"No ...... I'm fine, I just didn't sleep well two days ago." Xue Yao tried her best to stay calm, lowering her head and taking two sets of deep breaths.
Lu Jin'an nodded and looked down to quizzically survey the ox horn bow, "How did Old Seven give this bow to you? Do you know how to bow?"
"I will practice well!" Xue Yao looked up and replied nervously, checking to see if Lu Jinan would find an excuse to take back the bow.
Lu Jinan was puzzled, "What's wrong with you today? Are you afraid that I will take back this bow?"
"No!" If Lu Jinan didn't say anything, Xue Yao hadn't realized that she was nursing her food.
He straightened his back and said, "This bow is yours, you can get it back anytime you need it."
"Then I'll take it away." Lu Jinan was serious.
"Huh?!" Xue Yao was surprised, "Do you ...... still need it?"
"What? Don't want to give it?"
"Of course not ......" Xue Yao blearily glanced at the bow in Lu Jinan's hand, petty chirping to find an excuse: "This bow has not been maintained for several years, the wind and the sun, I'm afraid it can not be used, or I'll give you to find a new one! ......"
Lu Jinan snorted, handing the bow back to him, "This is more or less the same, Laoqi asked for my favorite bow, since he gave it to you, you should at least polish and wax it regularly, and remove the string if you don't need it, look at what a mess it's become."
Xue Yao took the bow and held it in his arms like a baby, bowing his head in shame and asking for forgiveness, "It was my negligence, please punish Your Highness."
"Chastise you?" Lu Jinan smiled helplessly, "Old Seven would still have to roll all the way from the palace to my mansion, and come back for some kind of 'showdown of the men', this king is horribly dead."
Xue Yao laughed out loud and lowered her head in embarrassment.
"Old Seven really treats you differently, differently than he treats our brothers." Lu Jinan lamented.
"That's natural." Xue Yao sheepishly covered up, "You are His Highness's most beloved elder brother, and I am merely His Highness's playmate."
"That is also a unique playmate." Lu Jinan looked at Xue Yao and said seriously, "Old Seven has been withdrawn and misbehaved since he was young, but fortunately he met an equally quirky you."
Xue Yao was surprised, "Where am I weird?"
Lu Jinan pursed her lips and smiled, "There are so many oddities that you don't realize it yourself."
Xue Yao curiously said, "I beg Your Highness for clarification."
Lu Jinan raised an eyebrow and said: "Your weirdness is unspeakable, that is, you feel different from the other people serving in the palace, don't you realize? Of all the companions, you are the only one who has become buddies with my younger brothers, why? You seem to be born with a little lack of slave gas, seemingly respectful to us, in fact, in the heart, you simply do not treat us as masters."
Xue Yao's face changed and just as he was about to explain, Lu Jin'an raised his hand to put him at ease: ''This is not a rebuke to you, I think it's very rare for you to have such a temperament.
Minion's eyes are always looking up at us and can't see through a lot of things, but you always dare to look straight at us and can help us see a lot of problems, and even occasionally look down at us and dare to point out the wrongs when you see them, and your heart is always clean.
Xue Yao, I'm not afraid to tell you that in the past, I thought you had talent and ability, but it's a pity that you didn't have any ambition. But this year or so of personally taking care of political affairs has allowed me to see through a lot of things that I haven't seen the name of for more than twenty years, and it has also allowed me to recognize - there are too few people as pure as you in this world, and perhaps it is only with Seventh Brother's pair of pure eyes that he could have perceived your rarity at the very beginning."
Xue Yao froze for a moment before he humbly said, "Your Highness is really overstating the case, Xue Mou is indeed an ordinary commoner with no great ambitions."
Lu Jinan smiled and shook his head, "I hope that you keep this initial heart and assist and take care of the future Son of Heaven for a long time."
After Lu Jinan left, Xue Yao repeatedly recalled these words.
Was King Rui praising him, or was he warning him not to have crooked thoughts?
He really has no bottom in his heart, he only blamed himself for leaking too much details in order to save Lu Jinan at the beginning, and now, after being reminded by someone, they are all strung together, and Lu Jinan will surely be discovered that he is different from normal people.
Xue Yao sat in the upper room in dull contemplation until sundown.
When Zhou Rui entered, she asked him suspiciously, "Brother Yao, what are you holding that bow for?"
Xue Yao then came back to his senses, looked down and wiped the wall of the bow with his sleeve, replied in a low voice that the bow needed some repairs, and got up and carried the bow to the backyard, back to his house.
It turns out that how much you care about a gift also depends on the person who gives it, and this bow lived the same on this day.
Xue Yao hadn't even noticed before that the bow was so chic in shape and so steadily colored, how it looked.
Every tiny scratch on the bow arm caused Xue Yao to frown slightly and rub his fingertips painfully.
So whether something is ugly or handsome, it's all about a certain thought in your mind.
Lu Qian now in his heart is not the same as the handsome appearance of his childhood, and also the same is his heart is at work.
Xue Yao had to admit that he did feel that way about that little man.
He's finished.
Tonight was a sleepless night as usual, Xue Yao hadn't yet figured out how to face this horrible fact, so he decided not to face it for the time being, and early in the morning he went to the palace to take his leave again.
Took a three-day vacation.
When he took his leave, King Ning always granted his leave, so the chief steward of the duty room just registered it with a smile on his face, without needing to ask his master first.
Staying at the mansion for three days in a row inevitably caused Grandpa and Mother to worry.
Grandpa thought that Xue Yao had committed a crime in the palace and had been whisked back by King Ning.
After all, no one would have thought that the king's young companion was not sick or suffering, but could still say that he had skipped work, and was afraid that he was not tired of living.
Onlookers felt that Xue Yao must have been thrown out of the palace rather than refusing to enter the palace on her own, so Grandpa and Mother were not in a good position to fall on their sword, and for two days in a row, they asked about the situation in a sideways manner.
Seeing Xue Yao's listlessness and ambiguity, they guessed that the King of Ning must have been angered this time.
Children grow so big, the first time "out of favor", the heart still do not know how bad to feel it, Zhou Rui heartache, change the way to pour some delicious to the son appetizer, the son has always been wilted, wilted head, can not eat.
In order to let her son cheer up, Zhou Rui late afternoon hard pull son out of the house, said to go to the west side of the city to see the fireworks will be.
Xue Yao, who hadn't seen his pups for three days, had almost turned into a walking corpse, and was led out of the house like a puppy in a daze, not knowing what his mother had said.
The fireworks and the children's shouts of joy along the way didn't bring Xue Yao's soul back, all the hustle and bustle only made him feel more alone.
The loneliness turned out to be so harsh that he couldn't stand it.
Confused, he followed his mother and the maid to a crowded area.
It's a bustling marketplace on the river, with brilliant lights and children running around.
Along the riverbank stands a bamboo pole, between the bamboo pole, tied with a row of hemp rope, each hemp rope is tied with a piece of wooden sign, written on the wooden sign with a variety of good wishes.
It is said that after the fireworks festival festival is over, the god of water comes to collect wishes, and all wishes of the sincere heart are granted.
Xue Yao thought to himself that the Water God was really idle.
Zhou Rui asked her son to go to a side booth to buy three signs to increase the workload of the Water God's land.
Xue Yao obediently followed her mother's instructions to buy a sign, and when she learned that wishing for a wish was only ten cents, she couldn't help but feel that the Water God could be really cheap labor.
Turning my head to look behind me, from the south to the north, the hanging wishing sign has become a wishing wall, which can't be seen at the end.
Get the sign, Zhou Rui to go to the line, let the gentleman to help write wishes, Xue Yao said we borrow pen and ink can write their own.
The literacy rate of the general population is low these days, which is why people line up in long queues at times like this.
It's not like he can't write, so he doesn't need to let his own mother make a wish like she's lining up train tickets for the Spring Festival.
But Zhou Rui did not agree, she felt that she had to have a wish card written by the gentleman before the water god would look at it, and if she did not line up, she was not sincere.
Xue Yao to take the sign from his mother's hand to line up for her for several kilometers, but Zhou Rui laughed and pushed him to the side, saying that you have the good nature to wait, go to the bridge to watch the fireworks, mother and Cui'er here in the queue will be done.
Xue Yao was sent away like that, but he didn't go on the bridge, wandering along the riverbank like a ghost, reading a wishing card.
Wishes are all pleasing to the eye, what "hope that parents live longer than Mt. Nan", "hope that life and life and autumn sister to keep each other", can not find the kind of "hope that next year the day into the gold" and so on! I can't find any wish cards like "I wish to make more money next year" or anything like that.
The wishing wall was front and back, Xue Yao's side was against the river and crowded, the opposite side was quite clean, so Xue Yao wanted to go around the end and go to the other side to pass the time.
One bamboo pole after another, there was no way to find a gap to go around, he just kept walking towards the south, the more he walked, the fewer people there were, and the wishing tags on the rope weren't enough to hang on to, and every now and then he would miss a few gaps in the wishing tags.
This made Xue Yao notice that across from the wishing wall, there was someone who was also looking at the sign.
The man was half a head taller than him, and the gap between the wishing cards just revealed the man's pair of sword eyebrows. Xue Yao was distracted, and even though he realized that he looked familiar, he didn't think much about it, and continued to walk towards the south in a loose manner.
Without taking a few steps, two wishing tags were missing from the rope above his head, so the pair of teal-colored eyes of the person on the opposite side of the room finally flashed plainly in front of Xue Yao's eyes.
Xue Yao was so scared that he almost died violently on the spot!
He recognized the guy across the street as his rebel pup.
From just now until now, across the wishing wall, Lu Qian had been so separated from him, silent.
What's this kid doing here?
He actually hid behind the sign silently and followed him all the way, so wouldn't he have been seen by the rebel pups when he just lost his mind?
Xue Yao's ears burned a little, but fortunately at this time, a group of children with candy canes whizzed by, Xue Yao took the opportunity to move a few steps away, no longer looking at the wishing sign, pretending not to see Lu Qian.
Of course he was still looking at it in the afterglow, and there were enough gaps in the wishing cards for him to piece together a complete rebel pup-
A rebellious pup with a purple shirt and a jade tree, just across a wishing wall, heading south at the same speed as him.
Not long after, Xue Yao sensed that not far further south, he would reach the end of the Wishing Wall.
That was the destination where Lu Qian could get away from this wall and meet his little companion.
Xue Yao stopped in her tracks, mentally planning how to skillfully pretend that she was attracted by the fireworks so that she could turn around and head for the bridge to the west, refusing to meet up with the cub.
No sooner had he entertained such an evil thought, however, than he heard through the wishing wall the low, darkly warning voice of a certain rebellious cub, "Continue south."
"Awww! These kids are so noisy!" With lame acting skills, Xue Yao pretended he didn't hear them and forcibly turned around to ignore the rebel pups.
"Yao Yao." That voice had never been more menacing.
Xue Yao glanced in the direction of the voice and realized that Lu Qian had already used one hand to pull the wishing rope down, revealing the upper half of his handsome and peerless face.
Those peach blossom eyes that seemed to be smiling but not laughing had already locked onto Xue Yao, and that look was clearly saying, "You're dead if you dare to escape."
Xue Yao heard the girls' murmurs ringing around her, and when she turned around to look, there was already a group of girls from the fireworks display stopping by in pairs, pointing at the man whose face was half bared at the end of the wishing wall--
"It seems to be the gentleman who danced with the sword on the roof that day ......"
"Is it really him?"
"Same with height, it must be right."
......
Xue Yao had an idea and turned to the girls and whispered, "That's him, he's coming for you."
The girls' eyes instantly lit up, and they hurriedly arranged their hair in buns, scrambling towards that purple-clothed male to rush over!
Xue Yao took the opportunity to turn around and escape in the opposite direction!
"Yao Yao?"
"Yao Yao."
Though the rebel pup's voice bellowed with ferocity, Xue Yao just ignored it!
The girls pick at the wishing rope and excitedly strike up conversations with the men across the street.
Lu Qian's gaze followed the little companion, his long eyelashes blocking the brilliant lights, his shallow pupils half shadowed on the top half, the bottom half as clear and translucent as dissolved gold.
The girls looked dumbfounded, and the surrounding area fell silent for a moment, so much so that Xue Yao clearly heard someone's footsteps quickly following at the end of the wishing wall.
"Stand still." Across the wall, alongside his young companion, Lu Qian issued a final warning.
Although he didn't have the advantage in speed, the rebel pup was blocked by the wall and couldn't catch him, Xue Yao spread his legs and flew!
Seeing that the little companion refused to obey, Lu Qian's eyes flashed, and with a short leap, his toes flew over the twine at the top of the wishing wall, and in an instant he landed right in front of the little companion.
Xue Yao, who hadn't reacted yet, charged across the room with his head lowered, slammed his head against Lu Qian's chest, and was bounced back a few steps, raising his head in surprise.
Lu Qian tilted his head to stare at him and lazily approached, lowering his head to meet his gaze, his shallow pupils reflecting the little companion's panicked expression.
"Isn't Yao Yao bedridden? I see you're running so fast that the soles of your shoes are almost rubbing out sparks."
"...... How does His Highness have the leisure to stroll through a fireworks party?" Xue Yao avoided the issue and changed the topic.
"Followed you here."
"Huh? How did Your Highness know I came to the night market today?"
Of course he knew that Lu Qian had been standing guard in front of his young companion's house early in the morning.
Xue Yao heard the girls whispering behind her and immediately felt weak, looking up and trying to get Lu Qian not to settle the score with him in front of so many people, "Your Highness, let's go to the bridge and watch the fireworks, shall we?"
Lu Qian didn't answer, narrowing his eyes at the young companion who had claimed illness, lied about his leave, and attempted to escape.
Xue Yao begged in a small voice, "OK? Seventh Master ......"
In order to escape the crime, Xue Yao couldn't care less about the dignity of an old father, and called the little brat a master!
Lu Qian's thin lips pursed into a straight line hooked up, obviously being pleased by the sound of "seventh master," so he magnanimously turned around, side by side with his young companion, and raised his chin toward the arch bridge, "Go."
Xue Yao sighed in relief and obediently followed Lu Qian towards the bridge.
There was a man and woman walking in front of them both.
The man took advantage of the night and bent down to take the woman's hand.
The rebel pup immediately turned his head to the young companion.
With a thump in her heart, Xue Yao hurriedly copied both hands into her sleeves to keep Lu Qian from catching them and lamented, "It's so cold tonight!"
Lu Qian gazed sideways at his young companion's increasingly distraught side face, and then, with a lurch of his long legs, stopped in his tracks.
Xue Yao originally wanted to pretend that nothing had happened, but she didn't dare to completely disregard Lu Qian, so she had to follow suit and stop, cupping her hands and tilting her head to look at the fireworks, "It's so beautiful ......"
Lu Qian watched him quietly, slowly raising one hand and probing into Xue Yao's sleeve to grab his shyly hiding hand.
Xue Yao's hand, hidden in his sleeve, was caught by a warm hand forcefully, slowly taken out of his sleeve, and was lifted up.
Xue Yao's heart began to race.
Eyes wide open, he watched as Lu Qian lowered his head, cupped his little companion's hand to his lips, and gave a gentle huff of air.
His long eyelashes were slightly drooping, and his eyes just fell on Xue Yao's hands, the look of concentration was so intense that Xue Yao was lost in thought.
Lu Qianji's breath blew Xue Yao's itchy breath, and the temperature actually made him feel hot, all the way to his heart.
Heart beating like crazy.