Chapter 421: Chapter 421: Her Name is Liuli

The suspended blade overhead was gone!

Qiao Xiaomai stared at Tong Sanlang in a daze, taking a while to come back to her senses.

The shock in her eyes turned into a smile, which flowed out from her pupils, filling her entire small face.

She couldn’t help but laugh in great joy, “His Majesty the grand emperor is truly wise and brave!”

I know, so I couldn’t wait to come to you immediately. From now on, we don’t have to avoid each other. We can be together in broad daylight.” Tong Sanlang also laughed.

Just like how Qiao Xiaomai picked fatty meat and put it into his bowl, the two wouldn’t have dared to act like this in the past.

Now they can be bold and unrestrained!

“Hmm!” Qiao Xiaomai nodded heavily with some excitement.

This is great, this is great!

This Emperor Emeritus is so understanding and reasonable!

The understanding Emperor Emeritus, Yang Wenxiao, leaning on his cane, slowly came to a crooked-neck tree.

A robust crooked-neck locust tree halfway up the mountainside, under which was buried someone’s skeleton.

Yang Wenxiao asked Yang Ye, Yang Wang and others to retreat. He stood alone before the tree. The sun shone through the leaves onto him, casting mottled light and shadow. A breeze blew, rustling the leaves of the tree.

“Liuli, I’ve come to see you.” Yang Wenxiao murmured these words, his usually bright and sharp eyes becoming unusually clouded.

Sighing, he casually sat down.

“The grass under this tree is growing quite robustly.” Yang Wenxiao used his cane to sweep at the wild grasses over a foot tall, “Just like you, you used to seem like you had endless vitality.”

As he spoke, he put down his cane and began to pluck the wild grass, muttering, “Gu Sheng told me that when you came here, you seemed to have aged more than a decade and lost all your spirit.”

“Aging over a decade and losing all spirit, I find it hard to imagine this happening to you.”

At this point, Yang Wenxiao paused; his grass-plucking motions also stopped.

He touched his chest gently, a self-mocking smile appearing on his face, “Was it because of Gu Yu? Was his death such a blow to you?”

Truthfully, I… envy him…”

He sat his hand upon his chest again but said no more, continuing to clear the wild grass under the tree.

After he had cleared all the wild grass, he sat down again, sighing deeply, “I’ve aged. Even plucking a few pieces of grass feels tiresome.”

“Next time… I suppose there won’t be a next time, huh.”

“Traveling from the Capital City here, this old body of mine can hardly stand it. Luckily, when you gave me a bowl of rice back in the day, I managed to survive. Otherwise, even if I were lucky enough to live on, I wouldn’t have made it to this day.”

“It’s all thanks to you that I am what I am today. But you… You didn’t get to see this flourishing world…”

The red figure appeared before his eyes again. Yang Wenxiao’s eyes welled up. He lifted his head, looking at the lush foliage of the tree.

“I wish I could have taken you with me, taken you back to the palace, and had you buried with me when I die. I would be able to see you every day, not like now, where after twenty years, I can only see you once…”

“I won this entire world, but I lost you.”

Thinking back to the harrowing journey many years ago, he couldn’t help but clench his teeth, “I don’t understand. Gu Yu had gunpowder, he had elixirs, so why did he lose to Fu Xuan?”

“If I had known this would be Gu Yu’s end, I would have locked you by my side at all costs.”

A missed opportunity was a missed lifetime.

[Well, His Majesty will leave tomorrow, and then we’ll get back to farming. Happy Children’s Day, my dear little ones! Goodnight!]