Inside the house, Meng Fu truly hadn’t gone to bed yet. She was calculating accounts with an abacus. She had brought some funds with her when she left the marquis’ residence—enough to live for a while, but she still needed to think of a way to earn more money.
The candlelight flickered, and the shadows of furniture on the gauze windows gently danced. After finishing her accounting, Meng Fu pushed the abacus aside, took out pen and paper, and began to write a story.
After more than half an hour, a short story of six to seven hundred characters took shape. She reread it, made a few sentence adjustments, and once she was satisfied, finally put down the brush in her hand.
This afternoon, when she went out to buy furniture, she’d stopped by a bookshop and had a quick look around, gaining a general understanding of the currently popular books. In truth, she was more skilled at writing commentary-style articles, but since she was an unknown woman, such pieces written by her wouldn’t attract any readers.
Meng Fu stood up and walked out to the courtyard. The shadows of branches lay crisscrossed across the bluestone tiles, the cool wind brushed gently, and in the distance, a few barks of dogs could be heard.
She tilted her head up to look at the bright moon in the night sky. The moonlight, like soft gauze, spread across the rooftops of ten thousand homes. Meng Fu could sense His Majesty’s feelings toward her—she just didn’t know when His Majesty himself would come to realize them.
And once he realizes it, what would His Majesty do?
Meng Fu imagined a few possibilities. In the end, she lowered her head and smiled slightly.
She used to think she didn’t want much—but now she was slowly realizing that she was actually quite greedy.
Meng Fu didn’t know—at this moment, His Majesty was standing just on the other side of the wall. They stood within the same patch of moonlight.
Only when Meng Fu returned to her room, put out the light, and lay down to sleep, did Li Yue finally leave from outside her residence. Though he didn’t get to see Meng Fu tonight, he was already very satisfied.
He was satisfied—but the hidden guards were about to lose their minds, smoke nearly rising from their heads. They wished they could stuff a few romance storybooks into His Majesty’s hands so he could study properly.
Just now, if he had made even the slightest sound, he could have caught that lady’s attention. But His Majesty forcibly held it in, missing the chance entirely.
They really couldn’t figure out what was going on in His Majesty’s mind.
But His Majesty was about to have a wife—this action of His Majesty’s surely had some deeper meaning.
Li Yue rode his horse back to the palace. Gao Xi came up to greet him and helped him take off his outer robe, asking: “Your Majesty, are you going back to Jun Mountain tomorrow?”
Li Yue now had more important matters to handle. He said: “Go back to Jun Mountain for what? Tomorrow morning, call Pang Huazhen to come see me.”
So the next morning, just as the sun rose, Pang Huazhen—who was eating small wontons on the main street outside the palace—was summoned inside. He instinctively thought something had gone wrong with Li Yue again. Before even entering the Zichen Palace to see him, his face was already on the verge of tears.
To a certain extent, Pang Huazhen’s guess wasn’t actually wrong.
Once inside Zichen Hall, as soon as he saw Li Yue, he called out: “My Emperor—!”
Li Yue waved his hand and said to Pang Huazhen: “I hear you. I’m not dead yet. No need to yell so loud. Come and check whether the poison in me has been fully purged.”
Pang Huazhen responded and stepped forward, placing his fingers on Li Yue’s wrist. After a while, having finished checking his pulse, the first thing he said was: “Have you been angry again lately?”
“Not that angry,” Li Yue said, “Does that mean I have to restart the three months all over again?”
Maybe it was because in the past three months, Li Yue hadn’t suppressed his temper at all—whoever he wanted to deal with, he dealt with; no one was spared—so when he asked this, he didn’t show much regret.
“That’s not necessary. At least, not a full three months again,” Pang Huazhen sighed. From the beginning, this whole thing wasn’t meant to be that strict. People have the seven emotions and six desires—minor emotional fluctuations are acceptable. But His Majesty—every time it was explosive rage. And to make it worse, he didn’t take it seriously at all.
In fact, although Pang Huazhen always said it was serious, over the past two years His Majesty still didn’t take it to heart.
Li Yue glared at him: “Then why were you howling like that?”
Pang Huazhen said: “You’ve definitely been angry recently. So what if a lowly subject lets out a howl?”
Li Yue asked him: “Then does that mean the poison is completely cleared?”
“More or less,” Pang Huazhen said.
Li Yue raised his hand and slapped the table twice, saying sternly: “How much is ‘more or less’? Can’t you just say it all at once? You trying to pick a fight?”
“Who’d dare fight with you?” Pang Huazhen said while stepping two paces back, afraid His Majesty might really drag him off to brawl. But then he realized Li Yue was just talking. He gave him a once-over and asked curiously, “You seem to be in quite a good mood.”
“Not bad,” Li Yue replied.
Pang Huazhen: “……”
When Your Majesty says ‘not bad,’ could you at least suppress that rising smile at the corners of your mouth?
“Did something happy happen to you?” Pang Huazhen asked. But since nothing had been finalized yet, Li Yue had no intention of telling anyone. Pang Huazhen rubbed his chin and speculated, “Judging by the flush between your brows and the clarity in your eyes, this lowly one calculates… Your Majesty’s Hongluan Star has moved?”
[Hongluan Xing 动 (红鸾星动) = “Hongluan Star is activated” – an idiom from Chinese astrology meaning someone has entered a phase where love or marriage is likely.]
Li Yue gave him a sidelong glance and said: “Since when did you learn fortune-telling too? Anything else to say? If not, get lost.”
Pang Huazhen grinned: “This humble one said ‘more or less’ earlier to remind Your Majesty to maintain this good mood. Combined with the medicine I prescribed, Your Majesty may even be able to recover the internal energy you lost back in the Northern Frontier.”
Can water that’s been poured out really be taken back?
Li Yue asked Pang Huazhen: “Pang Huazhen, are you a doctor or a half-immortal?”
Pang Huazhen straightened his expression and said seriously: “This humble one is telling the truth. This medicine took me a great deal of effort to research.”
“Alright, alright. Got it.” Li Yue waved him off.
After sending Pang Huazhen away, Li Yue, carrying the fuguang brocade he had gotten from the Empress Dowager, happily made his way to Meng Fu’s current little residence.
When he arrived, Meng Fu was writing a book. Li Yue didn’t disturb her—he just sat quietly to the side, watching Meng Fu. She was very focused on writing, her head slightly tilted, her expression concentrated. Her fair wrist moved swiftly, and soon, line after line of delicate zanhua xiaokai appeared on the white paper.
[Zanhua xiaokai 簪花小楷 is a refined, elegant style of small regular script used in calligraphy, often considered beautiful and feminine.]
When Meng Fu finally stopped her brush, Li Yue spoke and asked her, “What are you writing?”
“Just something casual,” Meng Fu looked up and smiled, “Just some nonsense of fox-speech and ghost-talk, wild tales from the mountains, strange records and curiosities. If Your Majesty is interested, you can take a look.”
Li Yue was indeed very interested in what Meng Fu wrote—but for now, that curiosity had to move aside.
Last night, he had hurriedly read through a bunch of romance storybooks. In those books, whenever the protagonist confessed, they would always pick a special day—either after a brush with death, or while drinking under the flowers and moonlight, or on some snowy morning or rainy dusk.
But how long would he have to wait for something like that?
Today was just an ordinary, common day. The sun was bright, the autumn air was pleasant, and Meng Fu sat behind her desk, gently looking at him.
Li Yue stood up and paced the room a few times, actually feeling a little hesitant—nervous, even.
His Majesty, after all, was doing this kind of thing for the first time. He probably should’ve rehearsed a few times in the palace… but staring at Gao Xi’s face, he just couldn’t say anything out loud.
Meng Fu tilted her head, confused, and asked him: “Your Majesty, what’s wrong?”
“I…” Li Yue took a deep breath—but what came out was, “On my way here, I packed some pastries for you from Yunxi Tower. I left them outside.”
Meng Fu responded with an “mm.” Such a small matter shouldn’t have the emperor acting like this, right? She asked, “And then?”
Li Yue’s mind was a bit scrambled. He was still wrestling with whether to confess today. But would it rain in the next few days? And if it didn’t—then what? He said vaguely, “Then… then I also brought two bolts of fuguang brocade. The colors are very pretty—I don’t know if you’ll like them.”
Meng Fu nodded and said, “I see. Anything else?”
Li Yue continued, “On the way here, I saw a cat that looked a lot like Guifei, but it was fatter. When it was trying to catch a bird, it almost fell off a wall.”
Help! What on earth is he talking about!?
His Majesty was screaming inside.
Meng Fu propped her chin on both hands, smiling as she listened to His Majesty recount his little tales from the road. As he spoke, he became more and more jumbled, totally out of sync—saying this, then jumping to that. But Meng Fu didn’t interrupt him—she just wanted to see what he was really trying to say.
Li Yue wasn’t even sure what he was saying anymore, but he didn’t stop. He kept walking, kept talking:
“…You see, the weather today is really nice. Tomorrow should be good too. I don’t know which day it will rain. Waiting for snow would be too long. There aren’t many flowers blooming right now. Saying it while drinking would be nice, but I’m afraid if you drank, you’d forget it all. I should’ve realized earlier—actually, the past few days were quite good. Who knows if those storybooks are even any help. I’ve said so much, but actually, actually I just wanted to say—I like you.”
Meng Fu, caught completely off guard by His Majesty’s confession, froze. Her mouth opened slightly, her eyes stared unblinking at Li Yue.
Just last night, she had been wondering—when His Majesty realized his feelings, what would he do?
She hadn’t expected this day to arrive so soon.
Some unknown bird chirped outside the window. The sunlight seemed even brighter than before. It passed through the window lattice, leaving long, thin streaks of light on the desk.
And as His Majesty finished saying “I like you,” it was as though a wild, raging mountain wind had finally stilled. All his scattered, frantic thoughts settled in that instant. He became calm.
“I like you, A’Fu,” Li Yue stopped walking. He turned around, walked toward Meng Fu, and halted on the other side of the desk. He leaned down slightly, fixed his gaze on her, and asked—
“Do you like me?”