Emperor Jing schemed and plotted. Like Shen Yi, he too got married.
Wang shi was shortsighted and prone to stirring up trouble, but he married her anyway. He took a primary consort and secondary consorts. He had no heart to give, and before the marriages, he made it clear to each woman: he would give them status, nothing more.
If they could accept that, he would marry them. If not, he would not.
Emperor Jing carefully built his alliances. He framed several of his brothers on various pretexts, sometimes even using his own life as a pawn.
He drank poisoned wine. He knelt in pouring rain to plead for mercy on behalf of brothers he himself had set up. The late emperor doted on him for it, and everyone else grew wary—but Emperor Jing felt nothing at all.
He did not wait until his position was rock-solid and his plans fully prepared before making his move. When his mother suddenly died in the cold palace, he framed Prince Su's faction. Then, while the late emperor was still mired in suspicion, Emperor Jing led his men straight into the palace.
He caught everyone completely off guard. Blood flooded the palace that day. When the sounds of fighting finally faded into silence, Emperor Jing sat on the white jade steps, his robes soaked in blood.
---
Emperor Jing woke from his dream, dazed, still feeling as though the smell of blood clung to him.
He lay in the soft bedding for a while, collected himself, and slowly sat up.
Pulling open the curtains, he saw that night had already fallen.
He stepped out of his room and looked down into the living room, where Shen Yi sat alone, lost in thought.
Emperor Jing stared at him, his eyes dry and aching.
In Da Qi, he had been so resolute. After leaving the Shen residence that day, the two of them never saw each other again—not even once.
When Shen Yi guarded the North Frontier and returned to the capital covered in military glory, Emperor Jing always pleaded illness and refused to meet him.
He took a fondness for alchemical elixirs, knowing full well they contained poison—yet he loved them all the same. Because his heart had long been dead. Living was just a shell going through the motions.
Countless times, from the highest pavilion in the palace, Emperor Jing watched Shen Yi leave the capital. The procession stretched on and on, the figures distant and small, but a general’s armor stood out from the rest—Emperor Jing could always spot the red scarf around Shen Yi’s neck at a single glance.
Countless times, he got drunk alone in that pavilion. Countless times, he wanted to summon Shen Yi back from the North Frontier, lock him in the palace, and never let him leave. But in the end, he did nothing. His harem was filled with beauties; he was known as a lover of pleasure and looked down on by the world—yet he had no heart.
He lived in misery, and he made sure Shen Yi knew it. Shen Yi watched him suffer and could do nothing about it.
Once, drunk, Emperor Jing said: "Let Shen Yi guard the North Frontier in life, and be buried there in death."
The two would never meet in life, and never pay respects in death.
Shen Yi saw Emperor Jing and stood up.
Times had changed. The world they now lived in was different—and yet they had both changed, and not changed at all.
Emperor Jing walked over and sat down beside Shen Yi. The first thing Shen Yi said was: "Shen Qing is not my child. After that one time, I never touched anyone else again—only in name."
Emperor Jing pressed his lips together and said, "I know." He did not use the royal "I"—that word belonged to a distant era, and he no longer used it.
Shen Yi looked at him. Emperor Jing said calmly, "I read all the letters you sent." He had not harmed the child because the child was innocent. He had not moved against the Shen family because he did not want people gossiping about Shen Yi wearing a green hat. Still, the Shen family had not fared well—they had fallen hard and could no longer stir up trouble. Once everything settled, others would deal with them.
Shen Yi had sent many letters from the North Frontier to the capital, never receiving a reply, yet he kept stubbornly writing. Wen shi had been pregnant with her second child at the time, and he had not even known—she and Shen Yi's mother had kept it from him.
Wen Shi told Shen Yi’s mother: "He doesn’t like children. We’ll tell him after the baby is born." And so they kept it hidden. When he finally found out he had a second child, his first instinct was to write to Emperor Jing and explain everything.
Shen Yi let out a breath of relief. Emperor Jing looked at him and suddenly asked, "When did you—"
He did not finish. Shen Yi said, "Forty days." Forty days after Emperor Jing's death, his own wounds had worsened and he had passed away as well.
Emperor Jing pressed his lips together.
Shen Yi looked at him calmly and said, "Your Majesty did not wish to live, and this subject feared Your Majesty would be lonely below."
"Don't call me 'Your Majesty.' There is no emperor here," Emperor Jing said.
Shen Yi readily changed his address: "Ah Ying."
Emperor Jing looked at him, the corners of his eyes drooping slightly. He said, "I knew that day when I said I would take you away—it was never possible. Later, you secretly helped me many times. My mother's death had something to do with your family, and I felt so powerless. There was too much between us. I wanted to keep you by my side—but you had a wife, and I had an empress and consorts. What right did I have to keep you? And what reason could you have to stay in the palace?"
He was surrounded by beauties. Even if Shen Yi stayed, what good would it do?
He had no heart for his consorts, but he had responsibilities, and he could not treat them lightly. And as emperor, he gave Shen Yi one last measure of face and respect—by not trapping him in the palace.
There was too much between them. In that era, they were bound by too many constraints. They had been too weak at the start to resist any of it. Emperor Jing felt both hatred and sorrow, and sitting on the throne, he was cold to the bone.
"I know—the more we loathed it, the safer we were," Shen Yi said softly.
Emperor Jing shook his head. "I just wanted you to know that I was hurting. That I was living unhappily. So that you couldn't be at ease either."
Shen Yi murmured, "I know."
He knew there was a tallest pavilion in the palace. He knew the man would get drunk there.
He also knew that this man had a soft heart. In all his years at the North Frontier, he had never once had to worry about military pay. And he knew even more that Emperor Jing feared that if they met, he would lose control of himself—that everything would fall apart. So it was better not to meet at all.
They were the two people who understood each other best. But fate had played its cruel hand—they were born in the wrong time. Emperor Jing's mother died. Within the Shen family, some took their own lives, while others were banished into exile. They were two people, but they also stood for two entire families.
They had fallen for each other—and that era had crushed everything.
Now, at last, it was all right. Through life and death, through the shifting tides of time, they had met again. The wounds on their hearts could now slowly heal.
They had been born in the worst of times. And reborn in the best.
"Then at the very end..." Emperor Jing said again, as if in a daze.
Shen Yi nodded. "Your Majesty left behind a good crown prince. But even if I had not returned to the capital, that would have been fine—I would have stayed at the North Frontier for Your Majesty. There were fewer disturbances there, and the people were less complicated."
Emperor Jing gazed at Shen Yi. His eyes held a desolate chill, and yet a faint warmth flickered within them.
He thought: if this were a dream, he wished never to wake.
-End-
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