Chapter 47: Raise A Son For A Thousand Days!
Yan Bei was the overlord of Mobei, never intimidated by anyone from childhood to adulthood. Looking down at people through his nostrils was a daily habit.
But Yue Tang’s smooth “Prince Jingyang” made him feel his waist and spine go soft, his breath suppressed by seven parts compared to usual, only his face remaining fairly steady: “You’ve come?”
Yue Tang nodded and stepped over the threshold into the room.
Gao An hurriedly came out, glanced at the guard staring sideways under the door, waved his hand, and they all cupped hands and stood straight.
Yue Tang stood in the room, first looked around the four walls, then turned around and looked at Yan Bei: “Where is your son?”
Yan Bei felt a surge of heartache inside.
Looking back from start to finish, from their acquaintance to marriage, then discovering her pregnancy after returning, to her leaving, it added up to five or six months.
In those days, she was spoiled and mischievous, often deliberately leaning close to his ear to call him “A Qi,” teasing him into shy annoyance.
After returning and discovering she was pregnant, he learned from how his brothers-in-law treated his elder sister during pregnancy, worrying about her meals, pounding her back and massaging her shoulders.
Admittedly the work was rough, but it was the daily accumulation that built their life drop by drop.
After A Li was born, she handled feeding, he handled childcare, and they would discuss together how to make the child eat well and sleep soundly.
After A Li’s full moon, the two of them also made him a gold lock together.
At that time, how was their family of three different from the world’s countless happy families?
He never expected that now, her constant “A Qi” had become “Prince Jingyang,” and a distance of thousands of miles had opened between them.
He stepped forward: “There is no ‘your son,’ that’s A Li, our eldest son! I’ll have Gao An bring him over right now.”
He thought, he loved A Li so much, and she must feel the same.
After experiencing ten months of pregnancy and stepping through the gates of hell in childbirth, she must naturally ache for the child even more.
That eulogy burned in front of Zhang Shaode, who knew how long she had prepared it in secret.
Even if there were ever so many misunderstandings between adults, it couldn’t stop her from settling her heart, nor let A Li go on enviously eyeing his little friends’ mothers.
Hearing his answer, Yue Tang’s heart immediately churned like raging waves.
She swallowed at her throat, and finally asked him, who was standing in the doorway giving orders outward, just one sentence: “How is A Li in your hands?”
Yan Bei was holding the door frame about to close the door, and only after a long pause did he turn around: “If I tell you, I’m afraid you won’t believe it.”
Yue Tang lowered her gaze, splashing water to extinguish the incense burner on the table: “Tell me anyway.”
……
A Li was playing with sand by Chrysanthemum Mountain. Several official’s family women brought their children to accompany him from the side. Everyone was careful, coaxing him everywhere.
Gao An arrived, cupped hands to the crowd, and once they retreated, he bent down to take A Li, who was happily building a nest for the little duck.
A Li refused to go: “Once the little duck has a home, it can grow up without worry. Once grown up, it can go in the water to help A Li find Mother.”
Gao An was silent, then squatted down and said gently: “The little duck has already helped A Li find his mother. A Li, go see Mother now, okay?”
……
“……That’s how it happened.”
Yan Bei finished explaining the whole story and looked at Yue Tang.
“The Du Family and I have never had any collusion. What they did, I only noticed after the He Family incident broke out. Now I’m just like you, looking for their evidence.”
Yue Tang stood by the table, gazing at the cooled incense ash in the burner, unmoving like a stone statue.
Yan Bei waited a moment, stepped forward two steps, and boldly reached out to touch her arm.
But Yue Tang struck like lightning, swiftly gripping his wrist!
Yan Bei hadn’t guarded against her; this martial man was actually made to hurt by her slender white hand.
“You say you picked up A Li ten li away from the place where I met with trouble, and also encountered a pair of servants and a horse carriage?”
Yue Tang turned around, her face cool as pale moonlight.
“Yes. At least ten li away, and there were no other people around. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have concluded it was two separate incidents.”
Yan Bei’s face was calm, but his gaze caught a small section of knife handle flashing from under her robe sleeve, and a wave of shock rose in his heart.
She had such good martial arts, and clearly harbored suspicions toward him, yet upon entering she hadn’t immediately drawn the knife to stab him through, and was even willing to listen to his ramblings, showing she at least didn’t see him as one of He Jianzhong or Zhang Shaode’s kind.
But she was utterly calm, with not a trace of past tenderness in her eyes or heart, clearly having long since put him in the past.
Now, besides being from the enemy faction, his only other identity was A Li’s birth father at best.
Yan Bei felt bitterness well up in his heart.
He looked outside the door, not understanding why Gao An was moving so slowly?
Raise a child for a thousand days, use him for a moment; it was time for A Li to come out and turn the tide.
Yue Tang’s mind was entirely on his words.
She gazed intently at the man before her, not missing the slightest change in his expression.
Clearly, what he said was different from what she had experienced that night.
All the attendants had been by her side, and moreover, she had watched every one of them be killed with her own eyes.
How could anyone have been left behind?
Crucially, that old woman who took the knife had pointed to the river to mislead him.
Was he lying, or was there some other mystery behind it?
Footsteps sounded from outside the door then.
After a slight pause, a childish voice rang out: “Mother!”
Yue Tang’s body shook violently, she abruptly released Yan Bei and turned back, seeing at the threshold a small child in a purple robe, clutching a grass-woven little duck, gazing at her with shining eyes.
Gao An stood behind him, and Lan Qin, who had originally been guarding outside the door, had also come, clutching her hands with tears in her eyes.
Yue Tang’s blood stiffened throughout her body, her voice hoarse: “What… did you call me?”
A Li kissed the little duck in his hand: “Nini is so great, you really found A Li’s mother.”
With that, he ran forward with small steps, stopped in front of Yue Tang, opened his arms, gently hugged her legs, then carefully pressed his face against her, closed his eyes: “Mother, Mother, it’s A Li!”
Yue Tang’s whole body melted into water, she softened her knees and knelt on the ground, grasping the child’s arms and looking at him closely.
The child’s face was like jade, his eyes clear as spring water, with warm expectation and timid excitement shining in the starlight.
Yue Tang glanced at Gao An under the door, and Gao An lowered his head.
A child just over three, how could he understand these things? Naturally, an adult had taught him.
But this one “Mother” after another had already shattered Yue Tang’s soul!
Her trembling hand supported the child’s arms, then she reached out to lift his clothes!
That scene of the child in swaddling clothes being slashed by a knife had long become seared into her heart.
She had seen with her own eyes the swaddling clothes dyed red with blood!
She had to verify.
If Yan Bei dared to use A Li’s name to deceive her, then in this very room, she would definitely go all out to make it his Prince Jingyang’s grave!
The clothes were lifted.
On the child’s thin little body, a clear, half-foot-long knife scar extended from his left shoulder all the way to his ribs.
“……A Li!”
Yue Tang opened her mouth, her five fingers uncontrollably stroking that scar!
