Mondatipa got up and looked at Tumoroga's legs with a grave expression.
Banruo and two other personal soldiers gathered around the couch, discussing something with Mondatipa in a low voice.
Everyone looked gloomy.
Contrarily, the calmest of all was the heavily ill Tumoroga. His distant eyes swept over the faces of the several people surrounding him and gave a command softly.
Banruo nodded while wiping his tears.
They were speaking Sanskrit, so Yaoying could not understand a word. She only felt that Tumoroga's hoarse voice due to sickness still carried a certain elegant cadence.
The footsteps that woke her up came closer and closer. One of the personal soldiers lifted the hanging curtain and walked into the inner room quickly, speaking in Hu: "King, the Great Minister and them are here. They insist on entering the hall to have an audience with the king!"
Banruo and the others looked at each other.
"Do not let them in!" Banruo stood in front of the couch and asked, "Where is the Regent?"
The personal soldier said, "General Su went to Gaochang not long ago and has not yet returned to the city."
"Where is Princess Chima?"
"General Ashina escorted Princess Chima to Yunfu City. They are not in the city either, and people have been sent to bring them back." The personal soldier was sweating, "They are about to break in!"
The personal soldiers were at their wits' end, and Mondatipa, who did not want to interfere in the government affairs of the Royal Court, sighed helplessly.
In the stifling silence, the drowsy Tumoroga on the couch actually sat up, the back of his slim shoulders tensing then straightening like a bowstring. Without a trace of panic on his wan face, he said softly: "Help me to the main hall."
His voice still calm and unhurried.
Banruo wiped the corner of his eyes, bending down to support Tumoroga. His actions were skilled, as if such a thing had happened countless times.
Yaoying took a step forward, "You better not get off the ground."
Tumoroga's eyes lifted up, the deep turquoise pupils falling on her.
His gaze was as distant as his person. As if he was looking at you, and yet as if he was looking at something else through you. Everything in the world was mundane in his eyes.
An invisible pressure lingered around him, not at all sharp, if at all.
Yaoying and he stared at each other for a while. Eyes falling on his legs, her brows lightly knitted, and she said in not very smooth Hu: "With your legs swollen like this, you must rest in bed. If you get out of bed, even if you have Anxi pills now, your legs are completely ruined."
She did not know how Tumoroga had died of illness, only that he was lifted by worshippers to the Dharma altar during his last public scripture reading. Looking at his legs at present, she guessed that they must have been ruined at that time.
In great alarm, Banruo asked through sobs, "King, tell the Great Minister and the others the truth!"
Tumoroga looked down at his legs, his eyelashes fluttering lightly, and said faintly, "No matter."
The Northern Rong was eyeing them, and the situation in the court was unstable. The news that he was seriously ill could not be leaked out.
Banruo and the personal soldiers looked at each other, not daring to say anything more, and helped him up.
Yaoying's frown grew tighter.
In spite of Tumoroga not caring about his body, did the people around him really take him to be a god?
He was human.
From the slaves' words, in the Royal Court, from the nobles to the commoners, all hated the Chinese. Only this monk was compassionate and not only treated all the slaves as his people, but treated the people of all races well, and also encouraged the faithful to coexist peacefully with the Zoroastrians, Manicheans, and Nestorians.
If this man lived another day, the Northern Rong would not be able to take down the Royal Court, and the Northern Rong would not be able to take out its main force to attack the Central Plains.
Yaoying's mind spun a few times and stopped Banruo, saying, "Your king cannot get on his feet right now. Find an excuse to send the Great Minister away."
Banruo looked at her warily for a few moments: "The Great Minister is stubborn. Ordinary reasons can't stop him... "
"I am the reason."
Yaoying interrupted Banruo's words, raised her hand to tuck back her hair. The ends of her eyes were playfully raised slightly, her eye like waves of brimming autumn water, like a tree full of budding flowers all of a sudden bloomed and sprouted, like a rose-tinted sky appearing behind a cloud. Such brightness made people unable to stare for too long.
In a flash, the room was full of spring.
"You go out and tell the Great Minister that the Princess of Great Wei is infatuated, bitterly pestering the Buddha's son. Buddha's son could not get away."
Banruo's face flushed, and he glanced at Tumoroga.
Tumoroga did not look up at Yaoying, eyes lowered, looking at the pair of worn and tattered straw sandals on the young girl's feet.
On the journey, he'd forgotten to instruct his men to take care of this Wei Empire's princess. Traveling with slaves, it didn't take much imagination to know that she had suffered a lot of hardship.
Tumoroga coughed and said, "No need. This matter has nothing to do with the Seventh Princess."
Yaoying was surprised to find that he spoke the standard northern dialect of the Central Plains and was more fluent than Mondatipa, a Tianzhu who had spent a lot of time in the Central Plains, speaking without any accent at all.
It is said that he was a young man with early intelligence. When he was in his teens, he had already mastered seven or eight languages. She did not expect that Chinese would be included among them.
If such a person was purely a monk who single-mindedly devoted himself to his practice and study of Buddhist doctrine, he wouldn't be living with such hardship.
Sighing inwardly, Yaoying smiled and said with genuine concern, "I was in danger and Buddha's son saved me from the fire, so I ought to repay."
Saying that, she squatted down to look at Tumoroga, her dark glowing eyes reflecting the other's pale face.
"With your legs is like this, it's better not to walk around."
Without waiting for him to say anything, Yaoying stood up, undid the tie securing her hair, and took off the tattered straw shoes on her feet. Stepping barefoot on the carpet, long hair draped over her shoulders, she walked out step by step, with lotus-like steps, and a graceful back.
A pair of dazzling and smooth snow-white jade feet between the ornate beast fur, giving off an allure that made some mouths go dry.
The personal soldiers were dumbfounded.
Outside the main hall, a group of middle-aged men in their forties and fifties stepped onto the stone steps.
The man taking the lead was precisely the Royal Court's Great Minister, Kang Mozhe, wearing a short robe with a collar and small sleeves, a belt, heavy boots, a sword at his waist, and his long hair tied with a colored belt behind his head. While walking, he berated a soldier: "The kind returned yesterday evening. Why did he not forthwith summon us ministers?"
Banruo stood up in greeting, pointing to the silently weeping Li Yaoying blocking the main hall's doors: "Great Minister does not know that the princess of the Wei Empire is courting death, insisting on marrying the king. The king could not get away."
Kang Mozhe froze, followed the direction of his finger to look.
There was a delicate and beautiful silhouette, bright and beautiful and breathtaking, more charming than that of early spring canyon wildflowers in full bloom.
With just a brief glimpse, everyone could not help but lighten their breaths.
Yaoying met the crowd's scrutiny, lowly sobbing, crying more and more sadly.
Kang Mozhe had already heard from a spy that a princess of the Wei Empire had proposed in front of ten thousand troops, and thought that the private soldier had exaggerated his words. At this moment, really seeing her in the flesh, he found that the spy had not properly described even half of the Wei Empire's princess' beauty.
The beauty was really blind, to unexpectedly take a fancy to a monk who would not be moved by beauty.
Kang Mozhe's covered up his thoughts and laughed, "There is such a beautiful woman in the world."
The others looked at each other with blank faces.
The king was the Buddha's son, and was being foolishly bothered by a beauty. At this awkward moment, did they go in or not?