“Grandma, have you been experiencing frequent nightmares lately?” Rong Tangtang asked, noticing the dark, bluish-grey shadows under the matriarch’s eyelids.
The matriarch pressed a hand to her forehead and looked at Rong Tangtang with considerable surprise.
Rong Tangtang helped her sit down.
Huo Zhenting hurriedly dispatched someone to summon the military doctor.
“Grandma,” Rong Tangtang asked, “if nightmares have been startling you lately, you can tell me what you’ve been dreaming about. I can interpret them for you.”
Everyone was stunned.
The matriarch was also quite surprised. “What’s this, child? You know how to interpret dreams?” Those who could interpret dreams typically needed to be well-versed in Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Book of Changes (I Ching), and Daoist principles, while also possessing spiritual intuition. Dream interpretation was a highly complex discipline with no fixed rules. Back in the previous dynasty, she had actually known an expert in dream interpretation.
That expert’s surname was Shi, and his given name was Tong; he had once been an imperial physician in the palace of the former dynasty. He could diagnose illnesses through people’s dreams and had saved many lives, but unfortunately, he left no successors.
Later, when the former dynasty fell, that imperial physician went abroad, and all news of him ceased—no one was ever able to find him again.
Now, encountering Rong Tangtang, who claimed to be able to interpret dreams, the old lady didn’t really believe it.
After all, the girl was far too young. However, not wanting to dampen her granddaughter-in-law’s spirits, the old lady began to recount her dream as she recalled it: “Lately, I keep having the same dream, night after night, and it all revolves around one thing.
“I dreamed that I was chatting and drinking tea with my old sisters and friends in a garden, and it was very pleasant.
“My friends were all holding a red handkerchief with a pair of mandarin ducks embroidered on it. I felt anxious when I saw them and asked, ‘Why do you all have red handkerchiefs and I don’t? Did you secretly make them together behind my back, leaving me out and not treating me as a friend?’
“They just looked at me with mocking smiles and refused to answer. Once I got furious, I summoned a large number of soldiers wearing white armor.
“My friends also summoned many soldiers, and I mounted a warhorse and started fighting.
“In the dream, I was fiercely capable in battle—I pierced a friend’s heart with a single arrow, and my soldiers hacked my friends’ underlings until their heads were split open and blood flowed.
“In the dream, I actually found it exhilarating.
“After I won and achieved victory, I suddenly started flying, soaring through the sky. At that moment, a long slide suddenly appeared in the sky, and as I slid down it, my heart felt terribly distressed, as if I couldn’t breathe.
“When I woke up, I still remembered that tense, thrilling, suffocating feeling of sliding down.
“Sigh, when I woke up, I blamed myself. How could I have felt such exhilaration at killing my friends?”
At this point, the military doctor arrived in a flurry, but the old lady raised a hand to signal them not to step forward yet, waiting for Rong Tangtang to speak.
Unflustered and carrying a composure far beyond her years, Rong Tangtang said, “Grandma, have you recently attended your friend’s grandson’s wedding?
“At the wedding, you saw many old friends, and they all told you how wonderful their own grandsons were, how great the granddaughters-in-law they married were, and how adorable their great-grandchildren were, didn’t they?”
“Yes, yes, child, go on.”
“After listening to their bragging, your competitive spirit was stirred up. You constantly felt that your own grandson couldn’t measure up to theirs.
“You became anxious overall, hoping your grandson would hurry up and get married and have children so that you could brag to them too, right?
“Because of this matter, you’ve been very distressed lately, to the point where you don’t even want to see those friends anymore.”
The old lady’s face flushed slightly with embarrassment, but she still admitted, “Yes, yes, you got every single thing right.”
These inner thoughts were things the old lady had never shared with anyone else.
“Grandma, you can’t keep living like this anymore. At your age, due to an overly intense competitive spirit and prolonged, high-level mental tension, your vital life force has already suffered serious damage.”