Upon arriving at the Qing Province government office, I heard that Chief Minister Zhao’s daughter had been injured during the official troops’ capture of the rebel, but fortunately Master Song had rescued her in time and her life was no longer in danger. When I asked how she was injured, the Qing Province Prefect stammered and didn’t know how to answer, only saying that Miss Zhao had been settled in his mansion to rest with people assigned to care for her personally, and that there would be no serious problems.
It was already the second watch of the night. Song Langsheng’s group of Central Army Camp soldiers were still resting at the post station. After some consideration, I decided to first visit Zhao Yanran. If she was not seriously injured, I wouldn’t need to make this extra trip.
Who would have thought that as soon as I entered the mansion compound, there was great commotion – the maids in the mansion looked panicked, and doctors were hurrying toward the inner courtyard.
It turned out Zhao Yanran was attempting suicide.
Perhaps I shouldn’t say she was “attempting” – the doctor said she had cut her wrists with considerable force, and stopping the bleeding alone had taken enormous effort. If they had discovered it a step later, she might have actually succeeded in killing herself.
The prefect was already pale with fright. Apart from severely scolding the attending maids, he could only tremble as he begged my forgiveness.
I felt this couldn’t be blamed on him – after all, I was also someone with rich experience in suicide attempts. If a person truly wants to die, they could even bite their tongue while burying their head in bedding. How could others stop them?
Fortunately, Zhao Yanran was not destined to die. After stopping the bleeding and administering medicine, she fell into deep sleep. In the short term, she shouldn’t have the strength to bite off her own tongue.
I dismissed those frightened little maids and went alone into the room to sit with Zhao Yanran.
Zhao Yanran on the bed was pale as paper, her body unconsciously trembling. The thick bandage around her left wrist was still seeping traces of blood, and there was also a thin sword cut on her neck.
I closed my eyes, seeming to imagine the scene where Zhao Yanran had Nie Ran hold a sword to threaten her, and seeing Song Langsheng approaching step by step, she had pressed against the sword blade willing to use herself to force back the surrounding troops.
The blood mark on her neck was very shallow – it should have been the result of Nie Ran moving the sword away in time.
I sighed, not knowing how to persuade Yanran to let go of this obsession. Even I was someone who wouldn’t give up until hitting the south wall – what persuasive power could my words have?
I tucked in her bedding and was about to get up and leave when I saw her slowly open her eyes. I hadn’t expected her to regain consciousness so quickly and hadn’t thought of what to say, but she had already gritted her teeth and sat up, looking at me quietly: “Princess… how are you here?”
“I… was asked by your father to come bring you back… Yanran, things have come to this point, why must you…”
Hearing this, Zhao Yanran lowered her brows and lashes. She asked in a low voice: “Is Ran Gege… doomed to die?”
I didn’t want to deceive her. After a moment of silence, I nodded.
A look of anguish appeared on her desolate face. She involuntarily grasped my sleeve: “Can you save him?”
I gently shook my head.
“But you clearly promised me…”
“That was then, this is now,” I interrupted her words. “Nie Ran is an heir of the former dynasty and has rebellious intentions. With uprising imminent, no one can save him.”
Zhao Yanran trembled slightly: “If Ran Gege dies, I cannot live alone either…”
I said reluctantly: “This matter concerns the nation’s security and the people’s peace. Even your father cannot change it. How can your romantic feelings shake such things? If you commit suicide over this, you’ll only make your father suffer the pain of white-haired person sending off black-haired person, leaving lifelong regret. How can you bear to do this?”
“The nation’s security… the people’s peace…” Zhao Yanran knelt on the bed and curved her lips, but tears filled her eyes. “I heard that your Prince Consort was also once identified as a treasonous heir of the former dynasty, but you would rather die to save him and helped him escape. At that time, why didn’t you think about the nation’s security and people’s peace?”
“Because I believed the Prince Consort wouldn’t do such things…”
“Then why won’t you believe in Ran Gege!” Zhao Yanran said hoarsely with resentment: “In your heart you’ve already sentenced him to death and never gave him a chance!”
I said: “The facts are before us – his various actions are all…”
“His various actions? What did you see? He did so much for you – did you see it?” Zhao Yanran cut off my words. “Who was it that he got poisoned with bone-softening powder for, and for whom did he prefer not to take the antidote and place himself in danger? Oh, you probably still don’t know how he was captured, do you? Your wonderful Prince Consort spread news that you had been harmed by rebels in the capital. He was almost at the rendezvous with Marquis Xia Yang, but he couldn’t let go of his concern and said he had to return to confirm your safety. Who knew he would fall into layers of arrow formations! I wanted him to use me as hostage to take me and leave, but he pushed me away and offered no more resistance. You say he’s wholeheartedly treasonous, but what I saw was him valuing you more than his grand cause of restoring the country!”
I suddenly stood up: “You need say no more…”
“If Your Highness the Princess has a clear conscience, what’s there to fear hearing?” Zhao Yanran looked at me and smiled bitterly: “Anyway, things have reached this point today. What should be said and what shouldn’t be said – what harm is there in saying it all? Haven’t you always wanted to know what exactly happened that caused him to lose all memory of you overnight a year ago?”
My heart trembled as I stared at her in shock.
“Or… I should start from two years ago…” she said: “Princess, have you ever wondered who exactly gave Ran Gege the Soul-Forgetting Powder that left him wandering among common people?”
“It was the current emperor, your Father Emperor.” She said word by word: “He ordered my father to give this strange poison to the heir of Marquis Xia Yang. My father couldn’t find an opportunity, so he had me do it. He put the drug in the pastries I made for Ran Gege. Do you know? Ran Gege’s poison… was fed to him by my own hands…”
Seeing my shocked expression, Zhao Yanran actually smiled: “These are things my father just told me a few days ago. He said His Majesty wanted Marquis Xia Yang to be too busy with this to increase his troops. My father even sent assassins to secretly force Ran Gege into desperate situations. In the end the assassins were all killed, but Ran Gege also disappeared without a trace, with no news of whether he lived or died…”
I slightly parted my lips, my voice so soft I could barely hear it myself: “Father Emperor…”
Zhao Yanran’s eyes gradually lost focus. She raised her hand to wipe away tears: “While we were all searching for him with all our might, Ran Gege was stranded in a small village. He had no memory and became a simple fisherman who worked at sunrise and rested at sunset, until he saved a girl in a natural disaster…”
I looked at Zhao Yanran in disbelief: “You… how do you…”
She didn’t answer my question, saying quietly: “That girl was severely injured in the leg. To save her, he made an agreement with Qinggu to test medicine, enduring the pain of vomiting blood and heartache, finally preserving her life. But that girl was leaving. Before she left, she gave him a name – Xu Fang.”
“After the girl left, Xu Fang sat by the seaside for a whole day. When night fell and sky lanterns rose everywhere, he saw from afar a lantern colored like a rainbow. For no reason, he followed the direction of that lantern and ran, only to see the girl embracing and crying with her beloved…”
“Only then did he learn that this girl was actually the current Princess, and that graceful man was her Prince Consort.”
“Not long after, Marquis Xia Yang found him and told him about his background and experiences, hoping he could return with him to slowly recover his health. But when he inadvertently learned that Marquis Xia Yang intended to harm the Princess, he secretly rushed to the capital, jumped off the cliff with the Princess, and took the Princess far away to escape.”
A huge stone seemed to press down heavily on my heart. I opened my eyes wide, unable to believe what I was hearing: “These things… how do you know them?”
“How do I know?” She suddenly smiled, and when she looked up again, tears slid down her cheeks: “Before I answer your question, can you first answer one for me?”
My whole body stiffened. Before I could react, I heard her voice fall: “At that time, when you loved Xu Fang so much, if he hadn’t changed back, hadn’t forgotten and abandoned you, and you finally recovered all your memories, would you have left him?”
This question had been asked by people again and again, but I never wanted to think deeply about it. Each time I tried, it felt like something was blocking my chest. But today, with Zhao Yanran’s few words, somehow it seemed to reveal the answer long buried in my heart. I closed my eyes: “What exactly are you trying to say?”
“You don’t dare answer because you’re afraid that once you answer, you won’t be able to face your Prince Consort,” Zhao Yanran said: “But I know that if Xu Fang had never left you, you definitely would have continued with him…”
“Yanran!”
“Princess… do you know how hard Xu Fang tried to be with you at that time – no, it was Xu Fang who had already remembered all his memories as Nie Ran… For you, he could abandon everything…” Zhao Yanran’s eyes were red: “That night when you arrived in Suiyang, at the Nie residence, when everyone knelt before him, even the old Marquis kowtowed and begged him…”
All the Nie family members, all the elders, clansmen, and loyal servants who had supported and protected him from childhood, were using their lives to beg him to stay.
That was responsibility and kindness as heavy as mountains, yet in that moment it crushed him completely.
“Even so, he still wanted to leave – for you. You have no idea what he gave up for you!” Zhao Yanran’s face was pale: “Do you know… Qinggu had already cleared the most deadly poison from his body. Even without taking the antidote, his life wouldn’t have been in immediate danger. If it weren’t for that sudden antidote, you two never would have been separated!”
Hearing this, I finally couldn’t contain my shock and unconsciously stepped back two paces: “Antidote?”
“Yes, the antidote. Your wonderful Prince Consort, to gain Marquis Xia Yang’s trust, had someone deliver the antidote for the poison given by His Majesty,” Zhao Yanran said with a cold laugh: “It was that antidote that rekindled the Nie family’s hope. They had countless guards block the way and forcibly restrained Ran Gege, forcing the antidote down his throat…”
“Princess, the person who made Xu Fang disappear from this world was none other than Song Langsheng.” She took a long breath: “This is what my father told me personally. If you don’t believe it, you can go ask your Prince Consort. If he hadn’t sent the antidote, would there be a Nie Ran with treasonous intentions in this world?!”
I involuntarily clutched at my clothes, feeling my whole being trembling slightly: “The Prince Consort… didn’t know these details. Everything was… fate playing tricks, we shouldn’t put the blame on him…”
“Fate playing tricks?” Zhao Yanran raised her head with a moment of bewilderment: “Can a simple phrase about fate easily destroy someone’s entire life?!”
I shook my head, tightly gripping my fists hidden in my sleeves: “But Xu Fang has already disappeared. Regardless of the reasons, the current Nie Ran has stolen military talismans, recruited old followers, and disrupted the capital – all these actions endanger the court and shake the foundation of the state! What he did is what he did. Telling me these inside details doesn’t change the current facts…”
“No…” Zhao Yanran bit her lower lip, tears glittering: “You think he disappeared, but actually he didn’t. He hasn’t disappeared…”
My whole body shook: “You, what did you say?”
Her gaze quietly fell on a bundle at the foot of the bed: “Things have come to this point – what need is there for me to continue hiding it?” With that, she moved over, opened the bundle, and took out something wrapped in silk from the bottom layer. Opening it revealed thick letters: “These are… letters Xu Fang wrote to Nie Ran. I’ve been keeping them all along…”
She slowly handed the letters toward me: “I think the one who truly needs to read these letters… is you, Princess…”
So these letters – Zhao Yanran had never burned them.
I hesitated for a moment, then slowly took them, but the letter paper felt so scorching that for a moment I didn’t even have the courage to open it.
Zhao Yanran said heavily: “That day, after he took the antidote, he was confined in the Nie residence with layers of strict guards, completely unable to escape and find you at the inn. The medicine made him unbearably drowsy, and he knew that once he fell asleep he would forget all memories of Xu Fang… So he took a dagger, and whenever he was too tired to stay awake, he would stab himself in the leg to force himself to stay conscious, then… write this thick stack of letters…”
I tremblingly pulled out the letters. When the familiar handwriting came into view, my vision suddenly became blurry as tears welled up, submerging everything.
Zhao Yanran’s voice was like cotton wool, tangled and winding: “He bent over the desk, enduring piercing pain, writing letters for a whole day like this, putting down on paper every little detail of being with you… He didn’t know what else he could do, but he didn’t want to forget you. Regardless of the past or future, his only wish… was just to remember you, nothing more…”
The wind howled mournfully like weeping. Clouds covered the full moon, and everything around became dim in the mottled shadows.
But the dots of ink my fingertips touched were clear as could be.
I used to often wonder what Xu Fang was doing and thinking before he changed back to Nie Ran, whether he would think of me.
The answer was in the letters before me. As I read, tears suddenly fell.
He said: He Feng is still waiting for me at the inn. I can’t return. Will she come looking for me? But I’m no longer there – where can she go to find me?
He said: I once thought she would be a new beginning to end my wasted time, but only after recovering all my memories did I suddenly realize that those brief days were an unreachable dream for Nie Ran. When the dream ended, everything was gone.
He said: I’ve carried heavy responsibilities since childhood, with everyone around me having high expectations. There are always people telling me where I come from, that my life was exchanged for by many people’s blood and flesh. They hope I won’t forget the national hatred and want me to remember it day and night, but no one has ever asked whether I’m willing to live in hatred. Later I became Xu Fang, and only then did I know – if Nie Ran had grown up in an ordinary family without having to shoulder the responsibility of restoring the kingdom, he would be this kind of person, someone completely different from Nie Ran.
He said: Nie Ran, I know that when you read this letter you might dismiss it, taking these as just momentary confusion from your amnesia. What I want to tell you is that in this vast world, among all living beings, only she can redeem you.
He said: I miss her, but after today, I won’t even be able to miss her anymore. I’m unwilling, truly unwilling to just forget her like this. Nie Ran, can you remember her for me? Can you protect her for me? Can you promise me to never do anything to harm her?
My heart felt like it was suddenly grabbed by something, pain making it almost impossible to breathe. These letters felt as heavy as a thousand pounds in my hands – I couldn’t hold them. When the letters scattered on the ground, my legs went weak and I slid down along the wall. In my mind echoed a question Xu Fang had once asked me—
“He Feng, what if – I mean what if… one day I did something terribly bad, would you stop talking to me?”
I was puzzled: “What bad thing?”
He looked up at the sky: “Probably those things that bring disaster to the country and people…”
I couldn’t help but laugh: “Just you? Bringing disaster to the country? How would you do it? With fishing nets or fishing rods? Haha…”
“…This is just a hypothetical… the person answering should respect this ‘what if’…”
“Oh…” I stuck out my tongue and thought: “What if… if there really was such a what if… then I definitely wouldn’t talk to you anymore…”
He sighed: “Sigh, I thought you’d say something like ‘Even if you’re enemies with the whole world, I’ll still stand by your side’… So disappointing…”
I glanced at him sideways: “Am I someone who can’t distinguish right from wrong?” Seeing he still wouldn’t turn back, I couldn’t help but smile: “But as long as I’m here, I definitely won’t let you go astray. No matter what you become in the future, even if you momentarily make mistakes, I’ll definitely pull you back!”
He turned his head, his eyes like winter sunshine, warm and lively: “Really?”
“Of course! He Feng’s word – even eight horses couldn’t pull it back!”
“Quick, let’s pinky promise…”
“…”
Xu Fang, Xu Fang.
In the end, the one who couldn’t keep the promise was me.
A trembling sensation rose from my feet. I closed my eyes and let tears slide down my cheeks. After a long time, I heard my hoarse voice: “These letters… has Nie Ran ever read them?”
Zhao Yanran gently shook her head: “No… Perhaps he sensed something and was afraid these letters would shake his resolve… When I thought he had forgotten you and wouldn’t be moved by you anymore, I selfishly thought about burying all this forever, letting it become the past forever… but…”
She choked up, raising her finger to wipe the tears from her eyes, looking at me intently: “Just that day when we were ambushed in the forest and fell off the cliff, watching you being swept away by the flood, Ran Gege immediately told me to grab the vines, and the next moment, without thinking, he leaped into the water and was swept away by the current in your direction…”
I suddenly looked up. In this instant, I almost thought I had misheard.
Zhao Yanran said slowly: “Later, Ran Gege exhausted all his strength to save you, but your arrow wound was too severe for ordinary doctors to handle. He didn’t dare alarm Marquis Xia Yang, so he paid a thousand gold to get Zhou Wenyu to treat you… During the two days you were unconscious, he stayed by your side without leaving for a moment. I asked him why he risked his life to save you. He kept shaking his head, saying he didn’t know the reason himself – only that when he saw you disappear before him, his only thought was that absolutely nothing could happen to you…”
Why, all of this, why?
She slightly curved her lips, tears filling her eyes again: “After rescuing you from death’s door, he told himself he couldn’t sink deeper, so he had Zhou Wenyu take you away and fabricated the lie that he had only accidentally saved you… But he still wasn’t at ease, so… he secretly followed you all the way. When you were cold, he had the innkeeper’s wife pretend to be a kind person and take you in; when you were hungry, he gave silver to vendors to provide you with food; seeing someone plotting against you, he would deal with those people first…”
Seeing my incredulous expression, Zhao Yanran asked: “Did you really think that as a penniless weak woman, you could return safely from Suiyang to the capital?”
I didn’t understand, murmuring to ask her: “Why? Why did he do this?”
“Even at this point, you still don’t understand?” Zhao Yanran’s eyes flickered bright and dim. She pointed to her heart and said word by word: “Even though his memory was gone and his mind had forgotten all the past emotions between you, his heart still remembered that he loved you! Xu Fang never disappeared – he’s always lived in Nie Ran’s heart! Xu Fang has been waiting for you to find him! It was you… you who gave up on him…”
This answer struck me like lightning. I sat there rigidly, unable to speak for a long time.
Zhao Yanran raised her misty eyes and said slowly: “Xu Fang once told me that what was written in this letter was the method for Nie Ran to become him again. I couldn’t resist my curiosity and secretly looked. Only after reading to the end… did I understand what that sentence meant…”
The end?
I numbly lowered my lashes, looking at the letters scattered on the ground, slowly reaching out to search through them one by one, finally finding the last page of the letters.
Before my eyes, the handwriting was already distorted beyond recognition—
When Nie Ran falls in love with He Feng, he will become Xu Fang who protects He Feng.
He Feng, Xu Fang will definitely meet you again. I believe this firmly.
(End of Chapter)
Author’s Note:
I finally explained the puzzles from the previous two chapters at the 400,000-word mark~~~
During the writing process, people often asked me why Nie Ran and Xu Fang were so different, why memory could change someone’s temperament so dramatically.
I never answered you because I wanted to wait until this Yi Shou Zhe Tian Yi Shou Chui Di – Chapter to give everyone an answer.
Because Xu Fang is Nie Ran’s purest form, but life is unpredictable and nine out of ten things don’t go as we wish.
About that answer – if Xu Fang hadn’t changed back to Nie Ran, would the Princess have left him?
The Princess’s inner answer is: No, she wouldn’t leave, because at that time her heart belonged to Xu Fang. Even if she recovered memories of the Prince Consort, those would only be regrettable memories – just as now, she won’t waver in her heart to be with the Prince Consort because of Xu Fang’s truth.
Next Yi Shou Zhe Tian Yi Shou Chui Di – Chapter will feature the Prince Consort~~~
Good night~~~