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Chapter 87: Gratitude
He admitted it with such crisp directness, without even a shred of hesitation.
His voice was so low it was almost inaudible. Zhao Yiyi’s expression shifted slightly; for a split second, she actually thought he wasn’t drunk.
“Talk to me, okay? Yiyi, just pay me a little mind…”
The mournful voice rang beside her ear, choked with a sob that bordered on despair. His hands trembled uncontrollably as he called out to her, pleading. He pressed his forehead devoutly against her hand, refusing to let her see his wretched state.
The carriage suddenly lurched into motion. Caught off guard, Zhao Yiyi stumbled forward and collided with him. Fortunately, he steadied her, barely preventing her from falling.
As the man buried his head and nuzzled gently against her palm, Zhao Yiyi could feel the ticklish brush of his eyelashes. She looked down at him in a daze, only to suddenly feel a sensation of wetness on her palm.
By the time she snapped back to reality, the dampness had spread, staining her fingertips.
Zhao Yiyi’s face filled with astonishment. She called out to him, uncertain and alarmed, “Your Majesty?” She tried to withdraw her hand.
But he held onto it tightly.
“Yiyi, can’t you… can’t you just coax Zhen a little?” He seemed to use every ounce of strength in his body, every word trembling, spoken one by one, just to force out that single sentence.
It sounded incredibly difficult.
Zhao Yiyi froze there, the blood in her body seemingly congealing.
A man as proud as he was, someone who kept his back straight no matter the circumstance—how could he be crying? Even back when he was implicated in the deposed Prince Wei’s affair and confined to the Eastern Palace, he had worn his usual indifferent smile.
How could he possibly be crying?
Yet the moist sensation against her fingertips was a constant reminder that this was real.
She pursed her lips and remained silent.
“I am jealous.” Gu Zhen held her hand tightly, as if holding onto something he was terrified of losing. He whispered, “Yiyi, I am not drunk. I lied to you just now. I… am jealous.”
The monarch who usually held supreme power and made arbitrary decisions was now hunched over in this cramped carriage, weeping silently.
“When he drank, you urged him not to drink too much with such deep concern. But when Zhen drinks, no matter how many cups I down, you won’t even spare me a glance.”
After listening quietly for a long time, Zhao Yiyi finally pulled one hand free. She pressed it against Gu Zhen’s shoulder and said softly, “Alright, stop making a fuss. You’re a grown man, don’t you know how much you should drink? You should be aware of your own tolerance. Drinking yourself into this state… you don’t save anyone any trouble.”
This sentence, however, truly agitated him.
His heart instantly seized up, twisting in sharp pain.
“Yiyi.” Gu Zhen called her name with a choke in his voice. He suddenly sat up and pulled Zhao Yiyi into his arms, tightening his embrace as if trying to merge her into his own chest. He said in a muffled voice, “Zhen is not a heavy drinker. I kept thinking, as long as you said one word to me—just one word—I wouldn’t drink anymore. But I waited and waited. I waited until the entire pot of Shidongchun wine was finished, yet I couldn’t wait until you came to stop me.”
Caught off guard and crashing into his embrace, her cheek pressed tightly against his broad, powerful chest, Zhao Yiyi could hear the steady beat of his heart.
With her cheek resting there, she curled her fingertips. For the first time, she felt an emotion that was hard to describe. “You drank there silently by yourself, and now you blame me for not controlling you?”
“Where in the world is there such logic?”
Indeed, where in the world was there such logic?
Gu Zhen was jealous, yet he refused to say it in front of everyone. He had only watched her secretly from the side, testing the waters step by step.
In the end, he had lost completely.
“No, Zhen doesn’t blame you.” Gu Zhen lowered his head slightly, resting his chin on the top of her hair. He explained impatiently, “I was just jealous. I wanted to hear a word of concern from you. I was afraid you didn’t want Zhen anymore.”
His voice was mixed with urgency and a bit of incoherence, revealing a somewhat laughable clumsiness.
Zhao Yiyi couldn’t clarify her current emotions either. She only felt a stifling sensation in her chest. Her heart beat powerfully, rhythmically, and a trace of confusion appeared in her eyes.
“Stop making a scene.” She frowned helplessly and said softly, “Get up a bit. I’ll have someone cook sobering soup for you.”
Just because of this one sentence, the man who had previously refused to let go at all obediently retreated an inch, turning his head to look at the carriage wall in a rather wretched manner.
Zhao Yiyi opened the carriage window and instructed the outside, “Return to the palace immediately. Have someone prepare a bowl of sobering soup for His Majesty.”
The personal attendants knew the Emperor was drunk, so they weren’t surprised. Several of them leaped out from the entourage of palace servants flanking them and galloped toward the palace city.
The sky turned dark early in winter. The moment the carriage window was opened, a beam of bright moonlight shone in, paving the floor mat with silver.
Cold wind poured in with it.
When the window was closed, the deep winter chill was shut out, and the silver frost withdrew.
The snow today stopped and started unpredictably.
Suddenly, her wrist was captured. Zhao Yiyi looked down and saw a hand covered in scars. She was stunned for a moment, then looked up at him. “What is it?”
Being looked at by her clear, penetrating gaze, Gu Zhen’s heart felt as if it had been seared by fire. He let go as if touching a red-hot coal and whispered, “It’s not very good to look at. In the future, Zhen will try not to let you see it.”
He was not someone who cared about appearance.
But no matter how little he cared, seeing scars like these, how could he remain indifferent?
Not to mention, one’s body, hair, and skin are gifts from one’s parents.
“Why did you have to do this to yourself?” She extended her fingertips and lightly touched the remaining scars, her voice as ethereal as mountain mist.
Even after applying the best scar removal ointment, it couldn’t be fully restored. A hand that was originally slender and powerful was half-ruined just like that.
At that time, rushing into the fire at Jiao Fang Palace, there was no time to think; he had acted purely on instinct. Gu Zhen shrank back slightly and smiled bitterly, “Zhen has failed you for so long, how could I watch helplessly as you were buried in a sea of fire? Yiyi, Zhen couldn’t do it.”
They had been married for only three short years, yet both had ended up in a wretched state.
One wounded in the heart, one wounded in the body.
Neither had an easy time.
Zhao Yiyi looked dazed, a sense of unreality rising within her. Looking at the scars stretching from his palm to his wrist, she reached out and touched them again. Suddenly, she grabbed his sleeve, pulled him in front of her, and asked through gritted teeth, “Do you think—do you think that because you saved me once, I will have a change of heart? Or do you think that by hurting yourself, you can make me grateful?”
By the end, she was almost tearing at his clothes with both hands, asking sternly.
She was suppressing an anger threatening to burst forth. One or two crystal tears hung on her long eyelashes, and the knuckles of her hands gripping his clothes turned white.
“Who cares?”
From the moment she decided not to like him anymore, whatever he did lost its meaning.
But why did remembering it now make her feel sad?
The irritability in her heart lingered, impossible to fade.
“No.” Gu Zhen looked down at her. He extended his large palm and carefully wrapped it around her hand, soothing her bit by bit until her grip loosened. Only then did he say softly, “Zhen never thought to use this as leverage or bait. I never thought to make you grateful. I simply wanted to save you, that is all.”
With the fire soaring into the sky at that time, in such a critical moment, how could there be time for thought and reaction?
The rationality he had always taken pride in became a joke in that instant.
Nothing else mattered; he cared about nothing else.
In that moment, he only wanted his Yiyi.
Since he had done it, he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again.
Gu Zhen gently stroked her back and said warmly, “Don’t overthink it. If you really don’t like it, just pretend this never happened.”
Luoyang City was silent at night. The wind outside the window constantly beat against the carriage walls, whistling as it passed.
In such a quiet night, a few traces of shock flashed across Zhao Yiyi’s face. Immediately after, she pulled his hand up in front of her face and gritted her teeth, “You tell me to pretend it didn’t happen, but how can I pretend it never happened?”
She made him look at the scar.
With such evidence present, how could it be treated as if nothing had occurred?
“You used to be so good at deceiving yourself; are you going to teach me to be like that now too?” She bit her lip, speaking with extreme difficulty, as if using up all her strength. All the emotions in her chest poured out in an instant. “But I can’t learn it. I can’t learn that kind of self-deception.”
The carriage finally entered the palace gates.
The palace servants who had returned ahead of time had already ordered the kitchen to brew the sobering soup and were waiting there, ready to serve it the moment His Majesty returned.
Zhao Yiyi kept a cold face. She watched him finish a bowl of sobering soup in the Zichen Palace before turning to leave.
“Yiyi.”
Watching her graceful retreating figure, Gu Zhen couldn’t help but call out.
Zhao Yiyi paused slightly and turned sideways to look at him. “Does Your Majesty have other matters?”
The candlelight shone on half of her face. The flickering light, alternating between bright and dim, cast a layer of gentleness over her already breathtakingly beautiful face.
But Gu Zhen dared not call her again.
After looking at her for a moment, he finally mumbled, “It’s nothing.”
When she came out, snow particles had begun to flutter and drift again. Yunzhu held an umbrella and followed beside her. Master and servant tread deeply and shallowly on the snow-covered palace path, leaving several faint footprints.
“You said yesterday that Father wanted to see me?” Zhao Yiyi rubbed the small hand warmer and asked indifferently.
Yunzhu responded affirmatively, “The Marquis of Huai’an has been clamoring to see Your Highness for some time. The officials at the prison saw him making a scene and, mindful of his identity, reported it up layer by layer.”
Zhao Yiyi smiled and said, “What does he want to see me for? Instead of spending this effort on me, it would be more urgent for him to see his precious son.”
“Perhaps he thinks Your Highness is unaware of the matter and wants to beg Your Highness to make a decision for him,” Yunzhu thought for a moment and replied hesitantly.
Zhao Yiyi thought about it, and it made sense.
She hadn’t left the palace for a long time. Zhao Weimin had been entangled in the lawsuit for months, followed by the Luoyang Governor forcefully taking action and sentencing him.
He probably thought she was unaware of the outside world due to being deep in the palace.
Otherwise, with her father in trouble, she should have intervened long ago.
Zhao Yiyi couldn’t help but chuckle lightly. She looked up at the moonlight, her voice soft. “Since he insists on seeing me, have someone make arrangements. I’ll go see him, to stop him from always thinking about it.” She suddenly thought of something and asked, “By the way, have his pair of precious children gone to see him?”
Yunzhu shook her head. “No. The official prison isn’t a place one can enter just by wanting to. Given the status of those two, if they didn’t use some means, how could they get in? Aside from that, I haven’t heard any rumors of them trying.”
Zuo Lianzhi was being watched by the Zuo family, and Zhao Shunnian was being watched by the Zhao family. However, if the two had any intention, even if they couldn’t see him, they should have at least mentioned it.
Yet there was not a peep.
The smile in Zhao Yiyi’s eyes deepened as she said slowly, “That is interesting.”
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