His wild, beast-like behavior truly frightened .
At first, when I saw him go still, I rely watched him from afar, not daring to breathe heavily.
Gradually, I noticed him collapsed on the ground, motionless, and a sense of fear crept into my heart, wondering if he had died. If soone discovered him tomorrow, I would have a hard ti explaining myself...
So I mustered my courage, approached him, squatted down, and gently shook his shoulder, calling out to him.
He didn't respond. Upon closer inspection, I saw a large lump swelling on his head, which looked rather comical, and his knuckles were scraped and bleeding profusely.
I took so ash and applied it to his wounds, then tore a piece of cloth from my outer garnt to bandage him.
At that ti, I had no sympathy for him. I rely thought that if anything happened to him, I would be implicated too.
And so I sat by his side, keeping watch over him for half the night.
As dawn broke, he awoke.
Looking at , then at the still-locked door, he couldn't help but ask in surprise:
"Why are you here?"
"Last night, I brought offerings and saw His Highness Jiang Muye performing rituals, so I hid and didn't dare disturb," I replied truthfully.
I had thought that, considering I had tended to him all night, he would at least not make things difficult for , even if he didn't express gratitude.
But who would have imagined that when I tried to help him up, he pushed away unceremoniously and questioned :
"Why didn't you wake up?"
I fell heavily to the ground, my tailbone aching so much that tears nearly welled up in my eyes.
The next mont, when the palace maid on duty opened the hall's door, he ran off in a panic.
I lay on the ground, rubbing my bottom while watching his hurried retreating figure, and muttered under my breath:
"What an unpleasant wretch. I shouldn't have cared whether he lived or died - he deserved to die!"
I had originally thought the incident was over, but I never expected Jiang Muye to be such a petty and narrow-minded person!
The next day, when he returned to Zhu Yin Hall, he happened to cross paths with as I was cleaning fallen leaves in the courtyard.
I respectfully greeted him, but he ignored like a blind man, and even deliberately bumped my shoulder as he brushed past !
Fortunately, I was prepared this ti, or else my bottom would have suffered again...
From that day on, I rarely saw him leave his quarters.
Concurrently, my daily als also beca increasingly inadequate to satisfy my hunger.
At first, there were still so non-greasy side dishes and two stead buns, enough to fill up.
But gradually, the side dishes turned into a small plate of dry radish cubes, and the stead buns disappeared, leaving with only a small bowl of watery porridge for two als a day.
Not only that, but the palace maids serving in Zhu Yin Hall also began treating worse, and even the head maid beca increasingly impatient with .
When I told her that I often felt faint from hunger, contrary to her usual deanor, she snapped at :
"You should be grateful to have food at all. What are you complaining about?"
In my heart, I suspected that Jiang Muye must have secretly instructed them to make things difficult for .
The more I thought about how he had repaid my kindness with resentnt, the more I disliked him.
But what good did disliking him do?
As a servant in Zhu Yin Hall, I had to accept whatever food the master provided, and had no right to dislike him.
If they hadn't rescued that day, I would likely have died when the Qi Army attacked and conquered the capital.
In the ti that followed, I could only drink a bit of porridge every day, with a stead bun every three to five days - not to ntion any hope of having vegetables to eat with it.
After being hungry for so long, I naturally had no energy to work.
One day, while gathering firewood in the woodshed, I suddenly felt dizzy and passed out from hunger.
I must have been extrely famished, for even in my dreams, I could sll the aroma of chicken.
That scent only made my hunger pangs worse. With great difficulty, I managed to open my eyes, only to find myself lying on the warm bed in Jiang Muye's quarters.
And he was seated beside , waving a chicken drumstick tantalizingly in front of my face...
Startled, I was about to ask what had happened, but before I could open my mouth, he rcilessly shoved the drumstick into it:
"Don't talk, eat first."
The oily chicken skin exploded with flavor in my mouth. Ravenously hungry, I didn't care about disliking him anymore and snatched the drumstick from his hand, wolfing it down.
It was only later that I learned from Jiang Muye that he had never instructed anyone to mistreat . Not only had my rations worsened, but all the palace servants were essentially living on a shoestring budget.
The head maid hadn't treated poorly either. The stead bun I could get every three to five days had actually been her own portion - she had given her best.
The reason for this situation was that Zhu Yin had signed an unequal treaty with the Qi Dynasty. Zhu Yin had agreed to pay the Qi Dynasty hundreds of thousands of taels of silver and tens of thousands of stones of grain annually, as well as send a Zhu Yin prince to the Qi Dynasty as a hostage prince. Only then did the Qi Dynasty agree to cease their invasion, temporarily withdrawing their troops.
After I had eaten a long-awaited filling al, Jiang Muye told :
"The one who locked us in Candle Dragon Palace that night was my elder brother. I was the one originally ant to go to the Qi Dynasty as a hostage prince, but my brother took my place..."
He spoke with such sadness that I didn't know how to console him. All I could do was share half of my drumstick with him and gently say, as my mother had comforted before:
"Don't worry, everything will get better."
But life often defies our wishes. On New Year's Eve that year, the crown prince was sent back.
The Qi Dynasty claid he had suddenly fallen ill and died, and on that joyous night of family reunion, they returned his corpse to spend the New Year with his family.
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