Chapter 117 [VIP]
rain--
It's raining in Weidu.
Xue Yi looked at the sky outside. Cold air seeped in through the cracks in the window, carrying with it the fragrance of plum blossoms. People always feel more awake when they are exposed to the cold wind.
The drowsiness was blown away.
He picked up the big-headed doll, held it up, and examined it closely. He had never liked these things before. Now… he wondered how Changyou was doing.
He touched it with his nose and could faintly smell a fragrance, the scent of Lu Xuejin.
Raindrops pattered down, slowly dripping from the eaves, blurring the vermilion walls. The rain adorned the entire sky with a misty haze, faintly reflecting the distant Mount Buwen.
The deep brown gemstones shone brightly, so beautiful and dazzling, but the Fangze Palace was too quiet, and all tranquility became a shadow within it.
His heart was dampened by the rain.
He peered intently into the rain, but could only make out blurry outlines.
rustle--
rustling sound—
The soil within the palace walls seemed to be flowing, the tiles and walls eroding each other. He saw a kind of microcosm, his pupils reflecting the entire palace, and suddenly remembered Song Zhao's words.
Your Majesty, did you hear that?
The sound of the palace collapsing came from a distant place.
People often only realize the warnings of those beside them, or even prophecies of absurd nature, after a long time. He belatedly learned the secret Song Zhao wanted to tell him, and his mind fell silent amidst the chaotic rain.
He took a pen and paper and wrote a letter in the pouring winter rain.
He wondered if it was the noise of the rain or the long time he had been standing by the window. He watched for as long as the rain continued, hoping that when it stopped, Changyou would return.
Until he heard the sound of a hammer chiseling through the wall again.
"Bang--"
"Bang--"
"Buzz—"
He saw pure white goats in the snow, their fur soft and white, their horizontal pupils staring at him, their black irises a bottomless abyss. He heard the goats bleating.
"This... Doctor Qiu, are you truly confident in the surgery? What if something goes wrong with His Majesty later... what should we do?"
"His health is now at its limit... If Lord Lu hadn't contacted me, you might have had to hold a funeral for His Majesty soon! No matter how you look at it, this would be a good thing for His Majesty."
“Alas! Physician Qiu, you are not in the palace and therefore unaware of the truth. His Majesty’s heart ailment… is not incurable. This heart ailment requires wearing down Lord Lu. The more His Majesty clings to Lord Lu as a lifeline, the more confused and muddled his mind becomes. We watch from the sidelines, but we are powerless to help… In the end, we can only obey his orders.”
“Even though things have come to this point…we are still His Majesty’s physicians. We watch His Majesty struggle against this body every day. It would be a lie to say we have no feelings for him! We are just worried…His Majesty, His Majesty…perhaps he does not want to live like this.”
"There's no need to overthink it... Now that the decision has been made, we just need to wait for time to prove it. Rather than suffering through another three to five years, it's better to take a bold gamble... All the heartaches that are hard to heal will eventually dissipate with the passage of time."
“He is the ruler of the people, and this body does not belong to him alone. His heart does not belong to him alone either, and cannot be given to whomever he wants... If he were to so easily hand over his heart to others to trample on, it would be better to destroy this stubborn mortal heart.”
A buzzing sound filled his ears, and the goat's pupils reflected his body. His head was being smashed by the hammer, and he watched as his eyeballs swelled and bled.
Hot, fresh blood was flowing everywhere.
His head was pierced, and his body was also pierced, falling to pieces amidst the sound of hammer blows.
...He fell ill.
In his field of vision, he saw the figure of a guard rushing in after hearing the commotion.
He saw Imperial Physician Jia and Imperial Physician Gu, and he heard Imperial Physician Jia talking to the guards... The people in front of him appeared as double images, and he then fainted.
"Dr. Qiu... what exactly happened?"
"...Lord Lu is back."
"...How is my brother now?"
He heard Lu Xuejin's voice and slowly opened his eyes. He saw Lu Xuejin and a group of imperial physicians surrounding him.
"This... Lord Lu, Physician Qiu said it might be a side effect of the skull resection surgery. We still need to consider it... We can only make a decision after His Majesty wakes up and asks about the situation."
He noticed Lu Xuejin's expression.
The imperial physician's casual words fell on the young man's ears, causing his expression to freeze. His head no longer hurt, but seeing Lu Xuejin's expression... it was the first time he had ever seen Lu Xuejin so distraught.
...Changyou was in pain because of him.
He sensed the emotion in it, and his heart suddenly began to beat.
He watched as Lu Xuejin's expression turned pale, her deep brown eyes filled with a certain emotion that enveloped him, making him feel warmth amidst the stinging pain.
A morbid desire sprouted in his heart.
The stronger his feelings for him became, the more pleasure he derived from it.
rain--
Drip, drip, drip—
"This... Lord Lu, Physician Qiu said it might be a side effect of the skull resection surgery. We still need to consider it... We can only make a decision after His Majesty wakes up and asks about the situation."
Lu Xuejin couldn't see his own expression; he only heard the sound of something falling to the ground, shattering into pieces.
He remained silent for a long time, looking at Xue Yi who had fallen unconscious beside the bed. The voices of Imperial Physician Jia and Imperial Physician Gu beside him became indistinct, and their sounds lingered in his ears.
"……grown ups?"
"...Lord Lu?"
His fingers curled uncontrollably, and as he looked down, he saw blood dripping from his hands—the blood of the person on the bed. It was as if he held an invisible knife in his hand, and with it he slashed Xue Yi's skin, shattered Xue Yi's soul, and divided Xue Yi's body into several pieces.
The blood flowing in my hands... is my brother's blood.
He heard his own voice and appearance.
"...I understand. Just tell me when your brother wakes up."
He couldn't remember the journey back from the capital.
If Your Highness does not wish to see him... then where can he go?
His home was wherever his brother was... but now...
He took a step forward, and the blood flowing from the person on the bed clung to him, like broken lotus root threads connecting his palm and dragging him toward the hospital bed.
He couldn't hear what the people around him were saying. As he walked along the long corridor of Fangze Palace, he saw dense dark clouds covering the entire Wei Palace.
With a loud "boom," a bolt of lightning cleaved the sky.
He saw his own face amidst the thunder; his complexion was bloodless, and all the life force in his body had been drained away. His red robes were heavy with an aura of death. All the living and the dead gathered around him, and he heard the sobbing and weeping sounds.
With a "plop," a raindrop landed on the side of his face, and he dragged himself back into the hall.
His head was spinning, and the sound of the rain outside seemed to drown him. He could see the rain outside when he looked up. The string of pearls fell and sank into a dark cloud.
In a daze, he fell into a dream, in which he saw many figures. From his father and mother, to Emperor Liang and Consort Li, from the eldest princess and the second prince, to his elder brother and the prince... those figures appeared repeatedly, permeating his entire life.
"Changyou—"
"Changyou—"
"Changyou—"
Murong Qing's face flashed through his memory.
Murong Qing appeared before him, her phoenix eyes lowered as she looked at him. The clouds behind them drifted continuously, the wind rustled through the trees, and thousands of leaves swayed in the breeze.
“…Changyou?” Murong Qing called his name softly.
As they emerged from the palace, they seemed to hear the cries of the palace servants. Every day, people wept, every day tears were shed, and every day people died within this palace.
He looked in the direction from which the commotion was coming, and stopped because of the sound of weeping.
"...Are you sad?" Murong Qing asked him.
Was he sad? He couldn't help but glance at the woman beside him. This was the future crown prince, whose eyes were always incredibly calm, seemingly detached, yet containing him and not containing him.
Sadness... this emotion rarely appears in him, almost never.
What day was it...? He was walking on the palace path with the eldest princess.
They seemed to have just come out of the Liang Emperor's palace. What happened that day?
Murong Qing: "Although it's superfluous for me to say this... just think of it as a battle of winners and losers. We are all in this battle, and who wins and who loses is all up to fate. It's just that the outcome has been decided, and we are not sad yet, so you... you don't need to worry about us."
He remembered that at this time, Emperor Liang suspected his elder brother of plotting a rebellion.
He said to Murong Qing, "But I don't want to see His Highness die... and what about my teacher and brother? What would His Highness do in that situation?"
“If I were you… I am not Changyou. Hearing the mournful cries of the palace servants, Changyou still stopped, how could I do the same… But there is one thing I am certain of. Whether it is me, my father, or Xue Yi… although there will inevitably be conflicts between us, we are all mortals. How could we not feel Changyou’s fervent heart?”
"No matter what Changyou chooses, I will not blame him. Changyou has done enough... more than enough. I believe Father thinks so too. Even if you were in such a hurry that you didn't ask about the grieving palace servants you passed by, you can be forgiven."
"You are only twenty years old... How can the boundless suffering of my Great Liang fall on your shoulders alone?"
That's right.
Has he really done enough?
When he returned home and opened the door, he was transported back to an earlier time, to his youth.
A maid's mournful cry came from the courtyard, and he saw his mother's body.
I didn't feel sad.
He already knew; with his ability to read people's minds, he knew his mother longed for death.
The mother longed for a beautiful death, so she took a poison pill and died in the long, silent night. On the night she died, the Ruiyun Palace outside was in full bloom, and her body became fertilizer among the flowers, forever adorning the Prime Minister's residence.
Memories scattered and then gathered together, until one day.
He was reading by the window when a sudden rainstorm startled the pear blossoms in his yard. He looked up and saw the blossoms scattered all over the ground. In the distance, his father, without an umbrella, gazed at him through the window, lost in thought.
“Father,” he called out.
He called for help, and people walked towards him, their bodies covered in mud and water.
"Did Father go out?" he asked.
"I just returned from His Majesty's... For some reason, I thought of your mother today," his father said to him. "What books have you been reading lately?"
“The one I bought last time,” he said, putting down his book as he watched the rain outside getting heavier. “I’m going to take the umbrella to my brother.”
My father's face in my memory is blurred, a dark, lifeless mass, exuding a desolate, deathly aura, like a thin paper figure under the eaves.
"Changyou," his father seemed to call out to him.
He turned his head, and the other person was still standing there. They didn't say anything, just stared at him, soaked to the bone, rainwater dripping from the side of their clothes and wetting the bookshelf beside them.
What did his father want to say to him at that time?
He had no idea.
Until a great fire broke out in the Prime Minister's residence, and the soldiers sent by Emperor Liang surrounded the residence, making it impossible to get through. On his way home, he took a dark and bottomless path. The firelight illuminated the Prime Minister's residence brightly, which only made the boundless and dim moonlight stand out even more.
He never saw his brother; his body was scorched by the intense fire, and his very bones and blood were burned away.
"Creak—"
"Creak—"
"Creak—"
Something is making a constant sound.
He pushed through the chaotic crowd, looked up, and saw his father's feet in the firelight.
His father hanged himself in front of the beam, with the plaque above reading "Blue Sky and Bright Moon," using his death to prove his loyalty.
……fire.
……fire.
……fire.
A sudden emotion welled up inside him.
He had lived a life of clarity and understanding, never controlled by his emotions, but now, as his memories faded, he was falling into a state of confusion. He saw his mother's and father's corpses clearly.
He remembered everything clearly, from the lividity caused by poison to his mother's beautiful sleeping face, his father's protruding tongue when he was hanged, and his swaying feet.
Why can't this boundless suffering—whether it be the father's grief or the mother's sorrow—fall upon him?
His mother's image appeared in his memory.
His beautiful mother... the beautiful Lady Heluo.
His mother inherited his maternal grandmother's beauty, who was said to be a stunning beauty in the capital of Wei when she was young. He saw his maternal grandmother's mother, his maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother, his maternal grandmother's maternal grandmother... He saw himself; his appearance was inherited from part of his mother's family, and his bloodline came from his mother's family.
The ailment that his mother had suffered from for generations... was now manifesting in him.
—He yearned for some kind of destruction, to set the world ablaze, to burn down his life as it had burned down the Prime Minister's mansion.
He saw his mothers appear before him, reaching out their hands to him, and he fell into their warm embrace.
He was enveloped in his mother's arms and fell asleep to the lullaby.
All the pain faded away, and all the memories faded away.
He fell asleep peacefully.
He watched himself transform into a boy, into an infant, into a tiny, undifferentiated heart that beat in his mother's womb and returned to her amniotic fluid.
He has not yet been born—
He distanced himself from all the pre-written endings. Whether it was Emperor Liang, the eldest princess, his father and mother, or his brother and prince... all the endings he had altered would return to their original places.
In the pouring rain, he saw his mother's figure.
His mother opened her arms to him, her face radiating tenderness with a smile.
“…Come here, Changyou, come to your mother.”
He...he's going to his mother...to the place where his mother is, a place where there is no more pain.
A note from the author:
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com