“Consort Shuang still has the mood to sing? Unless… you’ve come to terms with it?” Ye Pei looked at her.
Huang Beishuang burst into laughter. “You silly girl, go fetch the formal attire I’m to wear for tomorrow’s journey!”
Ye Pei and Zai Ping exchanged glances, then gently placed the nightgown on her bed. A gust of wind from outside made it flutter. No one paid any attention…
Walking down the long corridor, touched by moonlight. Huang Beishuang wore a purple-red formal gown, with a long gold-embroidered cape trailing behind her, making a soft rustling sound. Zhu Jun walked ahead, silent but lost in thought. This was the second time he was escorting Huang Beishuang to the Yunyudian Palace. The last time, Zhen Qu Youjia had also been present. After that, for nearly half a year, Huang Beishuang hadn’t been summoned by His Majesty.
And tonight, it came so suddenly.
Na Zhan reclined on the edge of the bed, half his face obscured by yellow gauze curtains. He seemed to have bathed as well, with droplets of water still visible on his chest. He didn’t look up at her, focusing instead on playing with the wooden ocarina in his hand.
“Why aren’t you wearing the nightgown?” he asked, his voice tinged with faint anger.
“Tomorrow I leave on a mission to Mizan, perhaps with no return. I wanted Your Majesty to see me, as this might be the last impression I leave you with!”
Na Zhan’s eyes turned cold. He reached out to part the bed curtains. She knelt halfway, radiant and beautiful, her cold gray eyes like a game of chess, each move calculated.
“Step forward!” He pushed aside the blanket covering his legs and sat up, his disheveled hair falling behind him as he looked at her expressionlessly. She took a step forward.
Na Zhan smiled ambiguously and beckoned, “Another step forward!”
She rose and took another step.
He then looked at her skirt, embroidered with a hundred birds and phoenixes in gold thread, alluring in the moonlight.
“One step, just one more step forward, and you could be in my arms!”
He pulled down his nightgown, revealing his muscular body, sitting on the bed, speaking enigmatically.
But Huang Beishuang remained where she was, still half-kneeling, her face lowered, her expression hidden.
She didn’t move forward.
Outside the window, bare branches cast chaotic shadows on the wall, swaying with each gust of wind.
“At thirteen, I had my first woman!”
Na Zhan sat on the bed, speaking casually, “She’s now my Consort Shu, five years older than me!”
Huang Beishuang knelt silently on the ground.
“Between a man and a woman, it’s about conquest and submission…, heh!” He chuckled deeply, “For instance, if she doesn’t submit once, we can have a second time. If she doesn’t submit for one night, we have another night. If she can’t forget my pleasure, I’ll invade all night, until she can’t resist…”
“But you’ve already abandoned her!” Huang Beishuang didn’t raise her head, looking at the shadows beneath the bed. She smiled bitterly, “Consort Shu often comes to my palace to listen to the flute, for no other reason than to catch a glimpse of you when you visit!”
Na Zhan stood up naked, just a step away from her. Looking down, he saw a pearl hairpin holding her black hair. He reached out and removed it, causing her dark hair to cascade like water.
“Raise your head!”
She didn’t move.
“Perhaps I should use the same method to subdue you.”
She laughed, “Then I would give Your Majesty the same outcome. Neither wife, nor pawn, nor self. Your Majesty, I would become a fleeting moment in your romantic life that you’d never look back on.”
He fell silent for a moment, then reached out to put on his robe.
“You know, by not taking this step forward, I could charge you with a capital offense?” He sat down, lifting her face with his finger, flippant and arrogant. “But I can’t charge you, nor can I give you a second chance to trample on my dignity! What should I do?” As he spoke, his finger punishingly pressed against her lips. The soft lips gave way to his rough finger. Suddenly, he said coldly, “Huang Beishuang, kneel at my feet, for the entire night, loyally at my feet, until dawn breaks!”
She nodded against his finger and knelt completely.
Na Zhan’s finger, very slowly, taking a long time, finally moved from her lips. He shifted on the bed, found the small wooden ocarina, picked it up, and began to play softly.
The ocarina’s sound was lonely, unlike the ethereal flute or the elegant xiao. It resembled a muffled groan, rising and falling in the magnificent Yunyudian Palace. Huang Beishuang listened with her head bowed, seeming to see dunes being blown by the wind, rolling layer by layer, rustling. In the end, when one opened their eyes, a new crescent-shaped dune stretched out.
There was no lovemaking in the Yunyudian Palace, no intimacy on the bed meant for passion.
On the winter night, he sneered at himself, never having known the taste of desire or hunger in his life. And that woman, beautiful and calm, unperturbed, knelt at his feet for an entire night, refusing to step forward. That one step, like a vast chasm, was like the River Styx. The other shore was indeed the last impression she left him with.
The ocarina’s song whispered, a sleepless night. With her, it was always sleepless!
In the year 331 CE, as winter approached and frost formed, with great battles looming in the desert, Huang Beishuang led a long procession out of Yunpei. At the gates of Guangping City, her clan saw her off, but she didn’t look back once.
Within ten days, she didn’t disappoint him, luring away the Fengtian army and surrounding Fuping.
The day he received the news, he sat on his warhorse, gazing towards Mizan.
Huang Beishuang would never know that he had always thought, no matter whose hands she fell into, as long as he was the final victor, she would never escape his grasp, just like Yuhao years ago.
And he had enough patience to wait for the day he would see her again.
…
Many years later, in the Guan Ying Palace, twenty-one Jiema trees would bloom annually, their flowers as abundant as rain. Perhaps these worldly flowers could never match the pure white of snowflakes, but who knew that even if snow drifted for a thousand years, it would never have such fragrance.
He often stood alone in the Huaiyue Pavilion, gazing at the beautiful Jiema trees, only to realize after a long time that human loneliness is nothing more than waiting for flowers to bloom and lingering after they wither…
Waiting, lingering, lingering, waiting…