“That farewell letter, the one you thought was my confession – you mean the second letter?” Huang Zixia asked hoarsely.
Yu Xuan closed his eyes and nodded firmly, saying: “Yes. I had thought I would certainly die, but who knew Qi Teng would save me? He urged me that since I had already eliminated Governor Huang, I should serve under Lord Fan, saying my future would be limitless. I refused him, only wanting to leave it all behind. Afterward, I fell into a daze, and when I awoke again, I had forgotten all the evil I had done. Perhaps my subconscious wanted to protect me, so I kept convincing myself that you had done everything, that the evidence was conclusive – I became increasingly fixated on believing you had killed my parents, even thinking I had seen you holding the arsenic with my own eyes, and also like…”
He gritted his teeth, speaking slowly and with immense difficulty: “When I returned home and saw the farewell letter placed on my desk. The contents made me think it was written by you.”
A lifetime of upbringing was shattered in one evening. An entire family was left alone, by one bloody hand. Love misplaced, various karmic bonds…
It was him, and it was also her.
The same life, the same circumstances, cycling in repetition, like the two small fish on that jade bracelet, each biting the other’s tail, entangled in endless cycles, forever inseparable.
“I forgot everything I had done, unable to tell if this was a letter you wrote to me or one I wrote to you. Yet I never expected that we both learned Wei Furen’s small regular script. I had always secretly helped you copy books, grew so accustomed to imitating your handwriting that even that same misspelling was identical…”
His voice was hoarse and choked, completely different from his usual clear and gentle tone. He slowly stood up, that pair of eyes covered with a thin mist of tears, gazing at her.
His pale face was like ice and snow, with white skin with only two points of black pupils, and a trace of pale blue on his lips. Like a figure painted on a white wall, possessing only perfect, flawless lines and shapes, yet devoid of all color, without any trace of life.
His eyes gazed deeply at her, just like many years ago when they first met, when he knelt before her helping her pick up lotus flowers, looking up at her, his eyes entranced.
The dragonflies that had brushed past their ears then were now dead, all the lotus flowers no longer existed, only this pair of eyes, and everything contained within them remained unchanged.
Time had been so kind, transforming a fallen beggar into a man of unparalleled beauty, changing an innocent girl into a brilliantly talented young woman.
Fate was so cruel, making these two people in one lifetime become the orchestrators of each other’s destiny, becoming the greatest enemies in each other’s fate.
“Xia…” he said softly, reaching out his hand toward her.
Besides them, though Li Shubai and Wang Yun knew Huang Zixia’s identity, Zhou Ziqin and the others were completely unaware, and were extremely surprised when he suddenly called Yang Chonggu “Xia.”
But Huang Zixia stood before him, motionless, not raising her hand to touch his outstretched one.
His deathly pale face showed a faint smile as he said softly: “Yes, I can never… touch you again.”
Yu Xuan died at dawn that day.
Being a major criminal, when being escorted to prison, the jailers first took him home to gather his belongings before bringing him to be confined.
Having remembered everything, he naturally also remembered where he had hidden the poison. He discreetly took it out and consumed it, then silently followed the jailers to prison as if nothing had happened.
He sat in the dark cell, waiting for the same death as Huang Zixia’s parents, quietly feeling the incurable poison consuming his body.
Thousands of sharp blades stabbed through his abdomen, his internal organs twisted into a knot, the pain reaching such extremes that he couldn’t move even a finger or make a sound.
But it was only for a moment before all consciousness faded. Death descended upon him like the warm spring waters of that year and like the soft, gentle snowflakes of back then. In the blood-red before his eyes, he curled up in the prison cell, looking up bewildered, seeing the illusion before him.
The first flower he had ever seen in his life, unrestrained and proud.
The moonlight shining through the narrow iron window onto his faintly smiling, wan face, also shone through the carved five-bat window lattice onto Huang Zixia.
The weariness from half a year of rushing about had lifted, and all the day and night tension in her nerves had relaxed. She slept beneath the window, peaceful and calm, her breathing soft.
She had a dream.
In the dream, she saw her parents, brother, uncle, and grandmother. They were under the osmanthus tree, drinking osmanthus wine, smiling and waving to her.
She lifted her skirts and ran toward them across the emerald green grass tips like fine silk.
The sunlight was brilliant, golden, and bright. Osmanthus flowers fell one by one onto her family, onto their heads, also laying a layer on the table. The thick honey-sweet fragrance swirled around them, like a slowly turning whirlpool, and as she watched her family’s smiling faces within it, she felt slightly dizzy, yet had never felt so happy before.
She thought with some surprise that she hadn’t even drunk the osmanthus wine yet, how was she already drunk?
But it didn’t matter anymore, the sunlight was so warm, the fragrance so sweet, the breeze so soft. She propped her chin up, watching everyone. They were talking about trivial things, she didn’t know what they were saying, but as long as everyone was happy, that was enough.
Huang Zixia was still that sixteen-year-old girl. Wearing light-colored clothes with narrow sleeves of fine gauze, born to a noble family, beautiful in appearance, famous throughout the land, with a perfect life.
She laughed together with everyone in the bright sun and flower fragrance, yet suddenly felt lonely, her heart empty.
For some unknown reason, she slowly stood up and turned to walk forward silently. Walking out of this place filled with osmanthus fragrance, walking out from beneath this warm and comfortable sky.
The summer lotus wind blew gustily, and she saw Yu Xuan standing opposite. Before the turning lotus leaves in the long wind, his body was coated in a layer of rippling water light.
Gentle silver light, pure and clear radiance. He was like a spring branch of green bamboo just stripped of its sheath, still covered with a thin layer of white new powder, tall and graceful, unstained by any worldly dust.
He smiled at her, reaching out his hand before her, calling softly: “Xia.”
The gentle breeze came, lifting his clothes’ hem, and also stirring her temple hair.
This was her frozen dream, where wind and rain would never invade this corner, where the future seemed it would never come.
The corners of her lips turned slightly upward, revealing a faint smile.
She reached out her hand, grasping the palm he held before her.
Their fingers intertwined, hearts linked.
She lowered her head, looking at his hand.
This slender palm, these proportioned joints, the just-right strength when holding her hand was so familiar. Gentle, yet not loose; accommodating, yet not forceful.
She smiled, looking up at his smiling face, looking at this man who had illuminated her most beautiful youthful years, and shook her head with a smile.
She released his hand, slowly clenching her empty right hand into a fist.
She said: “Goodbye.”
Before the lotus pond, in the long wind, she looked up at Yu Xuan’s face, smiling with moistened eyes: “No, forever and ever, never to meet again.”
When she woke it was already afternoon, the nearly setting sun shining on her from outside the window, the late summer heat had not yet dispersed, but the autumn wind was already gently blowing.
The whole world was clear and bright, radiant with light. She was still in the small building she had lived in years ago, within the governor’s mansion garden.
She got up and walked to the window, pushing it open to look outside.
The lotus pond remained unchanged, the ivy thick and green. An early-blooming osmanthus tree had already sprouted buds and released its fragrance. Not as thick as in the dream, carried faintly by the gentle wind from afar, a light sweet scent.
She thought for a moment but found she could no longer remember what she had been doing on this day last year.
The small building had been sealed for half a year, and everything inside remained untouched, in its original places. She used the water remaining in yesterday’s pot to wash herself, opened the wardrobe, chose a plain silk dress, and stepped into silk slippers without any decorations. Having been used to bind her chest for so long, now that she had loosened it, she felt somewhat uncomfortable.
Then she opened her dressing table, set up the already somewhat tarnished copper mirror, and arranged her hair in the simplest style. Without Mi Wu and the others around, she wasn’t very good at taking care of herself. Previously when going out, she had always worn men’s clothes, avoiding many troubles.
Her fingers slid over the hairpins one by one in her jewelry box, lingering for a long time on the silver hairpin Li Shubai had given her, but ultimately she took a pair of simple white jade hairpins to insert in her hair and also put on a pair of small South Sea pearl earrings.
She came out from the small pavilion, standing on the platform in front of the door like before, looking at the small garden before her.
In the back garden of the governor’s mansion, where she had lived for many years, every stone, every flower, and plant was familiar to her. But now, no one could walk through it hand in hand with her anymore.
She walked along the corridor in the early autumn wind, heading forward. Her light clothes were lifted by the wind, like rippling blue waves, like drooping fine willows.
Turning past the corridor, she saw Li Shubai sitting alone with a chess board in the small pavilion on the artificial mountain ahead. Zhang Xingying stood in attendance beside him, while Zhou Ziqin lay on the railing with a face full of gloom, clearly no match for Li Shubai at all, having completely given up any thought of competing with him in chess.
Zhou Ziqin’s gaze fell on her and couldn’t move away.
His mouth grew wider and wider, and his eyes grew larger and larger, staring at her stupidly as she drew closer, until she climbed the artificial mountain and came before the pavilion to bow to them with graceful courtesy, his mouth still hadn’t closed.
Li Shubai’s gaze rested on her, his face calm and unruffled, only the corner of his lips revealing a gentle curve. Like someone who, turning around a mountain path in the desolate wilderness, suddenly glimpses a newly blooming flower.
Zhou Ziqin propped up his nearly falling jaw, stammering: “Chong… Chonggu?”
Huang Zixia tilted her head slightly, nodding to him with a smile.
“You… you… you… how can you, such a good eunuch, dress up as a woman?” Zhou Ziqin pressed his right fist against his chest, looking thoroughly shocked and his heart racing, his face reddening, “Don’t… don’t come so close! You… you… you look too beautiful dressed as a woman, I… I can’t handle it…”
She could only ask him: “Last night when Yu Xuan called me ‘Xia,’ did you not hear?”
“I… I… I thought he was having another vision, reaching out to the Huang Zixia in his dreams.” Zhou Ziqin brought up exactly what shouldn’t be mentioned, without any tact at all, “Besides, didn’t you… didn’t you not reach back to him then?”
Huang Zixia could only give up on trying to communicate with him, lifting her skirts to enter the pavilion and approach the chess board.
Li Shubai held a chess piece in his hand, gazing at her for a long while, then gave up on this game, reaching to take the chess box and returning the pieces one by one, gesturing for her to sit down: “Did you sleep well?”
“Mm… very well,” she sat opposite him, responding softly.
Zhou Ziqin very carefully inched closer, looking thoroughly shocked, examining her from left and right, front and back, just short of poking her with a little finger to see if she was real.
Huang Zixia sighed helplessly: “Stop looking. Yang Chonggu is Huang Zixia.”
Hearing this, Zhou Ziqin looked up at the nonchalant Li Shubai, then turned to look at Zhang Xingying’s strange expression, and immediately pouted, crying out in distress: “So this is how it is, always keeping me out! Everyone else knows the truth, even Zhang Xingying, only keeping it from me! Can we still be good friends anymore?”
“I’m sorry, Ziqin,” Huang Zixia sighed, saying: “Because of the empire-wide manhunt, that’s why the Prince helped me hide my identity and pretend to be a eunuch. I was also worried that if my identity was revealed it would cause trouble for you, not that I intended to hide it from you.”
“You are… are…” he mumbled, then jumped up again, his gloom completely swept away, exclaiming excitedly: “This is wonderful!”
The other three in the pavilion all looked at him speechlessly as he bounced around the pavilion, overjoyed: “Great! The biggest worry in my life has finally been completely resolved!”
Zhang Xingying couldn’t help asking: “What was the biggest worry in your life?”
“Well, I’ve always been wondering, in our great Tang dynasty, in the field of investigating cases and deductive reasoning, is Huang Zixia more capable, or is Yang Chonggu more capable? If they ever met one day, who would have the upper hand?” Zhou Ziqin’s eyes sparkled as he looked at Huang Zixia, appearing thoroughly relieved, “This question has been haunting me! I’ve been so troubled by it lately that I could barely eat or drink, and couldn’t even sleep well! Now that I know you’re the same person, I feel like I can eat three big bowls of rice again and sleep until noon!”