She didn’t understand.
If Master was pushing for Great Qian’s development, to realize the grand wish of universal harmony and equality for all living beings, harboring passionate but naive blood and love, sparing no effort and even willing to oppose her to implement these policies, she would be pained but could accept and understand it.
After all, that would be a dream filled with great love.
It would be striving for all humanity.
It would be courageously trying for the happiness of her and her people.
She had always thought it was like this.
So she endured, contemplated, tried to accept, and even after determining she couldn’t accept everything wholesale, she never took drastic and harsh measures to deal with it, never employed any of the normal means that any emperor would use when their throne was threatened.
Even knowing that Great Qian Academy would be detrimental to her, knowing that Great Qian Academy students spreading throughout the realm would be detrimental to her, knowing that these students participating in the spring examinations might even shake the foundation of her rule, she still chose to continue.
All to first realize Master’s so-called “fairness.”
To prove to Master that she had always been a just and benevolent emperor, that she had sufficient breadth of mind and scope to face new changes, to give new meaning to the era, to gradually transform completely, letting the people live the free and equal life Master yearned for.
As long as she was given time.
If she couldn’t succeed, her descendants, her successors, would definitely continue implementing and waiting until Great Qian was mature and stable enough, until productivity, technology, and thought had all achieved sufficient progress, until the moment when reform would come naturally.
However, until today, she finally learned it wasn’t like this.
It turned out that Master indeed understood that Great Qian’s current soil couldn’t yet nurture overly advanced thoughts, couldn’t withstand overly intense deep cultivation.
Then, why?
Why would Master, who had loved her, protected her, taught her, and supported her until now, want to overturn her realm regardless of everything, after she had finally ascended to the throne and possessed the world?
Where was her great love? Where was her freedom and equality? Where was her “people are most important, state comes second, ruler is least important”?
Yun Buci gently shook her head across from her, her smile part self-mockery, part indifference. She glanced at the pale-faced Tie Ci, stood up, took off the cloak she was wearing, draped it over her shoulders, saying: “Your health hasn’t been as good as before these past few years. Don’t catch cold.”
Tie Ci seemed suddenly awakened. She pressed down on the cloak with one hand and held down the hand that was helping her tie the cloak with the other, looking up at her.
In the distance, palace lantern light silhouetted this pair of master and disciple – one sitting, one standing, the seated one looking up, the standing one looking down, their gazes meeting, the cloak slightly lifting between their fingers.
A very warm scene.
Palace servants passing in the distance couldn’t help but smile knowingly and quietly moved away.
On the covered walkway, Jian Xi held flowers she had carefully selected for a long time and carefully arranged for even longer, approaching the garden with great anticipation.
Under the garden pavilion, the master and disciple gazing at each other seemed frozen in that posture.
After a long time, Tie Ci spoke, her voice light as floating catkins: “Tell me why.”
“Then why didn’t you put poison in the wine, only a drug that makes one weak?” Yun Buci said. “You see, you really are a kind child. Even now, you still won’t poison me, only want to capture me, place me under house arrest. I guess you want me to disappear for a while first, let the academy faction lose their momentum without a leader, then slowly persuade me to finally give up, gather the academy faction, and ultimately use them for yourself.”
“Many people advised me to kill you,” Tie Ci said. “I’m not afraid of killing, but I’ve never believed that killing is the best way to solve problems.”
“If only everyone thought like you, but unfortunately for most people, the best way to resolve a deadlock is slaughter,” Yun Buci said. “Ah Ci, I understand you too well. I knew you wouldn’t poison me, so I dared to drink. But you don’t understand me.”
Tie Ci was silent for a long moment, then murmured: “Yes, I don’t understand you.”
“I don’t understand why you saved me back then.”
“I don’t understand why you chose me.”
“I don’t understand why you initially wanted to kill the Three Mad and Five Emperors.”
“Just as I’ve never known how many industries you actually have under your banner, how many things you possess that Great Qian cannot possess, where these things come from, whether they’re inexhaustible. I don’t know what you plan to do with these frightening things. More than once, people have told me I should be careful of you and guard against you, but you are my benefactor, my family. You’ve saved my life more than once. Without you, there would be no me today. If I can’t even trust you, I don’t know what else in this world I can trust.”
“I also don’t understand why you, who have done so much for me, would finally choose to oppose me – and not even oppose me for your beliefs and dreams, which completely contradicts the internal logic of worldly affairs you’ve spoken of.”
“I understand even less why, since we have no irreconcilable contradictions and conflicts, since you also agree with me in your heart, you have to be so urgent. I clearly told you we could take it slowly, could start with tax reform first…”
“No… we can’t.”
Tie Ci stopped and looked at Yun Buci.
“We can’t anymore.” Yun Buci’s gaze slid away from her shoulder, not knowing what she was looking at in the darkness, murmuring: “I can’t say too much. I can only say I’m really helping you. I don’t know whether you’ll ever… ever learn anything in the future, but I hope you remember this: perhaps I’ve hurt you, perhaps there will be other hurts, but all the hurt is the best, most peaceful way I can choose for you compared to even more terrible treatments.”
At that moment, both she and Tie Ci heard a series of beeping sounds.
The sound was mechanical and urgent, unlike any sound Tie Ci had ever heard in this world. She couldn’t describe how she felt hearing this sound, only that her heart suddenly jumped, and a sense of urgency and unease struck her fiercely.
And Yun Buci’s expression had already changed.
She muttered: “It actually came early…”
Then she sighed: “Tie Ci, truly, things could originally have had a relatively good solution. You just needed to harden your heart, watch Great Qian be in turmoil for a while, watch Great Qian lose some people, endure that period of bloodshed and growing pains. Great Qian would become a completely new Great Qian. At that time, if you still wanted power, we would give you some power. If you wanted freedom, then you could obtain the freedom you’ve dreamed of. At that time, you could be with whoever you wanted to be with, you wouldn’t have to bear what you didn’t want to bear, you could return to being the purest version of yourself. How wonderful…”
Tie Ci keenly caught two words: “We?”
“However, now it’s impossible. Because of your refusal and your resolute attitude, along with your court and country, it’s impossible to implement our new policies, won’t give us the Great Qian we want, and they can’t wait anymore… Tie Ci, you were wrong. You’ll eventually know that your resistance will bring devastating blows to the Great Qian you love so deeply…”
“What devastating blows?”
Before this question was finished, Tie Ci’s hand pressing on Yun Buci suddenly exerted force.
She had already pressed on Yun Buci’s pulse point, confident enough to subdue her.
But her fingers slipped over the pulse point. At that moment, she felt like she was pressing on soap or something slippery, completely losing the sense of substance under her hand.
At the same time, her shoulder also shook, trying to shake off Master’s hand on her shoulder.
Master’s hand was bounced away.
At this moment, Tie Ci had a flash of cold light in her hand that appeared and disappeared. She stared into Yun Buci’s eyes and finally clasped that thing in her palm.
Then she vaguely felt a prick on her shoulder. Turning her head, she saw an extremely small syringe embedded in the seam of her shoulder, the dark purple liquid in the syringe going down by more than half in an instant.
She immediately reached out to pull out the syringe. The syringe shattered silently in the grass, but no flowers or plants withered because of it.
It didn’t seem like poison.
But her heart was lifted even higher at this moment.
Master had already retreated during this moment, facing Tie Ci with her defenses wide open, but her eyes were deep, as if looking at Tie Ci, yet also as if looking through Tie Ci at the vast rivers and mountains behind her.
The garden was dimly lit, and behind her was even darker, like all the black of the entire night had condensed behind her.
Then that seemingly substantial black suddenly tore open, and countless billowing white mist rolled out from the opening. Something was vaguely moving in the white mist, accompanied by lightning-like light that immediately shot into her slightly dilated pupils.
In the next instant, that jumping red light was right in front of her. The white mist slightly parted due to that extremely terrifying speed, revealing a human figure wearing a strange tight-fitting silver garment, with a hooded mask on the head, tubes connected at the nose area, black lenses at the eye area flickering with strange light, with some red and green symbols constantly floating through them, holding a small, black and silver alternating, tube-shaped object.
The moment Tie Ci saw that thing, her pupils shrank violently and she was about to retreat.
But at this time, there was suddenly a thunderous sound in her chest.
Like angry tide sweeping wildly, shocking waves hitting the shore, giant waves breaking through solid dikes, rising high into walls, then crashing down thunderously.
Wherever it passed, reversing meridians, sweeping thousands of miles in an instant.
A very familiar feeling.
Four years ago, every time she was seriously injured, or encountered life-and-death moments, or felt urgent emotions, she would experience this feeling.
Accompanying this feeling would come innate abilities, more and more, increasingly numerous.
In the end, she learned that having too many golden fingers would bring backlash. Under Rong Pu’s advice, she voluntarily locked her own meridians, no longer giving herself opportunities to activate them.
In the Chongming Incident, she was forced to unseal them, thus leading to being forced into serious injury by Sang Tang, and from then on, all innate abilities were lost. If she hadn’t later been treated and recuperated by the Medical Madman, her internal power would have been greatly damaged.
Over these four years, she had made many efforts and preparations for her body.
But at this moment, the development of events still exceeded her expectations.
One injection had undone all the previous efforts she and the Medical Madman had made.
After true qi flows in reverse, there must be a period when one cannot move.
She looked up at Yun Buci in the mist and darkness. Behind her, more people in strange silver clothing continued to appear, each holding that black tube-shaped object.
Just looking at that thing made her hair stand on end.
Across from her, Yun Buci said: “Do you still remember how the Three Mad and Five Emperors failed?”
The silver-clad person who appeared first suddenly raised a hand, interrupting her words. At the same time, the muzzle turned and aimed at Tie Ci.
Without any words or movements.
In the next instant, a spark exploded, the surrounding mist and darkness instantly trembling slightly, along with the entire space seeming to shake, cracking open a point of black depths. From those depths sprayed flames that were brilliantly red and fierce, powerful as a thousand pounds yet swift as a thousand miles in an instant.
Tie Ci still couldn’t move.
Hearing that not-very-loud crisp sound, seeing that deep red in the black hole, she closed her eyes.
Murmuring: “…Master.”