As dawn broke, a fine layer of morning dew clung to the purple bamboo leaves in the courtyard.
Fan Changyu opened her eyes groggily, feeling a throbbing pain in her head. Had she been drunk last night? She frowned, rubbing her temples. As she breathed in, she noticed an unfamiliar scent on the bedding. Instantly alert, she instinctively looked down, relieved to find her clothes still intact.
Her gaze fell upon a dark comforter adorned with diamond-shaped bird patterns. The gauze curtains, embroidered with intertwining lotus motifs, were only half-drawn near the headboard. The golden morning light filtered through, making the dark lotus patterns shimmer.
Thinking she had been temporarily placed in the City Lord’s mansion after passing out drunk, Fan Changyu sighed in relief and sat up, supporting herself on the bed.
“Awake?” A low, clear voice sounded from beyond the bed curtains.
Fan Changyu froze, turning to look outside. Through the golden silk gauze, she could vaguely make out a figure sitting by the window opposite her. Clad in a dragon robe with a jade belt, his ink-black hair was half-tied with a golden crown. He had been sitting there like a statue in the morning light, for who knows how long.
Xie Zheng? Was she in his room?
For a long moment, Fan Changyu’s mind went blank.
The hangover headache was intense, forcing her to press her temples as she carefully recalled the events of the previous night.
She remembered pretending to be drunk and being helped out of the front hall by a maid. But later, when she was looking for a place to sober up, she seemed to have truly become intoxicated. Her last memory was of washing her face in a water vat when Xie Zheng suddenly lifted her.
Had he encountered her in her drunken state? Given their current relationship, why didn’t he simply have a maid send her to a guest room to rest? Why had he brought her to his chambers?
Fan Changyu had many questions, but she couldn’t remember anything after getting drunk. Fearing there might be some misunderstanding, she first said, “I apologize, I was drunk last night. I… I hope I didn’t cause any trouble for the Marquis?”
Through the gauze curtain, she couldn’t see the expression of the man sitting in the red wooden chair opposite her, but she could feel the atmosphere in the room suddenly grow tense.
Fan Changyu wasn’t sure if it was her words that had displeased him or if she had truly been discourteous the night before.
She could hear the early-rising servants moving about in the courtyard. Worried that if she left Xie Zheng’s room any later, someone might see her, she lifted the golden silk curtain and got up. As she put on her boots, she said, “If I truly offended you last night, I’ll make amends to the Marquis another day…”
The man who had been silent until now suddenly let out a derisive laugh. “What offense could you possibly commit against me?”
His voice was hoarse as if his throat was filled with sand, likely from sitting there all night. Yet his words were sharp and cold as if he deeply resented her constant attempts to distance herself from him.
Fan Changyu’s hand paused as she was putting on her boots. A deathly silence spread between them.
After she finished putting on her boots and looked up, without the gauze curtain obstructing her view, she saw his pale face. The corners of his eyes were tinged with red from staying up all night, and his hands resting on his knees had scabs on the fingertips.
Anyone could see how exhausted he was at this moment. Yet he was like a tightly drawn bowstring, making one fear that when that facade of calmness shattered, madness and distortion would seep through the cracks.
Seeing him like this, Fan Changyu felt an inexplicable dull ache in her heart.
In her memory, Xie Zheng had always been proud and aloof. Even when he was on the brink of death and she had saved him, he had never shown any sign of weakness.
Now, however, she felt that his pride and acerbity, like a body covered in thorns, were merely a thin layer of ice on a lake’s surface. With just a bit of sunlight, it could crack open.
Seemingly aware that his previous words had been too harsh, Xie Zheng remained silent for a moment before standing up and walking towards the door. “What would you like to eat?” he asked, his tone so natural it was as if there had never been any rift between them due to their fathers’ enmity.
Some memories of their past interactions were awakened. Fan Changyu had thought she could face this calmly, but at this moment, she was still gripped by a heart-wrenching sadness.
“Xie Zheng.”
The man, his hand already on the door latch, stopped abruptly at her words.
Fan Changyu looked at his slender back, took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, her voice carried a hint of hoarseness: “Since we parted in Chongzhou, we haven’t talked. Why don’t we take this opportunity to speak openly?”
The man facing away from her didn’t respond, but he also showed no intention of leaving, seemingly waiting for her to continue.
Fan Changyu said, “I’m very sorry about General Xie’s death.”
At the mention of Xie Linshan, Xie Zheng remained silent. With his back to Fan Changyu, she couldn’t see his expression, but his hand gripping the door latch was tense, veins bulging from the effort.
“I don’t blame you for the choice you made that day, or for the things you said. Before the truth about what happened seventeen years ago is fully uncovered, I won’t ask you to believe what my grandfather and father said. You once said, out of respect for Mentor Tao, that you would only see me as a fellow disciple from now on. But I can’t be as detached as you, Marquis.”
Fan Changyu stared at his back, her eyes already brimming with unshed tears. Still, she continued, enunciating each word carefully: “From now on, let’s remain strangers. I apologize for intruding today.”
When her mother was alive, she always said Fan Changyu had a carefree nature. But for those she truly cared about, losing even one could cost her half her life.
She didn’t easily like someone, but once she did, how could she simply let go?
The blood feud between their fathers, the imperial marriage decree – too much stood between them now. They could never go back to how things were.
“Crack—”
The sound of splintering wood came from the door. Xie Zheng had broken the door latch with his bare hands.
Fan Changyu’s heart skipped a beat involuntarily.
She saw his fingers, already crusted with dried blood, ooze fresh droplets from the force. Yet he seemed oblivious to the pain as he asked, still facing away from her, “What if I say I regret it?”
Fan Changyu’s pupils dilated, not immediately grasping his meaning. “What?”
Xie Zheng turned around, his eyes now pitch black. A bright red drop of blood slid down his pale, slender fingers, falling to the ground and splattering like a tiny flower of blood, resembling a teardrop of blood.
“I said, I regret it,” he repeated slowly, his tone bland yet obstinate.
These words sent a numbing shock through Fan Changyu’s heart, followed by an endless bitterness. She remained silent for a long time.
The doorframe blocked the morning light streaming in from outside. Xie Zheng stood there, his entire being seeming to meld into the shadows. Fan Changyu stood directly opposite the window, the morning sun falling entirely upon her, vibrant and warm.
The line between light and darkness seemed like an insurmountable chasm.
After a long while, Fan Changyu heard herself ask hoarsely, “You regret it, so what?”
Xie Zheng looked at her silently, his pitch-black pupils devoid of any light. “Can we go back to how we were before?”
He had tried to give her up, but the greatest torment and pain he had ever experienced in his life had been during these recent days.
At first, he thought he would gradually get used to it, just as he had when he couldn’t accept the fact of his parents’ deaths in his childhood. No matter how painful, he believed he could endure it.
If not in a day, then in a month; if not in a month, then in a year… But he couldn’t even last a month.
The emptiness in his chest was overwhelming. The longer he was away from her, the more intense that hollow feeling became, almost driving him mad.
Endless killing and pain couldn’t alleviate it one bit.
Many times, Xie Zheng felt as if he had already died.
No, death would probably be easier to bear than this torment.
She seemed to be an integral part of his life, so once he lost her, he became lost and dispirited, like a walking corpse.
Countless days and nights, she and the horrific scene of Xie Linshan’s death in Jinzhou seventeen years ago alternated in his dreams, leaving him struggling in endless darkness, covered in blood.
It seemed that in this life, he was only meant to live for revenge, undeserving of even a shred of joy or tenderness in this world.
But from her, he had received the purest, most fervent love.
It was she who made him realize that life wasn’t only about bitterness.
But Xie Linshan’s abdomen, gutted and emptied of organs, finally sewn up crookedly by the army doctor, those deep, bone-deep wounds from swords and axes, also constantly left him breathless.
When he was nearly driven mad by the torment of hatred and love, he realized that he hated her too.
Her father’s generation had killed his father! Causing him half a lifetime of pain.
She had shown him what love was, yet the emotions that grew from it tortured him day and night, denying him peace for the rest of his life!
At the height of his hatred, he had even thought about taking her with him to death after his revenge was complete.
If they couldn’t share a bed in life, then they could share a grave in death.
He would no longer have to endure such pain and torment, and on the Bridge of Helplessness, he could hold her hand as they went to the next life together.
In the next life, they probably wouldn’t be separated by such a blood feud. Perhaps he could meet her as children, grow up as childhood sweethearts… She liked scholars, so he would become a gentle scholar, take the imperial exams, and on her coming-of-age day, marry her, have children…
But these were just fantasies.
If he could bear to harm her even a little, he wouldn’t have merely said he would never see her again in this life.
Seeing her again, learning that she had already been to the gates of death and back, that feeling of fear and anger that made his teeth chatter and his whole body tremble with powerlessness – he never wanted to experience it a second time in this life.
Xie Zheng looked at the young woman in military attire standing in the morning light. Even her hair seemed to glow with a faint golden light, like a deity who had mistakenly entered the mortal realm.
The scene from last night, when Zheng Wenchang toasted her at the banquet, flashed before his eyes again, and the jealousy in his heart grew wild like weeds.
Could she be a deity for him alone?
After a long silence without a response from Fan Changyu, Xie Zheng unconsciously clenched his fists. The slight pain from the wounds on his fingertips made him increasingly alert, his black eyes growing ever more profound.
Fan Changyu was purely dumbfounded.
Go back to how they were before. How could they possibly do that?
There was a blood feud between their fathers. Even if the truth about the Jinzhou tragedy seventeen years ago could finally be uncovered, the emperor had already decreed a marriage. He was about to marry a princess. What would this make them?
Fan Changyu had heard that some high-ranking officials and nobles kept mistresses. Could it be that he wanted her to be his mistress?
Fan Changyu suddenly felt short of breath. A sharp pain rose from the depths of her heart, blurring her vision. She held back the surge of bitterness in her eyes and asked in return, “How does the Marquis think we can go back to how we were before?”
“Can the Marquis pretend the Jinzhou incident never happened? Or can he have the Emperor retract the marriage decree?”
As she spoke the last sentence, even though she clenched her jaw tightly, a tear that had been held back for so long finally escaped, falling heavily to the ground.
Xie Zheng’s expression turned terrifyingly dark as he heard the first half of her words. But upon hearing the latter half, he suddenly looked up sharply: “Who told you the Emperor has arranged a marriage for me?”