Wei Shao lingered in the Eastern Commandery for several days.
It wasn’t until Lei Yan came looking for him, saying that the Military Advisor in Luoyang couldn’t wait for the Marquis to return as scheduled. Knowing that the Marquis had personally escorted Lady Yu back to the Eastern Commandery, he sent someone to inquire about the return date.
As darkness fell, Xiao Qiao returned to her room to find Wei Shao lying on his back on the bed. Fei Fei was quietly resting on her father’s chest, her little head pressed tightly against his chin, her tiny hands and feet clinging to his chest and abdomen.
Wei Shao also had his eyes closed, his palm gently resting on Fei Fei’s back, as if he too had fallen asleep.
During the day, the family of three had gone out in casual clothes to play. Fei Fei had laughed and frolicked, and after a full day, she must have been tired. Earlier, Xiao Qiao had bathed Fei Fei and left her with her father in the room. She had gone out with Madam Ding Chun’niang to prepare dried food, clothes, and other necessities for Wei Shao’s group to take on their journey tomorrow. After everything was packed, she returned to the room to find father and daughter had fallen asleep like this.
Xiao Qiao approached quietly, and only then did she see that Fei Fei’s mouth was slightly open in her sleep, with a thread of drool hanging from the corner of her lips. The drool had already dripped onto Wei Shao’s collar, leaving a wet stain.
As Xiao Qiao was about to pick up Fei Fei, Wei Shao suddenly opened his eyes. He raised his neck slightly, glanced at Fei Fei sleeping soundly on his chest, and made a gesture for silence towards her.
Xiao Qiao was startled, realizing only then that he hadn’t been asleep, but had probably been lying still like this to avoid waking his daughter. Shaking her head, she bent down and gently lifted Fei Fei, handing her to Chun’niang, who had followed her into the room.
Chun’niang carried Fei Fei out to rest. Xiao Qiao turned back to see Wei Shao still lying there, looking at her. She walked over and sat beside him, taking out a handkerchief to wipe the drool stain on his collar. She said softly, “I’ve prepared the things and dried food for your journey tomorrow. You should rest early since you’ll be setting off in the morning.”
Wei Shao made a sound of acknowledgment and grasped her hand.
The night deepened.
Outside, a light rain had begun to fall at some point.
It was already late autumn, but this year’s weather was somewhat unusual. At this moment, there was even a faint sound of thunder in the distance.
The candle burned in the room, and her husband’s strong arms embraced her.
As Xiao Qiao snuggled closer to her husband amidst the distant thunder, finding a comfortable position and resting her face against his warm chest, she suddenly heard him say near her ear, “Man Man, there’s something I’ve always wanted to know. You never told me everything before. I’m leaving tomorrow, and I want you to tell me now.”
“Hmm?” Xiao Qiao was already a bit drowsy, and she responded with a muffled sound, her eyes still closed.
“I’ve heard you mention your nightmare twice in front of me. I want to know, what exactly is your nightmare about?”
Xiao Qiao opened her eyes.
Wei Shao seemed to have been awake all along, slightly lowering his head, his dark eyes fixed on her.
“The first time I learned about your nightmare was when I launched the campaign against Yanzhou. You came to me and told me that you had always been wary of me because of a nightmare. You said that in your nightmare, I destroyed your Qiao family out of hatred. The second time was when I witnessed you trapped in your nightmare, crying to the point where you couldn’t wake up. After I woke you, you said a man wearing dragon robes was trying to kill you with a sword.”
He paused for a moment as if recalling the scene.
“Man Man, this can’t be the whole story of your nightmare. I want to know everything. Will you tell me, without hiding anything?”
“Who is that man in dragon robes trying to kill you?”
“Is it me?”
He asked three questions in succession.
Xiao Qiao stared at him, at first saying nothing, but finally slowly shook her head.
“It’s not you.”
“Then who is it?”
Xiao Qiao bit her lip and fell into silence.
“What’s going on? I want you to tell me everything!”
Xiao Qiao closed her eyes.
Suddenly, she felt the weight of his lips on hers. He kissed her for a moment, then moved his lips to her ear.
“Man Man, I always have a feeling that you’re so deeply trapped in that nightmare that you can’t break free. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been so guarded against me before. Tell me, don’t hide anything, and don’t have any reservations.”
“I want you to tell me everything! Who is that person?”
Xiao Qiao’s eyelids trembled slightly, and she slowly opened her eyes to meet his gaze.
After a moment of hesitation, she finally gathered her courage and said softly, “It’s Liu Yan.”
Wei Shao’s eyes narrowed slightly, a shadow passing through them. He tightened his arms around her, pulling her closer to himself.
“Tell me everything.”
Xiao Qiao took a long, deep breath. “My lord, do you want to hear this? Won’t you regret it?”
“Speak!” Just this one word.
Xiao Qiao gazed at him and finally began slowly, “For a long time, I don’t know why, but I’ve been having this recurring dream. The dream is clear and coherent. Every time I wake up, I have a feeling that it’s not just a fantasy, but that I’m reliving my past life over and over in my dreams… As you said, I’ve been deeply troubled by it, unable to break free…”
“In the past life I dream of, the Wei and Qiao families were also joined by marriage, but it wasn’t me who married you, it was my elder sister. After marrying you, she never won your favor. You despised and neglected her for a lifetime. Only Grandmother treated her kindly, but unfortunately, Grandmother passed away the same year she married into the Wei family…”
Wei Shao was shocked. His brows furrowed as if he wanted to say something, but he held back.
“From then on, my sister was alone and helpless, growing old in loneliness. In my dream, you took Lady Su as a concubine and later became emperor. During those years, all the members of my Qiao family had already died at your hands, with only my younger brother remaining. Shortly after you ascended the throne, my sister died in illness and solitude, and then you made Lady Su the empress…”
Xiao Qiao’s tone was calm as she narrated.
But Wei Shao’s expression became extremely unpleasant. He stared at her, his gaze filled with deep disbelief and intense disgust.
“Tell me about yourself. What about you? Did you marry Liu Yan then?”
After a while, he seemed to have finally suppressed his emotions with great difficulty and asked, his voice tense, like a string about to snap.
“Yes.”
Xiao Qiao nodded.
“I married Liu Yan as per the betrothal agreement. Later, when the Han dynasty fell, he was, like in this life, supported by a group of loyalists as the emperor of a small court. I became his empress, but it didn’t last long. He was soon pursued and besieged by you. My younger brother died trying to help me escape. In the final moments before you breached the city walls, Liu Yan, in despair, began killing his harem. I vowed to live and die with him, so he killed me, thrusting his sword into my heart…”
Xiao Qiao closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again.
“That was the final scene of the past life dream I had. It was this scene that kept appearing repeatedly in my dreams, making it impossible for me to escape.”
She finished speaking and looked at Wei Shao.
Wei Shao’s hand unconsciously gripped her arm tightly, squeezing harder and harder until she felt pain.
The veins on his temples bulged slightly like earthworms, and his gloomy gaze fixed on her for a long time.
“So you couldn’t eat or sleep well, and from then on viewed me as a venomous snake?”
He seemed to finally realize he was hurting her and hastily loosened his grip, but then asked slowly.
Xiao Qiao let out a soft sigh.
“At that time, I had never seen your face. Even in my dreams, I had never faced you directly…”
She raised her hand, her warm fingertips gently tracing his now rigid facial features as if soothing his emotions.
Wei Shao’s expression finally relaxed somewhat.
“It’s just that this dream was too real. I couldn’t help but be affected by it, but I couldn’t tell anyone. I could only bury it in my heart, hoping it was just a dream. It wasn’t until that year when Zhou Qun of Rencheng raised an army to attack Yanzhou, and when my uncle decided to marry my elder sister to you in an attempt to curry favor, that I truly realized my dream might be real.”
“Because events similar to my dream were about to unfold before my eyes.”
“I was afraid. I knew I had to prevent things from continuing as they did in my dream. That’s why I went to great lengths to persuade my elder sister and Bi Zhi to leave home. At the time, I thought that without my sister, the marriage couldn’t take place, and my uncle would accept my father’s strategy to seek an alliance to jointly resist Zhou Qun. But I didn’t expect my uncle to be so hopelessly weak that he came up with the idea of breaking my engagement to Liu Yan and having me marry you instead of my sister. At that point, there was no turning back, and through this twist of fate, I entered your Wei family and became your wife.”
“My lord, you should remember that in the first year of our marriage, after the Deer Pavilion gathering, Grandmother fell ill, and you were about to go to war in Bingzhou. Before you left, I tried everything to make you stay. I was afraid that something would happen to Grandmother, just as I knew from my dream. Fortunately, Grandmother later overcame the danger. It was after this incident that I saw hope in changing the dream’s prophecy. However, the shadow cast by that dream was too heavy, and I still didn’t dare to relax. This led to the incident that greatly angered you when I advised my father to strengthen the army…”
Xiao Qiao’s voice trailed off.
“You know what happened after that, my lord…”
Wei Shao’s gaze remained fixed on her face.
The light in the room suddenly dimmed. The candle had burned out, and after a few final flickers, the room was plunged into darkness.
“My lord…” she called out to him after a moment of silence.
“You once told me that you considered marrying me a blessing. But you don’t know that being able to marry you in this life is equally a blessing for me.”
In the darkness, Wei Shao remained silent. Suddenly, he embraced her tightly, with such force that it seemed he wanted to crush her and embed her into his flesh. Xiao Qiao could feel his heart pounding violently in his chest.
She closed her eyes and remained motionless.
…
The night deepened, and it was unclear how late it had become.
Rumble—
Another roll of thunder echoed from the distant horizon.
Xiao Qiao instinctively shrank back, but her hand touched emptiness. The damp night wind seemed to surge in through the window, stirring the bed curtains in waves.
She suddenly opened her eyes and, by the fleeting blue lightning that just flashed across the night sky, saw a figure standing by the window facing the night wind and rain, his silhouette incredibly heavy.
Xiao Qiao slowly sat up, parted the bed curtains that were billowing in the night wind, and walked to Wei Shao’s back.
A gust of night rain was swept in through the window, the pitter-patter sound wetting the windowsill and sprinkling onto Wei Shao’s front.
His clothes were half-wet, clinging tightly to his body. His skin felt ice-cold to the touch as if he had been soaked in water.
It was unclear how long he had been standing there like this.
Xiao Qiao embraced him from behind, pressing her cheek against his broad back.
“Man Man, in that past life of your dreams, Grandmother was already gone by now? Or was she harmed by Lady Su? And I was not only deceived by her but also took her as a concubine and even made her empress?”
He suddenly spoke, his voice somewhat distant, like a person sleepwalking.
Xiao Qiao remained silent.
“And you weren’t my wife either. You married Liu Yan, and we were mere strangers. Our only connection was that in the end, under my pursuit, you died by his sword?”
Wei Shao slowly turned around. His face was hidden in the darkness of the night, his expression indiscernible.
Only a hoarse voice could be heard, filled with heavy bitterness.
Xiao Qiao let out a soft sigh. Her jade-like arms encircled his neck, her warm and dry body pressing against his cold and damp chest. She stood on tiptoe, pressing her lips to his cold, rain-wet lips in a deep kiss.
“My lord, I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to trouble you unnecessarily. Even if that was truly a past life, it’s all over now, just an illusion. What we have now is real…”
Another flash of lightning outside illuminated their faces.
Wei Shao’s face was covered in rainwater, pale as death, his eyes deep and seemingly glowing blue.
Taking advantage of the brief moment of illumination from the sudden lightning behind him, he stared intently at Xiao Qiao’s face, then suddenly cupped her head in his hands and kissed her forcefully in return.
The blue glow of the lightning quickly faded, and the room was once again plunged into darkness.
Accompanied by the successive rumbles of thunder overhead, he undressed her with movements so urgent they were almost rough, greedily kissing and frantically caressing every inch of her warm skin that belonged only to him, Wei Shao.
Soon, his cold and damp skin began to warm, his blood boiling.
He couldn’t imagine how blind he must have been to make Lady Su his empress.
He found it even more inconceivable that she had been married to Liu Yan, that they had been strangers, and that until her death, he had been nothing more than a vague and terrifying avenger in her eyes.
Even if it was just a so-called past life existing in her dreams, he found it unacceptable.
Completely unacceptable.
He was gripped by dissatisfaction, shame, and a deep sense of fear. His breathing became rapid and coarse as he suddenly laid her down on a desk by the window. He shed his restraints and, like a ravenous beast, pressed down upon her.
He was still in the hundred-day mourning period for his mother, but at this moment, there was nothing he couldn’t cast aside.
Only one thought remained in his mind: he had to possess her, right now.
Only by possessing her, by truly feeling her body constraining his own, could he convince himself that all those things he had finally asked about tonight were just her nightmares!
“My lord— Ah—”
A trembling cry of passion escaped Xiao Qiao’s throat, but it was quickly drowned out by another roll of thunder overhead.
The night rain pattered, and the wind slapped against the open windows, beating rhythmically on the damp window frames. Flashes of lightning occasionally streaked across the pitch-black sky. Amidst the incessant thunder, Wei Shao, almost feverishly, claimed every inch of her skin, repeatedly and willfully possessing her, making her accept him, consuming her heart and liver, devouring her blood and marrow, entering her very soul.
The long night finally gave way to dawn. The thunder ceased, the rain stopped, and the sky cleared.
Xiao Qiao’s cheeks were flushed, and her entire body was covered with pitiful marks from her husband’s passionate love. Exhausted, she lay on the pillow in deep sleep when she was forcibly awakened.
She opened her eyes, somewhat confused, and in the morning light filtering into the room, she saw that Wei Shao had already risen at some point, fully dressed with a long sword at his waist, looking spirited as he watched her.
Suddenly remembering, she tried to get up, but he gently pressed her back onto the pillow.
“Man Man, I’m leaving now. You don’t need to see me off. Stay home and rest easy. When I return to fetch you next time, the world will belong to Great Yan. You will be my, Wei Shao’s, empress, the true empress of the world.”
He bent down and gently kissed her forehead with affection, then whispered in her ear.
Though his voice was low, each word was filled with power.