Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Seven years ago, I was still a lowly criminal slave in the Yeting.

The Jiang Family had been physicians for generations. My father, Jiang Hong, once served as the Chief Imperial Physician of the Imperial Medical Bureau. Later, he was executed and our family assets seized after being implicated in the Southern Border Treason Case. I was young then, and I only remember that before my father died, he managed to have an old medical manual sent to me. Tucked between the pages was a slip of paper as thin as a cicada’s wing, with only one sentence written on it:

“If the Crown Prince is afflicted by the Forgetfulness Gu, only the blood of a Medicine Person can serve as a catalyst to extend his life. Each time he is saved, the Gu shall devour one thread of his affection for the one he loves most.”

I didn’t understand it then-not until three months later, when Bai Xiuzhu was carried back from the hunting grounds.

That day, the Eastern Palace was in a state of total chaos.

The Crown Prince had been ambushed at the hunting grounds. The arrows were coated in a rare poison from the Southern Borderlands that had seeped into his heart and lungs; he was barely breathing. The hall was filled with imperial physicians who were at their wits’ end, kneeling in a row as they waited to be punished for their failure. Because I had secretly read the medical manual my father left behind, the head maid pushed me forward to test a remedy. No one believed I could save him; they were simply looking for a scapegoat.

As I knelt by the couch, Bai Xiuzhu’s body was terrifyingly hot, yet his lips were a ghostly blue.

Recalling the words on that slip of paper, I gritted my teeth and sliced open my palm, letting my blood drip into the medicine before pouring it down his throat.

He struggled at death’s door all night before finally opening his eyes.

Everyone in the palace said I was lucky, and that the Crown Prince was lucky too.

Only I knew that wasn’t it.

It was the Forgetfulness Gu beginning to feed.

The first thing Bai Xiuzhu said when he woke up wasn’t about the assassins or the court situation. Instead, he stared blankly at the portrait of the Late Empress and asked in a low voice, “Who is she?”

The faces of everyone in the room paled instantly.

The Late Empress was his birth mother, the person he had respected and loved most in the world. But from that day forward, he could no longer remember the first pair of boots she had sewn for him, nor her final instructions on her deathbed.

He forgot.

He forgot it all, completely and utterly.

Only when he occasionally woke up in the middle of the night would he feel a sudden, inexplicable sorrow, as if he had lost something vital.

Back then, only I knew what he had lost.

It was also from that moment on that he kept me by his side.

People in the Eastern Palace said the Crown Prince was merely keeping a maid who understood medicine to facilitate his care. Only I knew it was more than that.

After every flare-up of the poison, he would subconsciously grab my hand.

When he saw the scars on my hands, he would frown for no apparent reason.

Amidst the snow-covered palace, he personally transferred me from the Laundry Bureau back to the Eastern Palace, simply because “she’s afraid of the cold.”

I once asked him why it was me.

He remained silent for a long time before saying, “Because every time I open my eyes and see you, I feel at peace. It’s as if you were always meant to be standing here.”

Later, he was ordered to the frontier to oversee the army, and I accompanied him as his medical attendant.

The snow at the frontier was heavier than in the capital, and the wind was fiercer. In the capital, Bai Xiuzhu was the Crown Prince, but at the frontier, he was more like a young general. He would personally lead his troops on patrol, tend to the wounds of injured soldiers at night while draped in a heavy cloak, and when my fingers grew stiff with cold, he would gather my hands into his palms to slowly warm them.

We endured three winters there together.

In the spring of the third year, he took me to see the apricot blossoms beyond the pass.

The wind blew petals across the sky. Suddenly, he pulled a white jade peace buckle from his sleeve and tied it to my waist.

“Wentang,” he said, “once I have quelled the border troubles and returned to the capital to clear the Jiang Family’s name, I will request an imperial decree to marry you.”

I froze, not daring to respond for a long time.

I was the daughter of a disgraced official, and he was the Heir Apparent of Daliang.

Those words were too heavy-heavy like a dream.

But he insisted that I believe him.

That night, he took me to a dilapidated Matchmaker Temple at the frontier, and there we bowed to Heaven and Earth. There were no red candles, no celebratory music, and even the divine statues in the temple were broken and incomplete. Yet he knelt with such sincerity, saying every word with conviction.
“In this life, Bai Xiuzhu acknowledges only one woman as his wife: Jiang Wentang.”

I cried until I couldn’t stop the tears.

I truly thought we could have a future together.

But the second calamity came sooner than I could have imagined.

On the day of the great victory at the border, a remnant of the enemy forces launched a night raid on our camp. To protect me, Bai Xiuzhu took an arrow in my stead. The arrow struck him right in the heart. When he collapsed into my arms, his blood soaked through my entire body.

The military physician said he couldn’t be saved.

I remembered my father’s parting words once more.

Every time the host is saved, the gu consumes a strand of their deepest affection.

But at that moment, I couldn’t care about the cost.

I used gold needles to seal his heart’s meridians, then sliced open my wrist to feed my blood into his mouth. It took an entire night for him to be pulled back from the brink of death.

When he woke and saw me keeping watch by his bed, he asked with polite detachment, “Miss Jiang, why are you crying like this?”

I understood immediately.

This time, the gu had consumed his love for me.

He still remembered that I was Jiang Wentang, his Medicine Attendant, and that I had saved him.

But he didn’t remember the Matchmaker Temple, the rain of apricot blossoms, or his vow that I was the only wife he would ever recognize.

During those first few days, even looking at him made me tremble with pain.

Seeing me avoid him, he became increasingly silent. Later, during a night when the poison flared up, he grabbed my sleeve in a daze. His forehead was covered in cold sweat, and his voice was so low it was barely audible.

“Have I… forgotten something very important?”

I looked at his pale face and finally couldn’t hold back. I nodded through my tears.

“Yes.”

“Can I still remember it?”

I shook my head.

He closed his eyes for a long, long time before whispering, “No wonder my heart feels like a hollow void whenever I see you sad.”

That was the second time he lost me.

But it was also from that day that I realized for the first time: even if a person forgets their love, their body will remember it for them.

After returning to the capital, the situation at court became increasingly treacherous.

The Rong Family’s power was at its peak. Rong Yingxue was the daughter of the Grand Tutor and had been regarded as the candidate for Crown Princess since childhood. Everyone urged Bai Xiuzhu to form an alliance with the Rong Family to secure his position as the heir. Yet, he suppressed these demands time and again, keeping me in the Eastern Palace and even beginning a secret investigation into the old case involving the Jiang Family from seven years ago.

I asked him why he was still investigating.

That night, he was flipping through dossiers under the lamp. Hearing my question, he looked up at me, his eyes filled with deep exhaustion.

“I don’t remember exactly what happened between us.”

“But I know that I once risked my life to protect you.”

“Wentang, people can lie and memories can deceive, but instinct does not.”

As he spoke, he pushed a wooden box toward me.

“Inside is a deed of divorce, a travel permit to leave the palace, and some of the evidence I’ve found regarding the Jiang Family’s old case. If something happens to me again and I truly don’t recognize you when I wake up, take this and leave. Don’t stay and die with me.”

I pushed the box back.

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

He smiled faintly and reached out to touch the scar on my wrist.

“It’s not nonsense.”

“I’m afraid that the next time I wake up, I’ll even forget who I’m supposed to protect with my life.”

My nose stung with unshed tears, and I forced myself to glare at him.

“Then I’ll just make you remember all over again.”

He watched me for a long time before suddenly leaning down to place a kiss on the deepest old scar on my wrist.

“If that day truly comes, just give up on me.”

I didn’t answer then.

Because I knew I couldn’t do it.

If he were dying, I couldn’t leave him unsaved.

Even if the price was being forgotten once more.