In the spring of the fifteenth year of Tianyou, Liu Ying was assigned to the Eastern Palace by the Empress’s command to attend to the Crown Prince’s daily needs.

The Crown Prince’s bedchamber was permeated with the lingering scent of medicine, though not bitter, mild and gentle like the young man reading scrolls behind his desk, wearing loose robes.

Liu Ying knelt at the threshold and paid her respects. She heard the young man’s voice, still changing and slightly hoarse, but as gentle as an April breeze.

“Rise. There aren’t so many formalities here.”

The young boy coughed lightly, set down his scroll and looked up, revealing a face of beauty that transcended gender. Smiling, he asked, “I remember, your name is ‘Liu Ying,’ correct?”

A beautiful, frail young man with such an extreme sense of fragility that Liu Ying was momentarily dazed.

Coming back to her senses, she felt deeply ashamed of her brief lapse in etiquette. She quickly lowered her head even further and replied with strict formality: “Yes. This servant’s humble name is not worthy to defile Your Highness’s sacred ears.”

Zhao Yǎn held his fist against his lips and laughed softly. “You don’t look more than two years older than me. Why do you speak so stiffly?”

Liu Ying’s ears turned red, and her fingers on the floor tiles curled anxiously, unsure if she had said something to displease her master.

“Your name is beautiful,” Zhao Yǎn continued.

…

…

At that time, Liu Ying didn’t understand what was so beautiful about her name.

Liu Yue, Liu Yun… All the senior palace maids who served the Empress had elegant, magnificent names. Only she was true to her name—like the short-lived firefly, humble and small, unremarkable.

And so, Liu Ying became the Crown Prince’s maid.

This young man had a weakness from birth; he couldn’t be exposed to wind or cold. The spring flowers were so beautiful that Liu Ying had allowed the Crown Prince to gaze at them from the corridor for just a few moments longer. Who would have thought that by nightfall, he would develop a high fever, coughing until his face turned red?

Physicians from the Imperial Medical Bureau came and went. Looking at the Empress’s anxious expression, Liu Ying was filled with such guilt that she wished to die to atone for her mistake, kneeling for hours at the steps.

After that, she served His Highness with doubled caution, never daring to be the least bit negligent.

When she accidentally touched the Crown Prince’s wrist while helping him change clothes, or when she inadvertently knocked over a jade brush on his desk while attending to his ink, she would habitually prostrate herself and beg for forgiveness: “This servant acknowledges her error. Please punish this servant, Your Highness.”

The Crown Prince seemed quite helpless about this.

His Highness had told her many times not to be so nervous, but she just couldn’t change. Gradually, the Crown Prince stopped insisting.

One day in early summer, when fine rain was falling steadily.

Liu Ying entered the hall carrying freshly brewed medicine and saw the Crown Prince motionless, slumped over his desk with pieces of calligraphy paper scattered all over the floor.

She was so frightened she nearly lost her soul. Setting the medicine down on the desk, she hurriedly knelt to support the Crown Prince, calling out anxiously: “Your Highness! Your Highness, what’s wrong?”

Her trembling fingers were about to check for breath when the young man suddenly opened his ink-black eyes and smiled at her.

Liu Ying froze, the anxiety and concern fixed on her face.

“Sorry, I scared you.”

The Crown Prince coughed as he smiled, though without malice, with the kind of mischief seen in children’s eyes.

“I’m relieved, Your Highness is alright.”

Liu Ying simply picked up the scattered paper from the ground and let out a long sigh.

After that, the Crown Prince seemed to have found a new amusement.

Occasionally when Liu Ying entered with medicine, she would be startled to find the young man lying motionless on the carpet, beside the bed, or at his desk with his eyes tightly closed. When he saw her panicking, he would open his eyes with a smile and say, “Sorry, I scared you again.”

After this happened several times, Liu Ying could calmly set down the medicine bowl, kneel properly, and respectfully address the motionless young man before her: “Your Highness, it’s time for your medicine.”

Each time, the Crown Prince would open his eyes and sigh with disappointment: “It seems this trick doesn’t work anymore.”

“Why does Your Highness always tease this servant?”

Liu Ying couldn’t help but curl her lips slightly upward. After all, there’s a limit to how many times one can be frightened.

“If not for this, how else could I get you to let go of your tension?”

The Crown Prince had noticed the curve of her lips, and his expression softened, as if relieved of a burden. “You should smile more, Sister Liu Ying.”

Liu Ying started, suddenly realizing that her state of mind had indeed become calmer. She was no longer like a frightened bird with a taut bowstring when she first arrived.

The Crown Prince had used this childish method to pull her out of the quagmire of self-blame and self-harm, teaching her to face everything calmly.

“Sister Liu Ying, if one day I truly don’t wake up, I hope you can send me off as calmly as you are now.”

The Crown Prince said gently as he drank the bitter medicine.

Liu Ying’s heart ached, and she hurriedly leaned forward anxiously: “Please do not speak such words, Your Highness! Your Highness is still young—surely you will live a hundred years, a thousand years, a long and prosperous life!”

The Crown Prince only looked at the dregs at the bottom of his medicine bowl, smiling without a word.

That New Year’s Eve, something happened that would alter the Eastern Palace’s circumstances.

In recent years, the Emperor had increasingly favored the Shen Guang religion and relied heavily on Prince Su, Wenren Lin, almost completely abandoning the lofty ambitions of his youth. New Year’s Eve coincided with the Emperor’s birthday. The Crown Prince entered the palace for the banquet and said something that displeased the Emperor, resulting in his confinement to the Eastern Palace for a month of reflection.

That night, the Crown Prince’s chamber-

The silhouette of a frail figure sitting in his robes was projected onto the window panels. The young man hunched over with his fist pressed against his lips, coughing terribly.

Liu Ying entered with medicine and saw him hunched over his desk with his fist pressed down, his thin back rising and falling rapidly with his labored breathing, giving one the illusion that at any moment he might sprout wings and disperse on the wind.

“Liu Ying, I seem to be… trapped in my own body,” the Crown Prince sighed, though with a smile, but Liu Ying could feel the helplessness that hung about him like mist.

This frail, broken body could not contain the boy’s deep and surging soul.

After that, the Crown Prince seemed to change somewhat.

He remained gentle and humble, but became increasingly diligent in his studies. Even when he was too ill to leave his bed, he never put down his books, reading by lamplight late into the night, like a sapling desperate to grow, eagerly absorbing the nourishing rain of the sages’ teachings.

In the winter of the sixteenth year of Tianyou, the Crown Prince rescued a man from death row.

He was a fierce-looking man, like a wolf or jackal, with a terrifying scar running from his left eyebrow across his nose bridge. Tattoos marking him as a violent criminal covered his forehead and the back of his neck. He stood in the courtyard holding a white plum branch, his ill-fitting prisoner’s clothes under his tattered cloak revealing a filthy, injured ankle and large feet in dirty straw sandals.

The first time Liu Ying met eyes with this death row prisoner, she nearly collapsed from the murderous aura that surrounded him.

The only person who wasn’t afraid of him was probably the Crown Prince.

His Highness ordered clean navy-blue warrior’s robes and cloth boots for the man to change into, and commanded palace servants to take his measurements for winter clothes. He was cleaned up thoroughly, transforming from a dirty, ferocious beast into someone presentable.

Then, smiling, the Crown Prince told him: “From now on, this will be your home, Chou Zui.”

“Who do you want me to kill?”

The man misunderstood the Crown Prince’s kindness, gruffly muttering as he opened his palm expectantly. “Portrait. Name.”

The Crown Prince froze momentarily, then looked up at him with resignation: “I don’t want you to kill anyone. From today onwards, I want you to learn how to protect people.”

The violent assassin clearly didn’t understand the meaning of “protect.” He stood there with his long limbs like an indifferent stone statue.

The Crown Prince smiled good-naturedly: “It’s alright, I’ll teach you slowly.”

Liu Ying learned from Shadow that this man was a top assassin who only took orders from employers. For unknown reasons, he had killed his master and fled, resulting in the authorities expending enormous resources to capture him. He was supposed to be executed with extreme prejudice, but the Crown Prince had secretly saved him and made him a personal guard…

Liu Ying listened with trepidation.

She didn’t know why the Crown Prince would make such a decision. She only knew that keeping a dangerous person close meant he was planning something dangerous himself.

She was uneasy—Chou Zui was truly strange.

He couldn’t read, nor could he communicate with others. Most of the time, he stood like an obstructive wooden stake, one command for one action, seemingly capable of nothing but killing.

When told to eat, he would take his bowl and squat on the stone steps outside, devouring his food like a wild dog. When told to sleep, he would climb up to the rafters and curl up on his side in an unseen place. When someone annoyed him, he was always inclined to solve the problem by drawing his blade… He had brought all these terrible habits from the assassin organization.

The Crown Prince taught him to hold chopsticks so he could dine at the table like a person. His Highness would patiently stand beneath the beam, calling Chou Zui down to rest on a proper bed, over and over again.

At first, Chou Zui couldn’t change his ways, but he had one redeeming feature: as long as the Crown Prince “ordered” him, he would comply without fail.

Two months later, Chou Zui lay on a clean bed with bedding for the first time. It was said that he lay there with his arm bent under his head, unable to fall asleep all night.

“Uncomfortable, isn’t it?”

Shadow Ah Xing rolled over, revealing a handsome face somewhat similar to the Crown Prince’s. With his arms pillowing his head, he said, “I wasn’t used to it when I first came either, but you get used to it gradually. For insects like us who can’t see the light, only the Crown Prince treats us as human beings… Chou Zui, do you know what it means to ‘die for someone who truly knows you’?”

Chou Zui had never been educated; he didn’t understand.

He only knew that a wild dog had found a home. From then on, the Crown Prince would be his only master—this was the greatest loyalty an assassin could offer.

…

The conflict between aristocratic clans and commoner families had been a headache for several generations of Great Xuan emperors.

The aristocrats needed to be appeased, and the commoners needed to be placated. For this reason, in early spring of the seventeenth year of Tianyou, the Crown Prince, just recovered from illness, volunteered to visit the Mingde Academy on behalf of the Emperor to comfort the scholars.

Women couldn’t freely enter places of learning, so the Crown Prince only took eunuchs and personal guards with him. Additionally, the Empress was unwell at that time, so Liu Ying remained in the palace to attend to her.

She never imagined that in this brief half-month, something would happen that would change His Highness’s fate forever.

When the Crown Prince returned from the Mingde Academy, he brought back a tall woman with striking, beautiful features, named “Liu Ji.”

The usually humble and respectful Crown Prince insisted on taking this woman as a concubine of the Eastern Palace, indulging and trusting her completely, even defying the Empress’s orders to do so.

Looking at the lamps burning through the night in Cheng’en Hall, seeing the closeness between His Highness and Liu Ji as they came and went together, watching them dismiss all servants and talk earnestly by candlelight all night… Liu Ying felt a difficult-to-suppress discomfort in her heart, as if her chest was stuffed with cotton—not painful, but filled with a dull ache.

Compared to Liu Ying’s self-deprecating silence, Princess Yongle, Huo Zhenzhen, was much more vocal.

The young princess showed great hostility toward Liu Ji’s appearance.

She vowed to reclaim her “Brother Crown Prince” from the “Fox Liu,” but whenever she tried to compete for attention or bicker, she ended up being frustrated by Liu Ji instead.

The Crown Prince just watched them with a helpless smile, without intervening.

When had Princess Yongle ever suffered such grievances? After just a few days, she left in tears.

While serving tea, Liu Ying heard Liu Ji’s casual voice from the hall: “Isn’t Your Highness going to explain things to her?”

“No, better a short pain than a prolonged one.”

After a soft sound of placing a Go piece, the Crown Prince said quietly after a long while, “The future of our endeavor is uncertain. I’ve already caused Yan’er to suffer; I can’t harm another sister.”

Liu Ying didn’t enter to disturb them but quietly withdrew.

That day, she drank a bit too much wine and became somewhat drunk, her thoughts completely out of control.

It was said that with a flushed face, she went to the Crown Prince and said: “Your Highness is the best Crown Prince in the world!”

Then, like a child, she glared at Liu Ji and declared angrily: “I hate you.”

This left the usually quick-witted Liu Ji speechless, pointing at Liu Ying and asking: “Is… is this still the same solemn Liu Ying? Has she been possessed by Huo Zhenzhen?”

When Liu Ying herself woke up, she had completely forgotten everything, but when Ah Xing mentioned it, she wished she could sink into the ground.

The Crown Prince said generously, “I thought drunk Sister Liu Ying was quite adorable.”

But Liu Ying was still mortified beyond words.

She apologized for her offense and swore off alcohol.

Flowers in the courtyard bloomed and withered. The Crown Prince and Liu Ji spent more and more days writing furiously and talking through the night. Several times, Liu Ying heard the Crown Prince’s uncontrollable coughing from Cheng’en Hall and had to knock on the door to remind him, begging His Highness to retire early and rest…

But each time, she would be gently dismissed by His Highness.

Sometimes Liu Ying would have an illusion—as if in Cheng’en Hall they were fighting day and night with brushes for blades against an invisible enemy, like Kuafu chasing the sun, like Jingwei filling the sea, like Xingtian who, even headless, used his nipples as eyes and danced with weapons.

Yet all of this seemed unrelated to Liu Ying.

She envied Liu Ji, and even envied Ah Xing and Chou Zui, because they could stand beside His Highness, while she could only watch from a distance as they drifted further away, until they were beyond her reach.

The sixth month of the seventeenth year of Tianyou.

News came that two lecturing scholars at Mingde Academy had passed away one after another, and Master Linjiang had suddenly resigned and returned to his hometown.

The Crown Prince seemed to have anticipated something. His expression began to grow solemn, as did that of the usually fearless Liu Ji.

Liu Ying remembered that day they stood side by side on the corridor of Cheng’en Hall, silent for a long time.

A storm was approaching. Rolling dark clouds pressed down like a flood, seeming about to swallow the young man’s slender figure.

What the Crown Prince said to Liu Ji that day, Liu Ying never learned.

She only knew that from that day on, Liu Ji was quietly sent out of the palace and never returned.

A few days later, the Crown Prince suddenly decided to leave the capital to recuperate from the summer heat.

At the summer resort in the height of summer, one could see stars scattered across the sky and the Milky Way gleaming brilliantly.

Under the corridor, the Crown Prince counted the glowing green fireflies in the courtyard, and smiling, turned his head and said: “Don’t envy Liu Ji, and don’t feel inferior because you cannot fight alongside me. Look, fireflies don’t compete with the sun and moon for radiance. Small as they are, they can still illuminate a small piece of the night sky.”

Liu Ying trembled suddenly, her heart feeling as if it were soaked in aged liquor, hot and swollen.

His Highness had never forgotten her, had never looked down on her. All along, the only one who had trapped herself was she.

His Highness said: If every piece of wood feared burning itself, there would be no fire in the world.

He also said: I know I am not destined for longevity, so while I’m alive, I want to do something meaningful.

The Crown Prince seemed to have a magical infectiousness—as long as he was nearby, everyone would feel incredibly warm and at ease.

Liu Ying thought that perhaps life could continue peacefully like this.

Until the seventh day of the seventh month, when Shen Jingming, one of the “Twin Jades of the Li Family” and a heavenly talent, inexplicably drowned. Shortly after, a humble scholar named Cheng Jixing died suddenly in his dormitory at Mingde Academy…

Within two months, the Crown Prince lost both his mentor and his friend. Overcome with grief, he bent over coughing terribly, with alarming traces of blood appearing between his lips.

He forbade Liu Ying from telling anyone. After lying in bed for two days, he suddenly asked: “How many days until the eighteenth of the seventh month?”

The eighteenth of the seventh month was the Crown Prince’s birthday.

Liu Ying looked at the young man’s deathly pale face and, suppressing her pain, replied with pursed lips: “Five days.”

“Five days is enough.”

The Crown Prince struggled to get out of bed. Under his thin clothes, the young man’s bones were visible.

“Go to Huayang,” he said.

Huayang?

Liu Ying immediately knelt and pleaded: “The Crown Prince’s old illness has returned. You should return to the palace to consult with the imperial physicians. You really cannot endure more travel.”

The young man just shook his head gently, took out a green sandalwood jewelry box he had spent a month crafting, and said softly with lowered eyes: “I’m afraid if I miss this opportunity, it will be too late.”

On the way to Huayang, the Crown Prince kept coughing, but when he was about to get off the carriage to meet his sister, he still put on his gentlest smile.

It was drizzling that day. Liu Ying waited outside the middle gate with an umbrella, when suddenly she heard the crisp sound of something falling from the side hall.

Then came a young girl’s voice, filled with resentment and anger: “Who wants your gift! Zhao Yǎn, I don’t need your pity.”

After a long while, when the Crown Prince came out again, his expression was visibly dejected, and his shoulders were soaked by the fine rain.

Liu Ying hurried forward with the umbrella, wrapping a rain cloak around his shoulders, and said with concern: “How could Your Highness stand in the rain and catch a cold?”

The Crown Prince waved his hand, but as soon as he got into the carriage, he began to cough heart-rendingly with his hand pressed against his chest.

After he finally caught his breath, he seemed very remorseful and explained: “It was I who was too presumptuous, not considering Yan’er’s feelings… Yan’er is so proud by nature, I should have been more careful with my words.”

Liu Ying noticed that the jade pendant at his waist had a broken corner. Feeling regretful, she quickly removed it and set it aside, saying softly: “Your Highness need not overthink. After returning to the capital, there will be plenty of time for correspondence. Princess Changfeng will eventually understand your good intentions.”

Liu Ying never imagined her words would come true so tragically.

On the return journey to the capital, assassins suddenly attacked without warning.

Arrows rained down like rain on the mountain road near the capital, with chaos and wailing all around.

“The enemy is hidden while we’re exposed—we’re too passive this way,” said Shadow Ah Xing as he quickly changed into the Crown Prince’s everyday robes, hung the broken lotus jade at his waist, and said resolutely, “I’ll draw them away.”

“Ah Xing!”

The gentle, moon-like young man rebuked him for the first time, solemnly saying, “I forbid you to do this!”

“Your Highness, isn’t this the very reason for a shadow’s existence?”

The young man who resembled the Crown Prince smiled brilliantly and raised his hand, saying, “Rest assured and sleep. Forgive my offense.”

Before Zhao Yǎn could object, Ah Xing precisely pressed the acupoint behind his ear, then steadily caught his unconscious, collapsing form.

“I entrust His Highness to you. You must escort him safely back to the capital… Please!”

The shadow rushed out, seized a horse, and broke through the encirclement.

“Protect the Crown Prince!”

“That’s the Crown Prince! Don’t let him escape!”

The main force of assassins was successfully drawn away, but Shadow Ah Xing never returned.

In the Eastern Palace, the Crown Prince, who had escaped death-

“You shouldn’t have let Shadow die in my place.”

He coughed violently, filled with a young man’s grief and helplessness. “To exchange another’s fresh blood for my survival, to advance by stepping on corpses—what kind of righteous ruler am I!”

Liu Ying and Chou Zui knelt and would not rise.

She didn’t argue. As long as His Highness was safe, she would accept any punishment.

Liu Ying thought this calamity was over, that everything had ended.

She relaxed, dragging her exhausted body to arrange for the imperial physician’s examination, to brew medicine and make soup…

But when she returned to the bedchamber, she saw the Crown Prince lying on the ground with blood flowing from his nose and mouth, his hand open to one side, with a few black ashes from burned paper floating nearby.

Chou Zui’s eyes surged with killing intent, like a poisoned blade, as he pulled his sword from the body of a eunuch with a squelching sound.

The Eastern Palace guards were alarmed, and Chou Zui “fled in panic.”

The Crown Prince’s deathly pale face, the blood flowing from his nose and mouth—all of it stabbed at Liu Ying’s eyes.

Too realistic—His Highness had acted too convincingly this time.

Liu Ying hesitantly stepped forward, the medicine bowl in her hand falling to the ground.

She frantically rushed over, carefully lifting the Crown Prince’s body, trying to preserve the fading warmth with her embrace.

But she couldn’t hold onto it. He was growing cold!

Crown Prince…

Highness! Highness!!

It’s fake, right? It’s a lie, right?

Heaven, please, don’t play such a joke!

Imperial physician! Call the imperial physician!!

Liu Ying heard her silent screams. How desperately she wished His Highness would open his eyes the next moment and end this farce.

But he slept peacefully and never woke again.

The doors to the Eastern Palace’s bedchamber were tightly closed. The Empress looked at her son’s corpse lying on the bed and suddenly staggered.

Her eyes were red, filled with tears she wouldn’t let fall, as she stumbled forward in disbelief. Only when her crimson-tipped fingers touched her son’s cold face did her tears finally fall in large drops, landing on the young man’s pale forehead.

The Empress trembled as she wiped the tears from her son’s forehead, but she could not dry them.

The Empress clutched her chest and opened her mouth in a silent scream—the heart-wrenching grief of a mother.

“Today, there was no assassin who poisoned the Eastern Palace. The Crown Prince merely suffered a relapse of his old illness due to shock and needs to recover behind closed doors.”

The Empress, with tears hanging from the tip of her nose and her tense jaw slightly trembling, ground out each word through gritted teeth: “You know what to do.”

The few palace maids and eunuchs kneeling in the hall were witnesses who had seen the “Crown Prince’s assassination.”

Now with the Great Xuan facing internal troubles and external threats, in stormy times, the Empress needed to conceal the Crown Prince’s death, so they could only…

The eunuch kowtowed to the Crown Prince, then, without hesitation, bit his tongue and committed suicide.

The two palace maids also got up and threw themselves against the wall to their deaths.

The Crown Prince had given them the grace of a second life. Rather than becoming tools for the real murderers, they preferred to follow their master, taking this secret to their graves forever.

Liu Ying should have also died by hitting the pillar, but at the crucial moment, Empress Wei pulled her back.

“Please grant this servant death, Your Majesty!”

Tears soaked Liu Ying’s face as she had no desire to live. “This servant has no face to continue living in this world. I beg only for death!”

“You are the Crown Prince’s maid. If you died too, it would arouse suspicion,” Empress Wei closed her eyes briefly, struggling to suppress her trembling breath. “Stay, and help me maintain appearances for half a month.”

What would happen after half a month, the Empress did not say.

She turned to look at her son sleeping eternally on the bed, tracing his features inch by inch with her finger, as if to engrave his image forever in her mind, then said with difficulty: “Sudden illness in the Eastern Palace has claimed the lives of two palace maids and two eunuchs…”

Only one eunuch lay in the hall, yet the Empress said, “Two eunuchs.” Could it be that she planned to disguise the Crown Prince’s body as a eunuch’s and transport it out of the palace for burial?

Liu Ying’s heart felt as if it were being sliced by knives. The Crown Prince, a person as pure and noble as sunshine after rain—how could he… how could he be hastily buried with eunuchs in a mass grave?

But they had no other choice.

All the Eastern Palace guards were registered with household records. Even if they died accidentally, their families would be notified to claim the bodies. One query from the Imperial Guard would reveal the truth. Only eunuchs were of such low status that when a few occasionally died of illness, they were treated like weeds, with no one caring.

In the late summer heat, His Highness’s body could not be preserved for long. This was the only way.

Sorrowful and cruel.

Liu Ying faced the Crown Prince and kowtowed heavily three times, until the dull pain overtook the sharp pain in her heart. She touched her forehead to the ground and remained there for a long time.

That clean, smiling, gentle young man was thus dressed in a eunuch’s indigo cloth robe, his face smeared with black ash, mixed among the corpses of “diseased” palace maids and eunuchs. He was transported out of the palace gates and hastily buried on Western Mountain.

No coffin, no offerings, no name, no family, no tombstone.

Overnight, the Empress’s originally jet-black temples sprouted silver strands, and her figure became much thinner. With bloodshot eyes from lack of sleep, bearing heart-breaking pain, she used “Chou Zui’s betrayal and the Eastern Palace guards’ failure” as a reason to replace all the palace servants in the Eastern Palace with a completely new batch of uninformed personnel.

Only Liu Ying was an exception.

But for her, survival was perhaps no less cruel than death.

Liu Ying often thought that perhaps the Crown Prince was too good, too good for Heaven to bear seeing him suffer in the mortal realm—and so he was called back to Heaven early.

She silently organized the poetry and writings the Crown Prince had left behind and came across the line: “I do not know how high the blue sky is, how thick the yellow earth is. I only see the cold moon and warm sun coming to brew man’s life.”

The cold moon and warm sun coming to brew man’s life…

How fitting a line.

Her heart suddenly twisted in pain.

Liu Ying collapsed to the ground, pressing this paper with its still-fresh ink scent against her heart, biting her lip as she wept uncontrollably.

Her moon had fallen.

Never again would there be a gentle moonlight to illuminate the humble firefly in the darkness.

At that moment, the doors of the bedchamber that had been tightly closed for half a month were opened, and a slender figure walked in with the moonlight.

As the shadows receded from her face, seeing this familiar face, Liu Ying froze with tears rolling down. Her trembling lips parted several times as she carefully said: “Your Highness…”

She reached out her hand as if to touch this mirage, but felt the reality of clothing.

“Disguise me as Zhao Yǎn.”

The girl’s voice was calm and slightly hoarse as she said with pursed lips.

She had no tear mole at the corner of her eye, nor did she have the paleness of long illness.

Liu Ying could finally confirm that the person before her was not the Crown Prince, but his twin sister, Princess Changfeng, Zhao Yān.

After spending time together, Liu Ying could clearly distinguish the difference in temperament between Princess Changfeng and the Crown Prince: the Crown Prince’s gaze was gentle as water, while the Princess’s eyes seemed to hide an indomitable flame.

But the siblings were alike in one way: outwardly gentle but inwardly strong, never submitting to the engulfment of darkness, tirelessly raising lamps to illuminate those walking alone around them, making them spontaneously bind together as one.

The moon had fallen, but the morning sun rose in the east, eventually bringing the light of day.

Liu Ying still often thought of the Crown Prince, of that young man who had wished to be like a moth flying toward a lamp, but who fell before dawn, filling her heart with a faint sadness and melancholy.

If possible, she would exchange her next life for the Crown Prince’s present one.

May the gods of the nine heavens bless and protect the Crown Prince to live safely again in another life, with all his loved ones around him, free from illness and calamity.