Chapter 3

Chapter 3

On the day I was so ill that I could barely struggle out of bed, Lu Yuheng brought an imperial decree.

He unfurled the bright yellow scroll, his voice steady.

“By the Grace of Heaven, the Emperor decrees: Ye Lanyin, a daughter of the Ye family, is of upright character, gentle, and virtuous. She is hereby invested as Empress, to preside over the Inner Palace and serve as a mother to the realm.”

I froze for a long time, almost suspecting I had misheard him.

“Have you lost your mind?” I looked at him, finding even a smile to be a laborious effort. “The court officials just watched you overturn the case against the Ye Family. If you crown a daughter of the Ye Family as Empress now, they will never agree to it.”

“Whether they agree or not is unimportant.”

“It is important,” I said softly. “You have only just ascended the throne.”

He knelt by my couch and gathered the silk shawl that had slipped from my shoulders. The corners of his eyes were bloodshot from exhaustion.

“Lanyin,” he said, “I promised you that I would let you wear a wedding dress with honor.”

I gazed at him, my throat suddenly tight with emotion.

I had waited ten years for those words.

I had waited until my parents’ bones grew cold, until my brother’s whereabouts were unknown, and until I myself was on the verge of death.

Yet now that the day had finally arrived, there was little joy in my heart-only an unspeakable sorrow.

Because I knew that this investiture was not a gesture of favor, but an act of fulfillment.

It was the fulfillment of my lifelong obsession, and the fulfillment of a promise he had made in his youth.

On the day of the grand ceremony, I summoned every ounce of strength to put on the Phoenix Robe.

In the bronze mirror, the woman was so thin she was almost unrecognizable. Only her eyes still held a faint glimmer of the young mistress of the Ye Family from years ago. As the palace maids applied my makeup and traced my eyebrows, their hands trembled constantly, as if they were terrified they might break me with a single touch.

Lu Yuheng stood behind me, watching for a long time before suddenly saying, “You look beautiful.”

I met his gaze in the mirror and asked, “More beautiful than when I was sixteen?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his voice was soft and raspy. “That year, when you stood beneath the apricot blossoms, I thought there was no one in this world more beautiful than you.”

My eyes grew hot, and I quickly turned my face away. “Don’t tease me. You’ll ruin my makeup.”

The ceremony was magnificent.

The ancestral temple, the seals and silks of investiture, the salutations of the officials, and the celebrations of the common people-nothing was missing.

As he led me by the hand up the high platform, a sea of people knelt below us. Those who had once watched the ruin of the Ye Family now watched a daughter of that same family take her place as Empress.

I suddenly understood why he had insisted on holding this ceremony.

It wasn’t just that he wanted to give me a wedding.

He wanted to tell the world that the Ye Family was innocent, and that I, Ye Lanyin, was not a criminal slave living in shame, but an Empress who could stand by his side to receive rites, bows, and the praise of the people.

In that moment, I almost wanted to live on, regardless of the cost.

But heaven does not always grant human wishes.

After the ceremony ended, I was coughing so violently I could barely stand straight. Flecks of blood seeped into my handkerchief like tiny red plum blossoms.

The imperial physician knelt outside the hall, not daring to lift his head. He spoke only one sentence: “If Her Majesty continues to force herself, she may not survive the night.”

Sitting on the wedding bed, I suddenly felt an overwhelming exhaustion.

Lu Yuheng stood with his back to me for a long time, looking like a jade statue bowed by the weight of snow.

After a long silence, he turned around and personally poured two cups of wine.

One cup for me, and one for himself.

“This is the Nuptial Wine,” he said in a low voice. “It is also the medicine that will grant you release.”

Looking at the two cups of wine, I suddenly wanted to laugh, but tears fell first.

“Lu Yuheng,” I asked him, “did you never once think of keeping me here?”

His fingers tightened abruptly, his knuckles turning a bloodless white.

“I did,” he said, his eyes filled with bloodshot veins as he looked at me. “I had the Imperial Academy of Medicine search through every ancient text. I sent people to the Southern Border, the Western Regions, and the Northern Frontier to find a cure. I even thought that if all else failed, I would step away from the court for three months and take you to live in the mountains. But Lanyin, the Red Wither Poison is too cruel.”

By the end, his voice was actually trembling.

“I am not afraid of you dying. I am afraid of you being in pain.”

The wall in my heart that I had held up for so many years suddenly collapsed completely.

I had always thought that I was the one who had suffered the most grievance all these years.

But it turned out there was also someone who, since the age of seventeen, had suppressed all his love, guilt, struggle, and pity at the root of his tongue-suppressing it until it bled, never daring to let it go.

I picked up the cup of wine and asked him softly, “What if I refuse to drink it today?”

His throat moved, and it took a long while before he spoke. “Then I will endure each day with you.”

“Endure until I bleed from every pore and become unrecognizable?”
He closed his eyes and remained silent.

Suddenly, I couldn’t bear to let go.

I couldn’t bear the thought of him watching me die like that, nor could I bear the thought of his newly stabilized empire being tainted by more rumors because of a dying woman.

So, I flashed him a smile, just like I had under the apricot trees many years ago.

“Your Majesty,” I said, “we should drink the Nuptial Wine together.”

He froze.

I pushed the other cup toward his hand. “You don’t have to die with me, but you must at least finish this cup with me for the ceremony to be complete.”

His eyes instantly reddened.

This man, who had grown up in the cold isolation of the Side Palace and later endured blood and storms to become an emperor, actually had tears welling in his eyes before me.

He picked up the wine cup and intertwined his arm with mine.

When the cups clinked, they made a very soft sound.

It sounded just like the tinkling of the small bell beneath the first flower lantern I ever gave him.

I tilted my head back and finished the wine.

As the Poisoned Wine slid down my throat, it wasn’t actually that bitter; in fact, it was much easier to swallow than the medicine I had brewed for him all these years.

The effects took hold quickly. First, a wave of heat spread through my chest, and then all the pain receded like a tide, leaving my entire body feeling light and airy.

I leaned into his embrace, listening as my own breathing grew shallower and shallower.

He held me very tightly, very steadily, as if he finally dared to hold me with enough force to hurt.

I struggled to raise my hand and touched his face.

“Lu Yuheng.”

“I’m here.”

“Regarding the Ye Family case… tell Zhiyuan for me that he isn’t allowed to investigate it anymore, and he shouldn’t hold onto the hatred,” I panted, speaking slowly. “You have already repaid us enough.”

The tears in his eyes finally fell, splashing onto the back of my hand. They were so hot they made me flinch slightly.

“Alright.”

“And…”

“Tell me.”

I looked at him, and suddenly, I felt like laughing.

“In our next life, don’t be born into the imperial family.”

He leaned down, pressing his forehead against mine, his voice incredibly hoarse. “Alright.”

“And don’t leave me alone again.”

This time, he answered very quickly.

“I won’t.”

But I knew that this “I won’t” had come too late after all.

I had spent the best years of my life waiting, and the worst years waiting as well.

Waiting for him to grow up, waiting for him to become capable, waiting for him to clear the Ye Family’s name, and waiting for him to come and marry me.

In the end, I finally waited long enough for a legitimate Phoenix Crown and ceremonial robes, but I also waited for a cup of fatal wine.

Strangely enough, as death approached, I found I no longer felt any hatred.

I only felt it was a pity.

It was a pity that the apricot blossoms from when I was sixteen didn’t stay in bloom until today. It was a pity that the vow we made in our youth required so many lives and so many years of mutual torment just to barely fulfill half of it.

My vision began to darken, and Lu Yuheng’s face grew increasingly blurred.

Before the last spark of consciousness faded, I heard him calling my name over and over.

He didn’t call me “Empress,” nor did he use formal endearments.

He called me: “Lanyin.”

Just like that youth ten years ago under the old apricot tree on Vermilion Bird Street-the boy who hadn’t yet learned to weigh love against the world on a scale-when he first accepted the flower lantern I handed him.

I drew my last breath in his arms.

Later, Lu Tinglan told Ye Zhiyuan what happened after my death.

She said that after I died, Lu Yuheng sat in Jiaofang Palace for an entire night, holding me in his arms the whole time. He refused to let go, no matter who tried to persuade him.

At the morning court session the next day, the officials requested that he choose another auspicious day to discuss the position of the Empress. He looked down at the crowd of people kneeling before the dais and said only one sentence: “My Empress has already been buried.”

From then on, no new women ever entered the inner palace.

Some said the New Emperor was deeply devoted; others said he was consumed by guilt and didn’t dare to appoint another Empress.

Others said that every year on the anniversary of the coronation, he would go to Jiaofang Palace alone to drink, and no one was allowed to approach.

Later, Ye Zhiyuan earned military merit at the Northern Frontier and was granted a title upon his return to the capital. The New Emperor personally went out of the city to welcome him and returned the old Ye Family estate to him, exactly as it had been.

Ye Zhiyuan asked, “Why does Your Majesty treat this subject so well?”

Lu Yuheng stood under the newly budding apricot tree in front of the Ye estate and remained silent for a long time.

Finally, he simply took an old, darkened Red Bean Bracelet from his sleeve and held it gently in his palm.

“Because this is what I owe your elder sister.”

I heard that the wind was very strong that day, blowing the apricot blossoms until they swirled everywhere.

It was just like when I was sixteen, standing under the blossoms and looking up at him, thinking that a lifetime was still a very long time.