Every day in the Cold Palace, Jiang Zhiyi dreamed of that scene at the city gate, dreamed of Yuan Ce looking up at her from beneath the city wall, and after a long gaze, dismounting and throwing away his spear.

Thus, for years afterward, every day felt like the day he died.

Like walking barefoot through a hell of knife mountains and sword trees, enduring the world’s most cruel punishment.

It was her fault for not discovering earlier that he wasn’t Shen Yuance.

It was her fault for being tripped up by a past that didn’t belong to him, maintaining her dignity and saving face, unwilling to admit to herself that feeling in her heart.

It was her seemingly righteous decision that, through a twist of fate, had pushed the man she loved toward an end where his heart was pierced by countless arrows.

She would never forgive herself.

In that sunless Cold Palace, Jing Zhe cared for Jiang Zhiyi day after day.

Later, Jing Zhe learned that during those days when they had lost track of time, Northern Jie had taken advantage of Great Yu’s internal strife to invade Hexi. The entire Hexi region had fallen, and Great Yu had teetered on the brink of collapse, nearly facing destruction. The Fourth Prince had led troops to battle, which was why he couldn’t rescue the Princess immediately.

Fortunately, the Fourth Prince had sent supplies for the winter, telling the Princess to wait a little longer.

By the following spring, the Fourth Prince ascended to the throne and finally opened the palace doors.

Spring light flooded into the long-abandoned palace chamber, illuminating the entire prison. She gratefully woke the Princess, telling her: “Your Highness, His Majesty has come.”

The Princess opened her eyes groggily and asked: “Why has His Majesty come in the middle of the night?”

Looking at the bright spring light filling the room, her heart suddenly sank like a stone.

The Princess’s eyes had deteriorated day by day in the dark palace, and by that day, she could no longer see light at all.

That day, there was not the slightest joy of ascending the throne on His Majesty’s face; he only repeatedly said he was sorry, that he had come too late.

The Princess, however, seemed not to care at all, smiling and shaking her head: “Your Majesty need not blame yourself. Whether these eyes can see or not doesn’t matter. The person I want to see, I can only see with my eyes closed.”

His Majesty said that if he had known Young General Shen would make such a choice, perhaps he could have found a solution that would have worked for both Young General Shen and the Princess—and for Great Yu as well.

Indeed, had it been so, Young General Shen wouldn’t have died, the Princess wouldn’t have become like this, and Great Yu wouldn’t have suffered such devastation, with its mountains and rivers broken, requiring who knows how many years to restore its prosperity.

But alas, some people are born without light, living lives full of thorns. Perhaps until truly facing the moment of choice, even Young General Shen himself didn’t know he would choose this way. Who could have known in advance?

His Majesty released the Princess from the palace. After living in the Cold Palace for most of a year, she took nothing with her when she left, except for the sleeve arrow Young General Shen had made for her—a memento that Princess Baojia had secretly sent to her after Young General Shen’s death.

That day outside the palace gates, she and the Princess unexpectedly met a young woman, the daughter of Minister Pei, named Pei Xueqing.

Miss Pei knelt before the palace gates, weeping inconsolably as she apologized to the Princess.

It turned out that the character “Yi” on the jade pendant wasn’t a complete character but only half of the character “Pei.” The person secretly engaged to Young Master Shen had been Miss Pei.

The young Master Shen of those days wasn’t truly the frivolous troublemaker he appeared to be; he had only pretended to be mediocre to avoid excessive suspicion from political enemies and the Emperor toward the Shen family.

Young Master Shen had said to Miss Pei on the eve of his departure for war: “If in the future we meet again and you find I don’t recognize you, then consider that we never knew each other. Don’t look for me again, and don’t wait for me.”

When Young General Shen returned triumphantly from Hexi in his brother’s identity, naturally, he didn’t recognize Miss Pei.

Miss Pei knew her beloved had great ambitions. Seeing him like this, she thought he had no time for romance for the moment, so as he had instructed, she didn’t seek him out again. She only silently waited for him, waited for him to complete what he wanted to do.

After hearing the news of Young General Shen raising an army, Miss Pei was anxious day and night, and soon fell ill. In her sickness, she didn’t know that the Princess had been summoned to the palace to become a hostage in her place.

Of course, even if Miss Pei had known and spoken up, the outcome likely wouldn’t have changed.

No one dislikes having more bargaining chips. Even if Miss Pei had claimed the jade pendant, the Emperor wouldn’t have believed mere words and released the Princess as a possibility. In the end, it would have only changed from one hostage to two, with both the Princess and Miss Pei brought to the city wall.

Like the Princess, Miss Pei only learned the whole truth from Military Doctor Li after Young General Shen’s death, by which time everything was too late to remedy.

At the palace gates, the Princess, with her support, slowly walked forward and raised Miss Pei from her knees, returning to her the “Yi” pendant that had been in her possession.

The Princess held Miss Pei’s hand, intending to comfort her, to tell her it wasn’t her fault, but as soon as she opened her mouth, they both broke down in tears together.

In this twist of fate, no one had met a good end.

The Princess and Young General Shen had never revealed their feelings to each other before being separated forever.

What Miss Pei thought was a separation in life was already a separation by death from Young Master Shen.

Military Doctor Li, considering himself a traitor, felt he no longer had the right to renew his relationship with Princess Baojia and chose to leave, never to see Princess Baojia again.

The dead had died in a state of utter ruin, and the living lived on in the same state.

That day, she accompanied the Princess as she once again climbed the city wall of Chang’an.

The Princess stood atop the wall, clutching Young General Shen’s sleeve arrow, gazing into the distance from the railings with her nearly blind eyes, looking at the place below where Young General Shen had once stood, letting the long wind sweep her robes and her hair, which had somehow become streaked with white.

For a moment, Jing Zhe felt as if the Princess were a butterfly about to spread its wings and fly away.

When the Princess moved her feet, her hands trembled convulsively with tension.

But the Princess only took one step forward and didn’t leap down as she had feared.

The Princess seemed to sense her tension and asked with a smile: “Did you think I was going to jump from here?”

“My life was bought with his life; how could I throw it away so casually?”

“Jing Zhe, a sinner, has no right to escape. A sinner… should live long and endure.”

A sinner should live long and endure, so the new Emperor gave the Princess freedom, but the Princess imprisoned her guilty self in the Taiqing Temple outside Chang’an, never to return to the world.

The Princess said that it was there that the Celestial Master Jianwei had prophesied Young General Shen’s life, and she wanted to go there to pray for a different rebirth for him.

After moving into the Taiqing Temple, the Princess knelt every day before the statues of the Three Pure Ones, praying with her broken body.

During their secluded days, they heard of an interesting matter.

It was said that after the new Emperor ascended the throne, those old affairs gradually became less taboo. The legendary love between the Hexi War God and the Princess of Yongying was written into romantic novels that circulated widely.

Minister Zhou, as a witness to this legendary love, seemed to have become the answerer to many mysteries—

The General was a frivolous young man? How could he have won the Princess’s favor, and how could he have later fought so many legendary battles?

This frivolousness was, of course, a pretense.

But why was it rumored that the General and the Princess were bitter enemies?

Since it was a secret relationship that no one knew about, their outward animosity was naturally to keep others from suspecting.

Why keep others from suspecting?

The Marquis of Yong’en viewed the Princess as his daughter and naturally wouldn’t approve of a frivolous young master as his niece’s husband. And with the Marquis’s wife being such a malicious person, keeping their relationship secret was the only way to last.

Thus, people who didn’t know the truth thought Shen Yuance and Yuan Ce were the same person, imagining a story of young love, and embellishing this tale with vivid details.

When she heard of this, the Princess’s withered face showed rare curiosity, asking her to buy the novel and read it to her.

Listening to those beautiful stories, the Princess showed for the first time since Young General Shen’s departure the smile that a young woman of her age should have.

Someone once asked the Princess if the story was true. The Princess shook her head, saying it was just people’s imagination.

But wasn’t it also the Princess’s wishful thinking?

From that day on, the Princess wanted to hear her read the novel every day, asking her to read one chapter daily, and after finishing, to start over again. But the Princess only listened to the happy first volume, not the sad second volume.

Day after day, year after year, almost everyone in the Taiqing Temple could recite this novel backwards. Occasionally, when she read a line wrong, someone nearby would correct her.

The Princess, needless to say, sometimes dozed off while listening. Upon waking, momentarily confused, she would speak of things from the novel, asking if Brother A-Ce had come.

Looking at the Princess’s expectant face, she didn’t know how to tell her that Brother A-Ce no longer existed in this world.

But she didn’t need to say it. After a moment of confusion, the Princess would always come to her senses, then say nothing, lean on her cane for the blind, and continue to pray before the statues of the Three Pure Ones.

As days and nights turned and seasons changed, the Princess lived in the Taiqing Temple for seven years.

In the deep winter of the seventh year of Yongning, the Celestial Master Jianwei reached the end of his life at the Taiqing Temple.

The Princess had hated the Celestial Master for seven years, yet never dared to reveal the Shen family’s secret. Although the Shen family was gone, there were still people in the Yuance Army who had kept that secret, and the Princess could not implicate them.

Now that the Celestial Master was dying, and a dying person would no longer reveal secrets, the Princess could finally let him know how ridiculous and foolish his prophecy had been.

That day, the Princess sat by the Celestial Master’s bedside for half a day, telling him everything.

The Celestial Master, on his deathbed, regretted what he had done and died without closing his eyes.

Having completed her final task, the Princess herself, like a withered flower, irrevocably wilted and faded away that winter.

At twenty-five years of age, the Princess’s black hair was half white, her body like dry wood, already decayed.

The Princess lay on her sickbed for a whole month, with hardly any time left even to stay awake and listen to the novel.

Until one day, the Princess woke up early with clear consciousness, having the strength to get out of bed, saying she wanted to go once more before the statues of the Three Pure Ones.

She knew this was truly the end. The Princess had endured for seven years; it was time for her to rest.

This was for the best. The Princess would no longer have to bear the heavy shackles, walking alone in this world without light.

She accompanied the Princess to the temple hall. The Princess knelt on the prayer mat, leaning against her, listening as she read for the last time the story of Yiyi and Brother A-Ce.

The Princess smiled as she listened to the end, saying that if there was a next life, she wanted to be the Yiyi from the novel, pure-hearted and sincere, no longer caring about face or dignity, just wholeheartedly loving him.

If there were a next life, she would recognize him earlier, choose him with determination earlier.

“The Princess only speaks of the next life, but what about this life? Does the Princess have any other wishes?” she asked, holding back tears.

“This life,” Jiang Zhiyi leaned against Jing Zhe and said softly, “I wish, I wish I could see him once more.”

The deities above seemed to hear her wish.

Jiang Zhiyi slowly closed her eyes, and in the darkness, a light appeared that had been absent for seven years.

She saw herself in a teahouse on the streets of Chang’an, sitting in an elegant room on the third floor, listening to the bustling sounds outside the window.

Amid the clamor, she suddenly heard thundering hoofbeats, followed by an “Ah!” of surprise mixed with a miserable “Meow!”

She turned her head in shock, seeing her pet raccoon fall out of the window, and hurriedly stood up to look down.

Below the teahouse, people lined the streets as black-armored cavalry cleared the way. The golden fat cat fell from high above, splayed out in the wind with its fur standing on end, about to crash into a meat patty.

Suddenly, a silver flash. A young man on horseback pulled out a spear from a nearby soldier, flicked his wrist, and the spear swept through the air in an arc, tilting upward.

In the brilliant morning sun, all the golden light seemed to concentrate on the single point of the spear tip.

The cat was caught on the spear shaft, its belly sliding down the shaft to the end, its four paws frantically clinging to the young man’s hand.

In a rain of flower petals, the young man looked up at her.

A captivating breeze blew past. She blinked gently, clearly seeing the young man’s face, and in an instant, her eyes filled with warm tears.

【End of Previous Life】