◎Past Life · Final Meeting◎

The daughter of the Qu family developed amnesia after nearly drowning.

At the time, Qu Cheng was still in prison, so no great fuss was made over calling in physicians. Though Yin Xiangru noticed her daughter had forgotten a great many things, the girl seemed otherwise unharmed — even more cheerful than before — so she did not worry overmuch.

What was more, her daughter had seemingly grown up overnight, now capable of managing the household’s affairs, sparing her mother from having to agonize alone over everyone’s livelihood. It was, if anything, something of a relief.

Then came the imperial edict betrothing Qu You to that Vice Minister of Justice who had just survived an assassination attempt.

At first, Yin Xiangru had wept until she nearly went blind over this marriage. It was Qu You, instead, who comforted her, saying the marriage was merely a temporary expedient to save her father — if she did not care for the man, she would simply find other things to occupy herself with after the wedding.

If her daughter could take it so lightly, then all the better.

After the wedding, the gravely wounded Vice Minister of Justice recovered miraculously, and came to pay respects at the Qu household together with Qu You.

Yin Xiangru found her son-in-law rather cold and distant, but gentle, cultured, and dignified in bearing, and thought the match a fine one after all.

Qu Cheng, however, disliked him intensely, forever sighing and grumbling, muttering things about the man being disloyal and unfilial.

Villain or not… as long as he was good to her daughter, Yin Xiangru found she did not particularly mind whether the man was a villain or not.

The concerns of women confined to the inner quarters were few enough — they had no room in their hearts for nation and empire, for grand principles of right and wrong; all they wished for was that their own small corner of the world remain peaceful and free of disaster.

But later, her daughter — always so gentle and timid — stirred up several great commotions in the capital together with that Vice Minister.

First, Qu You stood in full view of the crowds on the imperial avenue and read aloud, word by word, a petition of grievance on behalf of a courtesan.

Qu Xiangwen, Qu Jiaxi, and Qu Jiayu were utterly captivated, all talking over each other to describe the scene to her. She pressed a hand to her chest and murmured several prayers to the Buddha.

Later, that Vice Minister Zhou was somehow implicated in a case involving the reigning Chief Councilor, and nearly died within the palace. Qu You struck the Petitioners’ Drum a second time, appealing anxiously on her husband’s behalf, declaring without hesitation that she would sever ties with her own family if it meant standing by him through life and death.

Qu Cheng carefully supported her arm, not daring to step forward himself, and could only urge anxiously, “…If Vice Minister Zhou’s case is not overturned today, how will she ever be able to hold her head up in the capital again!”

She clutched at her husband’s sleeve, feeling, strangely, that her daughter had become a stranger to her — and yet, at the same time, feeling that this was who she was always meant to be, as though the past dozen or so years had merely suppressed her true self.

Now she too had someone she would protect without regard for her own safety or reputation.

How wonderful.

She recalled, distantly, the first time she had taken young Qu You to Xiuqing Temple, hoping to have the master bless a piece of jade for her. The master had not accepted the jade, saying only, “Your daughter carries a fated bond from a former life; she is one blessed with great fortune.”

She had believed this without question, and asked what this fated bond might look like, and when it would come.

The master had only smiled and said nothing more, insisting that the workings of heaven could not be revealed, but suggested she change her daughter’s name.

The master had personally written the character “悠” (You) and given it to her: “Pass this along to her. With this name, your daughter will no longer be so frail and sickly.”

She had followed the master’s instruction and changed her daughter’s name from “Jiayi” to the single character “You.”

From that day on, Qu You’s health improved day by day, and within a few years she could even ride and shoot a bow.

The master of Xiuqing Temple had never once been wrong. Yin Xiangru, watching her daughter before the drum stand, thought absently to herself that she had likely found the person fated to her from a former life.

Before departing the capital with her husband, Qu You had come secretly to visit, and had shared a long-overdue cup of tea with Zhou Tan.

It was two years before she saw the two of them again.

When trouble broke out involving the crown prince and the whole imperial city grew tense with fear, Qu You came and said only a few words before Qu Cheng cut her off, his face grave, and hurriedly packed to leave the city with her that very night, returning to Lin’an.

Qu You stood atop the high city wall, watching the small, lonely lantern on her parents’ carriage sink slowly into the pitch-black night, until it could no longer be seen at all.

In her heart, she wondered whether she would ever see them again.

She had meant to flee the imperial city together with Ye Liuchun, but she herself never made it onto that great ship. She could only lie prostrate on the ground, watching helplessly as the vessel vanished into the mist.

The crown prince captured her and threw her into the prison of the Ministry of Justice.

She endured many tortures within those walls.

The prince would not allow her to die. When she lay near death from the severity of her punishment, he even sent a physician to treat her. Before leaving, the physician, carrying his medicine box, told her with a note of pity that she would never be able to bear children again.

Fortunately, she did not care.

But at night, she fell into a confused, dreamlike state, and in that dream she saw everything from her two previous lives, and remembered at last who she truly was.

The original owner of this body — the one who had troubled her for so long — was herself all along.

She was that humble maid, A’Lian, kneeling by the corridor, praying for the snow to stop.

She was also Qu You, who had longed her whole life for freedom she never found, and who, on the verge of death, had wished to see the future on Zhou Tan’s behalf.

The gods and Buddhas of all the heavens had heard her prayer, and granted her wish.

But the divine, though they love mankind, never truly save them.

The great tide of history had not shifted in the slightest for her prayer; her wish had been cast into the churning river of time, raising only a single splash, a momentary ripple, before being swallowed once more by the towering waves.

Everything she had managed to change could only survive in the cracks of history left unrecorded.

She could not change her own early death, nor could she change Zhou Tan’s future and reputation.

Was this not, in the end, some grand cosmic joke?

She opened her eyes, all hope extinguished.

When the deposed crown prince dragged her up onto the city wall to threaten Zhou Tan into withdrawing his troops, she saw, across the mass of soldiers and the haze of gunpowder smoke, a single tear fall heavily down Zhou Tan’s face.

She suddenly wished, more than anything, to wipe that tear away for him.

And so she did exactly that.

Behind her, Song Shiyan cried out in anguish, calling her name with his whole heart: “Youyou!!”

This cold, ruthless man of power had grown strangely attached to her — this vivid, living soul from a thousand years in the future — perhaps simply the instinct of a man trapped hopelessly within the cage of feudal power, yearning for release.

But her freedom had only ever come from Zhou Tan’s prayers and his gifts.

And so she leapt from the city wall, wanting only to be closer to him.

Arrows flew past overhead, tearing through the dim, yellowed sky.

Zhou Tan galloped forward on his horse, watching helplessly as she fell before his very eyes, shattering into fragments, fragrant and fragile, scattered across the ground.

He tumbled from his horse, his mind utterly shattered, scarcely daring to touch her blood-soaked body.

“Don’t… make a choice because of me.”

She spoke with great difficulty, tears streaming. “Don’t… abandon your health, your body, your enemies, because of me… In this life and the last, you have done so much for me, but I…”

Zhou Tan gathered her soft, broken body into his arms.

“But I could not… I could not do it. This vast river of history is beyond me… I could never change it… I could never save you, Xiaobai—”

The white jade ring pressed between their two clasped hands.

Zhou Tan pressed his forehead to hers, as though deaf to the roar of battle and slaughter around them. “…It is I who could not save you.”

Qu You paid no heed to his words, and continued, “I regret it. I should never have made such a greedy wish… I only wish for you to live long and well, to become the immortal white snow of Kunlun remembered through the ages — whether… whether I am there or not.”

“If you are not there, how could I possibly live long and well?” Zhou Tan managed a faint smile, as though mocking himself, yet filled with utter, desperate pleading. “The amendments to the law you drafted for me — I haven’t yet had the chance to put them into effect… Didn’t you say yourself that the criminal statutes of Great Yin are incomplete, and that we would change all of it together? This work is unfinished — how could you possibly… leave me now?”

“Don’t let my name remain in the history books…” She felt her life slipping away, drop by drop, and could only use the last of her strength to plead. “Don’t… perhaps I may yet have another chance…”

She never finished that sentence.

What had already been carved into history could not be changed — but could the laws and statutes she had drafted still be passed down? If her name did not remain attached to them… perhaps there was still a chance to slip through the cracks of history.

In the first year of Chongjing, Emperor Ming ascended the throne, and twenty-five-year-old Zhou Tan entered the Council of State as a governing advisor.

His position was high, his power immense, and many among the old nobility had their eyes on him — yet not one dared approach him about marriage.

Everyone understood, without needing to be told, that the beloved wife of this powerful minister, who had once lived with him in perfect harmony, had died during the palace upheaval of years past.

On the day he was appointed Chancellor, he stood before his bronze mirror, straightening his robes and cap.

The night before, he had dreamed of Qu You again — fragmented pieces of memory, some of which he remembered, some of which he did not.

But none of it felt entirely unfamiliar to him.

He laid out ink and paper, meaning to burn a letter for her, to tell her that he had lived on as she had wished — only that, having lost the lamp she once lit for him in the dark, there were many times he felt he could not go on.

He wrote only three characters — “at dawn, hearing the Way” — before the pain in his chest became unbearable, and he could write no further.

Qu You had believed that his ideals were the most important thing to him in this world, but she had never known that what he truly wanted, above all else, was to live and die together with her. After her death, he had come close, more than once, to abandoning this world entirely — it was only the memory of her final words that gave him the strength to carry on as far as he had.

Since he no longer wished to live, perhaps this old, broken, ailing body of his could at least serve as a stepping stone toward the ideals they once shared.

Standing before that bronze mirror, Zhou Tan suddenly made a decision.

The dream ended abruptly.

Qu You opened her eyes, and once again saw that small prison window through which only a single beam of light could pass.

She thought she had woken up. She had not.

She had turned once more into Zhuangzi’s butterfly.

Only this time, she felt, with strange familiarity, that she had truly returned to reality.

The wind swept her out through the small window, carrying her toward distant blue-green mountains and rivers.

The landscape suddenly shifted, and with a start, she found herself sitting at a coffee table in a modern home she had not seen in a long while, her mother, wearing glasses, sitting beside her on the carpet.

Why had she never noticed before, that her mother had always worn the face of Yin Xiangru?

Her mother asked, brow furrowed, “So what field are you planning to study for your graduate degree?”

She heard herself answer, without thinking, “History.”

“I want to study history — to search for the truth within it.”

The scene shifted again, and she found herself at her usual seat in the library, ancient texts spread open before her, dust drifting through the sunlight.

She first saw the three characters “The Order of the Fallen Blossoms,” and was immediately seized by an indescribable sense of fate, absorbed in reading for the entire afternoon. Just before closing the book, she saw the name “Zhou Tan” — familiar, and yet somehow strange.

Qu You decided to look further into this man and his connection to The Order of the Fallen Blossoms.

She found herself utterly captivated by his poetry collection, loving every single poem, able to memorize each one after only a single reading — as though she had read them many, many years ago.

Her advisor, up at the lectern, flipped through his slides, speaking animatedly about Su Chaoci. “…In Chancellor Su’s collected writings, there is an account of a close friend he had known since early in life, a man deeply devoted to his wife. One day, he asked this friend why it was that one person could form such a profound, complex, and tender bond with another.”

“His friend answered with a line from Zhuangzi — ‘Even if one must wait ten thousand generations to meet a single great sage who understands, it will feel as though that meeting came in but a single morning or evening.’ This line comes from the Discussion on Making All Things Equal, and it means…”

The voice grew distant, fading away.

The master of Xiuqing Temple spoke gently, “…I am passing along this character, ‘You,’ on someone else’s behalf.”

After her name was changed, her frailty gradually healed.

Far away in Lin’an, Zhou Tan began to fall ill — a young man who had once practiced swordsmanship and horsemanship alongside his mother gradually lost the strength for martial arts.

She knew. This was the wish Zhou Tan had made for her.

“I would gladly bear your sickness in your place…”

Qu You lowered her head, and found herself, without knowing quite when, dressed in a pale peach gauze robe of ancient style, a flower-fortune slip held in her hand.

A beautiful, youthful hand plucked the slip from her fingers and read it aloud. “When autumn comes on the ninth day of the ninth month, my blossoms open as all others wither… oh no, oh no, Youyou has drawn the wrong slip — this one is far too sharp, too full of bloodshed, not at all fitting for us girls…”

Qu You looked at Gao Yunyue’s face and smiled faintly.

“There will be a day,” she said. “Yunyue, let’s make a wager — I bet you that come the autumn banquet, this whole garden will be filled with precious chrysanthemums. Don’t forget to invite me when it happens.”

Gao Yunyue agreed at once. “It’s a deal. And if I don’t see it happen, I certainly won’t be inviting you to admire my flowers.”

Not long after they parted, Qu Cheng was thrown into prison. She managed the household in her mother’s stead, and went with Qu Xiangwen to the pharmacy to buy medicine.

A young physician happened to notice something and immediately cried out, “Old Yu, you’re not being honest here — there’s a problem with this prescription…”

Qu You turned slowly to look, and as she studied the face of the young physician bent over the prescription, it gradually merged, in her mind, with the face of the physician who had once sighed with such pity for her in the crown prince’s prison.

So she said to Bo Ying, “Have I perhaps met you somewhere before?”

Bo Ying scratched his head and laughed. “I’ve wandered the streets scraping by for a living — it wouldn’t surprise me if you’d seen me before, miss.”

…

At last, she saw a scene of hazy, drifting rain.

The frail, disgraced white-robed official sat beneath an apricot blossom tree tied with red silk ribbon, the white jade ring clutched in his hand, a handkerchief pressed to his mouth as he coughed.

He seemed to see her there beneath the apricot tree, and seemed to know she was not truly present in the flesh, for he only gazed at her with deep tenderness, without drawing near.

“If there is a next life…”

She suddenly knew exactly what he was about to say.

“Don’t say it!”

Qu You recalled, slowly, that although The Order of the Fallen Blossoms had erased her name, the statutes within it — so clearly ahead of their time — had still been passed down through history. The moment she had seen them, something in her had stirred with recognition — this was the mark she had left for herself.

She would not fall into total despair again, because she still had a chance to change everything!

“Don’t make that wish… wait for me. Wait until I return — I will surely find a way to bring you the justice that belongs to you.”

“I am willing to exhaust myself entirely for your sake, until my last breath… as long as, in the pages of history, you and I stand together.”

Zhou Tan seemed to sense something, and lowered his hand without finishing his sentence.

The apricot blossoms, startled by her raised voice, fell fluttering to the ground.

The great dream sank deeper and deeper, until at last she woke, drenched in sweat.

The prison door was thrown open violently, and Song Shiyan appeared before her, his hair in disarray, his expression dark and grim.

This time, she was not dreaming.