CH 2

Meeting

In this world, only one person’s voice could make Wen Chan’s heart beat chaotically the moment he heard it.

He took a step back in panic and subconsciously turned his head to look; his eyes reflected the picture of a handsome teenager.

The visitor had draped a vermillion overcoat on his shoulder. The collar and bottom edge of the coat was surrounded by snow-white fox fur, lining the teenager’s bright white complexion. His long hair was tied up into a ponytail with an ink jade crown on top. His incomparably beautiful body gave out a noble aura.

The face in his memory overlapped with the face in front of him. Wen Chan was stunned as he suddenly appeared next to him. His whole body stiffened, and his own heartbeat reverberated in his ears.

The young man’s eyes shone like a group of stars. He glanced at Wen Chan and didn’t notice Wen Chan’s unstable emotions as he stepped forward. He then bent down to follow his actions and looked through the small hole that Wen Chan had just made. His lips raised into a light smile, and with a low voice, he asked, “So you were looking at this.”

Wen Chan panicked as he didn’t expect to run into him here and gulped. He wanted to say something but was afraid when he opened his mouth, it would be difficult to hide the trembling in his voice. He wants to leave without waiting for a second more.

Who knew that the other person would actually yank Wen Chan’s wrist and say, “Don’t be in such a hurry to leave.”

“What are you doing?” Wen Chan reflexively struggled, and once he opened his mouth, he really did carry a tremble in his voice.

“Which palace eunuch are you?” The young man took two steps and blocked in front of him. He carefully observed his face and asked, “Have we met somewhere before?”

Wen Chan bowed down his head and avoided the question. He just said, “Let me go!”

Seeing how much he resisted, the teenager let go of his hand and softened his tone, “Can you tell me what your name is?”

The force on his hand disappeared. Wen Chan understood what he asked. So, he hastily walked off, and since he was afraid of his trembling hands from being seen, he covered it with his sleeves and left. A surge of heat from his heart covered his body, even covering the initial coldness.

The teenager who did not get a reply stared at Wen Chan’s back as he left. He suddenly raised his voice and called out without fear of being heard by the people inside the pavilion, “Liang Yanbei!”

Don’t look back, don’t look back!

Wen Chan was repeatedly reciting this sentence, but when he heard this name, it was as if he could not control his body anymore, and he looked back.

As the tall young man stood under the golden light, his delicate eyebrows were half bright and half dark. The moment he saw him [WC] turn around, his eyes were tinged with a slight smile, and he said, “That’s my name, I hope we can meet again later.”

Wen Chan fled after hearing this.

This Liang Yanbei was the very same Liang Heng from his previous life.

Liang Yanbei changed his name to Liang Heng in memorial to his brother after his brother’s death in his previous life. He was known by that name for decades, while Liang Yanbei, his original name, was long forgotten and left in the past.

This man had been a part of Wen Chan’s life, from his youth to middle age to the time of his death. It was he who was there at his bedside during his last moments.

He once brought Wen Chan a million warm suns, but he also once allowed him to fall into the abyss.

Wen Chan was really afraid of his own uncontrollable emotions that were like a surging flood. Only his strength was there as the embankment to prevent it from breaking off. If there was even a slight movement in his footing, then the floodwater would instantly breakthrough.

However, the more he restrained it, the more painful it became. This pain came from the heart. It could neither be cured nor could it be removed.

He walked very quickly with the cold wind blowing against his face, but he was unaware of it. After a while, he unexpectedly met Ah Fu seeking the jade pendant. His emotions rapidly became normal again, and even his breathing slowly became stable.

Only after Wen Chan felt that his emotions subsided did he speak, “Ah Fu, I have found the jade token, so you don’t need to look for it anymore.”

When Ah Fu, burying himself in the snow searching, heard his master’s voice, was startled. He straightened up from the blanket of snow to say, “Your Highness, why don’t you go into the warm pavilion first? Your body is still wet, so you can’t stand in the wind for long!”

“Let’s go in together.” Wen Chan’s voice was light, and it was impossible to see that he just had some violent emotional fluctuations.

He called Ah Fu together with him, and they returned back to the warm pavilion. By the time they reached there, Liang Yanbei was already gone and the two people inside the pavilion had also fled. Apart from the two small holes Wen Chan made, nothing was out of the ordinary.

The house was much warmer than outside, and soon after they sat down, Qin Qi and Shu Hua returned with the clothes. Ah Fu went out to wear the clothes, while Wen Chan was left alone inside.

He finally stopped feeling like his body was being invaded by the cold when he put on a pair of dry brocade boots. He was sure that he would soon fall sick due to the unpredicted calamity that he encountered.

But he was prepared for it.

When Wen Chan finished changing his clothes, he suddenly realized that his jade pendant had really disappeared!

He first searched all over his body, but nothing was found. He then took his wet clothes and shook them vigorously. However, the palm-sized jade pendant was still not found.

Originally it was just a casual excuse to lie to Ah Fu, but he didn’t want his karma to come so quickly. Just now, he told Ah Fu that he found it, but now it was gone. How could he explain what happened?

Wen Chan suddenly felt as if his head was going to explode. He was unwilling to give up, and he turned over his clothes again and again, but still, nothing was there. He was born with a bad temper and threw his clothes down.

Ah Fu and the three of them waited at the door for a while before they saw Wen Chan come out, pushing open the door. Ah Fu was relieved to see that the wet clothes had all been changed.

However, when he saw his master standing by the door without moving, Ah Fu couldn’t help but open his mouth to urge him, “Your Highness, it’s time for us to go to the banquet.”

Wen Chan didn’t say anything.

Ah Fu had grown up with Wen Chan since he was a child, and he was good at reading people’s emotions, so he had a good understanding of Wen Chan’s expressions and movements. Thus, when he saw that Wen Chan was silent, he immediately changed his tone and asked cautiously, “Did anything cause dissatisfaction to Your Highness?”

Wen Zen smacked his lips, “That jade pendant…”

“That jade pendant? Didn’t Your Highness find it?” Ah Fu thought about the latter half of the sentence and then slowly tried to ask, “Could it be that you lost it again?”

Wen Chan immediately glanced at him with a look of approval, thinking that Ah Fu was still clever sometimes.

He really wanted to ask His Highness how he managed to throw, pick up, and then lose that valuable thing again in such a short time.

But the desire to live made him say something else, “Then it must have fallen around here somewhere near the warm pavilion. This servant will help Your Highness look for it.”

“En ……” Wen Chan faintly responded, to save himself at least a bit of a face, he said, “Let’s look for it together.”

“Your Highness, no! Your Highness’s valuable hands cannot touch this icy ground!” Your servant is still here, so how can you have a master look for something on the ground? Ah Fu almost immediately called out to stop him, “Only just a few hours ago did you dip your hands in spring water. If it freezes again, even ten lives of this slave are not enough to apologize properly ah!”

“One more person to search means more power to find it faster, and then we can get to the banquet faster too. If we are late, without asking anything much, his Majesty will definitely teach me a tough lesson.” Wen Chan said while signaling him to shut up. He walked down a flight of steps and went straight to the window.

The warm pavilion was surrounded by ankle-length grass, and even though they were covered with snow, it didn’t stop their green from being shown. Blankets of white with some green in between appeared really pleasing to the eye.

But it was not so simple to search for something in the grass. The jade pendant had some weight. So if it fell on the ground, it was very likely to submerge into the grass. Thus, to find it, you would have to poke through the grass. Wen Chan was also afraid to do it, so he used the tip of his boots to look around.

Ah Fu saw that he really was doing it and wanted to stop him, but he was not able to. He anxiously whispered to Qin Qi and Shu Hua, “We must hurry. We should not allow His Highness to freeze here.”

The two guards naturally knew this. The three immediately moved, scattering around the warm pavilion to search for it.

As it turns out, even with more people, the things that weren’t found before still stayed hidden. The four people searched in the grass everywhere, but they could only freeze there without seeing a trace of the jade pendant.

Wen Chan became somewhat tired after searching for a while, and beads of cold sweat dripped down his nose tip. Standing in the open area, he muttered to himself, “Did I really bring it with me when I left the palace?”

“What?” Ah Fu standing beside heard him say something. He stood up while supporting his own waist and asked in surprise, “Your Highness, when you lost it for the first time, you found it, didn’t you? That means you have taken it out from the palace, and this time it must have fallen near here somewhere.”

“It’s not over here,” Qinq Qi said while standing up, he was a few feet away from them, and a large part of the grass under his feet was almost crushed by him.

“Not on this side either.” Shu Hua came over. With slightly knitted brows he asked, “Did Your Highness see anyone else here before? Perhaps the pendant was picked up by someone else.”

The first time he heard this, a handsome face floated in his head, and then he suddenly remembered the man and woman who had a private meeting in the pavilion. He thought about it and said, “I think this jade pendant will not be recovered. I will report it to my father on another day.”

Each imperial heir had a jade pendant in their hand with their rank in the front and the word “Emperor” on the back, making their identity obvious.

Since it symbolized their noble status as imperial heirs, the jade pendant had exquisite workmanship and was expensive. Even the jade was top-grade that was transported over a million miles to get here.

If one of them was lost, to prevent the person who finds it from using the jade pendant to do bad things, all the imperial heirs that have a jade pendant must take them and make it into a new style. So, if a jade pendant was lost, you would have to personally plead guilty to the emperor and be punished.

“Your Highness…” Ah Fu called with a worried look.

“It’s okay.” Wen Chan deeply sighed, “I cannot blame others.”

It’s all because of his wonderful mouth.

Giving up the search for the jade token, Wen Chan led them to the annual banquet.

The place where the sedan chair was parked was not far from the site of the annual banquet. If not for the fall of Wen Chan, and taking a bit more time to find something, they would have already arrived by this time. They reached there at last, and fortunately, the annual banquet had not started yet.

The annual banquet was held in Nanling Garden.

The entrance to the Nanling Garden had a stone carving door that was nine feet high and ten feet long. The white stone carvings resembled the clouds in the sky. It had inlaid bright red coral beads, each the size of your palm and immensely dazzling.

At this time, there was a steady stream of officials walking towards the entrance. Wen Chan looked over very carefully. He tried to dust out their names from the depths of his memory. The faces that he had not seen for ages appeared there one by one.

He no longer looked bulky with two fewer layers of the cotton-padded clothes after changing. With a jade crown embedded with beads and stones on his head and wearing a silver overcoat with borders of gold silk, he stood there quietly. His calm temperament with his prestigious aura of an emperor from his previous life made people visibly shocked.

He rarely showed up in front of the courtiers. So even if people saw him, they wouldn’t know his identity. They just thought that he was the son of some official.

After standing for a while, Wen Chan felt it was time for him to go in, so he took his steps to go inside.

Just after a few steps, a call suddenly rose from the side, “Ninth Highness.”

Wen Chan paused his steps and turned his head sideways to look.