Feng Xuanyi was just about to reprimand him when countless shattered images suddenly flashed before his eyes. They came without warning, terrifyingly vivid, carrying the familiarity of something he had personally experienced and yet the horrifying strangeness of something he could hardly believe had ever happened.
The previous night, he should have remained in Yonghe Palace with Noble Attendant Han. He had eaten dinner, drunk wine, and gone to bed, deliberately refusing to think about that person. But…
Who had come to him in the middle of the night?
And why had he come?
Why had that person left in such a hurry, so anxious and alarmed?
Beneath the moonlight, who was that figure in pale moon-white robes standing atop the palace wall, looking toward him across a distance that seemed to separate heaven from earth?
Backlit by the night, whose peerlessly beautiful face had looked haggard and yet still seemed capable of stealing all color from heaven and earth?
In the darkness, who had questioned him again and again, sometimes furiously and sometimes calmly, while an almost imperceptible tremor hid beneath the words?
And beneath the faint breeze, who had refused even one final glance backward before leaping away with such absolute resolve?!
Question after question tore enormous empty spaces through Feng Xuanyi’s heart. The answers were already on the verge of leaving his mouth, yet he stubbornly forced them back. It was almost as though, as long as he refused to say the answer aloud, none of it would have happened and everything could still return to the way it had been. But…
“Master! Master!! Where are you going?! Master, you haven’t finished washing and dressing yet! Master!!” No matter how loudly Mo Yan shouted after him, he could not call back the bright yellow figure that shot out of the hall in a single stride.
In truth, Mo Yan did not need to ask. He already knew exactly where his master was going. Precisely because he understood too well, however, the sight left him speechless. A man who had once cared so deeply about imperial dignity had now rushed outside with his hair disordered and his clothing unfinished, caring nothing for appearances. He looked possessed, as though his soul had fled his body, filled with both terrible fear and desperate hope.
Perhaps Mo Yan truly had lived too long. He had seen too many things he should never have seen and learned too many things he was never meant to know. That was why the conclusion his instincts now produced frightened him so badly, even though he could find no way to refute it.
His body moved before thought could catch up. Feng Xuanyi’s mind went completely blank. He could hear nothing, feel nothing, and see nothing except countless images of that person: the faint smile, the furious expression when correcting him, the coquettish annoyance, the despair in those eyes, and finally that dimmed gaze and desolate smile. As though possessed, Feng Xuanyi raced straight toward Fengyi Palace, driving every ounce of his internal energy through his body without even realizing it. Again and again he forced down the waves threatening to break through his chest, stubbornly insisting that he was merely overthinking things. He told himself that he needed to see with his own eyes. It had to be a misunderstanding, an enormous joke, a—
Fengyi Palace looked exactly as it always had, splendid and magnificent.
The heart Feng Xuanyi had held suspended in terror seemed to glimpse an island amid a boundless sea, finally settling slightly. Standing before the palace gates, he almost laughed at himself. What in the world was wrong with him? Only now did he realize how improper he looked and told himself he should immediately return to his own palace. Yet his hands seemed to possess minds of their own as they pushed open the doors. Perhaps he needed proof to reassure himself, or perhaps he simply wanted to mock his own stupidity and refusal to accept reality.
The palace doors slowly opened, but no one came to answer. Feng Xuanyi frowned instinctively, already thinking that these palace servants would need to be severely reprimanded for their negligence. His feet moved almost without conscious command and carried him toward the main bedchamber of Fengyi Palace.
He encountered no one along the way. The heart that had only just found a trace of hope rose into his throat again. For some reason, Fengyi Palace seemed far too quiet today, almost… almost like a dead city.
Feng Xuanyi cursed himself for imagining nonsense. It was simply too early. Everyone must still be asleep.
He refused to examine how weak that explanation was or how many holes it contained. Not until he pushed open the bedchamber doors did every comforting thought reveal itself as self-deception and every argument lose what little color it possessed. His final stubborn hope disappeared, and with it went the last thing holding him upright.
“What are you doing here? Where is your master?”
No incense burned inside the enormous bedchamber, yet a familiar fragrance lingered in the air, faint and clean—the scent that always clung to Nalan Xuan. Every small partition stood open, and the folding screens had been moved into the corners. From the doorway, Feng Xuanyi could take in nearly the entire room at a glance. It was empty except for Xiao Dezi, who sat collapsed on his knees in the center of the hall with a blank, wooden expression.
The entire world seemed to fall silent in an instant. Feng Xuanyi could clearly hear his own heartbeat and breathing, as well as the uncontrollable tremor in his voice when the question left his mouth.
“Does Your Majesty truly not know?” Only after a long while did Xiao Dezi answer. He did not turn around, did not spare Feng Xuanyi so much as a proper glance, much less bow according to rank and etiquette. “Did Your Majesty not see it with your own eyes? Why come and ask this servant?”
“I am asking you a question. Where is your master?!” Feng Xuanyi no longer cared about hollow ceremonies or respectful greetings. He did not even pursue Xiao Dezi’s disrespectful tone. All that mattered was that he was not receiving the answer he wanted, that he did not know where Nalan Xuan was. Anxiety and fear tore at him. It felt as though every additional moment of delay would carve his stubborn denial open until it was raw and bleeding, exposing just how absurd his present existence had become.
“Dead.” Xiao Dezi straightened, knelt properly, and bowed with impeccable respect. His forehead struck the mirror-bright floor with a heavy thud.
“Insolence!! The empress of an entire nation is not someone a servant like you may slander with such lies!” Xiao Dezi had barely finished speaking when Feng Xuanyi roared like a dragon whose reverse scale had been touched. The terror he had buried in the deepest, most forbidden corner of his heart could no longer be suppressed. That place had been suddenly illuminated as though a blinding beam had been trained directly upon it, leaving him nowhere to retreat or hide. Everything was exposed before the world without the slightest cover. His heart seemed to stop, and even his breathing froze with it.
“Last night, Master leapt from the palace wall. Did Your Majesty not see it with your own eyes? Did Your Majesty not simply watch? Did Your Majesty not turn around and leave without a single change of expression?” Xiao Dezi straightened. There was no increasingly furious interrogation and no frightened collapse. He sounded almost like an uninvolved witness repeating something he had merely heard, calm and neither servile nor overbearing. “Your Majesty, Empress Yu is dead. Nalan Xuan is dead!!”
Something exploded before Feng Xuanyi’s eyes, while something else broke loose inside his heart. The heart he had kept suspended for so long finally found somewhere to fall, but not in the place he had desperately hoped.
He did not care about Empress Yu. He did not want some Empress Yu. “Empress” was only a title, a name for a position that anyone could occupy. It was nothing more than an imperial decree, black ink on white paper. What he wanted was the person named Nalan Xuan. Whether that man had deceived him or not, what he wanted was Nalan Xuan himself—a living, breathing person!
Why had he only understood something so simple now? If he had never been able to understand it at all, perhaps that would have been better. Then he should have gone his entire life without ever touching it. But why had he been made to see, at precisely this moment, the fissure splitting open in the deepest part of his heart? And why had he been forced to understand the cruelty exposed within that crack?
Who had once told him with such grief and fury, “A sovereign… now I truly understand what that means… From this day onward, I will remember it through every lifetime!”
Why remember it through every lifetime? What exactly had he sworn never to forget?