In April of the twenty-fifth year of Hongwu, Prince Zhu Biao returned from Shaanxi.
Thirty miles away from the civil and military outskirts of the Manchu Dynasty, the princess waited at the palace gate all day.
No one knew that he was the governor for three months even though he was sick, just to relieve his father's worries.
No one knew that on the night he returned to Beijing, Zhu Yuanzhang only said one word to him:
"Yeah."
I am Zhu Xiongying, the eldest son of the Crown Prince.
Grandma held my hand before she died: "Xiongying, your grandfather will never bow his head in this life. But you have to bend down for him."
I don't understand.
All I know is that my father was still reading memorials on his sick bed, and Zhu Pi would always have only two words: "That's terrible."
All I know is that grandpa has never visited the hospital.
All I know is that on the day my father left, my grandfather sat in Wuying Hall all night and did not come.
[In the thirty-first year of Hongwu, on the tenth day of the fifth lunar month, Fengtian Hall.
He was lying on the couch, staring at me with his cloudy eyes.
"You're here."
I knelt down and took out my grandma's hairpin from my arms.
"Grandma asked me to bring a message."
He took the hairpin and rubbed it with shaking hands.
Tears flowed freely.
Outside the window, the locust trees in Nanjing have been falling for twenty-five years.
This time, he finally cried.
That night, the candles in Wuying Hall burned until dawn.
This emperor, who had never bowed his head in his life, personally handed over the country to his fifteen-year-old grandson.
——That was the debt he owed for his son for twenty-five years.
