Jiang Qing

Bai Bingchen hadn't come back until midnight.

On the night of the winter solstice, the streets were sparsely populated, Mei Shao walked a full two streets, and found a lazy and dozing watchman in a corner sheltered from the wind.

Looking at the closed door of the mansion, Mei Shao stood for a while.At this time, the lights in the mansion were almost turned off, so he didn't knock on the door, but climbed in along the wall.

The Zhou mansion was just a family of merchants, and there were no servants with strong fists and kicks. Mei Shao didn't even need to hide his whereabouts, so he touched all the houses in the mansion.

Only the purple bamboo forest in the backyard was still lit. The more Mei Shao looked at the layout, the more familiar it became. After thinking about it for a while, she thought that there was such a purple bamboo forest in the backyard of Pingdu Baifu, and the planting pattern was seven times the same as this one. Eight points are similar.

Could this be Bai Bingchen's mother's house?

Mei Shao walked half the room close to the wall, turned to the corner window, just poked his head halfway, and caught a glimpse of the silver light passing by from the corner of his eye, he turned around very quickly and leaned against the wall, and a silver needle came out of his ear Grabbed it and stuck it into the wooden post on the porch.

"Don't you think it's impolite to spy on a woman's house at night?" A cold female voice came from the room.

Mei Shao stood up from her hiding place, glanced at the tiny pinhole on the window, and replied: "The following are Lord Bai's followers, here to pick him up."

Wu Chufu looked at the shadow cast on the window, her eyes moved slightly.

In Pingdu, etiquette education is the strictest. Just looking at the saluting figure through a layer of window paper, Wu Chufu also knew in his heart that he was definitely not the "follower" he said.

"Come in."

Mei Shao was slightly startled, and pushed the door open to enter the house, and saw a woman with eyebrows and eyes very similar to Bai Bingchen sitting embroidering under the lamp, with silk threads and needle boxes scattered beside her, and she probably took the silver needle from it just now.

Wu Chufu raised her head when she heard the sound, and looked Mei Shao up and down without half a cover, and finally her gaze paused on his valuable clothes, and she asked with a half-smile, "Follower?"

Even the teasing expressions in her eyebrows and eyes are very similar to Bai Bingchen's, but it doesn't match her cold voice just now, but it is not contradictory. It seems to pass through the torrent of time, and the expression of jumping away when she was young is briefly on her face. It bloomed for a moment.

"Madam Zhou." Mei Shao bowed to him and said, "I am a colleague of Mr. Bai. We are just resting in Jingzhou for a while, and we will leave for the capital tomorrow."

Mei Shao made a fuss calmly, trying to suppress him in the name of the court.

"Master Mei thinks that my son is more comfortable resting in my house than outside?" Wu Chufu's eyes shifted from the sword at his waist to the fox fur cloak he held in his hand, with a slight frown between her eyebrows. Momentarily, he said: "Master Mei is carrying something to keep out the cold, but he doesn't wear his upper body. Could it be that the eaves of my Zhou Mansion are too steep, and the things in Mr. Mei's hands have become a burden instead?"

"What does Mrs. Zhou want to say?" Mei Shao squeezed the corner of the cloak tightly. When he came out, he did not expect to meet Wu Chufu. He took this cloak because he was thinking about Bai Bingchen's body not being able to withstand the cold. Who would have imagined it? But Wu Chufu grabbed hold of her.

Wu Chufu glanced over obliquely, walked around his tense face unhurriedly, and then smiled and said, "Master Mei and Yucheng are really just colleagues?"

Mei Shao's heart jumped violently, and at the moment she asked, he felt the fear of being seen through.

Mei Shao tried her best to stabilize her expression, raised her eyebrows, and asked back: "Mrs. Zhou is very open-minded, so she would think of going there? Do you still expect your son to die?"

"Yucheng is going to be 27, and he hasn't married yet..." Wu Chufu paused for a moment, and there was a wave of love and hate in his eyes, and he said softly, "I hope it's true."

Wu Chufu quickly regained her composure and called out, "Xiao Lian, go to the ancestral hall and ask Yucheng to come over."

A girl came out from the curtain at the back. She bowed her head and bowed, her hands and feet were so soft that she didn't make any sound, and then she went out.

Mei Shao frowned, he didn't expect that the girl next to Wu Chufu also had kung fu, she must have restrained her breathing when she was behind the curtain, otherwise how could he not notice it.

Wu Chufu seemed to have read his mind, and said: "Qingshuang Sword is fast, and it is really a good swordsmanship. It's just that the world is so big and there are so many complicated martial arts, Master Mei Zhuang will not be so easily defeated. Are you scared?"

Hearing her calmly revealing her identity, Mei Shao frowned even deeper.

The same sad valley has always been hidden from the world, and it is mostly famous in the world with medicine, so the world gradually forgets it.Even when it is called together with the other three sects, no one can tell what kind of skills Tongbeigu has, so that it can be juxtaposed with the other three sects.

What's more, when Wu Chufu married Bai Jianye, she was automatically excluded from the arena. Mei Shao didn't expect that after so many years, she would still pay attention to the movements of the arena.

After thinking about it over and over again, Bai Bingchen has already entered.

He walked a little staggeringly, his knee was obviously injured, and he walked so fast that he almost tripped over the threshold.

"Xiang finished kneeling?" Wu Chufu glanced at the dark folds that were still faintly visible on his knees, and asked lightly.

What Bai Bingchen knelt was not the thin piece of incense in the ancestral hall incense burner, but the coiled dragon incense in the courtyard that was thick and tall.It takes six hours to wait for this kind of incense to burn out, but Bai Bingchen has only knelt for four hours now.

"Never." Bai Bingchen licked the chapped lips, glanced at Mei Shao, and asked, "Mom, what does this mean?"

Wu Chufu didn't answer him, and said to herself: "Since you haven't finished kneeling, let's kneel here for the rest of the time.

"Mrs. Zhou!"

"Lord Mei! This is my family business!" Wu Chufu gave him a hard look, and the emotion in her eyes was about to overflow.

She closed her eyes, and after a while, she hid the emotion in her eyes again. She turned her head and looked at Bai Bingchen with a gentle look in her eyes, and said softly, "Kneel down. Didn't you always want to know what happened back then?" ? Today I will tell you all."

Bai Bingchen raised his head suddenly, disbelief flashed in his eyes, and after a moment of stupefaction, he dropped his robe and knelt down.

There seemed to be thousands of silver needles on the cold ground, piercing Bai Bingchen's already swollen knee, his body swayed, but he met Wu Chufu's eyes without dodging, with a smile on the corner of his mouth, and said: "Please ask mother to clarify."

The two facing each other are clearly smiling, but Mei Shao's back turns cold when he looks at it. At first, he was only amazed at the similar eyebrows of the mother and child, but now it seems that their stubborn temperament, even the coldness in their bones It is so similar to self-repression.

Wu Chufu just scolded Mei Shao for being nosy, but at this moment she seemed to be unable to see him, sighed softly, looked at the flickering candlelight on the table, and said slowly: "You said that you are the same as the sad valley leaning on the white It is true that the family has been relieved of the epidemic, but I met your father much earlier than then."

A trace of surprise flashed across Bai Bingchen's eyes, and he silently clenched his hands hanging on both sides.

Wu Chufu didn't lose her composure at all, her voice was flat, as if she was telling someone else's story.

"Nowadays, there are two of the four major sects in Jianghu. At that time, Tongbeigu didn't have such a reputation for avoiding the world. I was just a half-grown girl. I learned a little and went out to travel secretly. I met your father."

"At that time, he was still a hard-working scholar, studying history and theory day and night, and hurt his body. I went to heal him, and I couldn't see his appearance clearly through the curtain. But if you want to calculate carefully Come on, that was indeed the first time we met."

"However, with my little medical skills, it was true that I couldn't cure him. Instead, he was injured even more seriously. It was the first time I healed someone other than the same sad valley. It was originally only for money, but something happened. I didn't dare to stay in his house anymore, so I was so scared that I ran back to the Valley of Same Sadness. I was 14 years old that year."

"After I went back, I felt uneasy. I was always worried that I had cured someone to death, and I didn't lose my temper as usual. I just didn't think about food and drink for a month or two. Finally, my master who only knew how to study herbal medicine found out. Something's wrong, ask me why."

"That was the worst time I was punished by my master. He said that I lost my heart to be a doctor and was not worthy of practicing medicine anymore. He took me down the mountain overnight to go to the White Mansion for treatment. We were in a hurry on that trip, after all, it had been a long time , maybe he has accumulated a long time ago. But when Master and I rushed to Baifu, the whole street was hung with red silk and lanterns, and the faces of the crowds were full of joy, and the servants exuding happiness He came out of the Baifu, they said, the son of the Bai family has passed the examination and is going to be an official in Pingdu."

"Master insisted on pulling me to identify whether the person in official uniform was a patient who was treated by me. There was no way, so I followed the crowd and squeezed in front of him. He was wearing official uniform and accepted the congratulations from the neighbors, but he didn't recognize him. Me, I actually didn't recognize it was him, but I saw the woman next to him was the one who asked me about my illness, so I figured it was his mother, and I was sure it was him. He stuffed a bunch of copper coins Give it to me, and then turn around and go to distribute copper coins to others. Everyone is laughing, but he is wearing an official uniform, but he doesn't laugh."

Wu Chufu's expression didn't fluctuate in the slightest, and even took the unfinished embroidery pattern, her hands didn't shake at all, and continued: "Afterwards, I was imprisoned by the master in Tongbei Valley to learn medical skills again. After three years, I re-entered the world and went to fight The medicine hall in Lipingdu. Relying on my skills, I had a quarrel with them after discovering that the escort team had hidden a few precious herbs while transporting medicinal materials. I didn’t want to live in the city. For fear of scaring the guests of the pharmacy, I let them tie me up the mountain, thinking that when I got to the outskirts, I would beat them up and run away. I was stuffed in a bullock cart out of the city, just in time to run into him leading people When I went back to the city, he saw the clues and called the car to stop for inspection. I was so worried that I fell asleep on the ox cart. I heard someone open the wooden box in a daze. I thought it was someone from the escort team and threw a silver needle. He wanted to run, but before he even took half a step, he caught him and took him back to the Yamen."

"He used this as an excuse to send me several times to testify. Afterwards, I knew that he was in charge of the patrol in Pingdu. We got acquainted with each other after receiving treatment in my clinic.”

At this moment, her calm tone faltered slightly, and Wu Chufu's voice was slightly suppressed, as if recalling the tragic scenes in the past, she even became depressed.

"Later, there was an epidemic in Jingzhou, and there were not enough ladies in the city, and the inside and outside of the city were sealed off. It happened that he was ordered to go to cure the epidemic, so I begged him to take me with him. We stayed there for six months. I I almost lost my life there, and the Tongbei Valley was almost destroyed, Senior Brother Liu... also died at that time."

The author says:

After the liver explosion, I was gone and slipped away.