement. To keep up the ruse, she had to make the people outside believe she had a large appetite and needed many dishes for each meal. Fearing they might catch on, Mu Mingtang deliberately disturbed every dish, creating the illusion that she had eaten from each one.
What followed was no different from noon—she placed the empty food box outside, and after a while, someone would come to collect it.
Though it was summer, the Jade Qilin Hall was deep and sprawling, and the interior had already grown dim. Mu Mingtang took a lantern and began lighting the palace lamps in the sleeping chamber one by one. Halfway through, she suddenly turned to look back. The vermilion eaves stretched deep, the doorways receded far into the distance. In the heyday of the Jade Qilin Hall, when all the lamps were lit at once, what a magnificent sight it must have been?
She smiled at the thought and continued her task. What did the former glory of the Jade Qilin Hall have to do with her? She had never witnessed Xie Xuanchen at his peak. To accompany him through his most helpless, most needful days—that was enough.
Mu Mingtang spent a long time lighting the lamps of the Jade Qilin Hall from the westernmost point all the way to the east. The hall blazed with light, almost lively in appearance. Yet inside the hall, from beginning to end, there were only two people.
When it was time to sleep, she would have to extinguish them one by one. The back-and-forth alone would take considerable time. But Mu Mingtang had nothing to do all day anyway. If she didn’t occupy herself with such tasks, what else could she do?
By the time Mu Mingtang returned to the sleeping chamber, she was already tired just from the walking. She placed the lantern on the high, plain-woven table beside the bed and remarked, “I used to hear people say that walking a full circuit around a wealthy family’s house would leave you drenched in sweat. I thought they were joking, but now I see it was true.”
She turned to look back at the shadow-filled hall, its lamps casting flickering light, and gave a soft click of her tongue. “That being said, living in a house this big all by yourself would really scare anyone.”
It was dark now, and Mu Mingtang didn’t quite dare return to her own small partitioned space. She decided to stay by Xie Xuanchen’s bedside instead. With Xie Xuanchen’s fearsome reputation, even ghosts probably wouldn’t dare drift near him, would they?
Having nothing to do, she could only sit beside Xie Xuanchen and say whatever came to mind. “Your Highness, Prince Qiyang, so you are actually the Marquis of Wu’an. I’m ashamed to say that you saved my life, yet I never knew my savior’s name. It was only after arriving in the capital that I heard people speak of Prince Qiyang, Xie Xuanchen. Xuanchen—’Heaven and earth, dark and yellow; vast and wide, the cosmos; sun and moon, full and waning; stars and constellations, arrayed in order.’ It’s a very beautiful name. When the late emperor gave you this name, he must have held great hopes for you. And you did not disappoint your parents’ expectations—you truly shone as brightly as the stars in the heavens.”
Speaking of names, she naturally thought of her own. “Come to think of it, I lost from the start with my name. My birthday is the first day of the fourth lunar month. The midwife said it was a girl, and my father saw that the crabapple blossoms in the courtyard were in full bloom. He slapped his forehead and named me Mingtang [‘Crabapple Blossom’]. Fortunately, our family didn’t grow any dogtail grass, otherwise, given my father’s level of education, I’d have been in real trouble.”
“I’ve heard that Jiang Mingwei’s name was inspired by ‘gathering white pea blossoms.’ ‘Gather, gather the white pea blossoms; the tender leaves spring up fresh and fair. I think of my lord and my heart is sad; the year is ending and he is not there.’ As for Prince Jin, his name probably carries meanings like ‘the sea accepts all rivers’ or ‘benefiting the whole world.'” The more Mu Mingtang spoke, the more disheartened she felt. She clapped her hands and said, “See, this is why people need to read more books. If I ever have a daughter, I absolutely must give her a beautiful, well-considered name.”
“Only mentioning a daughter and not a son—that seems a bit biased,” she murmured, then suddenly froze. After a moment, she laughed bitterly. “Why am I even thinking about daughters and sons? In this lifetime, I probably won’t have any children at all. If I ever did become pregnant, whether the child was the Prince’s or not, I wouldn’t survive. Living alone forever is fine, its quiet and peaceful. Living in such a huge house by myself, what else could I possibly complain about?”
Mu Mingtang lifted the blanket and gently examined the wounds on Xie Xuanchen’s wrists. Thanks to her careful cleaning and diligent application of medicine, the injuries looked much better.
She carefully tucked the blanket back around him, smoothing the corners. “You really can’t compare the affairs of this world. Jiang Mingwei can run away from her wedding just like that, and afterward, she still gets to be a princess consort. But me—I bent over backward accommodating everyone, and yet with one word from Jiang Mingwei, I had to make way for her. Fate is so unfair. After they married me off, Jiang Honghao will probably be promoted to the full chief position soon. That’s the grand controller of finance. After Jiang Mingwei becomes a princess consort, who knows how glorious the Jiang family will be. I’ll never live to see their downfall, I’m afraid.”
“But I can’t blame Jiang Mingwei entirely for this. When it comes to marriage, if one of the two parties is unwilling, the whole thing falls apart. The reason Jiang Mingwei could so smoothly return and become princess consort is, at the end of the day, because Prince Jin was willing. Since Prince Jin isn’t holding her disappearance against her, why should anyone else gossip? It must be wonderful to be loved like that. When you’re young, you pursue freedom, and if you get tired of playing, you can turn around and still marry your childhood sweetheart. She has all the confidence in the world. How come I don’t have such a devoted childhood sweetheart?”
Mu Mingtang lamented to Xie Xuanchen for quite a while, deeply regretting having missed the opportunity to cultivate a childhood sweetheart of her own. “But stepping out early is for the best, I suppose. If something isn’t yours, forcing it is useless, and it only invites suspicion. Those two golden boy and jade girl—their bond is stronger than gold, more devoted than the heroes in any opera. To them, I was probably just an annoying villain. I was a stand-in from the very beginning, yet I couldn’t see it and actually thought I could marry Xie Xuanji. Who is Xie Xuanji? He is not someone any woman other than his one true destiny can even dare to dream of.”
Mu Mingtang truly found Xie Xuanji’s life trajectory very inspiring—forging ahead step by step, rising higher and higher, the very image of a world-shaker from the history books. In contrast, the two of them were decidedly less commendable.
Mu Mingtang was the type to let a little success go to her head; she was nothing like the great figures who remained unmoved by loss or gain. And Xie Xuanchen, in his heyday, had also been arrogant and unrestrained, doing whatever he pleased and making many enemies—not a personality that history books favored.
Mu Mingtang sighed. “No wonder Prince Jin keeps rising higher and higher, while the two of us have ended up like this. If there were a book about all this, the male lead would surely be someone like Xie Xuanji.”
After saying this, she saw that it was getting late. Hugging the lantern to herself, she stood up. “I’m going back to sleep now, my savior. Good night.”
After Mu Mingtang left, Xie Xuanchen’s eyelids trembled, but he was too weak to open them. Over the years, he had gradually realized that the medicine was problematic—it left him groggy and deeply unconscious, unable to wake. Once he had suspected something was wrong, he refused to drink it anymore. Every time he regained consciousness, he would smash the medicine bowl. But having been immobile for so long, he often couldn’t control his strength, and the person feeding him needed a break as well.
Eventually, no one dared to feed him medicine, and they switched to feeding him congee instead. Xie Xuanchen didn’t notice at first, it was only after a long time that he realized the congee was also laced with medicine.
He then refused even food. As a result, his body grew weaker and weaker, and the periods of his consciousness grew shorter. Lately, he had been aware for longer stretches, but he was too weak to open his eyes. Still, for an hour or two each day, he could hear what was happening around him.
He had sensed that a new maid had come to the Jade Qilin Hall—no, perhaps not a maid. Xie Rui had apparently found him a wife.
Xie Rui’s people—Xie Xuanchen trusted none of them. But this woman was different from what he had imagined. At the very least, she had swapped the congee, and that pleased him.
However, remarks about being a “pretty-boy” and “eating soft rice”—those he utterly rejected. And what did she mean by saying that if there were a book, the male lead would surely be someone like Xie Xuanji?
As long as he, Xie Xuanchen, was alive, would Xie Xuanji ever have a chance to shine?
**