PFC Chapter 28 Shadow Guard is my father? (8)
Chapter 28 Shadow Guard is my father? (8)
Under everyone's anticipation, one of the leaders of this poetry meeting took the lead in picking up the poem written by Liu Qingyin. After reading it once, he said "good" several times.
"Okay! Okay! Okay! Great!"
The man's excited expression and his undisguised admiration made the onlookers even more anxious, and some of them shouted loudly.
"Don't just look at it by yourself. Tell us what's good about it! Let everyone appreciate it together!"
As soon as these words were spoken, someone immediately echoed them.
"Yeah, let me wait and see!"
"Hey, don't just hold it there, pass it over here so we can all enjoy it together!"
"..."
In the noisy environment, everyone was eager to take a look at the poem on the paper. Even Wei Zhuoyuan and Liu Yu had a bit of excitement on their faces in this environment.
Mo Ci was held high up, and was very curious about what kind of poem Liu Qingyin had written this time that could make these people so excited, and the person holding the paper even blushed with excitement.
Looking at Liu Qingyin again, she still looked neither arrogant nor impatient, and seemed to have a sense of pride. If it weren't for that inexplicable sixth sense, Mo Ci would probably be confused.
However, Mo Ci noticed the faint but unconcealed pride in Liu Qingyin's eyes. Yes, if one really has some talent, it is normal to be proud of oneself.
However, why did Mo Ci see some... contempt for people like them in that arrogance? This contempt did not come from talented people looking down on those who were not as good as themselves.
Instead, it was like... Mo Ci couldn't find words to describe it. In short, this feeling made him feel very uncomfortable and disgusted.
Mo Ci frowned, then heard the man on the stage say, "Okay, okay, everyone, please be patient. I'll read it to you."
After saying that, the noisy crowd immediately quieted down. After they were completely quiet, the man cleared his throat and spoke.
"When autumn comes and September th, I will kill the flowers after they bloom."
"The fragrance of incense rises to the sky and permeates Luojing, and the whole city is covered with golden armor."
After reciting a line of poetry, the man waited for a moment before continuing, "Can you guess what kind of flower Miss Liu is writing about?"
As soon as the question was asked, someone immediately answered, "Isn't it the autumn chrysanthemums that are blooming all over Luojing City right now?!"
"Yes, it is Qiuju. What do you think of this poem?"
"Brilliant! What a line! 'When I bloom, all other flowers die.' At this time of year, aren't only the autumn chrysanthemums in bloom? This line is both lively and overbearing, absolutely brilliant!"
"Miss Liu is truly amazing. I have to recite the poem you wrote last time every day. Now that Qiu Ju's poem has come out, I have one more poem to recite."
"That last line is quite interesting too. What a 'Golden Armor', what a 'Touluojing'! Miss Liu is truly talented!"
The praises one after another meant that other people who wrote the same poem were also savoring the charm of the poem, which caused the quality of their poems to decline a lot.
As a result, the first place in the poetry writing competition with "flowers" as the theme fell to Liu Qingyin.
Even Wei Zhuoyuan and Mo Ci, who disliked her, had to admire her and say that the poem was excellent.
Liu Qingyin, on the other hand, was unfazed by the praise of these literati, with a reserved look on her face. Occasionally, she would look in Wei Zhuoyuan's direction, with undisguised love in her eyes.
Mo Ci, who saw this scene, couldn't help but sigh at Liu Qingyin's love for Wei Zhuoyuan. If the genders were swapped, the famous talent who won the competition would look at the lady in the audience with eyes full of love.
Well, I'm afraid not many young ladies can refuse this man's courtship.
Mo Ci thought about it and immediately looked at Wei Zhuoyuan. Fortunately, Wei Zhuoyuan had an expression of admiration for the poem on his face, but when he met Liu Qingyin's gaze, he stopped looking.
In short, this is a case of the goddess being interested but the king being ruthless.
Seeing this, Mo Ci felt relieved a little, but he was also thinking about how he would deal with it if Liu Qingyin really became Wei Zhuoyuan's wife.
After all, he is just a child and there are limits to what he can do, and it is not easy for him to stop others from pursuing happiness.
What's more, Liu Qingyin is indeed talented.
This competition with the theme of "flowers" came to an end, and there were several more competitions afterwards. However, Liu Qingyin did not appear in any of the subsequent competitions.
Even so, this poem "Autumn Chrysanthemum" was enough for everyone to savor for a long time. When the poetry reading ended, Liu Qingyin's reputation among literati grew.
She is the most talented woman in Luojing.
Of course, in Mo Ci's perspective, Liu Qingyin's affairs only occupied a small part, and what occupied a larger part of Mo Ci's vision was learning.
Since the last time the emperor gave him a reward, Mo Ci's status seemed to have improved a lot. Although he stayed in the Imperial College most of the time, other people would come by when the Princess of Qi came to see Mo Ci.
He didn't do much, just brought his children of the same age as Mo Ci to visit the Imperial College. He said that he brought his children to see the Imperial College so that he could send them to study there in the future.
In fact, they wanted their children to be on good terms with Mo Ci. They didn't think about anything else. They just felt that Mo Ci had the emperor's favor now, so they wanted to win him over and bring some benefits to their family.
Besides, in the eyes of the world, Mo Ci is definitely the Crown Prince of Qi, the future King of Qi. Even if he has lost the emperor's favor, he is still an easy target to cling to.
Among these people, some are the younger brothers and sisters of the students who are already studying at the Imperial College.
You said it was just a younger brother, but why is there a younger sister?
Naturally, the one who is close to the water gets the moon first. Mo Ci is still young now. If she can gain his attention, maybe she can become the Princess of Qi when she grows up.
In short, everyone has different thoughts, and Mo Ci is helpless. He really doesn't want to interact with so many people.
Even in the previous world, he had come into contact with quite a few people, but the environment that truly made him feel comfortable was naturally one with as few people as possible, especially strangers.
The first person to discover that Mo Ci disliked many strangers was the Princess of Qi. Perhaps because of the saying "No one knows a child better than his mother", after realizing this, the Princess of Qi visited Mo Ci much less frequently.
With her mediation, Mo Ci's life finally returned to the beginning. Now, Mo Ci was finally happy.
In contrast, King Zhao Yan of Qi was very unhappy. Ever since he was inexplicably beaten last time, he has been looking for the person who beat him, but there has been no progress.
Not only that, because he was beaten, the wound on his face made it difficult for him to go out, so he missed the opportunity to watch Liu Qingyin show off her charm at the poetry meeting.
He also missed the opportunity to show his affection to his sweetheart, and hated the person who hit him even more. Unfortunately, he didn't even know who hit him. He had no place to vent his anger, and he was filled with rage.
In addition, the injury on his face had not healed, so he could only stay in the Prince of Qi's mansion on the pretext of illness. He didn't even attend the morning court, and missed a lot of court meeting information.
Fortunately, there were officials who had defected to him and passed on messages to him, so that he would not lag behind others in this information.
After Zhao Yan stayed indoors for several days, Princess Zhuang Xinhan of Qi also learned that he had been beaten. She laughed so hard that she cursed the King of Qi in her heart, saying that he deserved it.
After defeating King Zhao Yan of Qi last time, Mo Ci had not thought of him again. However, Liu Qingyin would appear around him intentionally or unintentionally during this period of time.
No matter how coldly Wei Zhuoyuan rejected her, she would become more courageous the next day.
This resulted in Mo Ci having more and more opportunities to interact with her, and he became increasingly aware that something was wrong with Liu Qingyin.
Because of Mo Ci's own experience of rebirth, he suspected that Liu Qingyin's situation was similar to his, and she probably did not belong to this world.
Once he had this idea, Mo Ci became more certain when he looked at Liu Qingyin.
This world has great restrictions on women. Of course, there are many rebellious women in this world, but Mo Ci can be sure that Liu Qingyin's rebellion is not to break the restrictions on women in this world.
On the contrary, her rebelliousness seems more like instinct.
Just like when Mo Ci first came to this world, he instinctively didn't care about imperial power, instinctively turned a blind eye to the so-called class hierarchies, and instinctively believed that filial piety in this world should be determined according to specific circumstances.
But for people who are not in this world, they believe that the father is God, so any action they take towards their children is natural and right. If the children resist, they are disrespecting filial piety.
Because of this, Mo Ci felt that Liu Qingyin should have originally lived in a world where the class distinctions between people were not so clear, so...
Mo Ci suddenly thought of something. Since Liu Qingyin was most likely not a local, then, were those poems really written by her?
If so, then Mo Ci admits that Liu Qingyin is talented.
If not, then Mo Ci would understand why Liu Qingyin, with her temperament, could write such magnificent poems that were completely different from her personality.
Mo Ci was also a little curious about what kind of world Liu Qingyin came from.
Also, given that he would wake up in another body in another world after his death, he would most likely go to a similar world where Liu Qingyin was.
If he could get more information, he would be able to integrate into it more quickly in the future.
Thinking of this, Mo Ci no longer avoided Liu Qingyin as before. Instead, he looked at Liu Qingyin with an inquiring expression, thinking in his mind how to get Liu Qingyin's secret.
He also didn't forget to think about whether there was a truth-telling elixir in the alchemy he was learning. Unfortunately, there was really no such thing as a truth-telling elixir, so Mo Ci could only think about it carefully.
As Mo Ci studied hard, he had been here for a whole year and finally set foot in the territory of Prince Qi's Mansion again.
This time when he returned to Prince Qi's Mansion, Mo Ci still did not let his guard down. Although the emperor was his guarantor, Mo Ci still did not trust Zhao Yan.
With Zhao Yan's temper, who knows when he will go crazy?
Although Mo Ci is not afraid at all now, if Zhao Yan fails every time he deals with him and loses some manpower, no matter how stupid Zhao Yan is, he will know that there is something wrong with him.
Therefore, taking advantage of this opportunity to return to Prince Qi's Mansion, Mo Ci planned to make Zhao Yan speechless.
Mo Ci will never show mercy to those who want to kill him.
Zhuang Xinhan brought Mo Ci back to Prince Qi's Mansion. The mother and son stopped at the door of Prince Qi's Mansion and looked at the conspicuous sign of Prince Qi's Mansion together.
Zhuang Xinhan looked at Mo Ci, who was one year older than her, and couldn't help but think of the day when she learned that Zhao Yan was going to kill Mo Ci. She was so frightened at that time that she finally calmed down and wrote a letter to her father for help.
At that time, she couldn't understand why Zhao Yan wanted to kill Mo Ci, and Mo Ci was her only child.
Ever since she married into the palace, Zhao Yan rarely entered his room. He always came suddenly when the lights were turned off, which was not a high frequency to begin with.
After she became pregnant with Zhao Huaiqing and gave birth to him, the couple never got close to each other again.
She was depressed for a while at first, but then she realized that she still had a son to accompany her, and that was enough.
Zhuang Xinhan regarded Zhao Huaiqing as her only spiritual support, so when Zhao Yan wanted to kill him, she could not accept it at all.
Until later, she thought she had figured it out. She had always known that Zhao Yan liked Liu Qingyin, but she was the Princess of Qi, the Princess of Qi who was married to her by His Majesty, and the King of Qi could not divorce her.
In this case, Zhao Yan would naturally stand up for his sweetheart and even want to hurt her son for this. This alone touched Zhuang Xinhan's bottom line.
She no longer trusted Zhao Yan, and her protection of Mo Ci became more strict and thorough.
Now, Zhuang Xinhan stood at the gate of Prince Qi's Mansion with Mo Ci, and she also had a feeling that things had changed. However, this time, she would not let Zhao Yan have any chance to hurt Mo Ci.
Zhuang Xinhan held Mo Ci's hand tightly, let out a long sigh, and then walked into Prince Qi's Mansion with Mo Ci.
It was the steward who told Zhao Yan that the mother and son had returned to Prince Qi's Mansion. Zhao Yan felt dissatisfied when he heard that the two went directly to Zhuang Xinhan's yard.
On second thought, he himself was not happy to see Mo Ci, because as soon as he saw Mo Ci, he would think that he had not only failed to kill a five-year-old child, but also brought trouble to himself.
Not only was he scolded by his father, he was also nearly dismissed from his duties. You know, although he is only a prince now, he also has the ambition to rule the world.
Now that most of the princes have reached adulthood, if he does less, he will have less capital to win over the ministers, and it will also mean withdrawing from the battle for the throne.
This is not what he wants to see.
Besides, Mo Ci is not his own flesh and blood. Although he doesn't know why the spices that made Mo Ci bedridden didn't work, it seems that he might as well keep the person under his nose for the time being.
Let him jump around as he pleases. Once he accomplishes his goal, he won't let anyone go, no matter if it's Zhao Huaiqing or Zhuang Xinhan!
Mo Ci had no idea about Zhao Yan's ambitions. He was now following Zhuang Xinhan to his room.
Zhuang Xinhan was probably afraid that he would remember the past and have psychological trauma, so she planned to let him move. However, Mo Ci said that he had some things left in the original yard, so Zhuang Xinhan had to bring him here.
In fact, Mo Ci didn't leave anything in the yard, but he was a little puzzled as to why he had the memory of Shui Qingmiao in the previous world, but had no memory of Zhao Huaiqing in this world.
So, he planned to come here and try to see if he could get Zhao Huaiqing's memory in a familiar environment.
When they arrived at the room where he first woke up, Mo Ci rolled his eyes and asked Zhuang Xinhan to wait outside while he went in.
After hearing what Mo Ci said, Zhuang Xinhan laughed and said that he also had a secret, then took everyone to rest on a stone bench nearby.
Mo Ci entered the room and closed the door behind him.
At this moment, everything inside the door was very tidy, completely different from the scene when Mo Ci left here, when everything was in disarray.
I think when he was in the Imperial College, Zhuang Xinhan had someone come to tidy it up. Thinking of this, Mo Ci smiled.
Then, Mo Ci groped his way to the bedside. Speaking of which, why did this bed have a mezzanine? Furthermore, it seemed that no one in Prince Qi's mansion knew about it. So, what was the purpose of this mezzanine...