Zui Gu🔞 ( mtl)

12.Temple

　　 A few days later, Aunt Yumin, who was beside the Queen Mother, came to Fengyi Palace in person and brought the Queen Mother's oral instructions that she wanted to take her to Longju Temple to live for a few days to pray for blessings. The

　　Queen Mother said that she escaped this disaster because the Bodhisattva blessed our dynasty, so she decided to take Yan Zhaozhao to Longju Temple, the most popular temple in Chang'an, to pray for blessings and chant sutras. The news was somehow known to the concubines in the harem, and they all came to the Queen Mother and asked her to take the concubines with them. Some concubines of lower status could not see the Queen Mother, so they showed their pious hearts to pray for the country in front of the emperor. The emperor was very happy and asked the Queen Mother to take more concubines with them.

　　The emperor was obsessed with beauty and did not realize that these concubines were just using praying for blessings as an excuse. In fact, they wanted to take this opportunity to show their faces in front of the Queen Mother more often, hoping to become concubines valued by the Queen Mother, so that their status in the palace would be guaranteed in the future. Although the emperor could not see it, the empress dowager understood it clearly. She did not want to have any more trouble when reciting the sutras, so she asked the emperor to accompany her, so that the concubines would pay attention to the emperor.

　　Since the empress dowager asked, the emperor could not refuse, so he agreed and ticked off several concubines he had favored recently on the list of entourage handed over by the eunuchs. Later, because he could not bear the soft and hard persuasion of several beauties, he added a few more people. Originally a simple blessing, it turned into a grand trip. The attendants, entourage, palace maids and eunuchs who left the palace were endless, and the carriages leaving the imperial city were one after another. When　　

　　they arrived at Longju Temple, the eunuchs beside the emperor allocated the wing rooms for them to live in. Needless to say, the abbot had prepared a quiet and elegant wing room for the empress dowager to live in, while the emperor lived in the east courtyard. The concubines who came with him all lived in the wing room close to the emperor, except for the empress Yan Zhaozhao, who was sent to live far away from him by the eunuchs because the emperor disliked her very much.

　　Although the emperor said so, Yan Zhaozhao was the mother of a country after all, and her living place could not be too bad. However, she was assigned to the west wing room far away from the east wing room because of the emperor's instructions.

　　After Yan Zhaozhao knew it, she did not look unhappy, and seemed to be very satisfied with the arrangement of the eunuchs. When she left, she asked Biluo to give him a bag of reward money.

　　The emperor disliked her, and Yan Zhaozhao was the same. She felt sick even when she looked at him. She wished to be as far away from the emperor as possible. After

　　a tiring day, the empress dowager asked everyone to rest early tonight and chant sutras with the abbot tomorrow morning to pray for blessings.

　　That night, Yan Zhaozhao extinguished the candles in the west wing and went to bed early, but the east wing was lit with candles throughout the room, and the sound of sweet laughter continued until midnight.

　　The next day, when it was still dim,

　　Yan Zhaozhao had asked Biluo to find out the monks' daily routines in the temple the day before. Today, she got up early and dressed simply, with only a few silver hairpins and a phoenix hairpin of the queen on her head. Then, she took Biluo to the inner room where the abbot prepared breakfast for them.

　　Not long after she sat down, Aunt Yumin helped the empress dowager to the inner room. Seeing that Yan Zhaozhao had sat here earlier than her and ate the breakfast prepared by the monks, she nodded secretly, and she liked her even more in her heart, and even her sharp eyes warmed up a little.