Song Yi Xiao didn't want to get involved in the muddy waters of the Wang Fu at all, but as they say, when you're by the river, it's hard not to get your shoes wet. She was no longer just walking by the river, she had grown up in it - and still hadn't reached the shore till now!

  So after realizing Wei Mengying's plan, although secretly worried about Lu Guanlun, she couldn't do anything and could only take care of Lu Guanyun first.

  It's unclear whether Lu Guanyun was reminded beforehand, but after Wei Mengying left, he stuck closely to Song Yixiao.

  Eating requires sister to feed, drinking water requires sister to pour, playing also requires sister's company. At night when it's time for bed, he insists on sleeping with his sister - Song Yi tries to coax him left and right but to no avail, so she has no choice but to give in to him.

  She is now "nursing her injuries" and has nothing much to do, so it's no big deal that her brother is being a bit clingy.

  It turned out this way, and there was no time to ask about Wei Chang's affairs anymore.

  The next day when she was bathing, Song Yixiao had just taken off her outer shirt when she heard Lu Guanyun urging outside the bathroom: "Sister, are you done? Why haven't you come out yet?"

  She sighed and helplessly said to Jin Xun: "Turn back and tell Zhao's mother, please ask her if she was rushed at the banquet of her niece's birthday party!"

  Jin Xun found an opportunity to bring up the topic with Zhao's mother, who went around asking indirectly, but Wei Cui continued to smile and deny it.

  Zhao's mother was just a servant girl, and Miss Biao refused to say anything. She couldn't force Miss Biao to speak after all. So she had no choice but to report back to Song Yilai like this.

  Song Yi smiled and glanced at her brother who was holding onto her skirt, wanting to be hugged. She pulled the corner of her mouth: "Why not ask Mother if she has time to take care of him?"

  She is now completely wrapped around his finger by this little ancestor!

  Madam Zhao reported the matter to Wei Mengying, but before she could summon Wei Zhuo, someone from the Wei family arrived, saying that the wedding of Mu Dage's maternal nephew was imminent, and Mu Dage planned to take her children to attend the wedding, so she asked Wei Zhuo to return a few days in advance to prepare.

  Song Yixiao suspected that Wei Chan had been wronged, so she secretly sent someone back to the Wei family to explain the situation, and only then did the Wei family find an excuse to come and take her away.

  "But when Zhao's mother asked, she said everything that could be said, how could her cousin not even give a hint?" Song Yi felt very puzzled, "It seems like she's blaming me, but my cousin isn't that kind of person!"

  But she was still hesitant and didn't want to stop her sister from going to the Wu's house to offer congratulations, so she packed a few things as gifts and had Wei Zhuo bring them along.

  The day after Wei Zhuang left, the summons from the Empress Dowager that Jian Yu Bai had mentioned earlier arrived. This time, the eunuch did not bring an imperial edict, but only conveyed the Empress Dowager's intention: "At the birthday celebration of Princess Consort Hengshan last time, the two princesses Changxing and Yushan came to offer congratulations. After returning to the palace, they told the Empress Dowager about the excitement in detail. The Empress Dowager was delighted after hearing it, and thought that since several ladies from various manors were granted marriage this year, some of them had not paid their respects to the Empress Dowager for a long time. Therefore, she decided to summon all the young ladies who received imperial edicts granting them in marriage three days later to pay their respects at Qingxi Hall in Mingren Palace."

  Wei Mengying warmly entertained the government official, and after seeing him off, she called her daughter over to give her careful instructions. At the end, she suddenly remembered something: "Didn't Miss Jiang from the Si Kong household bring a message for you, saying that Miss Jiang wanted to meet with you?"

  "It's like this." Song Yi smiled and slightly furrowed her brow, "I was just about to ask Mother for guidance on this matter. This Jiang Miss had no deep relationship with me before, but at the Shangsi banquet, she was quite capable! After the banquet that day, we were still very close, who would have thought that now it seems like she hates me... Mother, what's going on? How should I explain to her?"

  "What's there to explain? At the Shangsi banquet, she was a noble lady and you were just a humble guest; she was the future Princess of Wei and you were just an extra. But now, fate has turned around, she failed to become the prince's consort and became a laughing stock, while you unexpectedly married up. Do you want her to be happy? Unless you're even more miserable than her!"

  "Jiang sister doesn't seem like this kind of person..."

  Song Yi's words were cut off before she could finish: "Alright, the problem now isn't what kind of person she is, it's that this date was arranged at a very bad time! You went to coax her on the same day and then had to enter the palace the next day. What if she gets stubborn and delays your return to the manor? Or what if she gets emotional and hurts you like Princess Changxing did?"

  "Reject it! Don't even mention meeting the empress, you haven't even attended a palace feast. In just three days, how many things do I have to teach you? What skills do you have to deceive that Jiang person?"

  "But—"

  "There's no 'but' about it!" Wei Mengying said firmly, "If someone with the surname Jiang truly considered you a friend and knew that you had to enter the palace to pay respects to the empress dowager the next day, they should have proactively suggested canceling or postponing their appointment! The fact that she's holding a grudge against your missed appointment shows that she only thinks of herself and doesn't consider your feelings at all. What's the point of having friends like that?"

  She thought her daughter's vision was too narrow, "The identity of Xianfei's niece is indeed not low, but the girl's identity, after all, depends on how well she marries! This Jiang surname has already been rumored to be the future Wei Wangfei, but now she has lost to the Nanzheng County Princess. In the future, unless there are unexpected events, her prospects will definitely not be as good as yours! What do you have to fear from her? Once you get married, girls without this identity won't even have the qualifications to pay their respects to you!"

  "What about Miss Wei?" Song Yi smiled, knowing that mentioning Jiang Muqin again would be useless, so she changed her approach. "She has a deep relationship with Sister Jiang, and that's the younger sister of the Crown Prince's consort!"

  Wei Mengying disagreed: "Nothing! I'll take the blame for you, just push all the responsibility on me in the future! The empress dowager's summons and the girl's appointment, which of their mothers wouldn't do the same? Anyone with a little sense should understand!"

  Take a glance at her daughter, and with a serious tone, she instructs, "Those who don't understand you are either not sincere in their interactions with you, so they're particularly harsh; or they have a narrow mind and are easily offended! These two types of people can get by on the surface, but neither is suitable for deep relationships!"

  Song Yi's heart was a mess, but she couldn't outdo her, so she had to ask: "I heard what Miss Jiang said, and I think I offended her. Mother, you won't let me see her, the person you sent should at least speak nicely, don't offend her even more, or else it will be hard for me to make amends in the future!"

  "It's better to schedule another time when everyone is available."

  Wei Mengying readily agreed: "How could Mother harm you? Don't worry, don't worry!"

  She turned around and reminded her mother, "Don't openly offend Jiang Muxian, but don't spoil her too much either - why did the Empress Dowager go to great lengths to marry off her daughter as a princess consort to the King of Wei? Who doesn't know what she's thinking? Although Jiang Xianfei is not the birth mother of the King of Wei, having raised him since he was young, they are now in the same boat! Jian Xu Bai is on the Crown Prince's side, how can we let Xiao Xiao get close to that Jiang person?"

  What's more, the daughter of the Princess of Dai State snatched away Jiang Muyun's fiancé, how could her good friend not have some guard and hostility? The Princess of Dai State and the Princess of Jin State are biological sisters, Wei Mengying would not want her daughter to offend her aunt before she even got married!

  The painstaking efforts of his mother were all in vain, as Song Yi had been deceived into believing otherwise.

  Three days of preparation passed in the blink of an eye, and on the day Empress Dowager summoned her, she got up before dawn, bathed and changed clothes, combed and dressed, and after tidying up, she took Lu Guanyun to Wei Mengying's side and asked her mother to help take a look again.

  Wei Mengying grasped the time to instruct a few palace taboos, looked at the time and it was almost up, the servant who went to inquire about other families also returned to report, saying that the young lady's carriage had already left the distant house from the palace gate, only then did she say: "You can go now, remember what mother told you, be careful with everything!"

  The Empress Dowager took the initiative to summon her, and the carriage she rode in was also from the Hengshan Wangfu, so entering the palace went very smoothly.

  This morning, the imperial city was passed down from previous generations. Due to the barbarians making trouble in the Central Plains, after Daizong's restoration, in order to show the recovery of the rivers and mountains and the inheritance of the traditional attire, the palace names and regulations were basically unchanged.

  The only palace where the Empress Dowager lived was originally called Renshou Palace in the previous dynasty, but in this dynasty it is only known as Mingren Palace - because the original Renshou Palace was set on fire by the Empress Dowager herself during the Western Regions' invasion of the previous dynasty, and she threw herself and the young Emperor into the flames to die together.

  Later, Dari recovered the imperial capital and, since the Ren Shou Palace had been destroyed, he renovated the Huishu Palace, which was the residence of the Empress Dowager in the early years of Xianyong, renamed it Mingren Palace, and dedicated it to the Empress Dowager.

  When Song Yixiao was led by the palace maid to the Qingxi Hall, Nan Zhenjun and Pei Youdui had already arrived.

  It's not that she arrived late, but rather that the two of them had conditions that she couldn't match - these two were personally brought by the Princesses of Dai and Jin.

  Although she entered the palace smoothly today, after all, she is a minister's daughter and cannot avoid going through layers of reporting. The two elder princesses can enter directly, even if they arrive at the palace gate a step late, they will still arrive before her.

  Fortunately, the Empress Dowager didn't mind this brief moment, and after Song Yixiao finished paying her respects, she smiled warmly and said: "Get up quickly, I've long wanted to see what kind of girl Ah Xū has his eye on!"

  "Not only the empress dowager is curious, but also the daughter-in-law has been looking forward to it since early morning!" The empress dowager wants to see her granddaughters and daughters-in-law, both of whom have arrived. Of course, the daughters-in-law will not be absent either. It was Empress Su who spoke up now, "Look at this lovely appearance, Ah Xū is indeed grown up in front of the empress dowager, she has a good eye for people!"

  The queen said so, and the next in line, Cui Guifei, Jiang Xianfei and others also echoed.

  "Previously, Princess Changxing came to the Wangfu of Hengshan to make trouble for me and even laid hands on me." Song Yi smiled, unsurprised by the Empress's attitude. "This is just a show for the Dowager Empress and the Grand Princess of Jin State; the Empress wouldn't dare to make things difficult for me."

  She is also concerned about the attitude of the Empress Dowager and the Princess of Jin State.

  One of them raised Jian Yu Bai; the other was Jian Yu Bai's mother. The former was noble and unmatched, while the latter was a golden branch and jade leaf.

  If she has a bad impression of him, even if he doesn't treat her badly in the future, her days will still be very difficult.

  The more important people were, the later they spoke. The imperial consorts all praised her in unison, and even Princess Chang Le said, "This girl has a good temperament, she's actually a match for Ah Xiang."

  The Jin State's Princess Zhen Guo, who had been stroking the lynx on her lap, finally raised her eyes and looked Song Yi Xiao up and down before saying in a nonchalant tone: "Looks like you're quite sensible, but being too sensible can be heartbreaking."

  This remark was neither salty nor bland, and it was impossible to discern her emotions - but the people in this hall basically all knew what she meant: My future daughter-in-law is sensible and never mentions the grievances she suffered at the hands of Princess Changxing. As a mother-in-law, I am heartbroken!

  The Empress Dowager Shang quietly drank her tea, not saying a word. The Grand Princess of the State of Dai, Imperial Noble Consort Cui and others, intentionally or unintentionally, all looked at Empress Su with varying degrees of subtlety.