The Blackwater City Lord, Shang Qiang, was gaunt and deathly pale. Zhen Shu, who had seen two old men pass away, knew at a glance that this old city lord had only two days left to live. Yu Yichen sat down by the bedside, took the old city lord's hand and gently stroked it in his slender hands. After a long while, seeing the old city lord slowly open his eyes, he reached out and took the map that Zhen Shu had taken from her hairpin and placed it in his hands. Then he gently closed the old city lord's hands with both of his.
The old city lord nodded slowly, looked up at Zhenshu, and suddenly said in Chinese: "It's good that you've come!"
Zhen Shu didn't understand why the old city lord's eyes were fixed on her, but she still curtsied and gave him a deep Han-style salute. The old city lord nodded again, and after a while, he closed his eyes again.
The city lord's wife led Yu Yichen and Zhenshu to the outer hall. After they sat down, she spoke to the maid. The maid bowed to Zhenshu with her left hand on her chest before saying, "The lady said that the city lord is very happy that you came here."
She glanced quickly at Yu Yichen and said, "Because of this, Your Highness will not leave again."
Seeing Zhen Shu looking at him, Yu Yichen explained, "Madam is the wife of the Blackwater City Lord, which, in the context of the Great Li Dynasty, is exactly what you call a sage."
She recalled asking him last night if there was a sage sitting upright on a phoenix throne here, waiting for her to tease him. Now she knew his serious introduction was a joke, but she still rose and performed the Han-style salute to the city lord's wife.
The old city lord passed away that night. Funerals here were different from those in the Han dynasty. Zhen Shu, lacking status, didn't need to attend, but Yu Yichen was always out early and back late. Xiao Yu was having so much fun that she almost forgot she had a mother there, barely seeing Zhen Shu at all.
Finally, after the old city lord's funeral was over, Yu Yichen naturally became the new city lord. This nomadic people did not seem to care as much about mourning and filial piety as the Han people. The old city lord had only been buried for a short time, and Yu Yichen was already planning a grand and solemn ceremony to marry her.
When Zhenshu first heard the maid beside her, whose Mandarin was broken, say these words, she found it utterly absurd. Because the two could not understand each other, she did not ask until Yu Yichen returned to his room that evening: "Do you really want to marry me?"
Yu Yichen was somewhat surprised: "Don't you want to get married?"
Xiaoyu, playing with a rabbit, rolled her eyes at Zhenshu and said, "Pretentious. If he wants to marry you, just marry him. Anyway, my dad doesn't want you anymore."
Zhenshu rolled her eyes at Xiaoyu. Seeing him hitting the rabbit and trying to make it call her "Dad," she couldn't help but laugh for a long time, but then a wave of sadness welled up in her heart. She bit her lip for a long time before saying, "I just never thought I would live to see this day."
On the day of their wedding, the maids painted her eyebrows and cheeks, adorned her with crowns and phoenixes, and dressed her up as a city lord's wife. When Zhenshu sat in front of the bronze mirror, looking at herself with her chest covered with jewels and her body wrapped in a bright red sleeve embroidered with gold phoenixes, she still could not believe that she had finally waited for the day he would marry her.
When he went to fetch his bride, he wore a deep red, round-necked, narrow-sleeved robe embroidered with peonies, a jade sickle hanging from his waist, and black boots on his feet. The crown he wore was indeed a bit short, but it was still ridiculously peach-shaped. His long eyebrows and red lips were still the same as when he made her pray for marriage before the Buddha, and his broad shoulders and straight back were no longer the thin and frail figure he had been back then.
Four years have passed since they parted. She knew she shouldn't cry at the wedding, but the moment she took his hand, tears streamed down her face. This was a wedding in a foreign culture, completely different from the Han wedding. She and he knelt on a sheepskin rug, clinking glasses from afar. The ancient, desolate sounds of cow horns emanated from the surrounding area. She drank a cup of mare's milk wine along with the ancient sounds, and in her intoxication, she had her maids help her perform various grand rites. Even when she entered the bridal chamber that evening, the flush on her cheeks had not yet faded.
Yu Yichen arrived a little late. When he arrived, Zhenshu had already removed her crown, pearls, and auspicious robes and was lying on the bed. She still had a smile on her lips as she watched Yu Yichen remove his crown and clothes, and chuckled, "Yu Yichen, I suspect I had a dream, an absurdly wonderful dream. Perhaps when I wake up, I'll still be in my little bed in the mounting shop in the East Market of Liangzhou. Without you, without Xiaoyu, I'll still be the young me, getting up to get down from the door and open my shop."
She had been dragged out of bed by several maids who couldn't understand her language since the fourth watch of the night, and had been dragged around all day. She was exhausted and almost fell asleep when she heard Yu Yichen say, "Little manager, tonight is your wedding night. How can you sleep like this before you've even consummated your marriage?"
Zhenshu leaned back and unbuttoned her undergarment, still chuckling; "Do you really want to consummate our marriage?"
She opened her eyes and saw Yu Yichen kneeling beside her, looking at her face. She closed her eyes and whispered, "Sleep. It's good to have you by my side."
Yu Yichen got up and got out of bed. He started from the door and extinguished all the candlesticks in the palace one by one, even the lamp covering the entrance hall, before getting into bed in the dark.
Thus began his wedding night with her.