Chapter 241
Plot (4)
“Listen to mother, Mingwei, that’s not how it works.” Mrs. Jiang sighed. Sometimes, she was really worried about Jiang Mingwei’s violent temperament. No matter what the occasion was, as long as it made her unhappy, she would immediately express her dissatisfaction. Jiang Mingwei even dared to be angry with her mother for small matters, there wasn’t a need to mention how she would treat others.
Mrs. Jiang swallowed her bitterness and said: “You can’t be so conceited and always focus on yourself. No one in this world is perfect or has gone through similar things like others. No matter how low one’s status is, there will always be some uniqueness and charismatic points about them. If you want to stay as a princess for the rest of your life, who has relied on her family and doesn’t do anything, then you can continue looking down on people in your mansion as much as you want, it doesn’t matter. But Mingwei, you should always remember that if you want to go a step further and enhance your status, you must let go of your arrogance and narrow mindedness to make a good rapport with others.”
Hearing Mrs. Jiang’s profound words, Jiang Mingwei calmed down a little, and she also felt that she had reacted a little too intensely. In fact, if the person in question was someone else other than Mu Mingtang, then perhaps she could have tolerated it. However, her mother had to tell her to learn from Mu Mingtang, and that was something she could never accept.
The New Year had brought one emotional blow after another for Jiang Mingwei. Unhappy events kept happening continuously and there didn’t seem to be any joy left in her world. Jiang Mingwei was overwhelmed by grief, and was determined to change herself.
When Jiang Mingwei was reborn, she was determined to be Xie Xuanji’s queen. However, after being a princess for some time, she started to get impatient. Jiang Mingwei clutched Mrs. Jiang’s hand, carefully analysing the timeline of her past life and the plot of the book she remembered, “I apologise for making Mother concerned about this daughter’s lack of patience and misbehaviour. Today, your daughter vows to never make such mistakes again.”
Due to the sudden change in Jiang Mingwei, Mrs. Jiang got confused and she tentatively asked, “What’s wrong? Any issues?”
Jiang Mingwei shook her head and refused to say any more. Of course, she couldn’t tell Mrs. Jiang about her previous life or else they would think that she had lost her mind.
Jiang Mingwei carefully recalled the events of her past life. Although she was in Beirong in her previous life and had cut off all the connections with Ye Dynasty, she knew that in the fourth year of Suihe, half a year later, Beirong had signed an agreement with Ye Dynasty, but it didn’t last long as Beirong went south and attacked the Ye Dynasty within a year after signing an agreement.
When the war was going on, Jiang Mingwei had been in Beirong and did not know about the happenings in the Ye Dynasty. But when Jiang Mingwei was about to die, the book suddenly flashed through her mind. It was at that time she realised that the fourth year of Suihe was the most important year for the male protagonist, Xie Xuanji, because it was the year he had taken over the throne and became the emperor.
According to the book, this year, a fire broke out in the capital on the day of the Lantern Festival, and it had been burning for three days and three nights. The fire had spread from Donghua Gate to the Forbidden Palace. When the fire reached the main palace, a strong wind was blowing, and due to that the whole palace was burned in that fire. Even the Qingning Palace, the empress’s residence, was ruined. Because of this incident, countless people had been injured, some died and lots of treasury and gold was lost.
While all of this was happening in the palace, the emperor was on the city tower, enjoying the view of beautiful lanterns with his empress. Accompanied by other concubines, and princesses of the palace. When the news of the palace finally reached them, chaos erupted in the city tower. The empress soon learned that her palace was on fire, she almost fainted from the shock, and the other concubines and princesses were also frightened.
[TL Notes: The Lantern Festival, also called Shangyuan Festival, is a Chinese traditional festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month (i.e new year) in the lunisolar Chinese calendar. For more information, visit Wikipedia.]
Afterwards, eunuchs in the palace were busy protecting the emperor and other royal family members to ensure their safety, so it delayed the time to put down the fire. As they had missed the best time, the fire could not be controlled.
Sadly, the royal family could only watch the fire consuming majestic palace bit by bit and at the end destroy it to the ashes. Because they had failed to control the fire, the royal family, even the empress dowager had become a laughing stock of everyone, and the stories about the incident had even reached the far away countries. Even Jiang Mingwei, who was living miles away from the Ye Dynasty, had heard Beirong people creating songs to laugh at the royal family of the Ye Dynasty.
When the city tower was in complete chaos, it was Xie Xuanji, who kept guarding the emperor. Later, it was also because of Xie Xuanji’s decisive actions, they could finally control the overall situation. As the emperor had witnessed Xie Xuanji’s stable mindset and actions, the reconstruction of the capital was handed over to him.
Jiang Mingwei, who later read the book, knew more than that. She knew that the fire was not an accident but a plot set up by the enemy. As it mentioned in the book, some foreigners, who had disguised themselves as the people of the palace, had come to the Lantern festival and had deliberately set fire in the palace where no one would be able to notice at the start.
They originally planned to take advantage of the chaos, and attack the palace, taking the royal family as their hostage and later take control of the capital. But the guards surrounding the palace gates were like iron barrels, so they couldn’t find a way to invade and could only give up.
As the fire was deliberately created by spies sent by the Beirong, the negotiation between two countries came to an end there. Jiang Mingwei was merely a small concubine in her previous life, so she couldn’t get involved in these major events, and didn’t understand how many enemy forces there were in the capital. She only knew that the fourth year Lantern Festival in Suihe was the starting point for Xie Xuanji, after which he had rapidly risen to fame, gaining the trust of everyone around him.
Later, Xie Xuanji’s status rose from just a prince to a leader of the officials in the court, and even the emperor had gradually started to rely on him, letting him handle important tasks slowly. Since then, in everyone’s heart, he had become the future emperor.