【These two chapters are best enjoyed while listening to "Clover Flowers" to set the mood. The author has gone mad, mainly creating a soul-crushing story.】
The next dawn.
In the summer days, it would brighten extremely early.
When Ning Wanshuang opened her eyes, she saw from the window that the pitch-black night had already shifted into a foggy morning blue.
She had dozed off leaning against the front of the pleasure couch, and her neck ached badly when she woke up.
But she didn’t care about her own discomfort at all.
The moment she opened her eyes, her gentle gaze had already fallen onto Chenghuan.
Chenghuan’s eczema had worsened severely. In just one month, almost no spot on his body retained normal skin.
With extremely dry skin, even a tiny movement from the child would tear open a long and deep gash on the taut and wrinkled skin.
In order to let Chenghuan sleep well,
Ning Wanshuang had been keeping vigil by the child’s couch day and night these days, applying moisturizing cream on him almost every hour to relieve his discomfort.
At this moment, she lightly applied another layer of medicinal cream on Chenghuan,
then tiptoed out of the room and slipped into the small kitchen to get busy.
After some unknown period of time,
when Chenghuan arduously lifted his droopy eyelids from his groggy sleep,
he saw Ning Wanshuang sitting by his side, smiling at him and saying,
“My son, happy birthday.”
Ning Wanshuang carefully helped prop him up.
Chenghuan saw that the front table that used to be filled with jars of medicine now only had left a bowl of steaming longevity noodles.
Sitting atop it was also a white and tender boiled egg.
Chenghuan smiled weakly. He asked Ning Wanshuang,
“Imperial Concubine Mother, is that a soft-boiled egg?”
Chenghuan had never eaten a soft-boiled egg before.
Due to his taboo against raw and cold foods, he could only look on longingly as Jin Yue and Ruo Xin ate them,
biting into them and letting the golden egg yolk flow out, looking extremely tempting.
He had pleaded Ning Wanshuang to let him have a taste before,
but each time, Ning Wanshuang had denied him severely.
Yet today, Ning Wanshuang nodded at him with a smile.
“Of course.”
As she spoke, she stirred the bottom of the bowl with her chopsticks, scooping up the hidden dried scallops and peeled shrimp inside,
“And here is the seafood that you, my little glutton, have always pestered me to let you try. I didn’t allow you to eat them in the past, but today is your birthday, so I’ll make an exception and let you have them this once.”
Chenghuan's eyes shone with delight. He thanked Imperial Concubine Mother repeatedly.
He couldn’t wait to lift the bowl and heartily dig in.
But after just two bites, the skin splits on his body tore open widely again from the pain, and the child couldn’t help but knit his brows.
Ning Wanshuang panicked and immediately took the bowl from him,
supporting Chenghuan as she helped him lean comfortably against the headboard. After treating the new wounds on his body with medicinal cream, she picked up the bowl and chopsticks again, speaking to him with utmost gentleness,
“My good son, Imperial Concubine Mother will feed you.”
She carefully picked up a small clump of longevity noodles with the tips of her chopsticks, rolled them up into a little ball,
blew on them to cool them down before feeding them into Chenghuan’s mouth.
Chenghuan was just like a greedy little kitten, voraciously gobbling it down.
“So delicious! Thank you Imperial Concubine Mother~”
But that simple chewing motion alone was enough to tear open more cracks with blood seeping out from Chenghuan’s cheeks and jaw.
The blood spilling out from the intersecting ravines resembled exquisite red glass,
glinting faintly as it splattered into Ning Wanshuang’s eyes, dying the rims of her eyes red inch by inch.
She murmured to the child in an extremely soft voice,
“My son... I'm sorry...”
Chenghuan seemed to not have heard her clearly.
Seeing only the emerging teardrops from the corners of her eyes, he became anxious.
“Why are you crying, Imperial Concubine Mother?”
He hurriedly reached out to wipe away her tears.
But the cracked skin on his fingertips were like barbed thorns, piercing into the softest spot in Ning Wanshuang’s heart.
Her dammed up tears surged forth like floodwater.
Chenghuan became more frantic. “Don’t cry, is it because I didn't behave well and made you sad?”
Ning Wanshuang felt as if her chest was clogged by a boulder.
She didn’t dare to respond, afraid that she would immediately burst into sobs if she opened her mouth,
so she could only force herself to choke back her tears as she shook her head.
Yet Chenghuan’s tone carried traces of self-reproach.
“It must be because I didn't behave well. Imperial Concubine Mother has always taught me that a gentleman should be frank and upright, handling everything fairly and openly. But... I have deceived you.”
He lowered his head, intentionally avoiding Ning Wanshuang’s gaze.
But what entered his sight was the jade pendant on his wrist.
It was a Ru Yi knot bracelet that Ning Wanshuang had painstakingly woven for him over many nights.
Ning Wanshuang wasn’t skilled at handiwork, and even Jin Yue didn’t have something so thoughtful. Only he had one.
At this moment, Chenghuan gently caressed the bracelet, speaking in an extremely weak voice tinged with apology,
“I... I was the one who caused Third Younger Brother’s death. Eldest sister... was also my fault...”
After he spoke, he forcefully held back his sorrow to stubbornly wipe away his tears.
These light words were like deafening thunder in Ning Wanshuang’s ears,
delivering an earth-shattering impact to her mind.
She had actually long known what Chenghuan had secretly done behind her back.
As his mother who had raised her son before her very eyes every day, outsiders might not detect his every move, but how could his thoughts and deeds escape her eyes?
Hence what astonished her now wasn’t what wrong Chenghuan had committed,
but rather...
that he would actually admit it to her personally.
Before Ning Wanshuang could recover from her shock, Chenghuan had already wiped his tears dry. Looking up at Ning Wanshuang, he laughed bitterly,
“Actually, Imperial Concubine Mother must have already known for a long time, right?”
Chenghuan was frank. Since he was being so forthright, Ning Wanshuang no longer wanted to hide anything from the child.
Likewise, she also wanted to ask clearly about the doubts that lingered in her mind.
Therefore, she gently caressed the child’s hair, nodded, and asked in as gentle a tone as possible,
“But Imperial Concubine Mother doesn’t understand why you did those things. Was it because of Chengjing’s beatings and humiliations? However, why did you harm Cheng Yu?
Imperial Concubine Mother knows that you didn’t mean to harm Jing He and Eldest Sister initially, it was just a twist of fate. But Cheng Yu... he had just returned to the palace and knew his manners well. He shouldn’t have ever harmed you...”
Chenghuan’s eyes reddened as he pursed his lips and shook his head.
“That wasn’t the reason. I made Third Brother crawl into the Iron Orb, and I knew it would kill him. But I didn’t do that entirely because he beat me and humiliated me. What I hate the most was him saying that Father Emperor killed Imperial Concubine Mother’s relatives and hated both Imperial Concubine Mother and me...”
Speaking to this point, Chenghuan’s emotions suddenly grew agitated.
He endured the pain to clench his fists and fiercely pounded the edge of the bed. Gritting his teeth, he seethed,
“I won’t allow anyone to say that about Imperial Concubine Mother!”
That blow wasn’t light.
It almost tore open all of the skin over his knuckles. Trickling down were countless fine gashes.
Ning Wanshuang held Chenghuan’s hand sorrowfully, shaking her head with tears shimmering on her lashes.
“Foolish child. Was it worth committing such wrongdoings for Imperial Concubine Mother’s sake?”
“It was worth it.” Chenghuan nodded forcefully, gazing ardently at Ning Wanshuang as he enunciated word for word,
“Even if I know that... you aren’t my birth Imperial Concubine Mother.”
