Wei Caiwei dozed off under the grape trellis, drifting back to her previous life where she and Eunuch Wang had been frolicking wildly beneath the same vines. The trellis shook so violently it nearly collapsed, sending ripe grapes raining down upon her. The fruits burst upon impact, their sweet juices splattering—only to be eagerly lapped up by Eunuch Wang...
A knocking sound roused Wei Caiwei from her spring dream. Recognizing the distinctive shrill voice of a palace eunuch, she splashed cold water on her face and opened the gate.
It was Shang Qinglan.
Wei Caiwei wondered if she was still dreaming. The emperor’s favored consort ought to be residing in Yu De Palace, living in celestial comfort—how could she possibly appear at her humble doorstep?
After half a year apart, Shang Qinglan had grown taller, her bosom fuller, transforming from last year’s unripe plum into a succulent peach. Her eyes shimmered like rippling waves, radiating the aura of a cherished imperial consort.
Rubbing her eyes, Wei Caiwei watched as Shang Qinglan pulled someone inside. "We slipped out of the palace for fun and heard you’d returned home, so we came to see you."
When Wei Caiwei saw the companion, she became convinced this was a dream within a dream: it was none other than the Jiajing Emperor traveling incognito!
Heavens! For over thirty years the Jiajing Emperor had refused to hold court, for twenty years he hadn’t visited the rear palaces, remaining secluded in the Western Garden cultivating immortality and refining elixirs. Paranoia that "someone always wants to harm me" kept him isolated—how had Shang Qinglan managed to drag him outside the palace walls?
What next? Would he emulate the Zhengde Emperor’s southern inspection tours?
Wherever the Jiajing Emperor went, hidden guards followed. Instantly, the quiet Sweetwater Alley gained extra "pedestrians" and "vendors"—some pushing wheelbarrows selling chilled desserts, others carrying poles with early-ripened greenhouse watermelons, even a knife sharpener plying his trade.
Wei Caiwei hastily performed the proper obeisance. The Jiajing Emperor stiffly waved his hand, "We travel incognito. Dispense with formalities." This seemed to be his first outing, as he appeared both unfamiliar with and fearful of the outside world, his entire body tense.
Shang Qinglan tugged at the emperor’s sleeve, "I’m tired from walking. Let’s have some tea at Doctor Wei’s house."
"You insisted on coming out, and now you complain of weariness," the emperor chided, yet still followed her inside.
The stuffy interior prompted Wei Caiwei to seat her honored guests in the cool shade of the grape trellis. She first served watermelon and brown sugar fried cakes, then retrieved the fine tea Shang Qinglan had gifted her last year. By the time she hurriedly boiled water, brewed the tea, and brought it out, Shang Qinglan had already exhausted herself into slumber on the daybed beneath the vines. The Jiajing Emperor sat upright in a chair, perusing Wei Caiwei’s recent leisure reading—Journey to the West—having reached the chapter about wreaking havoc in heaven.
Wei Caiwei quietly set down the tea and tactfully withdrew.
In her previous life, no matter how much the Jiajing Emperor doted on Shang Qinglan, he’d only permitted her to leave the palace with Wei Caiwei for activities like hot spring visits—never accompanying her personally.
This lifetime, having journeyed to Jiangnan instead of remaining with Shang Qinglan in Yu De Palace, the lonely consort had somehow persuaded the old emperor to accompany her outside.
Truly, when the elderly fall in love, it’s like an old house catching fire—utterly uncontrollable.
Shang Qinglan, ever able to eat and sleep without cares, napped the entire afternoon under the grape trellis. The Jiajing Emperor never rushed her, waiting until dusk when she naturally awoke before they returned to the palace together.
Huang Jin, Supervising Eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial Affairs, told Wei Caiwei, "Regarding today’s events, Doctor Wei must maintain confidentiality. No one can learn that His Majesty and Consort Shang visited here."
Wei Caiwei didn’t even tell Wang Daxia.On the other side, Wang Daxia and Commander Mu escorted Wang Commander and Wang Daqiu to the Tongzhou Port dock, where a large official ship awaited them.
Commander Mu was reluctant to part. "Since I joined the army, I've served under Wang Commander and we've never been separated. Now Wang Commander is going to Jiangxi while I remain in the capital—each pursuing our own paths."
Wang Commander said, "We'll both grow old one day. When the children are grown, married, and established, we'll lay down our arms and retire to the countryside, plucking chrysanthemums by the eastern hedge, growing old together."
Commander Mu and Wang Commander sealed their pledge with a handshake.
"Ice bowls! Selling ice bowls!"
Hearing the cry, Wang Daqiu greedily ran over, clamoring for an ice bowl. Wang Daxia took out money for the vendor. "One bowl, please."
The vendor whispered, "No charge."
The voice sounded familiar. Wang Daxia looked closely—it was actually his former stepmother, Madam Wu!
Having shed her makeup and wrapped her head in a blue cloth, Madam Wu remained charming. Hearing in the countryside that Wang Commander had been assigned to Jiangxi and her son would follow—a separation of unknown duration—she disguised herself as an ice bowl vendor, pushing a wheelbarrow to wait for her son at Tongzhou Port.
When Madam Wu was divorced, Wang Daqiu couldn't yet speak and no longer recognized his mother, merely gazing greedily at the ice bowl.
Seeing his elder son buy an ice bowl for the younger, Wang Commander couldn't resist lecturing, "Your brother is young, his stomach is weak—he can't handle ice or he'll get diarrhea. You had diarrhea for five days straight from greediness as a child and grew gaunt."
Wang Daxia moved aside, allowing Wang Commander to see the vendor was his former wife.
Madam Wu made an ice bowl for her son with minimal ice shavings. As Wang Daqiu buried his head in eating, she took out a large bundle and hesitantly handed it to her former husband. "Children wear out shoes quickly. I made these shoes and socks for Daqiu in various sizes—they should last him until he's ten."
From demotion to reinstatement and even a two-rank promotion, Wang Commander held little resentment toward Madam Wu now. This ignorant woman had been led astray by her insatiably greedy family. But a mother's concern for her son was natural; Wang Commander silently accepted the bundle.
The once-loving couple stood wordlessly facing each other. Madam Wu fixed her gaze on her son eating the ice bowl, as if carving his image into her heart, then took out a packet of silver. "This is what I've earned this year to repay the family's losses. Though it's only twenty taels and far from enough, I'll repay some every year, even if it takes my whole life. If I can't finish, I'll work as a beast of burden in the next life to repay it."
Having been husband and wife for years, Wang Commander refused to accept it, but Madam Wu insisted. As they struggled, Commander Mu stepped in as peacemaker. "This silver is a drop in the bucket. Better to use it as capital to buy land or start a business—money breeds money, earning more and repaying faster. Wang Commander, how about letting her repay once every ten years?"
Wang Commander nodded. Only then did Madam Wu relent, pushing her wheelbarrow away.
Wang Daxia and Commander Mu watched until the large official ship left the port before returning to the capital.
Meanwhile, in Qufu, Shandong, at the Duke Yansheng's residence:
Yan Shifan's eldest daughter, Madam Yan, had married Kong Shangxian, the current Duke Yansheng, making her the Duchess. Upon shockingly learning of her family's collapse in Qufu, Madam Yan fainted. When she awoke, she had been moved from the main residence, and the Duke had handed her a divorce letter, repudiating her on grounds of wifely virtue.
Furthermore, he removed the two legitimate sons she had borne from the Kong family registry. Henceforth, the mother and her two sons would have no connection to the Kong family.The Duke Yansheng turned hostile without warning, but as a descendant of Confucius, all scholars across the land fell silent, not daring to comment, let alone accuse him of being heartless and ungrateful.
The Lady Yan, battered by successive blows, grew increasingly ill. The Duke Yansheng even forbade her from seeing a doctor and severely rationed her food and drink. Within a month, Lady Yan was tormented to death.
Her two sons, who had been driven out of the household, went to the capital to seek help from their maternal uncle Yan Shaoting. However, Yan Shaoting himself was living under someone else’s roof, relying on the Lu family’s protection to stay out of trouble. Faced with the Duke Yansheng’s sudden hostility, he could do nothing but travel to Qufu to collect his sister’s remains and bring his two nephews back to the Lu family.
Li Yiren took in these two relatives, who were not orphans but might as well have been, and arranged for Lady Yan’s coffin to be sent back to her hometown in Jiangxi for burial.
In stark contrast to the cold-heartedness of the Kong family and the Lu family’s generosity, the capital was abuzz with praise for the Lu family’s kindness, saying they would surely be rewarded with good fortune in the future.
When Yan Shifan saw his daughter’s coffin, a white-haired man mourning his black-haired child, he was utterly devastated. He had never imagined that the marriage he had so carefully chosen, which seemed secure and prosperous, would become his daughter’s death warrant!
Not all in-laws were as kind as the Lu family, who had taken in their son-in-law’s entire household to protect them. The Duke Yansheng, seeing his in-laws in trouble, had eagerly cut ties, driven his wife to her death, and cast out his sons, showing utter cold-bloodedness.
Yan Shifan wept bitterly over the coffin, swearing revenge.
The joys and sorrows of the world are never the same. While the Yan family grieved the loss of their daughter, and Yan Shifan nearly cried himself blind in his one remaining eye, inside the Forbidden City, the old emperor was enjoying a romantic affair with a young girl.
After that first outing from the palace, Shang Qinglan became addicted. Whether it was dragon boat racing on the moat during the Dragon Boat Festival, floating river lanterns on Shichahai during the Ghost Festival, climbing Fragrant Hills on the Double Ninth Festival, enjoying the Ice Games on Shichahai in the depths of winter, or admiring lanterns during the Lantern Festival—no matter the season, festival, or delightful place, Shang Qinglan dragged the Jiajing Emperor out to play.
At first, the Jiajing Emperor was resistant and uncomfortable, but gradually he began to find pleasure in these common folk pastimes and grew willing to share the bustling mortal world with his beloved consort.
By the following year, when Shang Qinglan whimsically suggested going to see the ocean, the Jiajing Emperor even risked accompanying her to Qinhuangdao to listen to the waves. Though he had once been a feudal prince in Anlu, Hubei, and later the emperor in the capital, his travels were fewer than those of Wei Caiwei. Though he remained fearful during the journey, when they arrived and beheld the vast, sapphire-like sea, the Jiajing Emperor took off his shoes and, with Shang Qinglan, left pairs of footprints in the sand.
Shang Qinglan was like a tenacious warrior, repeatedly breaking through the Jiajing Emperor’s taboos and forcibly dragging the old emperor out of his lonely, cold dragon throne. Though each outing was brief, it breathed a spark of life into the old emperor’s withered heart, like a fresh sprout emerging from a dead tree.
Thus, two years passed, and it was now the Mid-Autumn Festival on the fifteenth day of the eighth month in the forty-second year of Jiajing’s reign.
Wang Commander had taken his family to his post in Jiangxi and had not yet returned, so Wang Daxia simply celebrated the festival with Wei Caiwei.
Three years earlier, after Wei Caiwei’s handmade mooncakes had turned into iron bricks, she had given up on culinary pursuits and instead served the palace mooncakes bestowed by Shang Qinglan.
Just as the two raised their glasses in a toast, the gate was pounded with thunderous force.
It was Li Fang, the chief eunuch of Prince Yu’s residence. Drenched in sweat from anxiety, he said, “Doctor Wei, Selected Servant Li has started bleeding during the Mid-Autumn banquet. She’s going into labor.”
Li Jiubao was about to give birth to the future emperor. Wei Caiwei immediately grabbed her medical kit and rushed off.Author's Note: The timeline has fast-forwarded two and a half years, bringing us to the three-year agreement.
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