The Perilous Palace Dream - Side Story-6
Side Story: Ge Childhood Sweetheart
He was born in Huaxi Village and did not cry at birth.
The midwife slapped his buttocks with all her strength, but he merely twitched his mouth; inside his delicate eardrums, only that slapping sound echoed.
“What a pity—this child is mute.”
In an ordinary farming family, strong arms were needed; bringing a disabled boy into the world was indeed a pity.
Fortunately, he was only unable to speak; his arms and legs were completely intact.
Life in Huaxi Village was like the stream flowing through it, trickling over smooth pebbles in an unchanging rhythm.
His parents named him Axi, though he could never make the tinkling sound of the stream.
A fortune-teller passed through the village, and his mother pulled out three copper coins earned from selling eggs to have her mute son’s fortune told.
The Taoist, who claimed to be a divine seer, shook his head repeatedly and returned the three coins: “In his past life, the slaughter and sin were far too heavy. He ought to have fallen into the realm of beasts, but driven by an obsession, he was reborn as a human. However, he must endure ten lifetimes of physical disability. It is best for him to forge good karmic bonds and perform many deeds of atonement…”
Hearing these words, his mother shook her head in dismay and shed a few tears for him after returning home.
He, however, felt no sadness.
Being unable to speak was actually quite nice; he didn’t have to play and brawl all day long with a gang of annoying, bare-bottomed village boys.
The village boys bullied him for being mute and once played a prank on him, shoving him into a half-filled manure pit. He struggled out, lunged fiercely at the ringleader, and pressed his head down into the manure pit. It was only when the adults arrived that the unlucky child was pulled out.
His mother was so furious she wanted to drag him over for a beating, but she was rendered speechless when her son stared back at her with an icy glare.
From then on, none of the children in the village dared to bully the mute Axi.
Recently, a grand event was taking place in the village. As a supplier of vegetables and fruits to the palace, Huaxi Village had long enjoyed royal favor and imperial grace. On this day, the Empress felt an inclination to bring her seven-year-old twin children to Huaxi Village for an outing.
The entire village was buzzing with excitement.
Under the arrangements of the eunuch officials sent by the court, the village patriarch renovated the fields and residences.
He specifically prepared an old mansion that had belonged to a former imperial physician—idle for many years—to serve as the Empress’s temporary palace.
When the long, serpent-like procession entered Huaxi Village, seven-year-old Axi was also prostrating amidst the dark, kneeling crowd.
As he slightly raised his head from the crowd, he saw the golden imperial palanquin. The golden gauze shimmered dazzled in the sunlight; beneath the rolling gauze, a woman wearing a dragon robe and a golden crown caught his eyes. Flying golden dragons coiled around her pitch-black hair; under a pair of dark, graceful eyebrows were vivid, expressive eyes, like a bottomless pool from which one could never pull oneself out once drawn in…
He stared in fascination, forgetting to lower his head, until his father beside him pushed down hard on his neck with a large palm, forcing his forehead to slam heavily onto the ground.
By the time he struggled with all his might to break free from that hand, the imperial palanquin had already moved far away.
Little Axi stood up to chase after it, but his arm was held fast by his father.
“Foolish boy! What are you chasing after?!”
Axi let out a few hoarse ah-ah noises, feeling a wave of confusion in his heart.
What am I chasing after?
Topics about the Empress Regnant replaced the usual village gossip.
The blacksmith’s wife was the proudest. It was said that back when the Empress Regnant suffered hardship and lived incognito in Huaxi Village with her imperial physician, she had personally cooked several meals for the Empress Regnant, who ate with great satisfaction.
Of course, as for the chapter where the Empress Regnant and the imperial physician disguised themselves as husband and wife, everyone understood tacitly and never mentioned it. One must know that the Empress Regnant’s ‘Empress Consort’ was the famous commander of the Black Banner Army—a figure whose stomp would make Great Wei tremble three times. How could a minor imperial physician compare to the number one handsome man in Great Wei? Even if spoken aloud, it would be dismissed as sheer nonsense.
Axi climbed up the tallest tree in the village. From high up in the tree, he saw the courtyard enclosed by yellow drapes in the distance. He saw that beautiful woman in yellow robes sitting in the courtyard, holding a boy about his age, laughing and chatting happily.
Shortly after, a man dressed in white walked out of the house holding a little girl. It was a warm and harmonious family scene. The man extended his long arms to wrap around his wife and two children, imprinting a gentle kiss on the woman’s cheek. Everything was so harmonious, yet looking at it made his eyes ache. For some reason, he kept feeling that he should be the one in that picture.
Slowly, he felt as if he were behind that woman’s soft body, opening his arms to embrace her, looking up at the endless stars in the sky together…
Slowly, his eyes closed, and an unprecedented smile appeared at the corners of his mouth as his thoughts drifted across the brilliant night sky…
Yet in his daze, his foot missed a step, and his whole body fell from the fork of the tree. When he hit the soft, wet mud after the rain, an unbearable, excruciating pain shot through his foot bone.
A few days later, the young Crown Prince hosted a wrestling arena in the village, gathering the village children to wrestle.
The young Crown Prince was playful; having finally come to the countryside and seen many peers, he wanted to use wrestling as an excuse to make some like-minded playmates. The reward for winning was a large plate of sweet honey-coated osmanthus cakes and a small dagger encrusted with jewels.
The village children were eager, staring at the pastries and swallowing their saliva, yet no one dared to step forward.
Only one child—with a wooden board strapped to one leg—limped into the open area, gesturing with yi-yi-ya-ya sounds to indicate he wanted to wrestle the Crown Prince.
The surrounding guards were taken aback for a moment, followed by a burst of laughter from both adults and children.
Yet the limping little mute boy continued to look stubbornly at the young Crown Prince.
That gaze was filled with provocation.
Stirred by something in those eyes, the young Crown Prince stepped into the arena as well, imitating the words his father used when sparring with soldiers.
“In the martial arena, there is no distinction between high and low! You have the right to exert all your power; if there are injuries or death, it is up to fate!”
His childish voice made the guards burst into laughter once more.
However, the grapple between the two children that followed made the adults laugh no longer. No one knew whose child this little mute was, but like a young wolf, he pounced at the Crown Prince with a fierce glint in his eyes, every move like a dying, injured beast fighting for its life.
Even though the Crown Prince had been trained by famous martial masters from a young age, he was somewhat unable to withstand the assault. After a heavy throw, he was pinned onto the dusty ground.
Several guards and eunuchs rushed forward to separate them, but the Crown Prince shouted loudly, “No one come over! Otherwise, it will be one hundred strikes with the staff!”
At the Crown Prince’s order, everyone had no choice but to stand aside with hands lowered. They watched as the precious young Crown Prince and a country boy rolled into two mud balls.
“Qi’er, you lost; why won’t you admit it? Are you going to let a child with an injured leg lie on top of you all night?”
A soft, slightly raspy voice came through.
The Crown Prince’s trousers had been pulled down, exposing half of his little white buttocks. He was pinned down and unable to move, and he hadn’t expected his Empress Mother to see this embarrassing scene, making him even more unable to save face.
The younger sister standing beside her Empress Mother added a sharp blow to his pride. Biting into a piece of osmanthus cake fresh from the plate, her cheeks puffed out, she said: “Empress Mother, didn’t you say brother and I are big now and can’t wear open-crotch pants to show our bottoms anymore? Why is brother exposing his bottom?”
“Ah—!” The young Crown Prince let out a desperate, aggrieved roar toward the sky.
Nie Qinglin smiled amusedly and personally pulled up the child who was staring at her blankly.
She said softly, “My son has admitted defeat. Will our little hero spare him?”
Little Axi nodded blankly, letting those soft, delicate hands pull him up.
“What is your name?”
Axi’s lips twitched, but he could make no sound.
The surrounding children shouted out incoherently.
“His name is Axi! Mute Axi!”
Hearing this name, the beauty was clearly taken aback. Something flickered in her eyes before vanishing into calm rippleless waters.
“Axi… You won. Go claim your reward.”
Yet he didn’t even glance at the prize that made the other children drool.
Instead, he reached out a little hand covered in dark mud, pointed at her fragrant, soft lips, and then pointed at his own cheek.
This gesture made everyone around gasp, cold sweat breaking out across their brows.
The Crown Prince, who had just pulled up his pants, yelled indignantly, “Empress Mother isn’t your mother, why should she kiss you?!”
Yet Nie Qinglin looked smilingly at this stubborn child.
Using a plain white handkerchief, she gently wiped his mud-streaked little face, then gently pressed a kiss onto it…
From that day on, Axi refused to wash his face.
Every day while herding sheep on the hillside, he would burst into foolish ah-ya-ya laughter by himself.
Before his leg had even healed, he wanted to climb that big tree again to look at the fairy-like person in that courtyard.
However, that tall tree had already been chopped down. It was said that because the tree blocked the sunlight from the courtyard, the Grand Tutor had ordered it cut down. The thick branches had been dragged away for firewood, leaving behind only a ground covered in broken remnants.
On the day the Empress Regnant finally left Huaxi Village, he dragged his injured leg, running desperately after the large fleet of carriages.
But how could a short, injured leg catch up with a speeding convoy? Something seemed to surge in his throat, choked dry and raspy by the dust, but it was choked off at the root of his tongue.
When he scrambled up a high hillside, he was tripped by a tree root.
A heart-wrenching pain shot through his injured leg. Accompanied by that bone-burning pain, he finally let out a raspy, harsh howl like a young beast.
“Lin’er…!”
Yet after that single, brief cry came a period of blank confusion. Trying to make a sound again resulted only in futile yi-yi-ya-ya noises…
The fortune-teller was also preparing to leave the village. Walking to the entrance of the village and seeing him collapsed on the hillside, he shook his head with a sigh.
“So many unyielding desires… Why can you not let go even after passing through five cycles of reincarnation? Too much obsession becomes a sin…”
He heard the Taoist’s words and seemed to understand, yet also seemed not to.
But even if he truly understood, could he let go?
Looking at the receding dust in the distance, he only felt that the spot on his cheek where he had been kissed was burning hot, making the blood in his entire body boil.
Ten lifetimes? If, after going through centuries of reincarnation, he would meet her again and embrace her beneath the moonlight in front of clusters of flowers, then he was willing to endure the suffering of these ten lifetimes. Let the grinding of the mortal world strip away the entanglements of fame and wealth, leaving behind only that heart in exchange for a true love he could face openly…
Days in Huaxi Village returned to their former tranquility; the stream through the village continued to flow peacefully.
Mute Axi’s leg never fully healed. He became even more solitary, letting out foolish laughter when herding sheep alone on the hillside.
Above his head was a expanse of blue sky, along with a beautiful smiling face formed by the clouds…
