Chapter 230:
Spring in the South always comes faster. By the time Xie Wanning was three months pregnant, Bianzhou City was already filled with the fragrance of flowers.
After changing out of her thick winter jacket, she felt much lighter.
The Li Family Matriarch said that both she and her sister were carrying their pregnancies well. Calculating the days, their due dates were both in autumn, when the summer heat had faded and the cold had not yet arrived—a most suitable temperature.
After Chen Xi’er became pregnant, Matriarch Li forbade her daughter-in-law from helping at the pastry shop. Her daily routine was just to feed the chickens at home and cook a meal.
The two families lived close by, so when she had nothing to do, she would come to chat with Xie Wanning.
Regarding Xie Wanning’s identity, Chen Xi’er dared not tell anyone, including her husband, who only knew her as her recently widowed cousin.
The Li Family Young Master was a scholar and paid more attention to affairs of home and country than ordinary folk. Whenever Chen Xi’er heard any news from her husband, she would tell it to Xie Wanning.
Though news that even a minor scholar had heard could hardly be considered secret, it was still more than what ordinary folk knew.
This was also the only way Xie Wanning, holed up in her small courtyard, learned about the greater state of the world.
In the fourth month, an imperial decree came down from the Capital City, announcing to the realm that the Fifth Prince, born to the former Empress who had returned to the ancestral clan last year, had been made Crown Prince.
The Great Khan now had an heir.
The romantic affairs of those nobles high above, seated on clouds, always stirred up waves upon waves.
In the fifth month, the matter of the current Crown Prince forcibly seizing the Xie Family Young Lady who was already married to the Young Lord of Duke Pei’s Mansion, driving her to escape and fall into the Northern Great Yang Lake, spread across the land north and south of the Yangtze with terrifying speed.
In Bianzhou, this southern small city far from the emperor, many people were talking about it in the streets and alleys.
Xie Wanning overheard some of it.
The common folk at the bottom mostly sighed in wonder, not knowing what kind of peerless beauty the legitimate young lady of Xuanping Marquis’s Estate was, to make the heir of a nation disregard her status as a married woman and forcibly take her as wife.
The rest praised her chastity. The prince at the time was King Zhenbei; as long as she nodded, she would be a proper wangfei, and in the future might even become Empress. Yet she was utterly unmoved by power and resolutely escaped.
Hearing these discussions, Xie Wanning found it amusing while also feeling somewhat relieved.
Fortunately, her matter had not affected the reputation of the Xie Clan young ladies.
But to her parents, she was an unfilial daughter.
Thinking of her father and mother suffering the pain of white-haired people sending off black-haired ones, Xie Wanning felt heartbroken and unbearable.
……She did not know if there would be another chance to see them in this lifetime.
Time passed day by day, the weather gradually grew hot, and Xie Wanning’s belly finally began to show slightly.
Her appetite also recovered somewhat, no longer unable to eat or sleep.
In mid-sixth month, when Xie Wanning, with three months still to go before giving birth, learned a piece of news from Chen Xi’er’s mouth.
It was said that Yu Cheng, the Military Governor of Xiangzhou stationed at Yan Yun Pass, had been accused of secretly colluding with Great Jin. Letters stamped with seals were presented before the imperial desk, enraging His Majesty, who fainted from anger directly in the imperial court.
The Emperor was advanced in age, and the surge of qi and blood injured his body. He canceled court for three days straight.
It was the Crown Prince who stepped forward to manage court affairs, then requested to lead troops personally to Xiangzhou to suppress the rebellious general.
The Emperor approved.
The news took at least ten days or half a month to reach them from the Capital City. Calculating the days, the Crown Prince was almost at Xiangzhou.
Xiangzhou was to the Great Khan’s southwest, and between it and their Bianzhou was only the distance of one prefectural city.
No more than two hundred li apart.
Upon hearing the news, Xie Wanning touched her already bulging belly, her expression dazed.
