Protect those around her.
Return to Yunjing.
Never again be humiliated.
These had been the three great goals of Xie Yuzhang’s life.
The first two she had already accomplished. The third, the Emperor had now given her his promise.
Xie Yuzhang raised her eyes to the Emperor and smiled, and tears slipped down her cheeks.
Pear blossoms in the rain; a face like the morning glow.
Li Gu’s heart contracted. In this moment, the Xie Yuzhang before him and the memory of that young girl — the one who had faced an unchangeable fate with such composure — overlapped completely. Were it not for the low table between them, Li Gu would have reached out to gather her into his arms again.
That had been something he had only dared do in dreams, for many years. Now that he had truly done it, the trembling satisfaction he felt made him hunger for more.
Xie Yuzhang turned her head to wipe her tears, then turned back and asked, “Your Majesty — I heard my father was enfeoffed as the Marquis of Xiaoyao?”
Li Gu paused slightly. “He was.”
The succession of dynasties, the turning over of family names — this was a thing neither of them could escape, something they both had to face directly. Fortunately, neither Li Gu nor Xie Yuzhang had ever thought to run from it. Both were willing to look it in the eye.
“On the road here, I heard that Your Majesty treated the Xie clan with kindness. In the annals of history, Your Majesty’s name will surely be recorded as one of benevolence and generosity.” Xie Yuzhang reflected for a moment, then continued: “Your Majesty — I… do not wish to live in the Marquis of Xiaoyao’s residence.”
Hearing this, Li Gu let out a long, slow breath of relief. “I had not intended for you to live there in the first place. Your princess’s residence has long been prepared. Your people should have already arrived there by now.”
Xie Yuzhang’s eyes shifted with warmth. She looked at him for a moment, pressed her lips together, and smiled. “Then I will not stand on ceremony.”
She had said that the young girl of eight years ago had died on the steppe. Yet when she smiled, her charm was a languid grace — more coquettish and enchanting than it had ever been.
Li Gu’s gaze rested on her face and did not move.
The atmosphere within the warm pavilion gradually changed.
Xie Yuzhang said, “There is one more matter. When I set out, I brought over a thousand people with me as my dowry retinue; the great majority of them have come back with me. As soon as we entered the capital region, I released a portion of them, gave each of them a resettlement sum — enough for them to settle down without causing any disturbance. Those remaining who still wish to follow me, I’ll purchase some farmland and take them on as tenant farmers. These people will not trouble Your Majesty.”
“There is just one thing. My personal guard currently stands at a full complement of five hundred. They are not at all the same as they were back then — they have been tempered by real combat on the steppe. They may not be of a caliber that catches Your Majesty’s eye, but they are nonetheless five hundred able-bodied fighting men. To simply disband them would be a waste, and could also very easily cause unrest. Soldiers without food to eat, once pushed to the edge, can turn to banditry in the space of a single step.”
“All these years, it was they who protected me and kept me from being humiliated by others. I hope Your Majesty will show mercy and incorporate them into your forces, give them a path forward. That way, I will also have repaid what I owe them, and can set my mind at ease.”
Life always demands choices and sacrifices.
For Xie Yuzhang, the most painful of all was relinquishing her guard. Once a person had grown accustomed to holding authority, to having a blade in hand — to ask such a person to suddenly surrender the power they possessed was a pain no less than cutting away flesh.
But Xie Yuzhang’s mind was clear. She knew that these five hundred men had to be handed over. Under the feet of the Son of Heaven, who could be permitted to keep five hundred private soldiers? All the more so when she bore the surname Xie.
The sooner she surrendered them, the cleaner — and the better her reputation would be, and the safer she herself would be.
Li Gu, however, said, “Keep two hundred for yourself. I’ll arrange the other three hundred.”
“By regulation, a princess is entitled to two hundred guards.”
“Yuzhang.” His eyes were bright. “Yongning is not an empty title. The princess’s residence, the farmlands, the tax revenues, the guard — all that should be yours, I will give you.”
Xie Yuzhang was briefly stunned, then a flash of delighted surprise passed through her bright eyes.
The two looked at each other, and the air in the warm pavilion was palpably warmer.
Xie Yuzhang’s face was smooth as creamy jade, her waist slender as a willow. She lowered her head slightly, evading Li Gu’s burning gaze, and let a stretch of beautiful, snow-white neck show as she said softly, “Your Majesty should not do this — indulging a person this way is very liable to give them ideas above their station.”
Li Gu felt an indescribable ease spreading through his chest. “After the suffering you have endured these years, even if your ambitions grow a little larger, it is of no consequence.”
He could say such things now, composed and at ease, his face no longer taut, the back of his neck no longer flushing red. He had evidently gained experience of women in the years between, had come to understand them, and had learned how to indulge them.
And with a man such as this, Xie Yuzhang had the most experience of all.
Xie Yuzhang looked at him, her eyes like pools of still water. She sighed softly. “The heart has no edges — it will always have more demands, more things it wants to reach for. If Your Majesty offers this kind of opportunity to others, I am afraid everyone will simply keep asking and asking without end.”
She finished speaking, and in the man’s eyes before her, she saw a look that could never have belonged to the young Li Gu.
That look belonged only to the Emperor, only to a man who occupied the highest seat of power. In that look there was even a quality of encouragement.
He smiled and said, “And what else would you like? Say it plainly.”
Li Gu was not making an unlimited promise. He knew that even if he opened the door this wide, a clear-headed young woman like Xie Yuzhang would never ask for something that had no possibility of being granted. She knew where the boundary lay.
This kind of unspoken understanding — between a man and a woman who had both come into their own, between someone in power and the person he held in favor — had always been something known without needing to be said.
And facing a Xie Yuzhang who, upon the very first moment of seeing him, had laid bare something as weighty as “killing her husband” and had at once offered to hand over her guard — Emperor Li Gu, in this moment, found a brief and unguarded crack opening in his heart.
Or perhaps — whatever Xie Yuzhang might say — the deepest place in Li Gu’s heart still, in the end, looked upon her as that perceptive, composed young girl of eight years ago.
That girl had smiled brightly, yet her eyes had held a grief she could not conceal. She had worked hard to appear strong and steady, but Li Gu had known — if at that time he had already possessed the power to stand before her and shield her from the wind and rain, she would surely have thrown herself into his arms and never left.
Li Gu was not unaware of how time and circumstance could temper and change a person. But instinctively, he had not extended that understanding to include young women.
Show weakness, Xie Yuzhang told herself. Show him your weakness.
Inwardly, she knew perfectly well what the right course of action was in this moment — to open her mouth and ask for something that could yield real, tangible benefit, yet was ultimately harmless. He would not only give generously; he would give with pleasure.
He would compensate her for everything he had not had the power to give her before, and looked at from another angle, was this not also a kind of compensation to himself?
And yet, even knowing clearly what the right thing to do was, a voice from deep inside her kept asking: Xie Yuzhang, having lived a second life, what is it you truly want?
She very much wanted to ignore that voice, but the voice refused to release her, asking again and again: Xie Yuzhang! Xie Yuzhang!
You have been given a second life!
What do you truly want?
Li Gu waited for Xie Yuzhang to voice her wish.
He was certain that whatever she asked for, he could give it.
He had spent eight years wading through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, bringing half the realm under his command. There was nothing now that a young woman like Xie Yuzhang could want, that he could not provide.
But he waited for a long while, and Xie Yuzhang’s gaze had dropped. The slender, pale fingers she had rested on the table were gradually closing into a fist.
Li Gu’s smile faded. He looked at her and called softly, “Yuzhang?”
He leaned forward and reached out his hand toward her.
Xie Yuzhang closed her eyes.
Behind her eyelids rose the faces of the three imperial consorts she had seen in the rear palace earlier that day. Cui Ying and Deng Wan were both women of refined beauty from distinguished families, yet when they had caught sight of her face, they had been struck dumb. She had done nothing at all, and already they had begun to feel anxious, as if something were being taken from them.
This was what it was to be a woman locked inside the deep walls of the rear palace.
She had galloped across the vast open steppe. She had rolled through the caprices of fate. She had seen how wide the sky could be and how broad the earth. She had danced on the edge of a blade, and passed within a breath of death. To ask her now to bow with all the other women and compete for the favor of a single man, to take him as her entire sky…
Xie Yuzhang… in the end, could not do it.
The image of her elder cousin Xie Baozhu slowly withering within the prison of those high walls had traveled through years of memory and was still so vivid. Xie Yuzhang had watched with her own eyes as Xie Baozhu lost her vitality piece by piece, until at last her lamp was empty and her oil was gone.
And as for this Emperor — Xie Yuzhang still remembered that his feet were very large, and that he was always standing there, not leaving.
They had not encountered each other many times, yet every single time it had been like this. Every single time.
What had he been standing there waiting for? If he wanted something, wasn’t it simply a matter of saying so?
Lin Fei had said, He is fond of you.
Lin Fei had followed her to the steppe and suffered every hardship alongside her. She had been through three men. She had never, not once, said anything like that. Yet after returning to Yunjing, she had said it more than once.
In this moment of closed eyes, Xie Yuzhang’s mind had already flashed through calculation and deliberation. She had considered the consequences that might follow, weighed the gains and losses of taking different paths and making different choices.
When the Emperor’s hand was very nearly upon her, she opened her eyes.
She caught that hand, stopping it from touching her soft cheek, causing the Emperor to start with surprise.
“I…” Xie Yuzhang lifted her eyes. “Everything I did on the steppe was in order to escape the fate of ‘a life adrift, beauty my only offering.’ Your Majesty — will you grant me this?”
Her voice was quiet, but unwavering. Her bright eyes held depth and clarity, fixed directly on Li Gu.
How much did this man care for her?
Would his care for her be different from all the others?
She had now returned to Yunjing. She had been enfeoffed as a princess of Da Mu. Who, now, could reduce her to offering herself for her beauty?
Li Gu’s hand was suspended there, only the smallest distance from her delicate, luminously beautiful face.
He held his breath, meeting Xie Yuzhang’s gaze.
……
……
The door of the warm pavilion opened, and Fuchun quickly looked up — but it was Princess Yongning, Xie Yuzhang, who came out.
Fuchun hurried to bow. “Your Highness?”
A lightness showed between Xie Yuzhang’s brows. “His Majesty has given me leave to depart.”
Fuchun said, “Your Highness, one moment please.”
Fuchun immediately summoned someone and introduced him to Xie Yuzhang: “This is Liang Chen, this servant’s godson.”
Liang Chen appeared to be around sixteen or seventeen, a rather handsome young man. To make one’s mark in the presence of distinguished persons, appearance was the foremost consideration. After all, the first thing anyone looked at was the face.
Liang Chen led Xie Yuzhang out of the palace.
Fuchun, not seeing the Emperor come out, pushed open the door of the warm pavilion and walked to the latticed partition of the inner chamber. He thought about how Princess Yongning, Xie Yuzhang, had been smiling so lightly when she left. Though her clothing had been in perfect order when she came out, and he hadn’t heard anything particularly notable from outside, the anticipated intimate events seemed not to have taken place — but at the very least, she had seemed to have spoken with the Emperor in good spirits.
The Emperor’s mood was surely very good right now.
Fuchun called out cheerfully, “Your Majesty—”
Unexpectedly, from within came a deep, heavy voice:
“Get out.“