In the accounts of the eldest generation, those who had lived long enough, there was always talk of this: at the moment of death, before the soul departs the body, it briefly revisits one’s entire life.

Xiao Nanhui had never believed it.

Not as a child, and not when she grew up either.

She felt that a person’s life was very long — how could it possibly be traversed again in so brief an instant?

She imagined that all the roads once walked, the rivers once crossed, the wild tree groves once passed through, were laid out in a line — requiring the same span of time to travel through again.

But she had never imagined that those scenes could layer atop one another like the spring pancakes Dujuan used to spread — each sheet stacked upon the last.

And to pass through all those layers, all it took was a single hole.

A hole leading into the past, bottomless and without end.

She felt as though she was falling through darkness without stopping — as though she had tumbled into a dry well with no bottom, a nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-story ancient pagoda, an expanse of sky with no land.

Gradually, the scenes around her grew clear.

She saw her three-or-four-year-old self crossing a gobi wasteland swept with yellow sand. Behind her the outline of the ancient city of Suyan was slowly disappearing. Above her head the sun blazed like a great plate. Beneath her feet the earth was cracked and scorching.

She had walked a very long way. The dried sweet potato she had been carrying was gone, the water bladder long since empty. The dazzling sun swayed overhead. She watched flocks of vultures circling around her — then hoof beats sounded, and on the far edge of the horizon a general appeared on horseback.

Half of the general’s face was covered by his armor, but a pair of young and gentle eyes were visible. She gripped his hand and refused to let go, until he lifted her up from the ground and placed her on the tall horse’s back.

Then she saw her six-year-old self, timidly following behind Xiao Zhun and walking into the Marquis Mansion. Chencai stood before the imposing main gate, smiling and nodding to her in greeting, while Dujuan still wore a girl’s twin-ring bun. Dujuan stepped to one side to reveal behind her a table full of steaming, hot food.

She shoved food into her mouth as fast as she could, and looked up to find Dujuan reaching out a hand toward her. Thinking she was about to be scolded, she crammed in one more big mouthful at once. But Dujuan only wiped the corners of her mouth, and pressed a porcelain spoon into her hand.

Later, she saw Xiao Zhun lead into her room a “wild boy” with a round face and caterpillar-thick brows — and the moment the boy spoke, she discovered he was actually a girl. The moment Xiao Zhun’s back was turned, the little girl who had looked like a New Year painting changed her expression entirely and snatched away her fruit dish and food. The next day, using a grape as bait, she trapped the girl under a sieve and caught her dead to rights, and the two of them rolled around on the floor in a brawl, punching and kicking.

In another turn of her vision she had grown somewhat taller, but the thick-eyebrowed girl was still the same height. The two of them disguised themselves as men and went to a certain establishment full of warm lanterns and fragrant wine, laughing and carousing — a beauty on one arm, a handsome fellow on the other. From the back window she spotted a few thugs in the rear courtyard beating a manservant, so she dropped down and gave those people a thrashing. The manservant raised his head and revealed a pair of slippery, darting little eyes — his first month’s wages clutched tightly in his arms.

She saw herself go to battle for the first time — a single swing of her halberd cutting off half a bandit’s skull. Blood splattered across her face, blinding her. The shaft of her spear was slippery and gore-drenched, nearly impossible to keep hold of. She wiped her hand on her horse’s hindquarters at random, and that piebald mount of hers mistook it for a command to flee, broke into a gallop, and didn’t stop until she had run ten li beyond the battlefield.

She saw herself transform from a panicked recruit who always needed others to protect her into a steady, decisive Tiancheng soldier.

She saw herself go from having no one to having companions and family.

She watched her past self with her own eyes, and in her past self’s eyes, there was always Xiao Zhun.

She kept growing, while he remained unchanged through ten years, still the same man she had first met.

She watched herself run and chase after him every day, hoping that time might wait for her so she could catch up to his footsteps.

She watched herself wait and long for him every night beneath the long corridor of the mansion, hoping that time might pass more quickly so she could open her eyes to the sight of him returning home.

She watched herself grieve over his grief, bear enmity toward his enemies — while thinking all the while of how to render merit on the battlefield, and secretly, behind everyone’s backs, gathering every thread and trace of evidence concerning the slaughter of the Xiao family.

She watched herself on the day of her twentieth birthday, walking step by step through a sea of golden camellia blossoms bloomed to their fullest, into the great hall of Yongye Temple.

No. Don’t go there.

Don’t draw that fortune lot.

If you don’t draw it, how can its terrible words ever come true?

But the more she struggled, the further she sank.

She wanted to rush forward and stop that figure, but in the end she only moved further and further away.

In the darkness, it seemed as though there were hands gripping her, holding her, dragging her down into the abyss.

“Xiao Nanhui — wake up. How long are you going to sleep?”

Who was that? Was it Dujuan?

If she opened her eyes now, she would see Dujuan’s reproachful face and her pinched-together brows.

She should burrow under the covers and pretend to still be fast asleep. Dujuan would open the small window and say the weather was beautiful today, then unceremoniously whip off the blanket.

She would tell her she had had a nightmare — that something terrible had happened in the dream, and everyone had left her — and Dujuan’s heart would soften. She would pat her back and speak quietly and gently to her for a while.

She would rush to get dressed, put her shoes and socks on the wrong feet — surely a trick played by that lazy, good-for-nothing maid of hers — and chase out the door, only to collide headlong with the old steward carrying a bowl of spicy noodle soup.

The morning sun would still be low, and there would be so much time left, so much time ahead of her…

But why? Why did she know that all of that, which should have unfolded so naturally, was never going to happen?

Xiao Nanhui opened her eyes. Looking up, she saw that face — soft in its contours yet utterly cold in its stillness.

His eyes were deep and dark as the bottomless dry well in her dream, pulling in every bit of light around them, leaving behind a world that held only him and her.

She opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came out.

The corners of her eyes ached with the rawness of dried tears. At her temples, the skin was still damp.

Her nose and mouth were still breathing, her chest still beating — she felt she was still alive. And yet she felt she had already died.

They say you can only know a dream was a dream the moment you wake from it.

And she had only just discovered that her entire twenty years of life had been a dream. Waking from it, she was still alone, unchanged.

Her expression was numb. But the tears kept falling, beyond her control.

She closed her eyes again.

“Let this subject sleep a little longer, Your Majesty.”

“All right.” Cool fingertips prised apart her lips and teeth, and a pill the size of a pearl was placed between them. “But you must stay alive first.”

The tip of her tongue pressed against the pill, and she tasted bitterness spreading slowly through her mouth. She barely moved.

She did not want medicine to keep her alive. She wanted medicine to send her into dreams. Or medicine to wake her from a dream.

She wanted to open her eyes and have someone tell her it was all false — that everything she had lived through was only a nightmare.

“What is it? You don’t want to live?”

His voice was still cool and impassive, nothing to hint at emotion, yet it struck her like cold, hard reality.

He was always like this — nothing, no matter what occurred, could disturb even a fraction of his composure.

In other times, she would have felt wronged, would have wanted to argue back out of spite. But right now, her heart held nothing but endless exhaustion.

“Why would I not?”

Her voice was very soft, stumbling a few times through the vast emptiness of the darkness before settling into stillness.

After a long while, his voice came again.

“Then why did you bury what We entrusted to you together with your maid?”

The figure curled on the stone bed went rigid, then folded itself into an even smaller shape.

Xiao Nanhui had expected him not to let her off easily — but she had not expected him to close in so quickly, not even leaving her a moment to breathe and recover.

She finally forced herself to sit up, watching that half-visible profile in the darkness, her voice low.

“She was not a maid. She was my—”

She was her family. She was her friend. She was the most unremarkable yet most important person in her life.

But she was gone now.

She had been left forever on that wild and rocky slope of Doucheng Ridge, and only she and the moonlight had witnessed the shape of her in those final moments.

Bitterness welled up from the corners of her eyes again. She sniffed it back down. When she spoke, her voice had a strange, forced lightness to it.

“At the time the situation was urgent, and I had no certainty I could protect myself. I didn’t dare keep what Your Majesty entrusted to me on my person, so I left it somewhere safe. I made a marker when I buried her — Your Majesty is benevolent, and would not overlook her even while finding the item. That would let me rest at ease.”

“How at ease.” His voice was colder than she had ever heard it, the mockery entirely undisguised. “It is a pity that We do not deserve the benevolence you speak of, and have no intention of attending to the remains of a serving girl.”

She was silent for a moment, then shook her head.

“You wouldn’t do that—”

“What makes you think We would not?” His voice suddenly pressed closer, the echo bouncing off the four walls with a strange urgency. “If you die, your hatreds and your attachments will all be placed in the hands of these vague, insubstantial things called human hearts. And you must know — there is nothing in this world less reliable than the human heart.”

She let out a bitter smile — whether to cover something or to mock herself.

“And what of it? Your Majesty’s heart is far more reliable than I am. I thought I could do many things. I thought fate could be changed. I thought that from the day I picked up a weapon and began training in martial arts, I would never again be humiliated and rendered helpless. And what came of it? I cannot even protect the people closest to me.”

In the darkness came the soft sound of boiling water being poured into a vessel, and then the sound of a clay pot being set down.

“Whether a person is strong or not does not depend on whether their hand holds a weapon.”

Was that so? Perhaps. But what did it matter? Born an orphan and adrift through all her years, the means available to change one’s fate were few and far between. If there had been another way, who would have chosen to go on living like this — always licking blood from the tip of a blade?

She was angry now. The grief and rage that had been suppressed for so long came pouring out of her chest and belly all at once.

“Your Majesty was born at the summit of all mountains, with ten thousand li of rivers and lands below your feet. Even if your hand held only a strand of prayer beads, no one could harm you in the slightest. But I was born ordinary, and the hardships and bitterness of ordinary life — how could Your Majesty ever understand?!”

The illness and injury had not healed, and when she gave way to anger she felt her chest tighten, her vision darkening in waves.

The man’s cool fingertips touched her cheek — lightly wiping away the cold sweat at her temples, gentle in a way that bore no trace of having been provoked at all, carrying instead something of the tender intimacy between people who loved each other.

“So it is only now that you understand — this world is, at its nature, unequal and unjust? And because your lot was ordinary and lowly, you are permitted to simply give up? Is that what you mean to say — for yourself, and for that maidservant of yours who died?”

“You—!”

She could not argue him down, could not debate him, and could only clench her fists with all the fury she had left and retreat back into that last small refuge she had in the darkness.

“Even if I no longer wish to live, it is none of Your Majesty’s concern.”

He remained unruffled. The words he sent from between his lips were the final blow to shatter her.

“Before you go — do you not wish to know where that violet-robed assassin has gone, Xiao Aide-de-camp?”

She indeed stopped cold. The blank numbness in her eyes receded somewhat — and then she seemed to remember something, and the look she turned on him held equal parts anticipation and fear.

He knew exactly what was in her heart, and deliberately chose not to look at that expression.

A white porcelain bowl was placed before her. The medicinal broth within still carried just the right degree of warmth.

“If you want to know — drink it.”

She grabbed the bowl of medicine and swallowed the liquid without blinking, barely noticing whether it was bitter or astringent. Then she looked at him steadily, waiting for him to honor his word.

And he, staring at that porcelain bowl, kept his eyes half-lowered — concealing beneath them an emotion, terrible and refined through countless repetitions of concealment.

Even now, at this moment, he could not tolerate the way she had revealed such urgency for that man’s sake.

“He went southwest. The shadow guards have tracked him the whole way — the last confirmed trace of him was already at the border of Chizhou.”

The woman swayed to her feet, one hand gripping the edge of the stone bed, the other seizing his hand where it rested on his knee.

“This subject has also served as one of Your Majesty’s personal guards, and has previously crossed blades with him. This subject is willing to go and lend support — if it comes to a critical moment—”

He gave a cold snort.

“What — you mean to say that, if it comes to a critical moment, you would stake your life?”

She said nothing, only looked up at him with stubborn determination.

Those were eyes full of feeling — burning and alive. Even after suffering pain and betrayal and being trampled down, they had not become utterly numb and dead.

He had never possessed eyes like those.

People are often like this. The less one has of something, the more deeply one is drawn to it.

In the end, he was still unable to keep looking at her. He rose and stepped away from the stone bed.

“Xiao Nanhui — your life may be of no consequence whatsoever, because even you place no value on it. You believe your vengeance is something grand and magnificent, but in the face of death, none of it means anything at all.”

Death.

How ordinary those two words were, and yet how heavy. She had brushed past it countless times on the battlefield, and only now, at this moment, did she truly understand what it meant.

“Then what does mean something?”

The heavy sound of a mechanism turning, stone grinding against stone, came from deep within the darkness.

“Living. Living is what means something. Living is what lets you feel, experience, and choose.”

A current of air moved toward her face. She felt her loose hair stir faintly.

“My foster father—”

“Qinghuai Marquis Xiao Zhun has defected. The violet-robed swordsman has abducted Bai Yun. The Xiao family is now colluding with the Bai family.” His voice became flat again, not a trace of any further emotion to be found. “He has defected as a commander of an entire camp — he is now an enemy of Tiancheng. You understand this clearly.”

She understood it. That was exactly why she was in such pain.

“But there must be more to this that we don’t yet know—”

He did not turn around, but even his silhouette radiated a coldness that could not be hidden.

He should tell her: speak one more word about that man and he would have someone kill him.

But when the words reached his lips, they became something else entirely.

“If you live — you may yet see how the Xiao family’s story ends.”

The moment those words fell, the stone door turned completely. The heavy sound came to a stop. Around them all was calm again.

Xiao Nanhui looked up. On the other side of the door was the quiet night sky. Stars and moonlight spilled into the room — to eyes long kept in darkness, it seemed a brilliance she had never known before.

She stood, dazed, and walked toward that glittering night sky. Only then did she realize why this place had such an unobstructed view.

This was Jingbo Tower.

The last time she had come to this tower it was day — spring light bright and clear, a gentle breeze drifting.

But now it was deep in the night. Midsummer had arrived. The heat pressed in and the cicadas were loud.

Not far below, the entire imperial city lay at her feet. The ever-burning lights traced the intersecting streets running north, south, east, and west — like the glowing veins and arteries of a great living thing, pulsing with warm life. And at the very tips of these root-like tendrils of light, ordinary family after ordinary family lay sleeping — people who saw the same faces and did the same things and lived the same unchanging days over and over.

To be an ordinary person in such a world had once been the dream of her whole life. She had believed that the less one possessed, the less one had to feel in the losing.

Her tears had long since dried. She stared, blank and lost, at the distance, not noticing the sound of footsteps departing behind her.

“Whether to live or to die — work it out for yourself here.”