The Daily Life Of Mei Furen Doting On Her Husband - Chapter 31

“Oh… I’ve already painted it once, and now I have to paint it again!” Mei Si almost cried out of grievance. The servant next to him advised him, “Master, you can’t be so careless about rest anymore. How can you paint all day without sleep? You must be too tired, so you had such a dream.”

“Okay, I get it.” Mei Si touched his paper and cheered himself up again. “I’ll draw it again! I’m sure it will be better this time!”

When Mei Si was painting behind closed doors, Wu Zhen was buying wine in the wine shop. She knew all these things by heart. She could tell where the amber light came from just by looking at its color. She could tell the type of the liquor by taking a sip of the same colored ones. She could tell which wine it was and what year it was just by smelling it.

Jianlin, Chunjiu, Xunyang rice wine, Wangfengshui wine, Zhuqing wine… Wu Zhen traveled to the East and West markets and thirty wine workshops that sold good wines. She selected the best-tasting wines from each type of wine, and finally brought a large cart and asked the servants of the Duke Yu’s Mansion to deliver it to Mei Zhuyu’s house.

The wedding date was approaching, and it was time to practice his drinking capacity.

When Mei Zhuyu returned home, he saw the large cart of wine. Along with the wine came a letter from Wu Zhen, which said that the wine in the jar with a red seal was the strongest wine, while the wine in the jar with a yellow seal had a milder taste. She also briefly wrote about her feelings and preferences for various wines and recommended them in order for him.

Mei Zhuyu read the letter carefully, and then took the small jar of yellow-sealed wine on the top of the cart as the letter said. The wine was called Xingzihuang and was said to be a wine made from apricots.

After finishing his business, Mei Zhuyu brought the wine back to the room, opened the bottle, and poured out the wine.

The wine was slightly yellow, the color of apricot, clear and bright, with a refreshing fragrance.

The more turbid the wine was, the cheaper it was, and the clearer it was, the more expensive it was, so the clearer the color, the better. Although Mei Zhuyu didn’t drink, he knew that such a clear wine must be expensive.

After drinking a small cup of Apricot Yellow, it was just as the letter said, sweet, slightly sour, and very little spicy. Unlike the Amber Light he drank hastily before, this Apricot Yellow tasted warm and sweet. Mei Zhuyu drank half a jar in a row and felt that he was fine, so he simply finished the other half.

There was a tabby cat squatting on the branch outside the window. She watched Mei Zhuyu drink cup after cup as if he were drinking water. She couldn’t help but shake her head and sigh, thinking that the way the young man drank was really a waste of food. That wine had to be savored slowly to appreciate its flavor. Although the wine was not strong, it had a long aftertaste. Drinking a jar of it at once was still too much for a young man who never drank before.

Sure enough, the tabby cat saw the young man walking slowly, his eyes fixed on her, with half a cup of the wine in his hand.

Well, he was already drunk.

The tabby cat swung her tail and jumped into the house lightly, then walked up to the young man.

Mei Zhuyu, who was already dazed, took a while to focus his eyes on the tabby cat in front of him. After staring at it for a while, he suddenly knelt down in front of the tabby cat with a serious look, bowed to her, and then handed the glass of wine in his hand to her, saying, “Father, it’s been a long time since we last met. I want to tell you that I’m getting married soon. I can’t come back to Quzhou to offer incense to you and mother. I’m really sorry. I’ll offer you a glass of wine. Please forgive me.”

Wu Zhen: “…”

After Mei Zhuyu recognized his father, he fell to the ground and fell asleep quietly. Wu Zhen twirled her whiskers and drank the cup of wine, then walked to the little boy’s cheek, raised her paw, and pressed his face, patting it.

Mei Zhuyu was woken up by her while he was still dazed. He staggered to his feet, rubbed his eyes, sat on the couch beside her, tilted his head, and fell asleep again.

When Mei Zhuyu woke up, he felt a little dizzy. He lay on the couch with his clothes on, and his legs were too long to hang outside the couch for so long, which really made him feel uncomfortable. When he reached out to rub his forehead, Mei Zhuyu found something wrong. His chest felt warm and heavy, and he reached out to touch it and felt a piece of fur. Looking down, he found that he was holding a tabby cat in his arms, the familiar tabby cat.

Sitting up, Mei Zhuyu placed the sleeping tabby cat on his knees, closed his eyes, and breathed in and out quietly as usual. Suddenly, his knees felt light, and Mei Zhuyu opened his eyes to find that the cat had also woken up, stepped on his knees and stretched out, and brushed his wrist with its tail without any hesitation, then jumped to the ground and ran out the window.

It was unknown whose cat it was, but it had appeared in his room three times in the past few days, and he could also see it occasionally in the Ministry of Justice. Mei Zhuyu thought about it for a moment, but in the end he didn’t dwell on it too much. He stood up, took out a wooden sword from the cabinet, and went to the backyard to stretch his muscles.

Mei Zhuyu was very dissatisfied with himself after drinking a small jar of the mildest wine and getting drunk. Wouldn’t it disappoint Wu Zhen’s expectations if he drank such a small amount? In this way, he would have to drink a jar every day from then on, and he must adapt as soon as possible.

The night was dark. Mei Si put down his pen and carefully admired the fruit of his hard work under the dozens of bright lights around him. A large area of ink of varying shades appeared on the smooth paper, and evil ghosts rode on the dark clouds and strange mist, with ferocious and terrifying expressions, so vivid that they seemed like living creatures, as if they could fly out of the paper at the slightest glance.

Mei Si looked at it with satisfaction for a long time and felt that his painting skills had improved again. He laid out the painting and pressed it with a paperweight to dry it, and then he went back to sleep complacently. He had only painted a small part of the Thousand Ghosts Picture, and he had to get up early and work hard the next day. The sooner he finished the painting, the sooner he could show it off to his friends.

What Mei Si didn’t know was that after he fell asleep, the evil ghosts he had drawn, with a sudden ringing of a bell, crawled out from the paper again and went out through the gaps in the window.

After leaving the paper, the inky and ferocious ghosts looked fuller and more vivid, and each one of them was so ferocious that it could scare people to death. They left Mei Si’s residence and went straight in the direction of the palace, like a silent black cloud, melting into the night.

The faint sound of bells continued to ring in the streets, but the soldiers responsible for night patrols seemed not to hear them at all. They let the bells, like a thin line, lead the black cloud above their heads outside the palace wall.

This group of evil ghosts condensed into a black cloud, without any aura, nor the evil breath of ordinary evil creatures, only a faint scent of ink. They passed through the thick palace walls without any obstacles and entered the inner palace with high pavilions and courtyards.

Under a locust tree outside the palace wall, a man wearing a long veil smiled gently, put away the silver bell in his hand, and looked up at the towering palace wall.

“Come on, let’s see what kind of trouble you can cause.”