Just as he did now, Nalan Xuan had come into this world alone and unburdened, with no attachments and nothing he could not leave behind. To this world, he had thought himself merely a passerby, someone who could observe everything with the detached calm of an outsider. Even if he could never return to his original era, even if he spent his entire life as a lowly servant doing rough labor, he believed he could remain free and untroubled. Yet somehow he had fallen in love with a man trapped in a quagmire and had fallen into the mortal world with him. From then on, everything became muddled. He stepped into the struggle for power, and status, ambition, and desire changed the color of everything. He was no longer himself.
Then, for no reason at all, an entire distinguished family had been shoved into his life, followed by the astonishing life now growing inside him, bound to him by blood. Nalan Xuan had never been given a choice, much less the right to refuse. “Acceptance”—a word he had once despised and condemned because it so often meant swallowing grievances and compromising beneath pressure—had somehow become something he himself practiced with remarkable skill. And now it was being taken away again, just as it had first been forced upon him: without warning, without room for argument, and without the possibility of refusal.
Nalan Xuan had thought for a long time while standing outside the imperial study. He knew Feng Xuanyi would not come out to see him—or perhaps, somewhere deep down, he was actually afraid that Feng Xuanyi would. If the man did come out, what could Nalan Xuan possibly say? Question him? Ask why he had killed Nalan Xuan’s father and elder brother? Yet those very relationships had only existed because Feng Xuanyi had given him the identity that made them his family in the first place. He turned the matter over and over in his mind and found no answer. How pathetic…
Perhaps the answer had existed all along, both to the question he wanted to ask and to whatever answer Feng Xuanyi would give him.
You give and take from me as you please, summon me and dismiss me whenever you wish. What exactly am I to you…?
Nothing at all.
How ridiculous that an imagined question and an imagined answer could bind his hands and feet so completely that he could no longer move forward.
As consciousness blurred and the world tilted around him, he seemed to see Feng Xuanyi running toward him, frantic and worried, his expression as though the heavens themselves were collapsing. The sight filled Nalan Xuan with an unexpected warmth—and at the same time made the desolation inside him even deeper.
He could control what he did. He could control what he said. Again and again, he could deny that he loved Feng Xuanyi; again and again, he could warn himself not to sink into the man’s charity-like gifts of affection. But he could not control his own heart. And now, at his weakest moment, he had actually begun hallucinating—imagining Feng Xuanyi worrying about him, imagining Feng Xuanyi anxious for his sake.
A bitter smile. A quiet sorrow. Nalan Xuan swallowed every cause and consequence back into himself. If possible, he wanted this forbidden longing to rot forever inside him. It could take root. It could hurt. It could scar him so deeply that the mark never disappeared. But he would never allow it to grow.
When he opened his eyes again, he was already inside the bedchamber of Moon-Embracing Palace. The light outside was gray and indistinct, making it impossible to tell whether it was day or evening. Xiao Dezi sat nearby wearing such a mournful expression that merely looking at him irritated Nalan Xuan. Since he was exhausted anyway, he simply closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
Through the haze, he seemed to hear someone enter. The footsteps were very soft. He wanted to open his eyes and see who it was, but sleep was too heavy. His eyelids felt impossibly heavy and would not open no matter how hard he tried. He wanted to move a finger, yet his entire body seemed frozen and incapable of moving at all. Patiently, he tried to listen for what the visitor might say, but until wave after wave of exhaustion finally dragged him back into sleep, the person never spoke.
After that, Nalan Xuan lived almost completely cut off from the outside world. He knew only that the following day, the supervising execution official came to report back carrying two cloth sacks whose bottoms were stained dark red with blood that had already dried and hardened. His first instinct was that the two bloodstained bags must be proof of the executions of his nominal father, Marquis Dingbei Nalan Jian, and his nominal elder brother, Nalan Zhen. What happened afterward, he no longer knew.
Xiao Dezi told him that because he had spent that day rushing around everywhere and then stubbornly stood outside the imperial study for so long despite all attempts to persuade him otherwise, he had caught a chill and collapsed there. His Majesty had ordered him to remain inside Moon-Embracing Palace and recuperate without going out.
Nalan Xuan had never imagined that carrying one additional life could make his body so fragile. But he also understood that this was merely a pretext. Feng Xuanyi’s decree might sound as though it were issued out of concern for the child in his belly—after all, the child was Feng Xuanyi’s flesh and blood—but the true heart of the order probably lay in the words “do not go out.” The thought was bleakly absurd. He was a grown man who could work with his own hands and build a fortune, or take up arms and pacify a battlefield. Yet now he had fallen so far that he was forced to survive by the same means as the women of the imperial harem, relying upon the extraordinary constitution of a Changyu descendant and the child in his belly simply to escape disaster. If he had been nothing more than an ordinary man, would he be living in the Cold Palace now? Perhaps there would not even have been any need for him to kill himself in grief. Would an imperial decree already have arrived, impatient to sentence him to death?
Meng Zhen’s cries from the Cold Palace returned to him like a curse, lingering endlessly at his ears with all their hatred and venom. She had said she would wait to see how he ended. She had said he and she were the same. And it had all been true. Guipin Liu had once mockingly called him a second Consort Shu. Her prediction was proving disturbingly accurate.
The imperial harem was a pool of filth. Even if one had done nothing wrong, there would always be someone who could not bear the sight of you. Now that disaster had struck and his position was clearly no longer what it had been, Nalan Xuan sat quietly in a chair in the main hall, sipping a black bowl of pregnancy-stabilizing medicine as though savoring some exquisite delicacy. Calm and unhurried, he waited for all those people who kicked at fallen walls to come knocking, ready to experience for himself the humiliation Meng Zhen had suffered in the Cold Palace.
Yet day after day passed, and no one came. Meng Zhen, who had once regarded him as a thorn in her eye and flesh beneath her nail, was already dead. Those who had always remained neutral, swaying whichever way the wind blew while never missing an opportunity to throw out a few sarcastic remarks, were nowhere to be seen either. Even Han Ruifeng, who had once been close to him and had accompanied him through the hardest days in Prince Rong’s residence, did not come.
Nalan Xuan did not resent them. Yet he could not help feeling disappointed. In his present circumstances, distancing themselves in order to protect themselves was understandable. Reason understood it perfectly. Emotion was left only with disappointment.
“Master, Imperial Physician Liu said this pregnancy-stabilizing medicine has to be drunk while it’s hot.” Other people drank medicine as though swallowing poison, frowning and wishing they could gulp it down in one breath and be done with it. Nalan Xuan, however, treated it like fine wine, taking one slow sip after another. The medicine that had once been steaming hot was now more than half cold, and Xiao Dezi looked thoroughly exasperated. “Let this servant warm it again for you.”
Nalan Xuan lifted his arm and avoided Xiao Dezi’s hand as he reached for the bowl. “Stop wasting your time here too. You belong to the palace. Go ask Mo Yan for help. He’ll find you a decent assignment. If you stay with me, sooner or later you’ll only be dragged down with me.”
Xiao Dezi froze. His lips tightened. “This servant will go warm Master’s medicine.”
He took the bowl from Nalan Xuan and hurried away, only to run straight into Mo Yan, who had entered the hall without a sound. Most of the remaining medicine splashed across Mo Yan’s robes. The bowl slipped from Xiao Dezi’s hand and struck the floor with a crash, shattering into pieces. Xiao Dezi lost his balance and landed hard on his backside, grimacing in pain.
“What are you doing, rushing around like that?! If you offend Chief Steward Mo, can you bear the consequences?” A palace servant following behind Mo Yan immediately jumped forward and began scolding him.
Mo Yan raised one hand, stopping his subordinate before the man could continue.
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