The imperial procession heading north had departed the capital region, and several days later, on this particular evening, it arrived near Fucheng.
Fucheng was an important city connecting Hexi and the Upper Capital. Past Fucheng, another hundred li ahead, lay the Western Pass — beyond which one would truly leave the heartland and step onto the road outside the pass leading to Hexi.
An attendant official reported that the Fucheng magistrate, upon learning of the imperial procession’s passage through, had long since prepared accommodations for the imperial halt. At this moment, he was leading the city’s officials and citizens, kneeling in welcome along the roadside ahead, respectfully requesting that His Majesty enter the city to rest for the night.
Xie Changgeng sat atop his horse. He turned his head and gazed toward the direction of that city, staring for a long while as though lost in thought, without any response whatsoever.
Those accompanying the imperial procession followed his line of sight and looked over together.
It was a clear evening in early autumn, the sky ablaze with crimson. The city ahead, prepared to receive the imperial procession, was already visible to the eye. Viewed from here, the city’s silhouette was like a great dragon lying prostrate along the horizon, winding and stretching east and west beneath the golden evening light — a magnificent sight.
Everyone turned their faces together with the Emperor and gazed out, holding their breath in waiting.
After a long while, the Emperor slowly turned his face back and said: “There are too many troops and horses — no need to disturb the people. Tell them all to withdraw. We will make camp here for the night.”
With sunset only a few hours away, and still a hundred li between here and the Western Pass, they could not possibly arrive before dark. If they continued forward, the Emperor would have no choice but to sleep in the open field alongside the soldiers tonight.
But since he had spoken so himself, no one dared contradict him, and they responded in unison.
The procession continued onward. After nightfall, they made camp in a flat stretch of open ground beside the road.
Beneath the deep blue night sky, military tents stretched out in rows, campfires dotted the darkness. As the night gradually deepened, the fires died out one by one, and the soldiers who had traveled all day had long since entered their dreams.
At the center of the encampment, inside the imperial tent, the lanterns still burned. Xie Changgeng addressed several generals before him: “Tomorrow morning, after we pass through the pass, I will take a mounted vanguard and set out ahead. You lead the main army behind and make haste to follow.”
When a great army moved, there were countless constraints — covering a hundred li in a day was nearly the limit. Moreover, they had been within the pass all these previous days, passing through densely populated cities, and at every place they passed, local officials would lead the people to kneel and welcome the imperial procession along the roadside, inevitably delaying their journey. The Emperor had won his realm on horseback in the past, personally engaging enemies in battle. Now his heart was set on Hexi, and once through the Western Pass, it was entirely natural that he would want to ride light and fast to get there sooner.
After each general received his orders, they bowed and withdrew. The eunuch Cao Jin, who had been waiting outside, entered and presented the medicine that had just been decocted.
The Emperor drank it. The eunuch bowed and said: “It is late, Your Majesty would do well to rest now. The imperial physician always says Your Majesty must rest more so that your body may recover sooner.”
“The imperial physician’s words — I imagine they also reflect the Empress’s wishes.” He glanced at the scroll the Emperor had just picked up and said quietly.
The Emperor’s hand paused, and he slowly set the scroll down.
The eunuch’s face broke into a pleased expression, and he immediately called attendants in to bring water and towels.
The lanterns in the imperial tent were extinguished. Xie Changgeng lay on his back upon the bed. He closed his eyes; before him was only the pitch blackness of night, yet in his mind’s eye, the silhouette of that city he had passed by in the evening still floated before him.
The city’s shadow, viewed through the light of the setting sun, had been hazy and indistinct, like a dream from long ago — yet his heart knew clearly, this was no old dream. This was something that truly and unmistakably existed.
There had once been a woman who, because of this city along the westward road, had fallen into the abyss of fate.
She was at the bottom of that abyss, and her salvation lay in a single thought from her husband.
Yet that man, in the end, had failed her.
He dared not, nor could he bear to imagine, how, day after day of waiting, she had let the flame of hope in her heart go cold, inch by inch, until it was utterly extinguished and turned to ash.
In the moment she resolved to end her life, what had been in her heart?
He knew she hated him. But however she hated him, it was deserved. Not only her — even he himself hated himself deeply.
Such a wonderful woman — he had once longed for her and could not have her. How could that man have had the heart to treat her so.
Xie Changgeng’s heart clenched tightly. He felt as though his very organs had begun to ache with a dull, hidden pain.
At that moment, from outside the imperial tent came the soft sound of rustling footsteps.
“Your Majesty! The Empress has come!” Cao Jin’s voice reached his ears.
Xie Changgeng’s eyes flew open.
Before him was still the darkness of night. At first he thought he had misheard, but very soon the words were repeated.
Xie Changgeng sprang upright, without even time to light a lamp, stepped off the bed, strode forward, and threw open the tent flap with both hands.
He saw before the tent a slender woman’s figure standing wrapped in a cloak. She stood quietly in the moonlight, as though she had traveled by starlight and moonbeams to arrive here. Seeing him appear, she raised her hand, removed the hood, and revealed a face as bright and clear as the moon.
It was her. It was truly her.
She stepped forward, walking toward him, until she stood before him, gave him a nod, and said in a soft voice: “Let us go inside. I have something to ask you.”
Xie Changgeng had gone completely still, all reaction lost to him, only his heart pounding so hard it nearly leapt from his chest. Finally coming to his senses, he hastily stepped back a pace to clear the way for her, then turned and went to the table to light a lamp for her.
His hands were somewhat stiff and uncooperative. He tried several times before he finally managed to kindle a flame.
The firelight drove away the darkness, and the interior of the tent grew bright.
Xie Changgeng closed his eyes and drew a long, slow breath.
He opened them, turned around, and asked the woman standing at the tent entrance: “What is it?”
His voice was low and deep, restored to his customary composure.
“If you are tired, rest first,” he said, gazing at her face, which carried a faint trace of weariness. “I will call someone to attend to you…”
Mu Fulan walked toward him and stopped before him.
“Your Majesty,” she said, her eyes meeting his, “why did you originally make Xi’er the Crown Prince?”
Xie Changgeng seemed to start. He quickly glanced at her and said vaguely: “Did I not discuss this with you before? Why do you ask again?”
“Xie Changgeng, you are lying. You told me you had been injured, but I reviewed all the records of your injuries over the past several years and could find nothing that corresponded. I also asked Liang Tuan — he said you had gone to Huguo Temple and spent a night there, and that your behavior at the time struck him as exceedingly strange. He still remembers it clearly to this day.”
“I want to ask you — do you already know about what happened in the past?” She asked, word by word.
The air around them seemed to suddenly freeze solid.
Xie Changgeng did not move, did not speak, and the color of his face gradually changed.
After a long silence, he turned his face away, avoiding her gaze, and said quietly: “Don’t let your thoughts run away with you…”
Mu Fulan looked at him, and the corners of her eyes slowly reddened. After a moment, she spoke again, her voice trembling slightly.
She said: “Xie Changgeng, I can see that you are suffering too. I had thought — since you already know, why should we not speak openly and make things clear between us? This life is still very long. I do not want us to torment each other like this until we are old and dead. I truly do not understand why you refuse to admit it.”
“I did not follow you all the way from the Upper Capital to hear you lie to me. But if you truly do not wish to speak of it, or if I am simply imagining things, then so be it. Pretend I said nothing just now — I will go back.”
Having said this, she turned to leave.
Xie Changgeng stared fixedly at her retreating figure as she turned away. Just as she raised her hand to lift the tent flap, he stepped forward in pursuit and caught her wrist from behind.
“I was wrong.”
A voice, hoarse and utterly restrained, sounded from behind her.
Mu Fulan stopped and turned her head, meeting the man’s dark and shadowed gaze.
“You are not mistaken. I have remembered everything.”
“I dared not admit it before you, for I feared that if I did, I would lose all right to stand before you. Do not misunderstand me — I am not seeking your forgiveness. Every time I think of how I once treated you, I have never imagined I could be forgiven. Not only do you have every right to hate me — if you were to kill me, I would not utter a single word of complaint. I also know that if you could, you would never wish to lay eyes on me again. And the reason I still stand before you now is not to atone, nor to put my own heart at ease. For the rest of my life, I will never forgive myself.”
“I want to do a little more for you, to make amends as best I can. Do not refuse me — this is all I ask…”
Mu Fulan looked at him and said nothing.
He released the five fingers that had gripped her wrist.
“I knew… the moment you found out, you would only hate me more, despise me more…”
Across his face spread an expression of wretched, bitter torment, and his voice came to an abrupt halt.
Mu Fulan gazed at him for a moment, then slowly shook her head.
“Xie Changgeng, are you atoning for your sins?”
She said.
“I am grateful that you have finally brought yourself to speak your heart to me. In return for your honesty, I may as well tell you what is in mine. This is also why I came all this way after you.”
“Every person alive has things they cannot do — difficulties they cannot overcome. To expect too much of others, to demand too much, is the source of one’s own suffering. This truth was something I only came to understand after having died once. Since Heaven has given me another chance, what use is it to hate you? From the very beginning, I never intended to take revenge upon you, nor did I demand any recompense from you. I am no longer who I once was, and in this lifetime, you are no longer the Xie Changgeng of before. Even if you were — I want you to know — you need not carry this guilt any longer. There is no need to torment yourself this way.”
“Xie Changgeng, if you release yourself, it is as though you release me as well, and let my heart be at peace. Do you understand this?”
Xie Changgeng seemed thunderstruck.
He stared at her without blinking, motionless as stone.
Mu Fulan smiled.
“That is what I wished to say to you. I left in a hurry and should not linger. I am returning to the Upper Capital now. Take care of yourself, and come home soon.”
She gave him a nod, drew her cloak hood back over her head and face, turned, lifted the tent flap, and ducked out.
The eunuch had been waiting at a distance outside the imperial tent. Seeing Mu Fulan emerge, he hurried to meet her. When he saw that she intended to return to the capital that very night, he was astonished. Glancing back and finding the Emperor had not come out either, he dared not ask more, and could only accompany her to the edge of the camp, where he knelt to see her off, watching as she boarded her carriage and, surrounded by a contingent of guards before and behind, silently turned around — just as she had come — heading back in the direction of the Upper Capital.
The eunuch watched until the Empress’s party disappeared into the moonlit night, utterly puzzled. He stood there a moment, shook his head, and turned to go back inside — when suddenly, from within the camp gate, a lone rider came galloping out. The soldiers on night watch nearby all dropped to their knees.
The eunuch recognized the rider — it was, astonishingly, the Emperor himself. He too dropped to his knees, and before he could even lift his head, like a gust of night wind sweeping past, that single horse and rider had already flashed by him and was gone.
Mu Fulan sat leaning back inside the carriage, eyes closed, her thoughts drifting in a daze, when she felt the carriage gradually slowing beneath her and finally coming to a stop.
She opened her eyes, just about to ask what had happened, when the carriage door swung open.
By the light of the palace lantern hanging at the roof of the carriage, she saw a man climb inside.
Xie Changgeng had actually come after her.
He entered the carriage, fixed his gaze on her, and slowly, in a half-kneeling crouch, lowered himself before the hem of her skirt.
She was somewhat startled. She pushed the window open a crack and cast a quick glance outside. She saw that all those traveling with her had moved away, kneeling at a distance along the roadside.
This Xie Changgeng was unlike anything she had ever seen before, and it made her feel deeply ill at ease.
Her heart began to beat a little faster. She closed the window, keeping her composure, quietly shifted herself further along the seat, and said in a low voice: “Your Majesty, what are you doing…”
“Lan’er.” Mu Fulan suddenly heard him call her name in a low, quiet voice.
“I know I no longer have the right to call you by that name — just as I have no right to tell you that I hope you will give me another chance, to let me love you properly and keep you safe and happy all your life. But I said it anyway…”
“When you came to see me just now, there was something I did not fully say. I did not dare admit to you that I had remembered the past because I was still harboring a sliver of hope. Even knowing how I once treated you, I still could not bear the thought of losing you entirely. I was afraid that once you knew, I would become, in your eyes, a complete and utter sinner, with not half a chance remaining.”
Mu Fulan was momentarily taken aback.
His emotions seemed suddenly to overwhelm him. He paused, drew a breath, and continued: “When you came, you may not have noticed — not far from here, there is a city. That place is Fucheng…”
Mu Fulan looked at him kneeling before her feet, and the blood in her body suddenly ran hot, as though countless fine, dense needles were pricking at her skin.
“Lan’er, you once said to me, the man you would call your own must have eyes and heart for you, and you alone, all his life. Should he fall into hardship and need you, you would gladly give your life for him. Should you face danger, he too would do everything in his power to meet you in kind. In the past I did not understand, but now I do.”
“I came here to tell you: if time could be turned back, if you were once again captured by my enemies and they demanded I exchange this city for you — forgive me, I still would not agree. But I would go to rescue you myself, immediately, with everything I had. I would never let you wait day after day in vain as you did before. Even if in the end I could not save you, and we died together — I would have no regrets. If I died, there would be others to pick up the pieces of this realm.”
“Lan’er, I also want to tell you this: if the worst came to pass, and through my own failure you still perished in the end, while I remained alive, I swear I would raise our son well. I would never let you carry the grief you bore before.”
Inside the carriage, the lantern light was dim and soft, and the rims of his eyes were red.
“Lan’er, you are the daughter of the Prince of Changsha. I was once known by others as a bandit. In my youth, I thought myself a hero, a dragon trapped in shallow water. Now I know — in terms of breadth of heart, in terms of spirit and bearing, I, Xie Changgeng, am not even worthy of carrying your shoes. That I was able to marry you in a previous life was the greatest fortune of my life.”
Mu Fulan stared fixedly at this man kneeling before her knees, and suddenly, tears streamed down her face.
He raised his hand, wanting to wipe the tears rolling down her cheek — but she turned her head away and avoided him.
Xie Changgeng slowly drew his hand back. He gazed at her profile, as though she could not bear to turn her face toward him again, and said in a low voice: “Lan’er, do not refuse me immediately. Think on it further. Even if you truly will not give me another chance, at least wait until I return before you give me your answer. Will you?”