As the Queen Mother's Qianqiu Festival approached, the empresses and concubines began to prepare gifts.
The Empress Dowager is over a quarter of a year this year, which is for her birthday. Yuanmu attaches great importance to the exercise and management. At this time, which gift from the empresses is the most appropriate one to please the Empress Dowager, and it will be more helpful for her future.
So we all tried our best to think of some ingenious gifts that could stand out.
Rong Bin is no exception.
In the harem, she was the one who walked closest to the empress dowager and knew her thoughts best.
The Empress Dowager has believed in Buddhism for many years. Every year, she will donate ten thousand liang silver grains to build a Buddhist temple and add merit bricks. Every time she leaves the palace, she also goes to the temple to worship, which shows her piety.
Therefore, Rong Bin deliberately copied three volumes of Buddhist scriptures in Sanskrit and sent them to Guoen Temple to ask the abbot to open up, and asked her father to spend a lot of money to buy the sixteen bone relics, ready to send them to the empress dowager as congratulations.
She thought that she would win the first place if she prepared well, but who expected Song Zhao to prepare more carefully than she did.
It is also a Buddhist scripture copied by hand. Song Zhao's Dharma and Chinese scripture was copied by Master Jingkong himself.
Master Jingkong is the most famous Dharma Master in Kyoto. He ranks by seniority in Buddhism. His seniority, accomplishments and accomplishments are all one order of magnitude higher than the Abbot of Guoen Temple.
Besides, those Buddhist scriptures are not written in ordinary ink. They are all written with superior 'Indian ink' mixed with sandalwood powder. There is a faint fragrance between the lines.
Sandalwood powder is not a rare thing. Its value lies in the 'Tianzhu ink'.
That ink is priceless. A drop of ink is worth more than ten liang of gold. Only a family like the Protector's Mansion can give Song Zhao such generous support.
Compared with Song Zhao's gift, Rong Bin's gift suddenly seemed petty.
She lived with the two of them and presented them when they were worshipped. They are all Buddhist scriptures, which are easier to compare. Even if the empress dowager doesn't say anything, Yuanmu will make a judgement in his eyes.
So Rong Bin thought of a plan and ran to Song Zhao to cry for poverty and pretend to be wronged.
"This is the best thing that the palace can offer to the empress dowager. The empress dowager has always been intimate with the palace, which is something that the whole palace knows. If the palace can't offer the most decent and best gift on the Empress dowager's Qianqiu Festival, it will hurt the face of the empress dowager."
Song Zhao felt sorry for her when she cried, and Yang Pazi comforted her when she wiped her tears. "You don't need to be sad, sister. Well, I'll give you my gift, and I'll give you my gift. To be honest, my father prepared these gifts, and I don't want to make a big splash on the Qianqiu Festival to let others talk. But my sister is different. My sister takes out this gift, and no one will think that my sister is showing off while giving the empress dowager face. It's not worth the fact that the empress dowager loves her sister and kills two birds with one stone. What do you think of it? "
"Well... how can it be? The gift prepared by Duke Huguo for his sister is priceless with all his heart. How can my sister rob her?"
"My sister said that she didn't see her sister?" Song Zhao asked Tang Xin to get the Buddhist scriptures quickly and hand them to Rong Bin. "If you don't want them, you don't really treat me as your sister."
"Well... OK."
Rong Bin accepted the Buddhist scripture with half a push, and then broke through tears to smile, saying that she would definitely love Song Zhao in the future.
But in her heart, she had already laughed at Song Zhao as a fool for many times.
After she left, she ordered someone to bring her hand copied Buddhist scriptures and Buddhist relics to Song Zhao. Song Zhao left the Buddhist relics, threw the Buddhist scriptures into the wastebasket, and wrote again.
"Her handwriting is recognized by the empress dowager. When she gave me the Buddhist scriptures, she didn't tell me clearly, and she also wanted to calculate me here. Let the empress dowager see that the gift I gave was originally from her, and let the empress dowager think that she is ten thousand good, and I am a wicked concubine who has no right to spoil her."
Tang Xin studied ink for Song Zhao and smiled secretly from time to time. "She thought she had planned the master. She was afraid that she would never know the gift in her dream. If she gave it to the empress dowager herself, she would be doomed."
Song Zhaoling smiled, focused on writing and no longer spoke.