Chapter 543 Will

"So that wasn't a dream..."

Yun Chen muttered to himself, his eyes slowly turning red, not knowing whether to be relieved or sad.

She turned a few more pages, and the redder her eyes became, her nose felt more sore, and tears fell on the pages.

She rolled up her sleeves and tried to wipe the pages clean, but they were still wet no matter how hard she wiped. When she looked carefully, she found that it was Huo Gannian in the pages who was crying.

Sure enough, every time her Soul Devouring Pill took effect, the sound of his pipa was not a coincidence.

While she was enduring the poison attack in the inner hall, he played the pipa in the outer hall just across the door, using the sound of the piano to cover up her moans of pain.

The sound of the pipa was full of tears and blood. He played it night after night, until his fingers were worn out and the pipa strings turned blood red.

She couldn't remember how many times she fainted in the bedroom. In the outer hall, Huo Gannian looked out the window at the darkness that seemed to last forever, and suddenly felt a sense of despair that this world would never dawn again.

What if I can't catch that one out of a thousand...

He put down the pipa in his hand and picked up a bright yellow secret decree, his expression determined as if he had been considering it for a long time.

He spread out the secret decree, picked up the pen and solemnly wrote the word "last will", which shocked Lu Liang and Run He beside him. They both fell to their knees:

"Your Majesty! You are about to ascend the throne! Writing this is extremely unlucky!"

"Your Majesty! This is the kingdom you built with so much hardship! You cannot abandon it!"

Huo Gannian ignored him and carefully wrote a whole will, entrusting the power of regent to the Prime Minister Yun Wang who was about to take up his post in Beijing, and handing over the power of political consultation to the joint management of important ministers... Palace affairs, people's livelihood, military affairs...

After all matters were arranged, he carefully closed the secret decree. Seeing that it was stained with a little blood from his fingertips, he seemed reluctant to part with it. He wiped it lovingly and then handed it to Runhe and Lu Liang.

The two cried and were reluctant to take it. Having been by Huo Gannian's side for so many years, they understood his temperament very well and knew that this "last will" represented that Huo Gannian had made up his mind:

If Yunchen died, he would go with him.

Huo Gannian's hand holding the will was suspended in mid-air. He rarely gave orders in a cold voice, but sighed helplessly and stretched his hand forward a few more times. Runhe rushed forward and hugged the will in his arms, and also hugged Huo Gannian's legs, crying loudly:

"Your Majesty, Your Majesty, you will all survive, and we will all be fine..."

Huo Gannian rarely frowned at Run He's inappropriate behavior. He just patted Run He's shoulder in a comforting manner and sighed softly, as if explaining to Run He and Lu Liang, but more like admitting defeat to God:

"This guy is determined to bang his head against the wall and get bloodied before he turns back... If I had known this would happen, why would I have fought for this world... If, I mean if, Chen'er can't get better, I will give the will to Yunwang."

After saying this, he pushed open the door. Runhe and Lu Liang filled the bathroom with hot water as usual.

Huo Gannian half-knelt on one knee beside the couch, carefully washing and dressing Yun Chen, and changing him into the same clothes.

Holding her body that was so thin that it was almost just a bag of bones, he frowned with heartache and sighed again:

"Now I'm not afraid of you leaving, Chen'er. I'll chase you to the ends of the earth, to the ends of the earth, or to hell."

Be it the country or the people, he has tried his best to snatch them back from Yan Shijiu and protect them at all costs.

Now, we might lose Yun Chen for this, so it shouldn’t be too much to let him be “Anian” again.

He hugged Yun Chen, buried his head in her neck, and showed a long-lost smile of relief and satisfaction.

"If there is fate, there is no destiny; if there is destiny, there is no fate. Those four words were never a choice, but cause and effect. Between the throne and Chen'er, I can only choose one. I understand."

Huo Gannian's resolute voice drifted through the pages of the book and faintly reached Yun Chen's ears.

Yun Chen's hand froze on this page, and he was so shocked that he couldn't recover for a long time.

After knowing that she would not live long, she was either happy to avenge him with death, or because she was deceived by Wuchen Gu and was afraid that he would kill innocent people, she tried her best to escape from the palace to preserve his reputation.

Whatever the thought, she subconsciously believed that he would live much longer than her.

She never thought that he would die for her.

You know, what he gave up was not only his young and vigorous life, but also the kingdom and throne that he had obtained through untold hardships.

It would be a lie to say that she wasn't moved. Yun Chen started to sob, but she saw Huo Gannian in the picture on the page holding her. He suddenly asked Lu Liang beside him:

"Where's Zhuang Ji?"

"I'm already waiting for you in your bedroom." Lu Liang replied.

Yun Chen's tears were immediately held back. He stretched his neck to read the pages of the book. He lost all emotion and looked at Huo Gannian nervously as he walked towards the bedroom.

Yun Chen remembered that Zhuang Ji once boasted that one day in the middle of the night, Huo Gannian specifically summoned her to the bedroom. It should be this day.

In the picture, the doors and windows of the emperor's bedroom were all closed, and the Tianwei Army was guarding it tightly.

Huo Gannian and Zhuang Ji were alone in it.

Completely different from her appearance in front of Yun Chen, Huo Gannian, who had just been full of affection and determined to commit suicide together with Yun Chen if he could not survive, was now sitting high on a high seat in the outer hall.

His demeanor returned to his usual cold and majestic demeanor. He lowered his eyes to look at Zhuang Ji, who was crying and questioning him in a sobbing voice:

"You want me to use the Zhuang family's wine jar to help Yun Chen escape from the palace? What makes the emperor think I will agree? Do you think my sincerity is so despised? You let me trample on it, and you still want me to fight for your love?!"

Huo Gannian's tone was cold:

"Zhuang Ji, in consideration of your hard work and contributions over the past decade, I will forgive you this time for overstepping your bounds. If you do it again, I will settle all old and new accounts, and your conviction will be justified."

Huo Gannian's tone was full of undisguised strong threats.

Zhuang Ji was stunned at first, as if she couldn't believe that in this place where only she and Huo Gannian were together, Huo Gannian actually asked her to observe the respectful yet distant etiquette between the monarch and his subjects.

Then she calmed down again. She was a man of insight and had never been one to let her emotions outweigh her rationality.

After eighteen years of dormancy, sometimes even she herself couldn't tell whether it was for love or just a good excuse to pursue power.

Today, everything is completely different.

Although she was a powerful banker and successfully supported Huo Gannian to take the throne, it was just a matter of betting on the right horse.

With Huo Gannian's intelligence and skills, he can get everything he has now with or without her.

If it wasn't for the fact that she wanted to stabilize the hearts of other meritorious generals and avoid getting a bad reputation of "killing the dog after the rabbit is dead" when she just ascended the throne, Huo Gannian would have killed her a hundred times just for letting Yun Chen into the palace without permission.

Asking her to help Yun Chen escape from the palace was not a request, but an order from the emperor.

Thinking this through quickly, Zhuang Ji wiped the tears from her face, not daring to break the rules in the slightest, and knelt respectfully.

"Your Majesty, I know I was wrong. Please forgive me."

Huo Gannian snorted coldly and said:

"If you didn't do a good job in helping Yun Chen escape the palace, and if you revealed your true intentions and let Chen'er find out, or if the news leaked to irrelevant people, even the slightest mistake would lead to the sudden death of your entire Zhuang family, leaving them without descendants."

Zhuang Ji suddenly looked up and looked at Huo Gannian in disbelief.

Facing that statue-like, yet cold and ruthless face, she felt bitterness and pain from the bottom of her heart.

She looked at him with tears in her eyes, hoping to see even the slightest relaxation of his frown.

Seeing Huo Gannian's unwavering coldness from beginning to end, Zhuang Ji finally lost her temper and knelt on the ground, kowtowed deeply:

"Your Highness will obey your command."

After she finished speaking, she did not stand up. After hesitating for a long time, she could not help but ask sadly:

"Your Majesty, I dare not covet the throne. I only seek to serve you, even as an ordinary concubine... Eighteen years have passed. Have you really never been moved by your feelings? Not even a little bit?"

At that time, Huo Gannian had already walked down from the high seat and was passing by the kneeling Zhuang Ji.

He showed no intention of stopping, and his voice was as cold as it had been for the past eighteen years:

"The Hidden Moon Sword has been with me for twenty-seven years. Should I also be tempted and make it my concubine?"

As soon as he finished speaking, Zhuang Ji's face turned pale.

She knelt alone in the cold hall and said nothing more.

Huo Gannian walked farther and farther away, and then went back to the palace where Yun Chen was.

After this scene ended, Yun Chen felt embarrassed for his nervousness and quickly turned a few pages.

The next page shows Yan Lang taking her away from the palace and being led to the elephant tomb by the forbidden Taoist priest.

It was the first time she saw herself from the perspective of the sky, and she felt it was so fresh. She also realized that no matter where the convoy went, Huo Gannian always followed her at a distance with his most capable and secretive Black Sparrow Team.

She flipped through the pages, and the page stopped at the day she was buried in the elephant bone mud.

She saw herself like a thin skeleton, buried deep in the pit, and the white bone mud was turning into ink-black at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Yan Lang and the Taoist priest Bu Quan stood aside, and around them——

Countless Tianwei Army soldiers were guarding the surroundings, and nearly a hundred masked Black Sparrow Guards in black clothes were on standby.

Runhe and Lu Liang rubbed their hands nervously and paced back and forth anxiously.

Closest to the edge of the pit, Huo Gannian's tall and slender figure stood there, like a silent and cold stone statue guarding the tomb.