Chapter 110: The Joyous Event of the Empress Dowager (3)

Qi Sheng granted Xie Yi a marriage and married her to Li Hong so Fu’er became my competent grand maid. She was as agile as ever.

In a life as ordinary as this, days flew by fast. In a blinking second, the third prince was born.

I kept delivering babies and Zhao wang and Lv Li didn’t take a break as well. As if they were in a competition with us, they had babies one after another. But Zhao wang didn’t marry a princess again. Every time it was mentioned, the Grand Empress Dowager couldn’t help but get her eyes reddened. She felt she was in debt to Zhao wang so she asked every family to recommend suitable girls.

Whenever things proceeded to this stage, Lv Li would come to visit me in the palace and she specifically chose the time when Qi Sheng was there. She didn’t say anything else but grabbed my thigh and cried that she missed me and she was worried about me. Luckily that the Grand Empress Dowager intended to find Zhao wang a princess. Once the new princess was in the mansion and she had handed over all the affairs in the mansion to her, she would return to the palace and serve me.

Qi Sheng couldn’t put up with it and every time he would pay the Grand Empress Dowager a visit the next day. I had no idea what he told the old lady and the old lady would temporarily forget about finding Zhao wang a princess.

Several times later, when the Grand Empress Dowager mentioned about finding Zhao wang a princess again, none of the families took it seriously and girls of suitable ages couldn’t get married for various of reasons. In the end, Qi Sheng had no other way and he didn’t want his brother to be a bachelor forever so he made the only woman in the mansion the princess.

Zhang wang’s mansion was settled and Qi Sheng was finally relieved.

But I started to feel troubled. Somehow concubines in the harem were all addicted to religions and all of them seemed to become disillusioned with the mortal world.

Qi Sheng didn’t have many concubines in the first place and there wouldn’t be one left in several years if they left one by one every year. In the fifth year of Datong, the only concubine left in the palace, Concubine Liu, wanted to devote her life to the buddha.

I urged Concubine Liu in her place, “You are still so young. Why do you take things so hard? What’s bothering you that cannot be solved? After all these years, we are the only ones left in the palace. There was a time we were only able to take our turn every seven or eight days, and we’ve made through it. Now His Majesty can only sleep at my place or at yours, so why are you thinking about becoming a nun now? How can the temple be any better than the palace? You can only practice abstinence from meat and say prayers every day. Just stay and you can keep me company. If I have some meat for a meal, you wouldn’t have to be a veggie!”

I couldn’t help but become emotional as I spoke, and my eyes swollen.

But Concubine Liu got even more emotional than I did. She grabbed my thigh and pleaded in tears, “Your Majesty, please let me go. I’ve been serving His Majesty for several years and he’s never touched me. I am suffering but I can’t say it. In the past, the other concubines could take a half a night shift but now I’m the only one left so I have to guard for the whole night. I’m getting old now. Staying up for a night will take me days to recover! Your Majesty, please take a look at the dark circles under my eyes. No matter how much makeup I put on it, I can’t cover it!”

I was struck dumb for a moment and stared at the tearing Concubine Liu in a daze, speechless. After a long while, I tried to negotiate with her, “What about I talk to His Majesty and ask him to stop calling you to serve him at the night?”

Concubine Liu didn’t agree and she became a nun no matter what I said.

I felt the Palace was so empty that it didn’t look like one, so I had to advise Qi Sheng to choose more girls by myself. I earnestly urged, “Why do you have to be like this? More girls in the Palace will bring liveliness. I don’t even care about it, so why are you being so stubborn?”

Qi Sheng only smiled and answered, “I want to win your heart with my own. If it can’t be done in one year, then I’ll try for ten years. If it still can’t be done in ten years, then I’ll devote my whole life.”

I was quite helpless, “Qi Sheng, you don’t understand.”

“Then tell me,” he said.

I opened my mouth, trying to tell him, but I didn’t know what to say. The only thing I could tell him was that as long as he was an emperor, he would be my ruler. When my life was in his grip, how could I love him regardless of my own life?

He didn’t understand that love was not based on spoiling or cherishing, but equality. But he was the Emperor and I was the Empress, so never would we be equal.

In the tenth year of Datong, the Grand Empress Dowager finally passed away. Qi Sheng was extremely close to his grandma so he was downhearted for quite a while, which gave him another perfect excuse to cancel the girl selection the next year.

In the thirteenth year of Datong, Qi Sheng and I had already become an old couple, with five kids in total, three sons and two daughters. At that year, Qi Sheng made a list of all young talents in the imperial court and selected a few he was satisfied with. After investing their ancestors eight generation backward, our first-born Princess Weiyuan was finally married.

So I asked Qi Sheng, “We’ll stop having more kids, alright? I’m becoming a grandma soon and I’m too embarrassed to have another one.”

Qi Sheng carefully contemplated on it for several nights and finally agreed he would have a serious consideration of my advice.

In the fourteenth year of Datong, the Crown Prince Qi Hao was already sixteen. After careful selection, the Crown Princess was selected. When I was choosing other concubines for him, I taught him, “If you like, you can have some more girls. If you don’t like them, marry no one at all. Don’t ruin those girls’ life.”

The Crown Prince was still too young to understand the charm of beauty so he immediately nodded, “I only adore Ning’er, so I won’t marry anyone else.”

Qi Sheng looked at me meaningfully then invited me to visit the ancient temple in Cui Mountain. He asked me, “Pengpeng, don’t you feel happy now?”

Inside the temple, where smoke of incense sticks filled the room, I answered with the honesty that I never showed before, “I am happy, very happy.”

It’s just… when I was reminded that behind the happiness was several girls whole life devoting to the oil lamp and the Buddha, I felt guilty.

Qi Sheng asked, “This is the temple where Concubine Huang and the others became nuns. They are here. Do you want to meet them?”

I was in a trance for a while but in the end, I still shook my head, “No.”