The sky was overcast, and a fine, misty rain carried a biting chill, pattering against the pines and cypresses of the imperial cemetery.
The funeral procession and the wailing palace attendants had long since dispersed. The vast imperial graveyard was left in a deathly silence, save for the sound of the rain, which struck a cold chord in one’s heart.
Chu Moqing stood alone before a fresh tombstone. His plain white robes were soaked by the rain, clinging tightly to his thin frame.
His back was stooped, his temples streaked with white. He no longer possessed even a fraction of the upright spirit or youthful vigor he had once shown in his official robes as the Newly Ranked Zhuangyuan. All that remained was the exhaustion of a man weathered by half a lifetime of hardship and a sorrow so thick it could not be dissolved.
He slowly raised his hand, his trembling fingertips brushing against the cold surface of the stone. His thumb traced the four carved characters for “Princess Zhaoyuan” as he fell into a long silence.
The rain dampened his brow. After a long while, a low, raspy sigh escaped him, mingling with the sound of the rain and overflowing with endless bitterness.
“Princess, in this life, we both ultimately failed each other. You gave me a lifetime of glory, yet also confined me to a cage for half my life. I do not hate you, but I never loved you. Year after year of entanglement, in the end, we only succeeded in destroying one another. If there is a next life, I only wish that our paths never cross, and that we never meet again.”
Each word was light, yet they were like needles tempered in ice, stabbing ruthlessly into the void.
An ethereal soul floated above the tombstone—it was the departed Princess Zhaoyuan, Tang Jinyan.
She looked at the man standing before her with his head bowed, shrouded in exhaustion. Though her soul was weightless, she felt as if she were pinned down by a thousand-pound boulder, unable to move even an inch.
She had been the only daughter of the first wife in the Great Jing Dynasty. Since childhood, she had been held in the palm of the Emperor’s hand, receiving ten thousand favors. She had lived a life of unrestrained arrogance, possessing everything a woman in the world could dream of.
A fleeting glimpse in the Golden Throne Room during her youth was all it took for her to fall in love at first sight with Chu Moqing, the Newly Ranked Zhuangyuan. He had been dressed in red robes, tall and upright, his brow brimming with scholarly elegance.
He came from a commoner background but was overflowing with talent. His fluent answers during the palace examination had drawn praise from the entire court.
Back then, she had been lightheaded with joy, thinking only of grasping that flutter of her heart firmly in her hands. Completely disregarding the ancestral rule that an Imperial Son-in-law was forbidden from entering officialdom, she had insisted on requesting an imperial decree for marriage, forcibly tying him to her side.
The world envied him, saying that for a commoner scholar to climb the golden branches and become a grand Imperial Son-in-law, enjoying endless wealth and honor, was a blessing earned over several lifetimes.
But only Chu Moqing knew that the magnificent, excessively luxurious Princess Residence was never his home, but a cage that would imprison him for the rest of his life.
After their marriage, she had given him everything she could, offering all her love to him. Yet he remained consistently indifferent and distant, a man of few words. No matter how beautiful the manor’s gardens were or how grand the delicacies, they could not hold the longing in his eyes.
She often saw him standing alone on the Star-Gazing Tower, the highest point of the Princess Residence, looking out toward the world beyond for entire days at a time.
His silhouette was lonely and desolate, his eyes filled with a melancholy she could never understand.
It wasn’t that she didn’t understand, nor was it that she felt no guilt.
She knew it was her own stubbornness that had destroyed the future he had earned through ten years of hard study. It was her obsessive love that had trapped him in this square of land, exhausting all his spirit and vitality.
But she couldn’t bear to let go.
She loved him—loved him enough to disregard everything, loved him enough to willingly bear all criticism, and loved him enough to refuse to let go even when she knew it was a mistake.
And so, the two of them consumed decades in this cage, treating each other with “icy” respect.
She held onto a one-sided love, suffering in the torment of guilt and obsession, while he wasted half his life in helplessness and suppression.
Until she was forty-eight, when, plagued by long-term illness that no medicine could cure, she finally passed away.
And now, with her soul separated from her body, hearing these words with her own ears, Tang Jinyan finally understood completely.
She had used her whole life to love, but in the end, she had failed him and failed herself.
This marriage, which began with her one-sided wish, had ultimately ended with both sides wounded, leaving behind nothing but a floor full of regrets.
The rain pierced through her ethereal soul, and a bone-chilling cold spread. Tang Jinyan watched Chu Moqing’s lonely, departing figure, her eyes filling with endless remorse and grief.
If there were a next life, she would never be so obsessive again. She would never again trap him and stifle his future.
She would never again ruin his life.
Her consciousness gradually blurred, and the curtain of rain turned into an endless darkness, swallowing her whole.
“Princess, Princess, please wake up!” A soft, anxious voice suddenly rang in her ear like a beam of light, piercing through the boundless darkness.
Tang Jinyan snapped her eyes open, gasping for breath. The chill and the feeling of suffocation from the rain still lingered in her chest.
What met her eyes were familiar light blue gauze curtains, embroidered with exquisite patterns and adorned with fine pearl tassels. The faint, elegant scent of incense lingered at the tip of her nose—it was the atmosphere of the Yongan Palace where she had lived since childhood.
Stunned, she raised a hand to touch her cheek; it was warm and delicate, without the withered texture of someone on the brink of death.
Looking down, she saw she was wearing soft, plain sleeping robes of a light and comfortable material, carrying a faint soothing scent.
This wasn’t… her Princess Residence? It was… Zhangle Palace?
“His Majesty has sent Eunuch An to urge you several times. The auspicious hour for the palace banquet is almost here. If you don’t get up and get dressed now, you’ll miss the time!”
Seeing her awake, the maid Xiaoxi hurried forward, carefully supporting her into a sitting position. “Princess, you slept so deeply last night that I didn’t dare wake you. It’s almost noon now. His Majesty has already sent three groups of people. If you’re any later, I’m afraid His Majesty will be worried.”
“Palace banquet?” Tang Jinyan’s heart tightened as she spoke blankly, “What palace banquet?”
As soon as she spoke, she paused.
Her voice was sweet and soft, with the slight huskiness of someone who had just woken up. It was not at all the raspy, low voice of someone suffering from a long illness, nor was it as weary and aged as it had been at forty-eight.
Seeing her blank expression, Xiaoxi couldn’t help but cover her mouth and giggle. “My dear Princess, you must have slept yourself into a muddle! Today is the day the Newly Ranked Zhuangyuan pins flowers for the Street Parade and attends the palace banquet to give thanks. You were talking about going to see the excitement every day for the past few days; how could you have forgotten it all the moment you woke up?”
The Newly Ranked Zhuangyuan?
Tang Jinyan’s entire body jolted as if she had been severely burned. She suddenly reached out and grabbed Xiaoxi’s wrist, her voice laced with uncontrollable urgency and panic. “Who is the Newly Ranked Zhuangyuan?!”
Her reaction was so violent that Xiaoxi was startled. She hurried to reply, “It seems to be… a gentleman named Chu. I heard he comes from a humble family but is exceptionally talented. He was personally chosen by His Majesty as the top-ranked Zhuangyuan!”
A gentleman named Chu…
Without needing to hear the rest, Tang Jinyan froze. Her fingers suddenly went slack, and the strength seemed to drain from her body in an instant as her hand fell limp at her side.
It was Chu Moqing.
Her heart suddenly constricted. The cold words before the tombstone in her past life, his stooped and lonely silhouette, and the regret of trapping him for half her life all rushed into her mind at once, making her nose sting with sorrow.
She had actually been reborn. She had returned to the year of her Ji-ji, back to the time before this palace banquet where they were destined to meet, back to when she had not yet committed her great mistake and had not yet destroyed his path to the clouds.
Destiny had truly given her a chance to start over.