The setting sun sank behind the ancient plain, and the roosting birds gradually returned to their nests. A bright, jade-disc moon climbed the clear night sky, quietly listening to the whispered words of the pair of devoted lovers still leaning against each other beside the stone at the hilltop.

Li Xuandu asked her softly: “Zhuzhu—that day in the Western Garden, why did you let me go? I could never make sense of it, no matter how I turned it over. Before that, we had not even exchanged a single word.”

Pu Zhu nestled against his chest, eyes closed, listening to the steady, strong rhythm of his heartbeat. She said quietly: “Before that, it was true—I had not said a single word to you. Everything I knew of you came from other people’s talk. From the very first day I returned to the capital, I kept hearing people mention you behind your back. They said you were wildly ambitious, cold and unfeeling, that for the sake of power you had been willing to betray the Late Emperor who had always doted on you most, and that your betrayal had grieved him to death. I thought you were a frightening person with a deeply scheming heart.”

“The first time I saw you was at Imperial Grandmother’s birthday celebration. At the time you were standing quietly behind the Grand Empress Dowager. She suddenly called to you—it seemed she wanted you to receive a guest in her place. You leaned down, brought your face close to her ear to hear her, and then raised your brows and smiled. At the time, I…”

She opened her eyes, lifted her face from Li Xuandu’s embrace, and gazed at him. She felt the tips of her ears quietly growing warm.

“What happened at the time?”

He had been listening intently. Seeing her suddenly stop, he smiled and prompted her.

Her heart had quickened a little then—and she had felt some confusion.

A person whose appearance was like that of an exiled immortal, whose smile was so gentle it felt like a soft breeze brushing one’s face—this person had committed the act of great treason that everyone spoke of?

“At the time I was a little confused.”

She bit her lip and continued.

“Even though after seeing you in person I truly could not connect you with the Prince of Qin that everyone described—the one who had betrayed his own father for the sake of power—I told myself that you can know a person’s face but not their heart. If everyone said so, it could not be wrong. Not long after that, I learned I had been chosen as the Crown Princess Consort, and you returned to your fief. Gradually I forgot about you, and put my whole heart into doing my best as Crown Princess Consort.”

“The next time I saw you was at Imperial Grandmother’s funeral. By then I was already Crown Princess Consort. You had rushed back to mourn, and knelt before the Grand Empress Dowager’s spirit tablet for a very long time without rising.”

“In the mourning hall there were so many people. And I could see clearly in my heart—every single one of them looked so grief-stricken, but every one of them was performing, putting on a show for others. Only you—when I looked at your back in that moment, I found myself unexpectedly feeling something alongside you. I could sense, with perfect clarity, your loneliness and your sorrow.”

She let out a soft sigh and rested her head gently against Li Xuandu’s chest again, sinking into the memories of the past.

“That life was different from this one, where from the beginning I had schemed and calculated to become Crown Princess Consort. In that life, I became Crown Princess Consort completely unprepared. For me, it was just an accident. In that whole lifetime, I had so many regrets. Back in He Xi, A’mu, who had depended on me for everything, died of exhaustion at the edge of a well. Only days after her death, I learned that my grandfather’s name had been cleared of his crimes and I was being summoned to the capital. You tell me—was that not an irony for me? After becoming Crown Princess Consort, I could not feel even a trace of peace. I competed for favor by every means, living off a man’s affection, and stumbled along the way—yes, I gained his favor, but I also lost a great deal. I even lost the chance to become a mother. I also didn’t know how long that favor could last; I had not half a trace of confidence in the future. I felt lonely, lost, and a little afraid—but I had no choice but to keep walking forward, and wherever I got to, that was wherever I got to. So when I came across you in the Western Garden, looking at you in your badly wounded state, I remembered the feeling you had given me at the funeral. My heart softened. I didn’t want to get involved, so I pretended not to see you and slipped quietly away.”

When Li Xuandu finished listening, he drew her into his arms and took a deep breath of the fragrance of her hair. Then he leaned close to her ear and told her: at that time, he had in fact been conscious—and he had known she let him go.

Pu Zhu was startled. She sat in a daze for a moment, then suddenly pulled herself free from his embrace and sat up straight.

“Let me guess!”

Her expression lit up with delight, her beautiful eyes glimmering and bright.

“The reason you later didn’t come to rescue me—it wasn’t that you didn’t care whether I lived or died. It was that you never received my call for help. Am I right?”

That had been a grievance she had buried deep in her heart in this lifetime, something she could never let anyone know—a resentment she had eventually resolved within herself, yet whenever she thought of it, still felt a faint trace of something difficult to let go.

And now, at last, she could ask it aloud like this.

He looked at her gazing at him wide-eyed without blinking and nodded.

“Yes. That day I was leading the march on the road outside the city walls. I faintly heard someone calling to me, but there was disorder and the roadside was packed with refugees fleeing for their lives. I looked back but could see no one, so I asked the person riding near me at the time…”

He paused.

“The person near me. That person also said they had heard nothing.”

“Zhuzhu—if I had received your call for help that day, never mind that I knew I owed you my life—even without the Western Garden affair, given who your grandfather and father were, I would never have abandoned you. After I entered the capital and learned you were gone, before I set out wandering, I came here once and happened to meet an old palace attendant of yours. It was only then that I learned that you had called out to me that day, and that I had so unknowingly missed my chance to save you. Afterward, in that whole lifetime—no matter how hard I cultivated my mind, trying to make my heart hold nothing—my heart was never at rest. How could I attain the Tao in that state? So in the end, I returned to this place where everything began.”

“Zhuzhu—never mind that lifetime. Even now, when I think of you waiting for me in absolute desperation and never being found, I still cannot forgive myself—”

Pu Zhu immediately shook her head and cut off his words.

“Don’t ever think that way again! I’ll admit I was genuinely angry at you before, harboring quiet resentment against you in my heart—but now that I think about it again, if you had truly rescued me back then, that whole lifetime would have held no joy whatsoever. All the people I loved were gone, A’mu had already departed early, I would at best have worn some exalted title with no children, growing old alone in the deep palace—how could that compare to this present life? Heaven has in truth treated me well. Everything has been arranged for the best. That I was able to walk to where we are today with you in this life—I am deeply, deeply grateful.”

Li Xuandu said nothing more. He held her quietly at the hilltop.

The moon climbed higher; the stars dimmed. He suddenly tilted his head back and looked up at the stretch of night sky that felt so familiar—the same sky that had hung above him all those years—and said: “Zhuzhu, in my early years, I kept vigil here at this mausoleum for the Late Emperor, my father. There was one night when the grief and frustration in my heart could not be untangled. Right here, this very place where we are now, I slept out under the open sky until dawn. At that time I thought—in this life of mine, aside from duty, there would be nothing left worth living for.”

He took her hand and helped her up from the ground.

“Come. Walk with me to pay our respects to Imperial Grandmother. Though her spirit in heaven surely knows that all is very well with me now, I still want to tell her so in person.”

Pu Zhu nodded. The two of them walked hand in hand down the slope to the Hall of Eternal Repose.

That night, Li Xuandu kept company with his grandmother in the Hall of Eternal Repose. The following day, he met with Prince Duan and the others who had come upon hearing the news, then set aside all other matters and personally escorted Pu Zhu back to He Xi first. When he arrived and saw his son—now six or seven months old—the joy he felt was beyond any words.

He had been somewhat worried that the child would not let him come close. But when he picked the boy up and played with him, telling him he was his father, the little one opened a pair of round, dark, grape-like eyes and gazed at him with curiosity for a moment—and very quickly, broke into a peal of delighted laughter.

Li Xuandu immediately grew excited and turned to Pu Zhu: “He understood! He knows I’m his father!”

The Prince of Qin had said so himself, so the royal nurse and the others naturally agreed, saying the young lord and his father had an innate bond—sure enough, the moment they met face to face, it was quite unlike with anyone else.

Li Xuandu was even more pleased and elated.

He had left when his son was just one month old, and they were only meeting again after half a year—how could Luan’er possibly know who he was?

The child was simply bold by nature, unafraid of strangers.

Seeing Li Xuandu so happy, Pu Zhu saw no reason to puncture his joy. She smiled without a word and let him have his private delight.

That evening, Li Xuandu continued to play with his son, coaxing the little one to crawl back and forth all over him. The child was full of energy, but being egged on by his father to crawl nonstop like this, on top of not having slept properly all day, he tired quickly. Pu Zhu came in with a bowl of warm milk porridge she had prepared, and told Li Xuandu to stop playing with the child. He took the boy in his arms and let her feed him. After just a few spoonfuls, the child fell asleep.

Li Xuandu carefully laid the sleeping little person gently on the bed and tucked the blanket over him. Then he collapsed on the edge of the bed with a sigh: “So exhausting… more tiring than a battle…”

Pu Zhu suppressed a laugh and ignored him. She picked up the bowl and stood to leave—but unexpectedly, he suddenly sprang up from the bed and wrapped his arms around her waist from behind.

Pu Zhu was startled by him and lost her grip on the bowl. It slipped from her hands—and was caught nimbly by him in one swift motion and set quietly on the table.

Pu Zhu patted her own chest, then glanced back at the child sleeping on the bed and couldn’t help speaking in a low, reproachful voice.

“What are you doing? Didn’t you say you were exhausted? Let go—” She struggled gently.

“I was tired a moment ago. But Luan’er has fallen asleep, so I’m not tired anymore.”

He leaned close to her ear from behind, said this with a grin, and immediately swept her up in his arms and carried her to another couch.

The night deepened. The lattice window stood half open; a cool breeze drifted in, and the bed curtains behind the window stirred gently.

Li Xuandu held the person lying languidly in his arms, kissed her face with tender affection—a faint sheen of perspiration had risen on her skin—and closed his eyes for a moment. Then suddenly he said: “Zhuzhu, did you like me from a very long time ago?”

Pu Zhu immediately thought of the past life—that first time she had seen him at the Grand Empress Dowager’s birthday celebration, that smile like a gentle breeze brushing her face.

She didn’t know whether what she had felt in that instant could be called liking. But perhaps it was in that moment that a hazy, indistinct imprint of him had been left in her heart. Though afterward she had become Crown Princess Consort and he had gone far away to the Western Regions, and from then on they were no longer connected—each walking out the rest of their own lives like two ships sailing the night sea, briefly and silently crossing paths by chance before continuing on their separate courses, yours going your way, mine going mine, sailing further and further apart until the day each sank beneath the waves without another meeting—still, deep in her heart, she had perhaps never truly forgotten that smile which had seemed to fall into the garden of her soul.

She refused to admit it, however, and shook her head.

Li Xuandu didn’t press her to acknowledge it—he only said: “Do you know? Back then, I actually could have taken you as my consort.”

Pu Zhu was genuinely surprised at this. She sat up from his arms and looked at him with curiosity.

But then he said no more, and closed his eyes as if going to sleep.

She was not going to accept that. She coaxed and wheedled until he could hold out no longer, and told her about the day the Xiaochang Emperor had sent someone with the small portraits for him to choose a consort.

“I noticed you. But at the time I had no wish to take a wife.”

Pu Zhu remembered that after she arrived in the capital, a court painter had come to paint her portrait—but this was the first time she had learned that her portrait had actually been brought before him. After a long, dazed moment, she could only marvel inwardly at the strangeness of fate.

In that lifetime, perhaps they had each still been enduring their trials; the time for their fated meeting had not yet come.

“Not many days after that,” he continued, “I encountered you and Hui’er in Penglai Palace. Hui’er was seeing you out of the palace. To avoid the two of you, I hid at the side of the path, and I saw you drop a handkerchief—so I told Luo Bao to return it to you. Do you remember this?”

Pu Zhu racked her memory as hard as she could, and at last a faint, blurry recollection surfaced—it did seem that something like that had happened.

“At the time, did you know I was right behind you, and drop the handkerchief on purpose?” He nipped gently at her earlobe as he asked.

Pu Zhu shook her head vigorously.

“Is that so? I don’t believe you…” he laughed under his breath.

It was only then that Pu Zhu understood—he was teasing her.

She pinched him hard and kept her voice low: “Don’t flatter yourself like that—how could that possibly be!”

His laughter grew even more unrestrained. Afraid the noise would be too loud and wake the child sleeping on the bed, he bit back his laughter, gathered her up, and they rolled across the couch together—just as they were in the middle of this playful tussle, a faint knocking came from outside the door.

A maidservant came to pass on a message: word had arrived from the Eastern Capital. The city had fallen. The rebel court was annihilated.