Da Tang Si Zi: My Six Super Rich Little Nuggets!

Chapter 219 A master strategist, Liu Mei meticulously plans; an ancient beast responds with an iron

The winter nights in Chang'an are always sharper than elsewhere.

In the first year of Xianqing, snowflakes crashed onto the glazed tiles, shattering into silver sand. The copper bells under the palace eaves trembled, emitting a sigh that seemed to want to speak but couldn't.

The Imperial Astronomical Bureau official, observing celestial phenomena and calculating the solar terms, knelt outside the delivery room, holding up the star chart. A drop of blood splattered onto the markings of the seven northern constellations—the baby's cry pierced the cold mist of midnight, and the Yi Wood Star in the eastern sky suddenly dimmed!

"The fire of Bing can burn the earth of Chen, and melt the ice of Zi water..." The old minister's murmur was suddenly illuminated by the candlelight in the hall, which shone brightly, revealing Mei Xiaosi's sweaty forehead. The moment she wrapped the baby in the embroidered gold swaddling clothes, the branches of the winter plum were weighed down by the accumulated snow.

When Zi'an was fifteen, he found a vine growing out of a crack in the stone in the corner of the Cold Palace. Its dark brown veins crawled along the blue bricks, and every three inches it grew curled tendrils. Mei Xiaosi told him that they were countless hands grasping at fate.

Xiao Si never expected that Zi An would no longer be his best friend, but her son Qi Lang. He often sneaked away to water the vines while the palace servants were dozing off, until one day he bumped into his mother standing in front of the vines, her twelve golden phoenix skirts sweeping over the newly sprouted buds.

"For plants to grow into trees, they must first endure having their flesh cut off..." Mei Xiaosi cut off a section of vine and tucked it into her hair. Blood-red sap seeped from the cut, congealing into an amber-colored bead. That year, Qilang Zian was renamed the Prince of Ying and moved into a mansion filled with peonies, but buried a packet of wintersweet seeds under the eaves.

Years later, when the plum trees sprouted new branches, he sat on the dragon throne, wearing a crown reaching to the heavens. His back, beneath the imperial robes, ached from the weight of the unicorn shadow behind the beaded curtain, yet his palms lingered, greedily caressing the white jade tablet—warm and cool, like the icicles he had licked as a child. As Qilang Zi'an inscribed his wife's name into the golden edict, the sound of horses' hooves shattering spring ice echoed outside the Vermilion Bird Gate.

"Your Majesty, it's time for the calming soup." In the gilded bowl brought by the eunuch, the candlelight flickered into tiny specks of phosphorescence. He tilted his head back and drank the scalding soup in one gulp, and in a daze, he saw himself become a moth in the Buddhist scriptures of Mei Xiaosi, rushing towards the dying flame behind the curtain.

The moon over Fangzhou is like something preserved in a rough earthenware jar. Zi'an curled up in his damp, musty quilt, counting the night watch, each "ding-ding-dang" like a poisonous needle piercing his temple. His wife, Weimai, hummed a Jiangnan folk tune to soothe their son Run'er under the leaky eaves, the air filled with the fragrance of camphor from Chang'an.

One day, Zi'an, drunk, dug into the vegetable patch. The dull thud of the shovel hitting something hard startled the crows into flight.

Half of a rusty sword lay in the mud, its blade bearing rust-colored marks, a gruesome gash from a time-traveling rift.

As the moonlight fell like a veil on the sword, in an instant, the sword clearly reflected the face of the young man, Zi'an: he was wearing a Jinde crown and was throwing a Qingmei sword like a shooting star at the unicorn in Qujiang Pool!

As the ripples spread and the reflection shattered, Zi'an suddenly retched violently as if struck by lightning, as if trying to uproot the demonic vines that entrenched his internal organs. How could he harm Xiao Si?

"Is Your Highness having another nightmare?" His wife, Wei Mai, placed the sachet into his damp palm; the silk threads of the twin lotus blossoms on the Shu brocade were already frayed. Zi An stared at the spiderweb on the beam, recalling how the jade ornaments on his coronation crown had hung down so delicately, weaving a net that stretched from heaven to earth.

The east wind arrived unexpectedly. As Zhang Jianzhi's armor burst through the gates of Ziwei City, Zi'an was staring intently at the sachet. The golden lotus petals, which had bloomed and faded in his palm for nineteen years, suddenly felt as hot as charcoal. In his mother Mei Xiaosi's bedchamber, the ambergris incense was thicker than he remembered; her withered fingers traced the wrinkles between his brows, like rubbing divination inscriptions on tortoise shells.

“Ice that can’t be warmed…” Mei Xiaosi’s murmurs were shattered by the wind amidst the nine layers of curtains. As he turned, a ray of morning light pierced the clouds, like a candle suddenly blazing in a delivery room. The moment the imperial robes were donned, something cold crept down his spine—it was the vine that Mei Xiaosi had cut, which had already taken root in his flesh and blood…

There were no magpies this Qixi Festival. The lotus seed paste cakes that Princess Anle presented gleamed with an unusual luster. As the gold foil sliced ​​through his teeth, Zi'an recalled the imperial edict he had received on the day he was deposed. Blood dripped from the corner of his lips, staining his dragon robe like thorny plum blossoms. The purple-patterned porcelain vase on the table shattered, and the crisp sound of a withered plum branch falling to the ground startled the white-headed doves into flight.

In Zi'an's final vision during this lifetime's transmigration, the vine that grew wildly from the crack in the stone when she was a child was now rampaging, entwining the dragon pillars, shattering the caisson ceiling, and piercing the dome of the Taiji Hall. Crimson sap seeped from the vines, turning into a shower of powdery snow, burying Chang'an City into a crystalline tomb.

The voice of the Imperial Observatory resonated through twenty years: "When the wood and fire are extinguished, all things fall silent..."

The last vestige of Zi'an's spirit hadn't completely dissipated, clinging to the broken stele of Dingling, and quietly sprouting beans smaller than black nightshade in a corner unrecorded in history...