Chapter 11 Chapter Eleven

Of course, Emperor Wanli did not hear the surging sound in Jianzhou—not only that, he could hardly hear the voices around him. This time, he was sick, and he was really sick, so sick that he couldn't be cured at all, and he could only let the delay go on day after day until the end of the day. His life has been corrupted, eaten away, tortured to the brink of extinction by himself.Now, whenever he raised his upper body, he felt dizzy, and had no choice but to lie down. Lying on the luxurious and comfortable dragon bed, he always felt sore back, chest tightness, and want to vomit; even, he felt that his eyesight was poor, he always felt that he couldn't see things clearly, and he always felt that there were only black shadows shaking in front of him. What's more, his ears couldn't hear anything clearly. When the eunuchs came to talk to him, he often only felt a buzzing in his ears, and he couldn't hear their words clearly, and didn't know what they were talking about.

Afterwards, he was not even interested in counting silver and listening to eunuchs report the amount of gold and silver - now, the only thing he cares about and wants to do is to call the imperial physician to attend to the sickness, and then ask the imperial physician to explain his illness, start Prescription for treatment. He didn't think about anything else. He may have ignored the prostitute music in the palace for a long time - he couldn't see clearly or hear clearly, the song and dance of prostitute music only annoyed him in vain, only occasionally in his dreams, he could clearly hear a beautiful song , often the low singing of "Xi Shi":

There are many lotus seeds on the bank of the autumn river, and the daughter of the lotus picker sings on a boat. The lotus in the flower house is full of flowers, and the green waves are singing before the competition. I hate not being able to get lotus roots when the stems are long, and the broken threads often hurt my hands. When will I find a companion to return to?The water is far away and the mountain is long. Don't look back. Picking lotuses and hibiscus clothes, the autumn wind blows waves and wild geese fly. The osmanthus orchids go down to Jipu, and the skirts and jade wrists lightly shake the scull.

—— Chenghu Lake is vast, full of beautiful flowers and red makeup spread across ten miles.Where the wind blows from the bank, the clothes are slightly cool. Shaking, hundreds of teams of orchid boats, thousands of groups drawing oars, midstream vying to release lotus-picking boats.I only wish to be in love with both, and learn from mandarin ducks—— The singing sound seemed to come from another world, but it penetrated deep into his heart; moreover, even with his eyes closed, there was often a graceful dancing posture of Xi Shi in front of his eyes, graceful and precarious, both vague and indistinct as if separated by fog and veil, and It seems to be far away on the other side of the sky, separated by the distant Tianya Road, conveying a sense of beauty, pulling a bond deep in his heart.

That almost perfect figure is actually not Xi Shi—it should be his biological mother— In fact, he didn't have any special concern or preference for the beauty of Xi Shi or the legend of the death of Wu—from the beginning to the end, the image of the most attached woman in his heart was his mother, the one he longed for, wanted most, and wanted most. What he has is also the love of his mother - every woman he has ever looked at is actually just a variety of projections derived from his pursuit of maternal love, whether it is Xi Shi or Concubine Zheng. In fact, he has never really loved—especially when his life has shrunk to the point of death, when his spirit has become completely empty, and there is nothing but hallucinations and illusions in his ears, eyes, and centers. The exhortation from his mother has already become an indistinguishable voice for him, and its only meaning is to fill the void and sorrow in his life.

In essence, he is already a living dead person, relying on these occasional hallucinations of voices and figures to support a little bit of spiritual comfort, prolonging his breathing and heartbeat. Forty-four years in Wanli—he has been the emperor for forty-four years, but his life is meaningless. In the days to come, he just waited day by day, waiting for the arrival of death.