The night was beautiful, the fireworks were dazzling, and their story had just begun.
Chapter 1 Side Story: Darkness and Light (Part 1)
The night was deep, yet far from peaceful.
A woman's heart-wrenching screams echoed from inside the palace.
After an unknown amount of time, a loud cry came from inside.
Just one sound.
Then the hall fell silent.
A nanny hurriedly came out of the hall, and a short while later, she hurriedly went back in.
Then, a woman's frantic roars and curses echoed from inside the hall.
Three years have passed in the blink of an eye.
A lively little boy happily ran into the quiet bedchamber, holding a small wildflower.
“Mother, this is a little flower that I found at the foot of a wall when I went out to play. It’s pink and very pretty. I’m giving it to you, Mother.”
The little boy smiled and handed the wildflowers to the woman, hoping to receive her smile and thanks.
But the woman's face was only gloomy and cold, with resentment and hatred deep in her eyes.
She looked at the little boy, grabbed the wildflower, threw it on the ground, and then slapped him across the face.
The little boy was slapped to the ground and started crying in fear.
The woman trampled the wildflower to pieces with her feet, then yelled at the little boy, "Don't cry, or I'll strangle you!"
The little boy was too young to understand the horror of a woman's shouting, but he didn't know what death meant. So, he didn't understand the woman's threats and continued to cry, "Mother, do you not like Xiaohua? If you don't like it, then I won't give you Xiaohua anymore."
The little boy kept calling her "Little Flower," which sounded like a joke to the woman. Her eyes widened and turned bright red.
She yanked the little boy up from the ground and cursed, "What a joke? Even you call me a joke?! I went to great lengths to get you into the palace, hoping your arrival would bring the Emperor to see me, but what happened? The Emperor hasn't come even once, not even once!"
"Mother... Waaah, Father isn't coming. Can you ask the nanny to call him? Or, I'll go and call him for you, okay? Mother, please don't do this. You're so scary. I'm frightened..." The little boy cried fiercely.
"You want to call the Emperor over? Ha! The Emperor doesn't even want to see you, do you think you can get him to come? To get the Emperor to come, I even smothered my own daughter to death, just to exchange her for you, this stolen bastard. But I've already given the Emperor a son, why doesn't the Emperor come to see me? It's all your fault, all your fault! Just because you're not my biological child, just because you're an outsider bastard, the Emperor definitely knows you're a bastard, that's why he doesn't come to see me!"
The woman, as if possessed, hurled all sorts of vicious curses at the little boy.
The little boy couldn't understand, but seeing the woman like that, he was too scared to cry.
He just stared at the woman with innocent big eyes, not daring to utter a single word, "Mother."
As the woman put her hand on his neck, a nanny ran over and pulled him away, saying, "Your Highness, if you really strangle him to death, there will be no hope left!"
"Take him away, take him away! I don't want to see him! If I see him, I want to strangle him!" the woman yelled.
The nanny quickly picked up the little boy and left.
The little boy nestled in his nanny's arms, watching the gloomy woman recede into the distance, his smile vanishing.
"Why does Mother hate me so much..." the little boy asked, hugging the old woman's neck as if talking to himself.
Chapter 2 Side Story: Darkness and Light (Part Two)
The old woman sighed and didn't speak, because she didn't know how to explain a woman's madness to a three-year-old child.
Women who crave power and wealth will resort to any despicable means to rise to the top.
Although she had spent a night with the emperor as she wished, the emperor didn't even glance at her. He even thought the woman had schemed against him and angrily wanted to kill her.
She can cry and act pitiful.
The Emperor did not soften his heart, but the Empress could not bear it. She did not want the Emperor to bear a reputation for being heartless and to be gossiped about, so she asked the Emperor to give the woman a title.
The woman was overjoyed, thinking that she could rise to a high position from then on.
However, this palace was no different from a cold palace.
The emperor forbade her to leave the palace and never came to see her.
Unwilling to accept this, she had an affair with a guard in order to get pregnant as soon as possible and switch the baby with a real one.
She even made plans for childbirth. She brought a baby boy from outside the palace. If she gave birth to a boy, she would smother the baby boy; if she gave birth to a girl, she would smother the girl and then replace her with the baby boy.
The old woman shook her head, looking at the pitiful little boy in her arms. If it weren't for the fact that her whole family's lives were in the woman's hands, she would never have gone against her conscience to help the woman do such a sinful thing.
The nanny carried the little boy back to his quarters, placed him on the bed, and asked, "Is Your Highness Xun'er hungry?"
"Hungry." The little boy was Xiao Shixun. His naturally curly hair and youthful face made him very cute.
"Please wait a moment, Your Highness Xun'er. I'll get you something to eat."
"Thank you, Granny."
The old woman smiled and reached out to touch his head. The flattened curly hair bounced up again after the old woman withdrew her hand, stubbornly curling up on his head.
Two years have passed in the blink of an eye.
Inside the hall, the sounds of a woman cursing and a child crying could be heard again.
"Mother, please stop hitting me! Please, please stop hitting me! Xun'er is in pain, it hurts so much!" Xiao Shixun pleaded, clinging to the woman's leg.
The woman kicked him away and then stomped on him without any politeness: "What use are you to me? You'd be better off dead."
As she spoke, she stomped on it several more times.
Every step he took landed on Xiao Shixun's most vulnerable spot.
The old nanny couldn't bear to watch any longer and ran over to stop the woman: "Your Highness, please don't hit him! He's just a child! What has he done wrong?"
"How can he not be wrong? He's wrong for not letting the Emperor come to see me!" the woman said, trying to hit him again.
The nanny grabbed her, preventing her from going over: "You can't hit her anymore, Your Highness. Those kicks you took on the child will probably ruin him!"
"He's ruined, so be it. Did I expect him to have children? He's useless, he's just a piece of trash. I'd rather have a dog than him. At least a dog knows how to make me happy, but seeing him only makes me feel disgusted!" The woman cursed mercilessly, completely ignoring the child rolling on the ground, clutching his sore spot.
"But Your Highness, he is innocent! It was Your Highness who brought him here!" the nanny said, unable to bear it any longer.
Upon hearing this, the woman suddenly fell silent. The old woman thought she had finally taken pity on her and was about to breathe a sigh of relief when she saw the woman pull out the gold hairpin from her hair and stab it directly into her neck.
The old woman stared at the woman in disbelief, her eyes wide, and before she could utter a single word, she collapsed and died.
Chapter 3 Side Story: Darkness and Light (Part 3)
"You know too much, you can't live..." The woman squatted down, wiped the gold hairpin on the old woman's clothes to remove the bloodstains, and then put it back in her hair. Then she looked at Xiao Shixun, "You little bastard, if you dare to talk nonsense to outsiders, you'll be the one who dies next!"
Xiao Shixun stopped crying and stopped rolling around.
Instead, he endured the pain and looked at the woman in horror.
When the woman saw that he had become "obedient," she sneered and then turned and left.
Seeing that she had left, Xiao Shixun dared to crawl to the old woman's side and nudged her, saying, "Old woman, old woman, wake up! I'm in so much pain! Please help me apply the medicine, old woman, please wake up..."
As he spoke, Xiao Shixun burst into tears, his weak and helpless sobs echoing in the empty hall.
Days passed by one by one.
Since the old woman died, Xiao Shixun has neither cried nor cried out in pain.
Because he knew that even if he cried or cried out in pain, no one would come to comfort him anymore.
So no matter how fiercely the woman scolded him or how painfully she hit him, he never cried again, and he didn't even try to dodge.
He thought he would live like this for the rest of his life, he thought he could live numbly like this forever.
Until he saw a boy who radiated light, a boy who was so gentle and warm...
That day, Xiao Shixun, who had been beaten, ran away. He wanted to find a dark corner to curl up and stay quietly for a while, but when he walked to the foot of a dark palace wall, he saw a boy with a bright smile, as bright as the sun, not far away.
The boy was so bright and warm; he longed to be close to him.
But he didn't dare; he could only stand in the dark corner and stare blankly at him.
"Are you the eldest brother?" The boy noticed him and walked towards him, moving from the sunlight to the dark corner of the wall.
The boy's voice, like his personality, was gentle and soft.
Xiao Shixun didn't speak, but stared intently at the boy named Xiao Shijing.
"Brother, why is there a cut on your face that's still bleeding?" With that, Xiao Shijing took his hand and led him back to his own palace.
He asked Xiao Shixun to sit down, then ran to get gauze and medicine.
He was studying medicine, so his bedroom was full of various small medicine bottles. He skillfully treated Xiao Shixun's facial wounds, but then discovered that Xiao Shixun had injuries not only on his face, but also on his body.
"Brother, who hit you?" Xiao Shijing asked, and was about to take off Xiao Shixun's clothes to see his injuries, but he stopped him. "Brother, don't be afraid. Did you get into a fight? Don't worry, I won't tell Father or Mother. But you can't fight anymore. Look at all these injuries. They hurt so much."
Xiao Shijing pushed Xiao Shixun's hands away and continued to undress him. When he saw the wounds on his body, he couldn't help but frown. This wasn't fighting; it was being beaten.
He carefully continued to treat Xiao Shixun's bruises, his movements very gentle, as if afraid of hurting him.
Xiao Shixun remained silent throughout, only looking at Xiao Shijing, at his fair and handsome face.
Only after the wounds had been treated did Xiao Shixun speak, "Am I your elder brother?"
Xiao Shijing was taken aback: "Isn't that right?"
Chapter 4 Side Story: Darkness and Light (Part 4)
"Don't you resent me, or my mother?" Xiao Shixun asked again.
Xiao Shijing shook his head: "If the Empress Dowager doesn't blame me, neither will I. The Empress Dowager also said that even if there is a mistake, it is the Empress Dowager's mother who is at fault, and the Empress Dowager is innocent."
Xiao Shixun fell silent.
Seeing that he was silent again, Xiao Shijing took his hand and said, "Brother, I'll take you to a good place."
Then he led him to the artificial hill in the Imperial Garden, where there was a hidden stream.
Xiao Shijing released Xiao Shixun's hand and then began to take off his shoes and socks, saying as he did so, "In the sweltering summer, soaking your feet in this cool water in this shady spot is very refreshing."
Xiao Shixun stood there, watching him walk to the edge of the ditch with his bare, fair and beautiful feet, sit down, and then put his feet in the water and swish them around, splashing water everywhere.