diymy Chapter 322 Xu Fenghua's change of heart; she began to like this feeling.
Chapter 322 Xu Fenghua's change of heart; she began to like this feeling.
Take good care of your health...
Is there anything special about this sentence?
Xu Fenghua knelt there, a strange feeling suddenly welling up in her heart.
She dared not think any further.
She looked up, but the palace doors were empty.
Morning light streamed in from outside, spreading a golden carpet of light across the bluestone slabs. On that carpet of light lay only her own shadow, lonely and long, stretching all the way to the threshold.
he's gone.
really gone.
Xu Fenghua stood up, then walked to the window and opened it.
A morning breeze swept in, carrying the chill of early winter, and brushed against her burning cheeks.
The coolness made her more awake and gradually dispelled the inexplicable flutter in her heart.
She leaned against the window frame, gazing out the window.
The wintersweet in the courtyard is still blooming.
The dewdrops on the petals were crystal clear, shimmering with tiny lights in the morning light, like tiny diamonds embedded in the pink and white petals.
Very beautiful.
But Xu Fenghua looked at all of this, yet she didn't absorb anything.
Her thoughts were still on last night.
She remembered the tenderness with which he kissed her.
His gentleness almost made her believe that he truly cared about her.
He was so gentle that she almost forgot she should hate him.
His gentleness almost made her forget who she was, where he was, and why she was there.
Xu Fenghua recalled how she felt when she responded to him.
The feeling was strange, like a drowning person grabbing onto a piece of driftwood, or like a lost person seeing distant lights.
She shouldn't have done that.
She must have been resisting it.
But she didn't.
She hadn't even considered the idea.
Xu Fenghua closed her eyes, leaned against the window frame, and let those images flash through her mind frame by frame.
She suddenly felt as if she had changed.
When did it start?
She didn't know. All she knew was that, in a moment she hadn't noticed, something had quietly changed.
Like a river, it flows day after day, passing through the same riverbed and washing over the same stone.
You might not see any changes in a day, or even a month, but over a year, two years, or even ten years.
That stone is no longer the same stone it used to be.
And she was that stone.
Day after day, the river called "Qinmu" washed away her rough edges, her sharp points, and all the things she thought would stay with her forever.
She has changed.
I've become someone I don't recognize anymore.
She used to be the eldest daughter of the Northern Border, the proudest daughter of the Zhenbei Prince's Mansion.
She could gallop across the snowy plains of the North, strategize in the business battles of Jiangnan, and hold her head high in front of any man, coldly looking at them with her amber eyes, letting them know that this woman was not to be trifled with.
She used to never bow her head before any man. She would never kneel on the ground and say in the most submissive posture, "Your Majesty, I respectfully see you off."
She won't toss and turn at night, wondering if a man will come. She won't close her eyes and let herself be consumed by a kiss the moment it lands.
But now, she can.
She learned to bow her head, to kneel in worship, and to suppress all her emotions in those moments she didn't want to face, leaving only a perfect, impeccable smile on her face.
She learned to depend on others.
She depends on the man she should hate to the core.
This realization filled her with a deep sense of panic. The panic rose from the bottom of her heart, like an invisible hand, suddenly gripping her heart tightly and fiercely.
How could she depend on him?
He was the enemy of the Xu family, the tyrannical emperor who forcibly took her as his concubine, and the source of all her humiliation and suffering.
She should hate him, she should fear him, and she should be thinking about how to escape from him and overthrow him at all times.
Instead of lingering in his arms, indulging in that unwanted warmth.
Instead of feeling a strange sense of reluctance when he left.
Instead of closing her eyes and letting herself indulge in his kiss.
Xu Fenghua's fingers clenched tightly, her nails scratching shallow white marks on the windowsill.
What's wrong with her?
How did she become like this?
Shouldn't she hate him?
Shouldn't she constantly remind herself that he is her enemy, her foe, someone she must defeat?
But why did her heart beat so fast when he said "take care of yourself"?
Why did she feel that strange sense of security when he was by her side?
Why is it that when she thinks of him, her heart is no longer filled with hatred, but also with something indescribable and complex?
Xu Fenghua opened her eyes and looked out the window at the courtyard illuminated by the morning light.
The wintersweet is still blooming, and the petals are still falling. A bird flies up from a branch, flapping its wings, flying over the palace wall, and soaring into the clear blue sky.
She watched the bird fly further and further away, smaller and smaller, until it became an almost invisible black dot and disappeared into the horizon.
She suddenly felt very envious of that bird.
It can fly, go wherever it wants, and land on whichever branch it wants.
And she could only stand in front of this window, gazing at the sky she could never fly out of.
A self-deprecating smile appeared on Xu Fenghua's lips.
She longs to go back to the way things were before.
Go back to the past when you didn't have to think about anything, fear anything, or endure anything.
Back on the snowy plains of the North, riding a horse against the wind, laughing and shouting loudly, leaving all worries behind, letting the wind blow them away and the snow bury them.
But she can't go back.
Never go back.
Those days, like the snow in the North, fell into the spring sunshine, melted, dried, disappeared, and can never be found again.
Xu Fenghua closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
She placed her hand on her lower abdomen and gently, slowly stroked it.
The movement was very light and gentle, like caressing the most precious treasure in the world.
"My child," she said silently in her heart, "you must take good care of yourself."
"Your mother will protect you."
"No matter what happens, your mother will protect you."
Her eyes reddened again.
Outside the window, the sunlight grew brighter and brighter.
The petals of the winter plum are still falling, one after another, landing on the bluestone slabs, in the pond, and in the dappled light and shadow.
At this time,
Inside the imperial city of the Qin Dynasty.
The news that Qin Mu married the Empress of Liyang has become common knowledge, and it's causing a stir and generating much discussion in the streets and alleys.