Chapter 314:
Guanju Palace, main hall.
After five years, Xie Wanning saw her parents’ clearly haggard faces, and her nose tingled.
Madam Zheng was still holding her grandson in her arms. When she saw her daughter enter, her eyes immediately reddened.
“Father, Mother!” Xie Wanning hurried over in a few steps and knelt on both knees. “It is your daughter who is unfilial, causing you worry.”
Thinking of the scenes in the dream where her parents knelt before the palace gate, pleading with Lu Ziyan to let her rest in peace, her parents back then were even more aged and haggard than now.
In the past life, she made them, white-haired, send off the black-haired one.
In this life, she was also separated from flesh and blood for five years, making them worry for five years.
Xie Wanning collapsed onto her parents’ knees, crying uncontrollably.
Outside the door, Lu Ziyan watched this scene. His steps, which had been about to enter to pay respects to his father-in-law and mother-in-law, hesitated slightly. After a moment’s pause, he chose to turn and leave, giving this family time to recount their long-separated reunion.
Here, Madam Zheng tugged at her daughter twice. Seeing she refused to get up, she patted her shoulder. “Get up quickly, let Mother take a good look at you.”
Xie Yanyu, at the side, grabbed his younger sister’s arm and pulled her up, then handed over a handkerchief. “Wipe it. You’re the empress now.”
“…” Xie Wanning’s crying paused. She took the cotton handkerchief and wiped casually, then spun around in front of her parents. “Don’t worry about me. I’m doing well.”
Her figure was light and graceful, her complexion radiant, and even her gaze was as clear as when she had been pampered in the boudoir.
She truly did not look like someone who had not been doing well.
Madam Zheng felt relieved and asked in detail about these years’ events, inevitably shedding another round of tears.
Compared to the woman’s open display of emotions, the Xie Family father and son were more reserved, quietly listening to the mother and daughter talk at the side, occasionally handing over a handkerchief.
After this emotional exchange, Madam Zheng looked at her daughter’s delicate, flower-like face and still regretted it deeply: “It’s all Mother’s fault for arranging such a marriage for you so early, causing your originally smooth life to experience these unnecessary twists and turns.”
Back then, it had truly been an excellent marriage engagement. Lu Ziyan was the legitimate second son of the eldest branch of Wuyuan Marquis’s Estate, and the Lu Family was flourishing, with father and brothers holding up the household above him. As the legitimate second son, he had no pressure to bear at all.
Who could have foreseen such a major change later on.
Madam Zheng took her daughter’s hand and asked in a lowered voice, “You fled for five whole years. This time he caught you and brought you back—did he make things difficult for you?”
“No,”
How could Xie Wanning bear to worry her parents? She immediately shook her head. “Really not. He has changed a lot, no longer as domineering and autocratic as before, and he has not made things difficult for me… I was also willing to come back with him. I’ve thought it through—even if he hadn’t come looking, I would have chosen to return to the capital.”
Madam Zheng was unwilling to believe it.
Her daughter had been forced to abandon everything and conceal her identity to flee far away.
How could it be so simple to change her mind.
“Don’t worry. I really wasn’t forced by him to return to the capital.” Xie Wanning pursed her lips and said softly, “…The child has already been born. Actually, I’m not as averse to him as I thought.”
By the end of her words, she felt somewhat uneasy herself.
“What a torment,” Madam Zheng did not know if she believed it or not, only sighing deeply, “If we knew it would circle back to him in the end, why bother canceling that engagement back then…”
Childhood sweethearts, innocent affection from youth, yet they nearly parted like migrating swallows.
Now, she was entering the palace as empress with the status of a remarried woman.
Madam Zheng’s eyes showed complexity. “With him being so obsessed, can he truly let go of the past with you… completely?”
“Yes,” Xie Wanning said. “I believe him. If he says he will, then he certainly will.”
She believed that the two who had missed each other, after going around in circles to find each other again, would surely set aside past grievances.
