Chapter 281 Xu Zhenguan: How do you explain this?
About a quarter of an hour later.
Zhao Duan, who had wiped his body clean, put on his clothes, and freshened himself up, carried the "Tai'A Sword" and was guided by the beauty in palace makeup, walked through the corridor at noon and arrived at the "dining hall" of the Yangxin Hall.
This is not the first time Zhao Duan has arrived.
A few months ago, on the third day of his journey, he entered here and underwent an interrogation involving life and death.
That was also the first time he had dinner with the empress.
A few months later, at noon in autumn, he came to this door again, about to face another major interrogation.
My mind was uncontrollably tense.
Zhao Duan tried his best to eliminate the complicated thoughts and put himself into the alert state of "Great Secret".
He knew that if he handled this conversation between the king and his ministers incorrectly, it would most likely cause everything he had accumulated during this time to start over again.
"Mr. Zhao, your Majesty is at the front, please."
The unfamiliar female officer stopped and her skirt did not move.
He made a "please" gesture sideways.
At noon in autumn, the dark clouds over the palace gradually dispersed, the sun shone, and the air was still moist and slightly cold.
Birds flew past the palaces from the direction of the Imperial Garden, and every ten meters or so in the long corridor, there was a palace attendant.
But at this moment, all of them were expressionless and unusually quiet.
"...Thank you." Zhao Duan took a deep breath and showed an impeccable smile. He took a step forward and once again entered the role of a loyal minister in seven steps.
After seven steps, he arrived at the door, where the man bowed his head and bowed: "I, Zhao Du'an, see your majesty."
After a delay of about two breaths, a familiar and cold voice came:
"Sit down and eat."
"Yes." Zhao Duan did not play the trick of rejecting someone. In the officialdom, hearing the music and understanding the elegant meaning is a basic skill.
What is heard in the ears is not the content of the words themselves, but the tone and context, so as to understand the emperor's true meaning.
Zhao Duan once heard a saying in his previous life:
Language is an imperfect carrier of thinking. Human beings invented language and characters to express their ideas.
But from the moment the words left my lips, most of their true meaning had been attenuated and they had become incomplete.
Therefore, in the long process of evolution, people have learned to understand the true intention of a sentence by combining context, tone, demeanor...
In fact, language only accounts for a small proportion of meaning.
Thus, there is room for words and discourse to be misunderstood.
At this moment, the meal the empress mentioned was really just a meal and nothing else.
So Zhao Duan stepped into the room, came to the table, sat down on the prepared round stool, picked up the chopsticks... and then raised his head after completing these smooth movements.
The round table is filled with delicacies.
Directly opposite, sitting was the elegant and graceful Xu Zhenguan.
She was the same as usual, wearing a white uniform, with a full head of black hair hanging casually behind her, without any accessories on her body, so the person became the main subject.
She has skin as white as jade, almost no polish, natural facial features, thick eyelashes, a straight nose, plump lips...
The curve of the mandible is gentle and flows smoothly downward, pulling out a pink neck that suddenly converges at the lower neckline.
Noble ladies in the capital dress boldly, but as the monarch of a country, the empress is extremely "conservative" in her clothing.
While Zhao Duan was quietly sizing up the empress, Xu Zhenguan was also sizing him up.
There was no emotion in those slightly slender phoenix eyes, only the two pupils as black as dots of ink, which were purely scary.
The eyes of the king and the minister collided.
"Let's eat."
Xu Zhenguan said casually, and immediately started eating first.
From the outside, he seemed to be chewing slowly and elegantly, but the speed at which he cooked the rice was strangely fast. In the blink of an eye, two meatballs were gone.
There was no interrogation.
There wasn't even a "question", but it doubled Zhao Duan's head and pressure.
"I obey the decree." He squeezed out these few words, then bowed his head and started to feast.
The God of War has a large appetite. After he was promoted, he tried his best to fight, and his stomach was already roaring with hunger. Fortunately, the empress seemed to have ordered the imperial kitchen to increase the amount of food today.
When the two of them finished eating the plates, the palace maid would immediately remove them and then bring them new dishes to fill them.
In the room, only two Taotie, the emperor and his minister, were left in the room.
After a long time, when Zhao Duan felt full and his eating speed slowed down, the empress also put down her chopsticks, wiped the corners of her mouth with a handkerchief, and said, "Get out of here."
"yes."
A famous palace maid came forward, began to clean up the battlefield, and presented tea soup after dinner.
Zhao Duan took a sip of tea soup to moisten his throat, as if he was going to die, and took the initiative to confess: "Your Majesty, I actually..."
He felt that as a man, he should take the initiative at this time and not wait for others to ask questions.
However……
However, Xu Zhenguan raised her hand and interrupted his speech. The hem of her pure white skirt floated up. She stood up and walked out, saying: "Follow me."
…
...Zhao Duan, who was interrupted from casting a spell, had no choice but to keep up, one step behind the empress - to avoid letting the empress' plump buttocks come into his sight.
The two walked through the long corridor and exited the Yangxin Palace. In the autumn afternoon, they crossed the huge square in front of the palace's noon gate, which could accommodate thousands of people lining up to fight.
Arrive outside the "Arsenal" where the imperial city is dedicated to guarding.
"Your Majesty." Eunuch Hai, the old eunuch in python robe, had been waiting here for a long time. When he saw the two arriving, he bowed and saluted.
Xu Zhenguan had a majestic look on his face and said softly, "If it's nothing important, no one is allowed to disturb me."
"yes."
Xu Zhenguan stepped forward, crossed the threshold, and entered this building complex displaying many palace treasures.
...When Zhao Duan passed by Lao Hai, he winked at him crazily, to the effect of asking:
What do you mean?
But Eunuch Hai pretended not to see anything, pretending to be transparent, which made him depressed and even more uneasy.
In the silent arsenal, the monarch and his ministers walked in tandem, along the central axis, through red wooden doors inlaid with brass door nails.
Arriving at the deepest point, there was a small courtyard full of weeds.
In the autumn mood, the vicissitudes of the pavilion in front of me are particularly depressed and desolate.
"Go upstairs."
Xu Zhenguan said softly and stepped up the stairs.
Zhao Duan crossed the stone wall with the "Picture of the God of War" on the first floor, followed the empress, and climbed to the second floor.
The door opened with a creak, and the second floor had almost the same layout as the first floor. The only difference was.
The stone wall in the room is much narrower and much higher. It is more like a "stele" than a "wall".
The sky was not bright and the room seemed a little dark.
The surface of the second stone wall was dusty and there were no patterns visible.
The monarch and his ministers stood side by side in front of the door, letting the dim light behind them shine into the room.
"Your Majesty... I actually..." Zhao Duan spoke for the second time.
"Sword." The empress interrupted him again, spitting out this word from her red lips.
"……oh oh!"
Zhao Duan was stunned for a moment, and hurriedly took off the Tai'a sword from his waist, and held it up with both hands: "I dare to borrow the sword. It is a heinous crime, an unpardonable crime, and a heinous crime..."
Xu Zhenguan glanced at him with disdain and ignored his nonsense. She stretched out her white wrist and grasped the hilt of the sword with her slender fingers.
The other hand pointed together and lightly brushed the black and red sword. Under the sky, the magic weapon that only Xu Zhenguan could hold was as clever as a cat.
The surface ripples with a luster like water ripples.
There was a faint, joyful sword cry.
There was a hint of...pleasure in the sound.
Zhao Duan had a weird expression, inexplicably feeling that he was a good match for this sword. Facing the peerless beauty in front of him, he looked like a bitch...
It’s a difficult brother and a difficult dog. It belongs to...
"Do you know how long it took me to go from mortal to divine?" The beauty asked softly while stroking her sword.
Zhao Duan shook his head frankly and did not show his wits at the wrong time.
"Half a year." Xu Zhenguan gave the answer.
Zhao Duan admired and said:
"Your Majesty is extremely talented and truly a talent that has never been seen before."
Crossing a realm in half a year is indeed very fast. Although Zhao Duan is also very fast, considering that he has been in the mortal world for a long time before crossing, the total time has reached several years.
Well, if we count from the time when we traveled through time to practice the Martial God Picture, it would be less than half a year...
Xu Zhenguan shook his head and said:
"This kind of talent is nothing. The path of cultivation becomes more and more difficult the further you go. Moreover, what wastes time in the mortal realm is nothing more than hard work and accumulation... Therefore, what is truly valued among the royal family is the ability to obtain the Taipei It’s a bit of inheritance and a bit of approval from the ancestor.”
She was silent for a moment and said meaningfully: "Just like the Tai'a Sword, there are many enshrinements in the palace. The princes and grandsons of the past dynasties can really cultivate to the point where they can hold this sword, but there are only a few people who are recognized by this sword. …
Oh, this is a secret within the royal family. Even my uncles and princes don't know the key to holding this sword.
I just thought that one needs to have a high enough level of cultivation, or permission from previous emperors..."
Zhao Duan felt beads of sweat on his forehead and felt a little panicked.
Xu Zhenguan stared at him with her beautiful eyes, and said in an unhurried tone:
"Do you know when I was approved for this sword?"
"...I don't know."
"That was long after I advanced to the worldly realm. Before I ascended the throne, even when there was a coup, I could only hold it, but I couldn't summon the sword."
Xu Zhenguan recalled sadly.
Then, with a slight turn of his wrist, he placed Tai'a Sword on Zhao Duan's shoulder.
The empress's jade face was frosted, her beautiful eyes were full of evil, she stared at him, and exhaled like a orchid:
"How did you do it?"
…
Typos will be corrected first
(End of this chapter)