Huo Cheng first met Nie Yuhuang on the border battlefield, when he had just been promoted to the rank of brigade commander.
The Wumeng army launched a massive invasion, resulting in countless deaths and injuries among the border soldiers.
Huo Cheng led his soldiers in a desperate resistance, his swords dulled, yet he continued to hack and slash mechanically.
He cannot fall down, nor dare he fall down.
Behind him were unarmed elderly, women, and children, including his mother.
The message had already been sent out, and everyone was waiting for reinforcements from the imperial court.
Seven days have passed, but there is still no sign of reinforcements.
Huo Cheng had more than a dozen knife wounds on his body, all of which were bleeding. The weapon in his hand was getting heavier and heavier, and his eyelids were getting heavier and heavier.
As his comrades fell one after another, he knew that it would soon be his turn.
An arrow came flying, and he swung his sword to slash at it.
But my arm was shaking so badly that I only managed to change the direction of the arrow.
He was still shot in the abdomen.
Immediately afterwards, another pain shot through his back, and Huo Cheng spat out a mouthful of blood, collapsing to his knees, his vision blurred and his ears ringing.
A soldier from Wumeng raised his sword and swung it at his head. He saw it, but he was too weak to dodge.
Well, that's fine then. He did his best.
Huo Cheng closed his eyes in despair.
In a daze, he seemed to hear the thunderous sound of horses' hooves and people shouting something around him, but the sound was muffled and inaudible to him.
It was probably an auditory hallucination.
It's been so long, the imperial court has given up on them, and no more reinforcements will come.
The expected pain did not come; instead, someone screamed in agony in front of him.
Huo Cheng struggled to open his eyes and saw the Wumeng soldier who had just tried to kill him now standing with an arrow through his chest, looking behind him in terror.
He turned his head to look blankly.
Then, Huo Cheng witnessed the most unforgettable moment of his life.
Even after two lifetimes, he never forgot a single detail.
As the setting sun cast a blood-red glow upon the battlefield, where blood flowed like rivers, a girl in red rode in on horseback.
Her dark hair was blown about by the wind, her bright features were sharp and intimidating, and her red-tasseled spear kept her enemies from getting close.
Someone raised a knife behind Huo Cheng, but he only had eyes for that red figure.
The girl thrust out her spear, frowning and shouting, "What are you standing there for, you big idiot? Don't you know how to dodge?"
Huo Cheng stared at her, too afraid to move, too weak to move.
Helpless, the girl leaned down from her horse, grabbed his arm, and flung him back, so Huo Cheng sat behind her.
"Hold on tight, this princess will lead you out of here."
Huo Cheng knew her identity from just this one title.
Princess Dayu, Nie Yuhuang.
Nie Yuhuang indeed led him out of the encirclement, but she also captured Huo Cheng's heart, a love that lasted a lifetime.
The eldest princess personally led troops to support the border, taking the lead and striking fear into the hearts of the enemy, quickly restoring morale.
She was not only highly skilled in martial arts, but her military strategy was also on par with any general.
And so, Nie Yuhuang led her army to recapture the lost city and drive the bandits out.
In the final battle, she was struck by three swords and four arrows, but she fought desperately and beheaded the Khan of Wumeng.
Huo Cheng would never forget how bright the princess's eyes were when she held up the enemy's head high, her face stained with blood.
It was brighter than the starry sky at the border.
After that, Nie Yuhuang closed her eyes and fell off the horse, but was caught by Huo Cheng, who had been watching her back.
After she left, Huo Cheng's heart flew to the capital with her.
Only his mother could see through his thoughts.
“Ah Cheng, your mother knows you like her, but a princess is not someone we can aspire to.”
Huo Cheng remained silent.
Mother was right; he was just a minor border garrison general, appointed by her personally.
She is worlds apart from the most esteemed eldest princess of Dayu.
But what if?
If he were to become a great general or marshal in the future, would it be possible to harbor some ambitions?
Not long after, her father, the emperor, arranged a marriage for her with a handsome and refined scholar who had achieved the highest rank in the imperial examinations.
It is said that the prince consort was deeply in love with her and resolutely gave up his promising future in order to marry her.
Everyone is saying that the eldest princess is lucky to have found a husband who loves her dearly.
Only Huo Cheng felt that the man was the luckiest and most fortunate person in the world.
The princess he kept in his heart deserved the best man in the world.
Huo Cheng suppressed his deepest feelings of love, wishing her only peace, joy, and a house full of children and grandchildren.
But heaven did not hear his prayers.
After the old emperor's death, she suffered a miscarriage due to poisoning, became crippled in both legs, and still had to shoulder the burden of the Great Yu empire for that useless new emperor.
She was only a nineteen-year-old girl. Huo Cheng couldn't imagine how much she suffered and how tired she was, or whether she was afraid.
Huo Cheng used his long-saved leave to secretly visit her in the capital.
She was dressed in elaborate palace attire, sitting in a wheelchair. Her appearance remained unchanged, but her bright eyes were filled with weariness.
Afterwards, she served as regent for seven years, and the name of the Rakshasa Princess spread throughout Dayu.
Everyone looked at her with fear, but Huo Cheng only felt heartache.
But there was nothing he could do but desperately guard the border for her.
The new Khan of Wumeng once again led his troops to attack the border, with more troops and a fiercer offensive than the old Khan had.
Huo Cheng gritted his teeth and held on, believing that the princess would send reinforcements; the soldiers and civilians on the border all trusted her.
But instead of reinforcements, they received news that Princess Zhenguo had been imprisoned for treason.
They waited in vain for reinforcements, and finally Wu Meng broke through their defenses, thus opening the gates of Dayu.
By the time Huo Cheng crawled out of the pile of corpses, several border cities had already been massacred, and he couldn't even find his mother's body.
War raged across Dayu, with cities falling every day and tens of thousands of people being massacred.
Despite his severe injuries and weakened state, Huo Cheng traversed the flames of war and made his way to the imperial city.
Upon arriving in the capital, they heard that the Emperor of Dayu had knelt and surrendered, and that the imperial son-in-law, Xu Shi, was actually a prince of Wumeng.
Da Yu is completely finished.
Huo Cheng didn't care about anything else; he only wanted to rescue Nie Yuhuang.
Just then, the guards from the princess's residence also needed to rescue people, so Huo Cheng joined them and took advantage of the chaos to break into the imperial prison.
When Huo Cheng saw the white-haired woman with her collarbone pierced and her body covered in wounds, his heart bled.
He felt it was a desecration to treat her like this, a treasure he couldn't even bear to think about.
But Nie Yuhuang is Nie Yuhuang; she would rather die than live in dishonor.
Years had passed, and due to some mental confusion, Nie Yuhuang didn't recognize Huo Cheng.
She smiled at Huo Cheng and said, "Could you please go to the princess's residence and fetch something for me?"
Huo Cheng went there.
He didn't know it was poison, a deadly poison that burned life to gain power.
His beloved woman took the poison he had personally obtained, briefly regained her strength, and killed her enemy.
In the end, she was pierced by a thousand arrows and died in front of him.
With the help of the people of Dayu, Huo Cheng took away Nie Yuhuang's body.
Despite being wounded by more than a dozen arrows, he carried Nie Yuhuang's body for a long time before finally burying her at the foot of a scenic mountain outside the imperial city.
Huo Cheng leaned against her grave and talked to her for a long time.
After he bled out, he closed his eyes with a smile.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself back in the past, with his mother's familiar face right in front of him.
After figuring out the timeline, Huo Cheng was overjoyed and immediately set off for the capital.
He wanted to tell her everything and help her kill Xu Shize and Nie Ming, so that she would never repeat the same mistake.
"Mother, I'm going to the capital. I have something important to tell the Princess."
Unexpectedly, his mother slapped him on the back of the head.
"You've had a fever for three days, have you gone mad from the fever? What princess, she's Her Majesty the Empress."
Huo Cheng looked completely bewildered.
After learning everything from his mother, Huo Cheng was overjoyed; it turned out she had returned.
Before Huo Cheng could go to the capital to see her, she led her army to the border herself.
The empress declared that she would destroy Wumeng.
Huo Cheng went to the battlefield with the Empress, protecting her back, although in the end he was always the one protected by the Empress.
Huo Cheng quickly realized that the person was not her.
Although his princess was also very capable, the empress was even more capable, inhumanly so.
But he still only loved his princess.
Perhaps his gaze betrayed everything, for after the destruction of Wumeng, the Empress told him some things.
It also allowed him to "see" the person he wanted to see.
In the void, Nie Yuhuang sat on the sofa, surrounded by Ata and Xiao Yin, who told her embarrassing stories about Fugui.
When asked how stingy Fu Gui used to be, Nie Yuhuang laughed.
As she was laughing, she suddenly seemed to sense something, looked in a certain direction, but saw nothing.
On the other side, separated by countless dimensions and by life and death, Huo Cheng met a pair of smiling eyes.
Those eyes looked so familiar, just as bright as the day he first met her.
With just one glance, Huo Cheng knew that it was his princess.
After the Empress returned to the capital, Huo Cheng remained on the border, staying at the place where they had met.
The sunset was magnificent, just like it was back then.
Huo Cheng looked up at the sky and, for the first time, defied the norm by calling out the name he had kept in his heart for two lifetimes.
"Yu Huang, in your next life, you will surely be safe and happy, without any more hardships."
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