Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Li Qiyue was pregnant and found it inconvenient to move around, so Zhao Yan excused her from paying daily respects.

The harem might as well have been the Cold Palace. Every morning, the moment I opened my eyes, I had to face a flock of lifeless consorts who came to pay their respects as if they were attending a funeral. To be honest, I rather missed the days when Li Qiyue still came to greet the Empress. With her hair full of pearls and jade, she stood there like a luminous gem, shining bright.

She really was a feast for the eyes.

No wonder Zhao Yan liked her.

I touched the old-fashioned eastern pearls hanging from my ears and sighed.

Later, I went to the Empress Dowager’s palace to deliver the Buddhist scriptures I had copied. I hadn’t expected to run into the two of them there.

The Empress Dowager and Li Qiyue actually had a poor relationship. She disliked Li Qiyue for her lowly birth, for monopolizing favor and acting overbearing, for having no sense of propriety and clinging to Zhao Yan day after day as if she had no bones in her body.

Li Qiyue did not care in the slightest. The Empress Dowager was not His Majesty’s birth mother. With someone backing her, the more the old woman disliked something, the more Li Qiyue insisted on doing it.

At that moment, she was sitting improperly. Zhao Yan lightly patted the back of her shoulder, and only then did she reluctantly straighten her waist. A trace of impatience showed in her eyes as she casually grabbed the bead dangling from Zhao Yan’s belt and toyed with it.

Zhao Yan’s gaze softened, and the corner of his mouth curved in a barely perceptible smile.

The Empress Dowager’s hand paused on her prayer beads. Her gaze swept over me, and then she said to Zhao Yan, “The Imperial Noble Consort is with child, so it is inconvenient for her to attend to you in bed. Your Majesty should still share your favor evenly. When you have time, you may visit the Empress more often.”

Only then did Zhao Yan’s gaze fall on me for the first time that night.

He had a pair of peach-blossom eyes, with long lashes at the outer corners. They should have held a gentle, lingering warmth, but his whole bearing was that of one who stood above all others. No matter what he looked at, there was always a dismissive indifference in his eyes, leaving only a sense of chill thinness.

I instinctively avoided that gaze. By the time I looked up again, he had already withdrawn his eyes and replied lightly, “Your son understands.”

Now Li Qiyue was unhappy. She pouted and said her waist hurt. Zhao Yan bent down and pressed his hands against her waist a couple of times, asking softly, “Have you been sitting too long?”

With the two of them acting so openly, the Empress Dowager’s expression did not look good either. In the end, remembering that Li Qiyue was pregnant, she told her to return and rest first.

The Empress Dowager accepted the Buddhist scriptures and let out a faint, almost imperceptible sigh.

“You are a sensible one. I like you when I see you. But if the Emperor does not like you, what use is it for me to like you?”

“It has been three years since you entered the palace, hasn’t it?”

Three years… and one hundred eighty-two days.

That night, I had a dream.

I dreamed of the day I was married. Zhao Yan sat beside me, lifted my bridal veil, and asked if my waist hurt from sitting and waiting so long. He said he had come to apologize to his wife.

The moment he said that, I knew I was dreaming.

Because that day, I had sat alone on the bridal bed, waiting until the clamor outside gradually quieted, waiting until my body and heart cooled bit by bit. And still, my husband never came.

For a young woman, no matter how much I told Mother that I did not care, how could I truly not care in my heart?

I knew Zhao Yan’s heart was not with me, and I had no desire to fight Li Qiyue for him. But this was the most beautiful and most important day of my life. How could it wither away without anyone ever having seen it?

Through the veil, my vision was filled with festive red as I asked Chuntao, “Is he not coming?”

Chuntao gently placed a hand on my shoulder, as if to comfort me.

I took off the heavy ornaments from my head, then pressed at my waist a few times. I heard my own voice, very calm, say, “Then fill a bed warmer for me. I want to sleep.”

After waking from the dream, I sat up in the darkness and called for Chuntao to fill a bed warmer for me.

“Your Ladyship, did you misspeak? It is July now.”

“I’m cold.” I slowly wrapped the quilt tighter around myself. “I truly feel cold.”

I did not cry on my wedding night.

In the third year after marrying Zhao Yan, I finally could not hold on any longer.

Inside the brocade pouch Mother had given me was a pill that could feign death. In the pouch, she had written that once one entered the palace gates, the depths were like the sea. She and my father had only this one legitimate daughter. They had discussed it: if I ever found myself with nowhere left to go, I could fake my death and leave the palace. The Meng family would arrange for people to receive me outside. From then on, they would simply regard me as truly dead. The road to the ends of the earth would be long, and we would never meet again.

I dug that pill out of the pillow stuffing and held it up in the moonlight, studying it in silence. As long as I swallowed it, as long as I swallowed it, I would be free. From then on, everything within the palace walls would have nothing to do with me.

I stared at it for a long while without a word, then quietly picked it up and began pushing it into my mouth bit by bit.

And then the strangest thing I had ever encountered in my life happened.

I couldn’t swallow the pill.

I couldn’t bite through it. I couldn’t chew it apart. With water, I did manage to force it down, but it only spun once at the back of my throat before I coughed it right back out.

“It’s no use. Stop trying to eat it.”

A voice rang out without warning.

Who was speaking beside my ear?

And why… did it sound so much like my own voice?

Every hair on my body stood on end. A chill shot down my spine. I wanted to scream, but even that scream was strangled in my throat by some mysterious force.

“Don’t be afraid, Meng Yao. I am you. You from another world. I won’t hurt you.” The voice sighed and went on, “I came here to stop a mistake I once made. That isn’t a fake-death pill. It’s poison, real poison. If I were you, I wouldn’t eat it.”

In the darkness, the pill rolled onto the quilt. Its black surface shimmered with a dark red gleam, an unnatural color seeping through it.

How could that be? Mother had clearly said… How could she possibly hurt me?

As if it knew what I was thinking, the voice continued, “Your mother wouldn’t lie to you. But what about your father? Chancellor Meng may have heaven-defying ability, but would he really dig up an imperial mausoleum for your sake? A consort taking her own life, helping you fake your death and leave the palace-that is a crime punishable by beheading. For the sake of a disobedient pawn he has already cast aside, even if your father didn’t think of himself, he would still have to think of the clan. Tell me, what choice would he make?”

Every word it said made sense. I had no way to refute it.

This matter was far too risky. There were indeed too many variables.

Otherwise, why had so many beauties from ancient times to now spent their lives growing old alone in the inner palace? What virtue, what ability did I, Meng Yao, possess to become the one exception in ten thousand?

My heart went half cold. I asked it, “How do you know?”

The voice gave a bitter laugh. “Because I took it. If you don’t believe me, you can feed this pill to something else and see whether it’s poison or not. I told you-I am you, the you from another world.”

So the final escape route my family had left me was also a lie.

Cold sweat soaked through my inner clothes. I was clearly trembling, yet I did not feel cold. It was as if all the blood in my body were surging toward the hand warmer in my arms. After a long while, I covered my eyes and pressed my fingers against the tears spilling out. Then I asked, “Then why are you here?”

“I have died many times. Not just by taking Mother’s fake-death pill. I have tried many ways to die. I even tried that death you mentioned before-the one where I supported an imperial grandson and helped usher in a golden age. That time, I even kept a few male favorites. Sounds rather nice, doesn’t it?” The voice laughed softly, as if it had remembered something absurd. “But my best years were already gone. What was the point of doing those things then? Behind my back, they all called me an old demoness.”

“I came to ask you this: since you are going to die no matter what, are you willing to live properly for once?”

The room fell silent. I could hear my own heartbeat with perfect clarity.

After who knew how long, I asked, “How?”

The voice smiled in satisfaction. I felt something I could not see gently wrap its arms around me.

“Have you heard that line of poetry? The one that goes… when the tumi flowers bloom, the season of blossoms is over?”