"What?" For a moment, Shao Zhen wore the bewildered expression of a small child, as if she had no idea what time it was—perhaps she had fallen into another nightmare.
If she just slept and woke up, she would find that everything was false, not to be believed.
But could she feel such heart-wrenching pain even in a dream? Shao Zhen did not know.
After enduring the ringing in her ears, she stammered tremulously: "What did you say?"
Seeing her struck dumb with terror, Xiaowen's heart ached, and her voice unconsciously took on a sobbing tone: "Milady, don't panic just yet—perhaps there's still a chance things might turn around…"
She didn't even believe those words herself, let alone expect to fool Shao Zhen with them.
Tao Wenkan was in trouble.
His life or death was now unknown.
When Shao Zhen realized the meaning of those words, her heart felt as if it had been seized by a great hand, spreading unbearable pain through her chest.
The fierce agony quickly coursed through her organs, making her raise a hand to clutch tightly at the fabric over her breast, hunching her shoulders and bending her waist to withstand the sharp sting—yet finding no relief at all.
"Where did you hear this news?" She lifted her reddened eyes, the crimson threads at their corners nearly spreading into her pitch-black pupils.
Xiaowen knew she surely couldn't accept it all at once, and wanted to help her sit down and explain slowly, but Shao Zhen shook off her hand, stubbornly fixing her gaze on Xiaowen's face, demanding a definitive answer.
She turned her face away, unable to bear looking at Shao Zhen any longer: "The courier brought word of victory from Lucheng this morning, so I hurried to the Tao residence to inquire about the master. Who would have thought—who would have thought—"
Though the battle was won and Lucheng had been reclaimed from the refugees and restored to peace, Tao Wenkan, as the commanding general, had gone missing.
"They say the master used himself as bait to lure the enemy deep, which was how the enemy forces were successfully split and defeated… The army sent men to search the foot of the mountain for five full days, and only found half of the master's blood-stained armor…"
Shao Zhen could no longer take in the rest.
The sequence of events was so clear—how could the news of Tao Wenkan's death be false? With such a sheer cliff, how could anyone survive a fall? Even if he hadn't died immediately, dragging his wounds for five days without food or water—how could he possibly live?
The taut string in Shao Zhen's heart snapped abruptly. Her body swayed, and before she closed her eyes and fainted, she thought of Tao Wenkan's gentle, warm face, and a thick, rusty taste of blood surged up her throat.
"Milady!" Xiaowen tried to press her philtrum, but couldn't wake her.
…
The blow was truly too great, and combined with the fact that Shao Zhen hadn't rested properly for days, the illness struck with ferocity, sending her into a high fever.
The physician who came to examine her said her condition was perilous—like a small boat adrift on raging waves, on the verge of capsizing and being dragged into a bottomless ocean.
Xiaowen's heart trembled at his words. She pressed a silver ingot into his hand and nearly fell to her knees begging him to save her.
The physician deliberated and prescribed a potent remedy, instructing Xiaowen to administer a dose every three hours. As for the rest, it would depend on Shao Zhen's will to survive.
After seeing the physician off, Xiaowen returned to the main hall.
The young woman on the couch had a face burning with fever, cold sweat beading across her forehead in layers. Even in illness she found no peace, muttering deliriously through cracked lips.
Xiaowen leaned in to listen, hearing Shao Zhen call out "my lord" or "mother" over and over, then change to mumbling "so cold" and "so hot." Her hand, wiping away the sweat, paused, and tears began to fall from her own eyes.
Why was her poor mistress so ill-fated, never able to find happiness or fulfillment?
Shao Zhen, lost in delirium, seemed to have returned to her childhood, resisting the bitter taste of medicine. Xiaowen had to pry open her teeth with a spoon, managing to force some down—though more came out than went in.
The pale brown medicinal juice stained the front of her robes.
Perhaps because there was still something she clung to in her heart, when night fell and Xiaowen returned carrying a teapot filled with hot water, she was both startled and overjoyed to find Shao Zhen staring with dull, lifeless eyes fixed straight at the ceiling beams, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
"Milady…" Xiaowen, frightened by her utterly despairing appearance, hastily dropped the teapot and rushed over.
Shao Zhen turned her head at the sound, and before she could even part her lips to speak, two streams of hot tears burst from her swollen, aching eyes.
Xiaowen reached out and embraced her, letting her bury her face in the hollow of her shoulder, sobbing until the fabric was soaked through.
The young woman seemed to be using this moment to release all the grievances and injustices she had suffered over the years.
What sin had she committed, what wrong had she done, for heaven to be so merciless as to take away the ones she loved, one after another? Was she destined never to have peace and stability in this life?
"If I had known," Shao Zhen sobbed, breathless between gasps, "if I had known that this parting would mean separation between the living and the dead… I would never have—never have let him go to Lucheng…"
It was all her fault, for being useless, for failing to persuade him to stay.
Wenkan, Wenkan. His father had originally hoped he wouldn't follow the same path as a military officer, drenched in blood and battle. Who could have imagined that after his parents' deaths, the young man who had just come of age would still choose to study martial arts—and today, he would die on the battlefield.
"Milady, this isn't your fault. How could it possibly be your fault?" Xiaowen used her fingers as a comb, gently gathering her long hair, thinking that if she cried, perhaps she would feel a little better afterward.
The fever in her forehead had not yet fully subsided, and within moments, Shao Zhen cried herself weak, leaning against the bed frame just to remain seated.
Seeing that her emotions had calmed somewhat, Xiaowen then told her that at the Tao residence, Madam Xu had also collapsed from grief upon hearing the tragic news.
The household's intention was to wait a while longer—perhaps Tao Wenkan, being a fortunate man, might not have lost his life after all.
As Xiaowen spoke, she shifted the topic, urging her to eat some congee to fill her stomach.
Shao Zhen didn't respond, her swollen, reddened eyes still shedding tears, unmoved by the hopeful scenario in her words.
She couldn't eat, and even less could she sleep. The moment she closed her eyes, she would think of every little moment with Tao Wenkan. The sweeter and warmer those times had been, the more they now brought her pain and sorrow.
She picked up the jewelry he had given her one by one, holding them against her hair to try them on, but the bronze mirror only reflected her solitary figure—the gentle husband who would lean over to carefully paint her brows and apply her makeup was nowhere to be seen.
It was as if heaven itself sensed the grief in her heart, mourning Tao Wenkan's untimely death.
The torrential rain seemed endless, the sky perpetually dim and murky, making it impossible to tell day from night.
Three days of waiting felt like three years. At last, the entire Tao household had no choice but to accept the news of Tao Wenkan's death and began preparing his coffin and funeral arrangements.
Grief was inevitable, but after all, he had died for his country. When the Emperor heard the news, he bestowed upon the Tao family a jade ruyi and a thousand in gold, and posthumously promoted him a rank. The Tao family could not show too much sorrow.
Upon hearing the news, Shao Zhen hastily got out of bed and rushed to the Tao residence, heading straight for the mourning hall.
The rain was still falling. Xiaowen held an umbrella but couldn't catch up with her no matter what, watching helplessly as half of her shoulder got soaked.
Seeing the white funeral banners hanging all around the residence, Shao Zhen's heart twisted in pain again. Had Xiaowen not supported her, she would have nearly collapsed to her knees.
Inside the dim mourning hall, the funeral lamps cast flickering shadows. Madam Xu had removed her usual hairpins, wearing only a black headband across her forehead, dressed in coarse mourning garments, with a hempen sash tied with knots around her waist.
A fire burned in the bronze basin, and the woman mechanically fed sheet after sheet of spirit money into it. The leaping flames eagerly licked at the paper, reducing it to black ash.
It seemed as though that ever-smiling young man had also turned into a wisp of smoke, drifting freely up to the heavens.
Madam Xu was likely too immersed in her grief to even notice that she and Xiaowen had entered.
Shao Zhen dragged her legs, which felt as heavy as if filled with sand, moving to the coffin whose lid had not yet been sealed.
The coffin was completely empty, save for a battered suit of armor. The bloodstains on the armor plates had been wiped clean, revealing their original cold, dark luster. Next to the armor lay a middle garment reduced to only its sleeves—unmistakably familiar. It was the one she had sewn for him with her own hands before he left for Lu City.
She had thought she had no more tears left, but seeing his belongings with her own eyes, tears fell uncontrollably, blurring her vision until she could see nothing clearly.
Just then, Madam Xu looked up and caught sight of her standing there in a daze. A sharp, bitter resentment flashed through her murky eyes.
"Fine then—how do you still have the face to show up here!"
Having lost her son, she had completely cast aside her usual dignified demeanor. She pointed at her and cursed loudly: "It's all your fault, you jinx! You brought death upon our Wenkan. Ever since you entered this household, he's never had a smooth day! Our poor Wenkan—only twenty-two years old, and you've made me, a white-haired mother, bury her black-haired child…"
Shao Zhen wanted to say that wasn't true—that no one wished for Tao Wenkan to come to harm more than she did. But each accusation from Madam Xu struck straight at her spine, and even she began to wonder whether it was her insistence on this marriage that had step by step led to today's tragedy.
She was the one who brought misfortune upon him. She was the one who destroyed him. She was the one who killed her Tao Lang!
At that thought, she had no defense to offer, her pale lips trembling.
"Shao Zhen, are you finally satisfied now? Back then, I urged him to take a concubine, but you insisted on interfering. Now he's died without an heir, leaving this world all alone—what do you have to repay our Tao family?"
Seizing on her silence, Madam Xu grew more convinced of her own righteousness and strode aggressively toward Shao Zhen, who stood half a head taller than her. "Have you ever been worthy of the love he gave you?"
"Give me back my son's life!"
The woman's shrill voice nearly pierced her eardrums. Shao Zhen was forced to step backward, wanting to flee, but her feet seemed nailed to the ground, unable to lift no matter what.
Xiaowen's cries and all other sounds grew alternately distant and near. In her hollow, sorrowful pupils, a pair of hands reached toward her chest like vengeful ghosts demanding her life—no, it was a heavy shove.
Shao Zhen calmly accepted the push from Madam Xu.
She thought, she had caused Tao Wenkan's death, so Madam Xu's retaliation was only to be expected.
If the other woman could push her down and dash her against something, killing her, that would be even better—then she could go to the Yellow Springs below and see her Tao lang, and say "I'm sorry" to him.
But she did not fall. Instead, she landed in another person's solid, warm embrace.
In a daze, time flowed backward to the back mountain of Baoji Temple, where that scent of pine resin once again firmly caught her.
The moment his hand touched her arm, Yun Cheng thought to himself, it had only been a few days since he last saw her, yet she had grown alarmingly thin—her spare flesh seemed to cling directly to her jutting bones.
He cast his gaze downward. The young woman's cheeks bore traces of undried tears, her eyelids were swollen a peach-blossom red from crying, and her lower lip was marked with a row of shallow teeth imprints. Facing the aggressive Madam Xu, she showed no reaction at all, like a white camellia flower that would wither if no one tended to it.
Yun Cheng had not originally planned to come today. With the Wang family's collapse behind him and the Third Prince's stunning comeback in Lucheng ahead, the court situation was shifting by the moment—he had a mountain of matters to settle and clean up, and finding the time was genuinely difficult.
But he remembered that he was the one who had told Shao Zhen that Tao Wenkan was safe and sound in Lucheng. Now that something had happened to Tao Wenkan, he owed her an apology.
Moreover, Tao Wenkan counted as his friend; by both sentiment and reason, he ought to make the trip.
But he had not expected to arrive at such a coincidence, happening to witness Madam Xu making things difficult for her.
Tao Wenkan had only just passed, and Madam Xu was already eagerly heaping all the blame onto her head. Judging by this, there was no way the Tao family would keep her fed and clothed out of the goodness of their hearts.
Tao Wenkan must have considered all this as well, which was why he had brought her to meet him.
Tao Wenkan had indeed treated her with deep affection, but Yun Cheng begged to differ with his methods.
If it were him, knowing that he might not always be able to stay by her side, he would thoroughly eliminate every threat around her, purchase property for her, and set aside enough silver so that she could live on her own—rather than entrusting her to a friend of unknown character.
After all, so-called friends might not be what they appear to be in private.
The hypocrites of this world are as numerous as hairs on an ox.
Seeing that it was him, Shao Zhen snapped back to her senses in an instant. Before she could step away, Yun Cheng had already withdrawn the hand supporting her.
The pain in her heart was so full it threatened to spill over, so Shao Zhen no longer cared that he was seeing her in such a wretched, helpless state.
Madam Xu also hastily reined in the ferocity on her face and asked, "Young Master Yun, why have you come?"
She glanced at the maidservants standing guard outside the door, silently scolding them for not alerting her when someone arrived, letting an outsider witness the family's shame for nothing.
"I've come to see Brother Tao off," Yun Cheng said, his voice neither loud nor low, like the tinkling of jade pendants, yet carrying a strange power that calmed the heart. "I imagine Wenkan would not wish to see his household in discord, his kin at each other's throats."
Being subtly reminded by a junior that she had acted improperly was rather hard for Madam Xu to swallow, but she murmured in agreement. She knew well that Yun Cheng spoke the truth—Tao Wenkan had always been filial and kind-hearted, gentle with all.
No matter what, she should not be shouting and carrying on before his spirit tablet, disturbing his peace.
Thinking of the child she had raised from a young boy into a fine, accomplished young man, the woman's eyes reddened, and she turned away to dab at her tears with a handkerchief.
"The departed are gone and cannot be brought back. Brother Tao, looking down from above, surely would not wish to see his lady mother and his wife grieving themselves to such a state over him. I ask you both to restrain your sorrow and accept what has passed."
This speech was, in truth, meant for Shao Zhen alone.
He did not actually want to mention Tao Wenkan, but he knew well that only that name could restore a measure of vitality to the irrational Shao Zhen.
Sure enough, at these words, mist welled up in the young woman's dull pupils.
She looked at him with gratitude, yet her eyes held more than gratitude alone—like a drowning person grasping at the only straw, pitiful to the point of death.
That pitiful gaze was far too familiar; it pried open the memories he had sealed away in the depths of his being.