A black dot rapidly swept from the horizon. Azi landed on the windowsill, shaking its feathers, flapping its wings, then biting his sleeve and pulling his hand from the windowsill back inside the cloak.
Azi had become extremely spirited, its feathers also smoothed out, though its body size hadn’t grown much yet.
Lian Shenwei stroked its head. “Where did you go play?”
Azi called out once, fluttered to Lian Shenwei’s shoulder, head bumping against the window. With a click, the wooden stick propping up one side of the window was knocked down, and the window closed tightly.
It flew again to the bird perch hanging by the bed, using its height advantage to glance at its master, then at the bed.
Lian Shenwei shook his head: “Don’t want to sleep.”
“You’re quite energetic.”
Azi shook its feathers again.
It completely showed no trace of the sickly state when first arriving at the Regent Prince’s manor, though there was a reason for this transformation.
Even carefully nursing his body and dragging out not attending court, Lian Shenwei’s body was still very frail. Not long after Feng Ke left, he caught another cold, plus the weather changing—he could only endure it himself, coughing severely.
Azi also fell seriously ill, so confused it ate anything. In one unwatched moment, in a daze, it accidentally pecked a few mouthfuls of his blood water after washing handkerchiefs.
On the spot it was in bad shape.
Lian Shenwei had no choice but to place it on the table and watch over it all night.
He had someone prepare Azi’s favorite meat strips as a send-off for keeping him company this time.
That entire night, Azi convulsed, blood spitting from its beak, the light in those beast eyes utterly scattered. Several times Lian Shenwei thought it would die, yet it stubbornly pulled through each time.
While its entire bird body trembled in pain, it struggled to tear at the meat strips in his hand. When tired from eating, it knew to rest. As if replenishing its energy—that unyielding wildness and tenacity desperately wanting to live forced Lian Shenwei to perceive a ‘King of Hell stay away from this old man’ tyrant aura.
Lian Shenwei’s hand moving to help it leave painlessly withdrew. He truly watched and accompanied it the entire night.
When dawn barely broke, Azi suddenly vomited everything it ate. Yet the entire bird became spirited, swaying and fluttering its wings, then swooshed and toppled into Lian Shenwei’s embrace.
After some more time passed, Azi learned without teaching—it would go out flying high in the dead of night or when no one was on the roads.
Who knows if fighting poison with poison actually became an antidote—anyway, Azi pulled through like that.
Perhaps because Lian Shenwei stayed with it that whole night, it had some particular dependence and trust in this human who fed it.
It was very clever. Observing how Ming Zhu and Tian Nan took care of Lian Shenwei, it gradually became one of the qualified monitors too.
Azi tilted its head, looking toward the door.
Seeing its movement, Lian Shenwei also turned his head.
Tian Nan came over with a secret letter in hand. “Master, battle report from the frontier.”
Lian Shenwei reached out to take it, opened and looked, quickly scanning through. His brows eased slightly. “Good news.”
But merely one piece of good news. The Northern Yi came ferociously, the frontier bitterly cold—there was still a long time of battle ahead.
Li Ningfeng guarded at the frontier. His body had recovered. Even the worst outcome wouldn’t be too bad.
The general trend leaned toward the good.
“The court can also breathe easier.”
***
[“Little Uncle, wait for me!”
“Wait for Jingjue!”
The child suddenly cried out in surprise, his whole body flying up. The youth carried him leaping onto the roof. “Shh, quieter. I snuck back. Also, this is my father’s wine cellar. Why are you here? You weren’t specifically blocking me, were you?”
The child mischievously blinked: “No.”
“Is Little Uncle coming to do something bad?”
The youth snorted lightly. “What bad thing? I’m doing a good deed.”
“Your maternal grandfather collected so much good wine but doesn’t drink any himself—isn’t that wasteful? An enormous disservice to fine wine. What gentlemen disdain.”
He fished out a small bottle from his chest. “This bottle is called Kunshan Shatter. The brewing method supposedly was lost. Who knows where the old man got this bottle.”
After opening it, the youth quickly tasted a sip. Wine fragrance escaped.
The child swallowed. “I want some too.”
The youth readily agreed, feeding him a tiny bit—about as much as the child’s fingernail.
This wine was truly potent. When the child next woke, he found himself locked up together with Little Uncle. He smacked his lips wanting to cry, then was messily wrapped up in a blanket.
The youth bundled him up and held him, coaxingly patting. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid. Little Uncle is here.”
He used a drowsy voice, humming low a tune with soft Jiangnan tones.
…
The scene shifted—again the black hem embroidered with royal hidden patterns, a pool of blood on the ground.]
Ying Jingjue suddenly opened his eyes, cold sweat dripping, heart beating extremely fast. The dream images faded bit by bit.
He’d been dreaming with increasing frequency. Sometimes the feeling they gave was warmth, sometimes fear, sometimes panic. Originally after waking he wouldn’t remember at all.
But this time he tried hard to recall, finally grasping some scattered fragments.
The young emperor hesitantly murmured: “Little Uncle?”
**
SR On SGWCLC Chapter 126