Chapter 5
Chapter 5
In truth, every now and then, I could still glimpse a trace of Zhao Xun as he had been in his youth.
He was not entirely without a mother-son bond toward the Empress Dowager.
When the Empress Dowager was alive, though he was always cold to her,
he would still summon me from time to time to ask after her condition.
In my previous life, after the Empress Dowager passed away,
I once happened upon him sitting alone, holding one of the keepsakes she had left behind, weeping silently until dawn broke bleak and gray.
Inside the Empress Dowager’s temporary mourning hall, the white funeral streamers hung like falling snow.
The sound of chanting sutras gradually faded.
I knelt beside the coffin and watched as the princes, dukes, and nobles who had come to pay their respects slowly departed.
In the end, only Zhao Xun remained, dressed all in mourning white, standing there with shadowed eyes.
His gaze moved from the white streamers to the Empress Dowager’s remains, and at last fell soundlessly on my thin, frail back.
Only after Eunuch Hong urged him again and again did he finally turn to leave.
Before he went, he tossed out a bland sentence:
“If you cannot endure it, have Hong Jing come find me.”
He was worrying too much.
That day would never come.
The consorts’ mausoleum was already full and needed craftsmen to expand it.
A project that should have been finished in a few days was, for some unknown reason, dragged out for three weeks.
The Empress Dowager’s coffin had no choice but to remain in a side chamber.
Fortunately, enough spices had been placed inside, so the body would not decay.
But in early spring, the air was dry and everything was parched.
It was all too easy for a fire to start.
When smoke began seeping in through the crack beneath the door,
I touched the scalding wall, and my heart sank.
Was it an accident, or had someone done this deliberately?
I did not know.
After spending half my life trying to read other people’s minds, I no longer had the energy to guess.
The door had been locked from the outside.
I stood there in silence for a long time. In the end, I returned to the coffin.
The air was scorching, yet the Empress Dowager’s remains were cold to the touch.
I looked at her aged face.
All at once, I remembered the year I was seven, when I was assigned to the Empress Dowager’s palace as a maid responsible for sweeping and cleaning.
Back then, the Empress Dowager was still Consort Sheng.
She had no illustrious family behind her, and her temperament was meek and yielding. Ten years after entering the palace, she still had no favor.
By chance, she found me crying while washing clothes and asked me gently what had happened, whether someone had bullied me.
When she learned my mother had died, even though she herself had little to spare, she still gave me twenty taels of silver without hesitation.
I remember how cold the moonlight was that night.
Consort Sheng held me and softly comforted me through the entire night.
I sobbed in her arms and said I had no mother anymore.
A soft halo of light fell over her young face.
She wiped away my tears and said, “Then from now on, I will be your mother.”
At the time, three years had passed since she had given birth to Zhao Xun.
I became her personal palace maid, but most of my energy was spent on Zhao Xun.
There were many princes in the palace. His birth mother’s rank was low, and Zhao Xun happened to be exceptionally gifted, so his elder brothers were always bullying him.
He was not yet old enough to know how to hide his brilliance. Whenever he suffered some grievance, he would throw himself into my arms and sulkily demand that I comfort him.
The Empress resented that Consort Sheng had borne a prince after attending His Majesty only once.
In secret, she hinted to the Imperial Household Department to cut back on Consort Sheng’s charcoal and food for the winter.
Consort Sheng did not complain.
She took Zhao Xun and me and sat around the only brazier we had, roasting sweet potatoes.
Life was truly bitter then.
A single sweet potato rolled around the circle, yet none of us could bear to eat it. In the end, it somehow rolled back into my hands.
Zhao Xun’s eyes shone. “Ah Tao should eat it. If Ah Tao is full, then I am full too.”
Consort Sheng propped her chin in her hand and watched us with a smile.
She asked him, “Why are you so good to Ah Tao?”
Zhao Xun answered without the slightest hesitation, “Of course it’s because I like Ah Tao.”
“When I grow up, I’ll buy Ah Tao lots and lots of food, so she can be happy every single day.”
“I’m going to become powerful, so no one can ever bully Ah Tao.”
It was all childish talk.
That shallow fondness he had once held for me in childhood was like a basin of oil poured over the raging flames of resentment.
Every time I saw him over those ten years, he had grown a little taller.
Refined, handsome, and cold, he was no longer an unfavored prince, but a candidate for crown prince.
His noble, beautiful cousin leaned against his side. When he looked at her, his eyes were filled with love.
He would never again tug on my sleeve and call me Ah Tao with a bright smile. He would only look at me coldly, mock me, target me, and make things difficult for me.
Even after the Late Empress died,
he stopped me with a cold laugh, his tone so cutting it was almost sharp. “Why weren’t you the one who died?”
“Good people truly do die young, while scourges live a thousand years.”
…
Just as he wished,
I was going to die very soon.