In this moment, held within his embrace, even the tears streaming down her cheeks felt too hot to be real.
She could not stop herself, and did not know why she could not stop crying, until she felt him lift her face and bow his head to kiss her.
His lips still carried a trace of the cold from the ice and snow. When they touched her, her body trembled slightly — but both arms around his neck only pulled him tighter.
The ancient wind from north of the Tianshan swept across the mountain ridges and wandered through the foothills all night long. On this snowy night, within this small tent, the lamplight glowed orange, the fire in the brazier burned warm, and the man called Xie Changgeng was at her side.
Like an old scene come again — yet she knew that the time between had stretched so long, so long, that she had once thought the man who had chased her all the way to this very place would forever remain only a memory, a faint and unreachable memory she could no longer revisit.
She gradually forgot her tears and began to answer his kisses in kind. When she heard him call her name in a voice suppressed to a rough, low murmur — “Lan’er” — she slowly opened her eyes and gazed at the face of the man so close before her.
“Do you remember a question you once asked me, back in the Western Gate?” she said. “If at that time I had not yet worked out my answer and did not know how to respond to you — then now I know. Clearly, without any doubt.”
“I came to thank you. Chang Geng, you let me see again, for the first time — the young man I once met beneath the cypress trees of Junshan. You are that young man whom I have loved since the age of thirteen in my past life.”
“And if that young man has grown old, then he would look just the way you do now.”
She took hold of his hand and drew it toward her, pressing it flat against her chest.
Beneath the softness, her heart was beating.
Xie Changgeng looked down and held her gaze.
The ice and snow caught in his hair and tangled beard melted and became water. A rivulet of snowmelt rolled down his forehead, over his brow, and into his eye. He blinked — then without warning he gathered her back into his arms and held her close, tightly, and did not let go.
The ancient and unyielding snows atop the Tianshan peaks. The cutting winds that roam the Gobi year-round. Even if they had weathered his face and frozen the blood in his veins — in this moment, because of those bright and luminous eyes looking up at him, everything suddenly became exactly as it should be.
He was red-eyed as he pressed her beneath him, wanting her without end. It was as if he had truly become a young man again — bold and full of fire, as if striving to mend the heavens themselves, blood running hot, with a strength that would never run out and a longing that could never have enough of her.
The night grew deeper. Time passed — how much, it was impossible to say. Even the yak-oil lamp in the corner of the tent had at last gone out.
The sound of his breathing — steady and calm — fell against her ear. He was tired. He had fallen asleep. And yet his warm breath still played over her forehead, like a feather, again and again, brushing lightly against her. She could not help it — she shifted slightly within his arms. The moment she moved, a hand reached over and gripped hers.
“Where are you going…”
A muffled, half-dreaming voice drifted into her ears.
She pressed herself back against him at once, curling up in his embrace.
“Go to sleep. I am right here — I am not going anywhere…”
She brought her lips close to his ear and coaxed him softly.
He grew quiet. A moment passed, and just as Mu Fulan thought he had drifted back to sleep, she heard him say in a low voice, “Lan’er, when I first arrived here, there was a time when my body was in a very bad way. When the coughing spells came, the pain was so severe I could barely stand upright. I thought I was going to die. During that period, I often dreamed of you. Once, I even dreamed that you had come to see me.”
“I said to you: in the life before, I had wronged you. In this life, even if I spent the whole of it making amends, the debt was still mine. But — if we were to have one more life after this, I would want the one who remembered everything to be me. I would take the black boat again, sail from the Yangtze into Dongting, and go to your father, Prince Changsha, to ask for your hand — to seek to marry his daughter. I would want you to wait for me at the place where we first met, and I would go there and help you rescue the little bird that had fallen from the cliff — so that you would come to love me.”
“I hadn’t gotten your answer before I woke up.”
He fell silent, and after a moment, continued, “Later, the Medicine Elder came wandering through, and my old wound gradually healed. But that dream — I have never forgotten it. It is still clear in my mind…”
His voice grew quieter by degrees, until it was gone, leaving only the arms holding her, growing tighter and tighter, as though afraid that if he loosened them she would vanish — like a dream from which one wakes to find nothing.
Mu Fulan’s eyes grew warm.
She reached up, fingers searching in the dark, and traced his chest, then his neck, moving slowly to his face, inch by inch — then she gently tangled her fingers into his unkempt beard and drew his face toward hers.
“I promise you. Not only this life — we will be together from now on. And if there is a next life, I will go there and wait for you. You must remember to come. We will start again as a young husband and young wife — that would be very good.” She said it.
Xie Changgeng held her close without moving.
Wind and snow through the night. The next morning, the snow cleared and the sky opened. The winter sun shone down on the gleaming white snow blanketing the Tianshan peaks, brilliant and dazzling.
Mu Fulan’s attendants stood before the mountain-foot outpost of Jincheng, bid her farewell, and turned to go.
Mu Fulan watched as their figures walked away and was lost in thought for a moment. Then she turned to the man beside her and said, “Come — take me to Jincheng. From now on, besides Junshan, this place is my home too. When winter is over and the weather turns warm, whenever you have the time, take me to the Western Regions. In my master’s journals, I have read of the countries of the Western Regions he traveled through — the customs and ways of life there are so different from those of our central land. I have longed to see them for myself.”
Xie Changgeng slowly withdrew his gaze from the direction of the capital and looked toward her. A smile came over his face.
He nodded. “All right,” he said.
Mu Fulan looked at Xie Changgeng, who was quietly draping a cloak over her shoulders. “Are you thinking of Xi’er?” she asked.
Xie Changgeng adjusted the cloak on her carefully, and said quietly, “In the end, he still cannot forgive me.” His voice was full of regret.
Mu Fulan said, “Do you know how my master came to be here?”
“I once asked. The Medicine Elder said he was traveling the world and wanted to see the Western Regions, and by a fortunate coincidence passed through this place.”
Mu Fulan shook her head. “It was Xi’er who found my master and asked him to come here to treat your wounds.”
Xie Changgeng’s hands went still.
“When he was small, he did not know who you were to him, nor anything of the past. To him, you were only a stranger. And yet, as a stranger, you earned his respect — and earned his affection. Later he remembered the past. Because of me, he came to hate the man you used to be — while never forgetting the man you have been to him in this life, the one he knew as a child.”
“The thing I had always been most unwilling to see happen was for him to remember the past as well. He is the kindest and most thoughtful child. I had hoped he would know nothing, and live out this life with the purest heart. But perhaps this is not a bad thing after all. He has come through the worst moments and known the best of feelings. Give him some time — he will think it through.”
Xie Changgeng was quiet for a moment. Then he asked her to wait, took his personal sword from his side, wrapped it in cloth, mounted a horse, and rode ahead to catch up with the attendants who had just set off on Mu Fulan’s orders, returning to the capital with their report. He drew alongside them, extended the wrapped sword, and said, “When you return, present this to His Majesty, and bring with it these words: that the person to whom this blade once belonged holds a heart unchanged from the day His Majesty gave it as a gift — not by even a single fraction.”
None of the attendants recognized him. They knew only that he was the guardian of this frontier city beyond the passes, and that he and the young Empress Dowager seemed to share some bond that was difficult to name or fully explain. Seeing him ride up with such an earnest charge, how could they dare to refuse?
The team leader quickly dismounted, received the sword with great respect, and promised to carry out the errand without fail.
Xie Changgeng nodded and turned his horse back.
As he returned to the outpost, he saw her from a distance, standing in the snow, talking with the soldiers.
The city master was a figure shrouded in mystery. The soldiers garrisoning Jincheng, beyond their reverence for his uncanny military genius and awe at the way his reputation held sway over the Tianshan — who had given him their wholehearted loyalty unto death — had never even seen the face beneath that beard clearly, let alone known anything of his origins. In idle times, soldiers had occasionally gossiped about it among themselves in private. Some said he was an old general from the previous dynasty, sent here to redeem himself through service. Others said he might be someone who had stood close to the late Emperor — or perhaps someone whose achievements had grown too great for the young Emperor to brook — and that was why he had ended up in this place. What none of them had ever imagined was that out of nowhere a woman of such remarkable beauty would travel ten thousand li to come and be with him.
After the city master had left just now, a few of the bolder soldiers had gone over to her and asked whether she was the city master’s wife, and whether she would be staying.
Mu Fulan had smiled and said, “I am his wife, and also a physician. He told me that this is a hard and cold place, and that you are short of medicine and healers — so I have come.”
The soldiers were overjoyed. They turned to see the city master returning, and crowded forward, calling out, “My Lord, it is cold out here — take your wife back into the city at once!”
Xie Changgeng laughed heartily and called back, “Then I am asking the rest of you to hold the post for a few more days. Once the heavy snow seals the mountain and you withdraw into the city, I will have sheep slaughtered and wine brought out as a reward for every one of you!”
Amid the soldiers’ cheering, Xie Changgeng rode up close, leaned down, swept Mu Fulan up with one arm, swung her onto the horse before him, and galloped forward into the distance.