Chapter 14 A whip, a hammer, a dagger

During those depressed and lonely years in the deep palace, Wu Mei also thought of her father more than once. The memory of the deceased father is actually distant and vague.Wu Mei was still young when her father was alive, so of course it was impossible to get any specific teachings from her busy father.Almost all fathers' early experiences were told by their mothers.Through her mother's narration, the young Wu Mei learned about her father's legendary past and how her father changed from a humble timber merchant to a founding hero of the Tang Empire.From her father's thrilling and tortuous life experience, the young Wu Mei may not be able to decipher too many profound connotations, but she can faintly perceive something throbbing and exciting from it.

Now, Wu Mei, a talented person living in a lonely deep palace, already knows that it is a kind of energy. It is an unruly life energy that is unwilling to be at the mercy of fate. At this moment, Wu Mei clearly felt that this energy was dormant deeply in her body like a restless young animal. She knew that as early as the moment she came to the world, this mysterious energy had flowed directly from her father's blood vessels into her blood vessels.And now, this hidden energy is strongly driving her to do something—something that breaks through the status quo and changes her destiny. Cai Ren Wu Mei decided to look for every opportunity to reawaken Emperor Taizong's attention to her.As the daughter of the samurai Yu, she believed she was born to be special.She is now determined to be brave enough to show this difference.

So there was the famous lion cong incident in history. This story originated from the memories of the Queen in her later years.She said that Emperor Taizong, who loved horses like his life all his life, once received a precious BMW as a tribute from the Western Regions, named Lion Cong.This BMW is rare in the world, but it is also unruly and unruly. Even Emperor Taizong, who has excellent riding skills and has trained countless horses in his life, has nothing to do with it. Emperor Taizong was so excited that day that he brought a group of concubines and maids to the horse training ground, and the talented Wu Mei was among them.Taizong pointed to the Lion Cong and said with great interest: "Among you, who can tame my Lion Cong?"

Empress Wu Zhao clearly remembered that at that moment, the little beast that had been dormant in her heart for many years suddenly woke up. People saw Cairen Wu Mei take a big step forward, and answered the emperor's question loudly. She said: "The concubine has a way to tame it, but it needs three things." Emperor Taizong was obviously in a good mood that day.He looked at Wu Mei with a smile, and seemed to show great interest: "Oh? What three things do you need?" "A whip, a hammer, and a dagger." Emperor Taizong was stunned. All the people present were also stunned.

Just when everyone was deeply surprised, Wu Mei, the talented person, said immediately: "The concubine first whips its back with an iron whip, and if it refuses to accept, hit its head with a hammer. The dagger cut its throat!" After many years, when Empress Wu Zhao sat on the golden palace of the Great Zhou Dynasty and told this story, there was still a light of pride and joy flowing on her face.In the end, she proudly told the officials that Emperor Taizong highly praised her extraordinary courage and courage—"Taizong strengthened my ambition!" (Volume 206) In fact, the end of the story that the Empress tells is rather suspicious.We don’t know whether she was really appreciated by Emperor Taizong, but one thing is for sure—after the Lion Cong incident, Cairen Wumei not only failed to reawaken the emperor’s attention and interest in her, but also suffered more than before. For complete neglect and forgetting, and this forgetting is a full ten years!

If, as the queen said, the Lion Cong incident won her the appreciation of Emperor Taizong, then it is hard to imagine that she would remain unknown for the next ten years, and would not be favored by Taizong in the end.It can be seen from this that the Queen's recollection of this story many years later may be somewhat distorted, especially the ending, which is unavoidable to be exaggerated.This kind of after-the-fact boasting is quite similar to a big brother in the underworld. After years of shopping and finally sitting in the boss's position, he will always show people the scars on his body intentionally or unintentionally, or like to tell people, brother, I was in prison back then. How is the time.

This is how people are, once the salty fish turn around and come back to life, the bloody wound will become a capital worth showing off, and the painful experience in the past will become an extremely glorious memory. In fact, human memory is selective, and even has some kind of unconscious fictional ability.People will always choose, or create something to remember it, so the deeper the suffering in the past, the more likely it will be gilded with a halo of holiness after the passage of time.As wise and powerful as the empress Wu Zhao, I am afraid that he is not exempt from this point.Just because she finally got over it and made it through, she has the right to choose her own memory, and also has the right to give her past suffering a halo of holiness.

Therefore, regarding the ending of the Shizi Cong incident, we prefer to think that after the shocking words of the talented Wu Mei, everyone present must have a dumbfounded expression, and Emperor Taizong's face may not be very good. .We can imagine that Wu Cairen's horse training methods must have shocked and astonished Taizong. He absolutely did not expect that Wu Mei, a talented person with a gentle appearance and elegant manners, would be so cruel and ruthless. The most poisonous thing is a woman's heart! At that moment, Taizong probably only had such thoughts in his heart.We can even imagine that Emperor Taizong probably just stared at Wu Mei, a talented person who pretended to be calm, for a long time with a half-smile expression, until the uneasiness in her heart was completely exposed on her face, Taizong said lightly ——Wu Cairen is really amazing.

If Taizong really said so, the later Empress Wu Zhao could also understand it as appreciation and praise, but we seem to have more reason to understand it as ridicule and ridicule.Because in the eyes of Emperor Taizong, who had read all the vicissitudes of life, it was a bit pretentious and grandstanding for Wu Cairen to do so.In other words, trying to use such an extreme and alternative method to win the favor of the emperor can only be Wu Mei's cleverness and wishful thinking.This self-defeating performance was unlikely to bring any benefit to Wu Mei except to arouse Taizong's disgust and give people a laughing stock in vain.

After the Lion Cong incident, Cai Ren Wu Mei entered the longest period of darkness in her life.In this way, the most beautiful Mood for Love in her life gradually disappeared in the ten years of changing stars and clouds.The restless little beast in her heart had already died in the gloomy palace years, and Yuan Tiangang's mysterious prophecy many years ago seemed to have become a sad joke. In the winter of the nineteenth year of Zhenguan (AD 645), Emperor Taizong failed to conquer Goryeo and returned. People inside and outside the court clearly felt the emperor's fatigue and old age.This invincible hero of the generation who was once invincible suffered the worst defeat in his life on the Liaodong battlefield.This unprecedented failure caused irreparable trauma to his heart, and at the same time, his body began to be entangled with various diseases.

Cai Ren Wu Mei is still engaged in the work of serving the emperor's daily life.When she changed Taizong's clothes, she found that the sacred body of the emperor had shown some signs of premature aging.Taizong's originally sharp and clear gaze like a falcon has now become cloudy and dull, and his originally strong and powerful muscles have become loose and bloated.Everything seems to show that - Li Shimin, the once brilliant emperor of Zhenguan, is already a hero. At that time, the battle between Crown Prince Chengqian and Wei Wang Li Tai for the heir apparent had ended in a dismal outcome, while Jin Wang Li Zhi, who had never been noticed by others, suddenly stood out like a dark horse in the political arena and unexpectedly became the new Prince of the Tang Dynasty .The political turmoil in the last years of Zhenguan is still fresh in people's memory after many years.It is not difficult for careful people to find that Emperor Taizong was exhausted physically and mentally by this huge political change. It was this major spiritual blow, together with the failure of the Eastern Expedition to Korea two years later, that quickly pushed Emperor Taizong Li Shimin to death. the abyss. When Li Zhi was still the King of Jin, Wu Mei, a talented person, had met him at several court banquets, but this gentle and weak-tempered King of Jin never left a deep impression on Wu Mei.Even at the grand ceremony for the canonization of the crown prince, the Ninth Prince, who had become the crown prince of the empire, still looked timid. At least in the eyes of talented Wu Mei. Looking at this fisherman pushed to the front stage of history by the treacherous hand of the goddess of fate, Wu Mei always has a feeling of wanting to laugh. She found that the new prince didn't look like a prince at all, and he was rather stupid. But to Wu Mei's surprise, this silly big boy Li Zhi not only does not make her feel annoying, but also looks a little cute because of his unique childishness and shyness. At the banquet after the canonization ceremony, the talented Wu Mei couldn't help but cast a concerned glance at Prince Li Zhi while she was managing the affairs at hand. Wu Mei didn't know why she kept looking at him - looking at this big boy who was three years younger than herself.For this reason, she found many reasons for herself, such as Li Zhi's cheeks gradually flushed due to the inability to drink, such as his shy expression and demeanor when he was toasted, and so on. Later, Wu Mei found another reason that she thought was the most important. That was the look in Prince Li Zhi's eyes. Those eyes are rare to see in this huge Tai Chi Palace. It is clean, simple and spotless, just like a clear spring water. Many years later, Empress Wu Zhao believed that maybe since then, she had developed a feeling for this big boy Li Zhi that she had never had before. However, the cognition of this emotion is only a vicissitudes of memory after the empress has changed. It is impossible for the talented Wu Mei to realize all this clearly, and it is even more impossible for her to hold this vague emotion. Have any unrealistic fantasies.Therefore, Wu Mei, a talented person who is deeply hopeless about the future, naturally would not expect that it is this vague and ambiguous feeling that will eventually bind her life tightly with Li Zhi's life, and at the same time it will also bind Li Zhi's life. Her personal destiny is closely tied to the political destiny of the entire empire.