Standing atop the palace wall, Nalan Xuan let the pleasant night breeze, faintly damp with moisture, brush across his face. The night was an empty darkness, with only the distant rustling of trees breaking the silence. Their faintly swaying branches cast overlapping shadows that twisted like ghosts, enough to make anyone watching feel fear creep into his heart and a chill crawl down his spine. Nalan Xuan, however, watched them with a smile, his heart filled with longing. To him, those shapes were not frightening specters but the call of freedom, beckoning from the place he had yearned for so long yet had never been able to reach.
All was still beneath the heavens, the moon cold and the stars sparse. The tall, slender figure upon the wall was draped in a veil of silver beneath the hazy moonlight, light flowing over him until he seemed at once real and illusory. That lonely, distant back made one instinctively want to draw him into an embrace and protect him carefully, unwilling to see him suffer even the slightest further harm. Yet at the same time, one scarcely dared approach, for that figure resembled an immortal banished from heaven, and merely drawing near seemed almost a desecration.
Mesmerized, his gaze heavy with intoxication and even his expression unconsciously softening, one of the guards stationed along the wall stared for a long while before suddenly coming back to his senses. Even if the person before him truly were a celestial immortal, anyone appearing in such a place at such an hour could possess only one identity—an assassin.
The guard commander jolted in alarm, silently thankful that he had not allowed beauty to cloud his mind long enough to cause a disastrous mistake. He shook his head to regain his senses, tightened his grip upon the sword at his waist, drew a deep breath into his dantian, and shouted sternly, “Who goes there?”
On the palace wall, Nalan Xuan acted as though he had heard nothing. His brows merely drew faintly together. This imperial palace truly deserves to be called an exquisitely crafted prison. Even standing at the pinnacle of power, even occupying one of the highest positions in this struggle, a person is still shackled by it. I can’t even take a walk and enjoy the night scenery without being disturbed.
A profound exhaustion swept over him. Nalan Xuan felt so tired, unbearably tired…
But even if he slept, eventually he would have to wake again, and waking meant returning to this endless weariness. Pain might fade with time, yet it could never truly disappear, just as a scar could grow lighter but could never be made to have never existed. Thus, the old wounds faded again and again while new ones were laid over them again and again, until the entire body was covered in injuries and no individual scar seemed worthy of notice anymore.
And so Nalan Xuan wondered, Is there any way to stop hurting so much? Is there any way to ignore the sorrow of having no control over my own life? Is there any way to sink into a beautiful dream and sleep forever without waking?
Below his feet stretched a pitch-black abyss whose depths could not be seen. Perhaps the answer was down there…
Growing anxious after receiving no response for so long and terrified that one moment of negligence might result in disaster, the guard snatched up the bow beside him, aimed at the moon-white figure, and prepared to loose an arrow.
The urgent clatter of approaching hooves suddenly sounded from the distance, drawing nearer and nearer until chaotic noise erupted through the night and injected an unnatural restlessness into the stillness.
“Stop!” A galloping horse swept forward like a violent gust. The deep, powerful voice carried tremendous force as well as tightly suppressed fury.
The horse passed so close that the startled guard nearly lost his grip on his bow. A confusion of hoofbeats followed as a sizable troop approached aggressively. Still wondering what in the world had happened, the guards caught sight of the imperial insignia that only the emperor himself was permitted to use and immediately turned pale with shock.
The mounted party rapidly drew closer, and only then did they clearly see that the man leading them was Mo Yan, the Chief Steward of the Inner Court who rarely left the emperor’s side. “His Majesty has arrived!”
Feng Xuanyi rode at the very front, charging straight through without slowing, while the Imperial Guards following behind suffered desperately to keep pace. Yet at a time like this, none of them dared be the one to complain.
Following Mo Yan’s anxious gaze, the guards at the palace gate watched Feng Xuanyi yank sharply on the reins and swing down from his horse. His movements were normally fluid and effortless, every gesture radiating dominance and imperial authority, yet now there seemed to be an unmistakable trace of agitation in him. In his haste, his foot even caught briefly in the stirrup as he dismounted, nearly making him stumble.
“Long live Your Majesty! Long live, long live Your Majesty!”
The troops halted behind him, dismounted, and dropped to their knees in respectful greeting. Every person present bowed with absolute reverence, with one exception—only one.
Upon the palace wall, that slender body seemed almost ready to melt into the darkness. Long illness had left Nalan Xuan increasingly frail, as though even a gentle breeze might scatter him away, yet he no longer cared. There was no emperor now, no empress, no hatred born from the destruction of his clan, and no agony from losing his child. Fame, rank, and wealth could all be cast aside in an instant and allowed to become nothing more than smoke from the past. Wearing only a moon-white inner robe, with moonlight as his gauze and the wind as his dance, he tilted his head slightly upward and savored this brief moment free of all worry, like a phoenix preparing to spread its wings and take flight, dazzling beyond compare.
Standing beneath the wall, Feng Xuanyi raised his head and saw every one of Nalan Xuan’s movements clearly. He paid absolutely no attention to the guards kneeling all around him, his gaze fixed tightly upon that swaying yet strangely content figure without daring to relax for even an instant. His face remained expressionless, yet something in his bearing seemed inexplicably grave. Drawing qi into his dantian, he gathered his internal energy through his legs in a continuous, controlled stream. His knees bent slightly before he suddenly exerted force, his body rising as lightly as a feather. He touched down, turned, borrowed momentum, and pushed upward once more. Except for the few secret guards who had been raised beside him since childhood, no one in the imperial palace knew that Feng Xuanyi possessed martial arts, much less that he was a first-rate expert. The guards could only stare dumbfounded as their emperor flew up the winding stone staircase, clearing nearly ten steps at a time.
The officers remained bewildered and uncertain. They could only watch helplessly as the emperor drew closer and closer to that moon-white figure. Without an order, none dared rise in defiance of imperial authority, though curiosity inevitably gnawed at them. Unable to openly stare, they craned their necks while silently wondering what in the world had happened to His Majesty and why he looked as though he had lost his very soul.
“What are you all still kneeling here for?! Hurry after His Majesty and protect him!” Mo Yan came running from among the Imperial Guard detachments, panting so hard he could barely speak as he stared at the guards still kneeling there like wooden statues. His heart was nearly bursting with anxiety. The words Something is going to happen circled endlessly through his mind, and he feared that if they were even one step too late, the consequences would become irreversible.
Only then did the officers dare openly turn around. Following the direction of Mo Yan’s finger, they looked toward the moon-white figure facing the distant flash of imperial yellow. Assuming that Mo Yan feared for the emperor’s safety, one particularly eager guard immediately lifted his bow and nocked an arrow, hoping to secure the first merit. Before he could earn that glorious achievement, however, Mo Yan practically threw himself at the man and forced the weapon down, roaring, “That is Her Majesty the Empress!”
At those words, everyone shuddered violently. The guard who moments ago had been gleefully calculating how to claim the first merit immediately went weak in the legs and collapsed onto the ground, trembling uncontrollably. The others no longer cared about appearance or proper decorum. One after another, they scrambled and stumbled up the stone steps toward the top of the palace wall, countless speculations racing through their minds, though none dared voice a single one aloud.
Unable to match the speed of trained martial artists, Mo Yan remained below the wall, breathing heavily as he stared anxiously at the two figures facing each other from afar—one dressed in imperial yellow, the other in moon-white. A multitude of conflicting emotions surged through him. It was not that he wished to take sides. He had watched everything unfold along the way, yet now, after matters had reached this point, even he no longer knew who was right and who was wrong. Perhaps arriving here had been inevitable, perhaps it was merely helpless circumstance. He had done everything he could to prevent it, but in the end, he was only a servant. What right did he have to interfere in the affairs of his masters?