The forty-sixth year of the Da Feng era. Once again, it was the Qingming Festival.
After the rain, the air on Be Mang Mountain was crisp and clear, and the gray stone tombstone had been wiped clean, free of even a speck of dust.
“Father, we’ve already paid our respects to Uncle Wen.”
Three male and female voices came from behind Feng Che. He merely stared at the tombstone.
“You’re all married now. There’s no need to accompany me. Go back to your own homes and live your lives well.”
Once only Feng Che remained, he straightened his robes to cover his injured leg and knelt before the grave.
This was the tenth year Gao Zhi had followed Feng Che as a ghost.
It was the first time she had seen him kneel before her grave.
Speaking of it, the relationship between Gao Zhi and this man could be summed up in a single sentence.
They had known each other since childhood, going from longtime classmates and sworn rivals to betrothed, then breaking off their engagement, with her marrying someone else afterward. From then on, they had gone their separate ways.
To be precise, he was now thirty-five. He was no longer the spirited young man he had been in his youth. Ten years of hardships and storms had left their mark on his handsome face, and his temples had already begun to gray. Only those deep-set eyes remained exactly as she remembered them from her youth.
Even in death, Gao Zhi had never imagined that Feng Che would come to pay respects to her for ten years.
“Gao Zhi, you’re really cruel.”
Gao Zhi froze when she saw a hint of red appear in his long, narrow eyes. Yet his gaze remained fixed on the tombstone.
Not on her, who stood behind it.
“You never came to see me in my dreams. Not even once…”
Feng Che pressed his lips into a straight line. “Did you really think I could remember you for this long?”
Gao Zhi clicked her tongue.
Even loving couples probably couldn’t compare to how diligently he visited a grave.
As expected, enemies really did remember each other for a thousand years.
“And yet I really can.”
The man’s self-mocking words were tinged with a sob, making Gao Zhi widen her eyes.
“If only I could forget you.”
Feng Che’s voice was very soft, and tears silently slid down his face. “A-Zhi, you must hate me, don’t you? Otherwise, after hearing that I was still alive, why would you have resolutely severed our engagement with me and married into the Eastern Palace?”
Gao Zhi paused.
It was true.
Until the day she died, she had hated Feng Che.
They had grown up together. Before the late Prince Huai’an died, he had asked His Majesty to arrange their marriage. In Gao Zhi’s eyes, Feng Che had already been her fiancé when he suddenly left to go to war before their wedding.
People laughed and said that Feng Che despised her because she spent all day studying and practicing martial arts like a man. He was willing to go to war, but unwilling to marry her.
She didn’t believe them.
She waited for him for five whole years.
In the fourth year of the war, they nearly lost a strategic stronghold to the enemy. Feng Che disappeared for an entire year, and the people said he had fled or become a traitor to the country.
She didn’t believe that either.
Finally, in the fifth year, Feng Che returned to the capital.
But he did not return alone. He brought three children born to him by another woman. The eldest was eight, while the youngest was only five.
She heard him admit with her own ears that the three children were his flesh and blood.
Gao Zhi was the only daughter of the General’s Residence, raised like a precious treasure. When had she ever endured such humiliation?
She severed her engagement with him.
Afterward, she accepted the Crown Prince’s proposal and married into the Eastern Palace.
How unfortunate her fate was. The Crown Prince was no good man either. After being deposed by the former emperor, he raised an army in rebellion. In the end, he was defeated and imprisoned, while she was deceived into drinking the poisoned wine sent by his beloved concubine.
When she opened her eyes again, she had already become a ghost, following Feng Che for ten years.
“You should hate me. You waited for me all those years, only to hear that I had children with another woman. You must have felt so wronged.”
Feng Che stroked the tombstone.
“But how could I ever betray you?”
Gao Zhi was startled.
What did he mean by that?
“Do you remember Wen He?”
Feng Che gazed toward another small hill. “Every year, I pay my respects to him first, then come to see you. A-Zhi, remember how Wen He often studied with us when we were classmates?”
Wen He had been their classmate. He was several years older than them and had always taken good care of them.
Hearing this, Gao Zhi had a bad feeling.
“The three children are all his flesh and blood.”
Feng Che’s fingertips brushed over the words carved into the stone: Tomb of My Dearest Friend, Gao Zhi.
Gao Zhi stared in disbelief.
If all three children belonged to Wen He, then why…
“You must be wondering why I didn’t tell you back then, right?”
Feng Che continued, “Wen He’s beloved was a Liao woman who had fled to Taiyuan Prefecture after being convicted of a crime. The Da Feng Empire forbids intermarriage with foreigners. Wen He had children with her, and the Wen family was an influential clan of noble lineage. They could never tolerate such a thing.”
Gao Zhi covered her mouth.
“I led the army into battle because my father would only agree to ask the court to grant us the marriage if I accepted this matter.
“I went to war alongside Elder Brother Wen, but he died protecting me. His wife refused to go on living without him and followed him in death.
“The three children carry Liao blood. If I didn’t claim them as my own flesh and blood, they would never survive.”
Feng Che opened the wine flask hanging from his waist and took several sips.
“Besides, Zhu Wen shattered my leg back then. I was a cripple. Before I returned to the capital, I heard that you had fallen for the Crown Prince.
“I was a cripple burdened with accusations. How could I possibly deserve you?”
Gao Zhi clearly remembered that she was dead. So why was there still such a piercing pain in her chest?
After her death, she had personally watched Feng Che become like a completely different person. He tortured the Crown Prince, who favored his beloved concubine, to death, and turned the concubine who had poisoned her into a living human mutilated beyond recognition.
Everyone who had ever bullied her was dealt with thoroughly by him.
Her corpse had been thrown into a mass grave. After a heavy rain, it had become swollen and rotten.
Even Gao Zhi herself had been unable to bear looking at it for long.
Yet Feng Che showed no disgust whatsoever. He had gone to great lengths to dress her, treating her as though she were a priceless treasure. He carefully braided her hair in the style she had loved most when she was alive, applied her makeup, dressed her, and finally buried her.
Even the members of the Gao family who had been implicated because of the Crown Prince had their funerals personally arranged by him, including the selection of their burial grounds.
At first, Gao Zhi couldn’t help wondering if Feng Che had truly had feelings for her.
But once those trivial matters were taken care of, Feng Che returned to normal. He devoted himself to raising the children and managing state affairs, living an ordinary, uneventful life. He hadn’t even shed a single tear for her.
For ten years, aside from his regular visits to her grave, there had been no trace of her in his life.
She had thought that perhaps Wen He’s grave was nearby, so Feng Che had simply come along to mock his former fiancée—the woman who had been blind enough to choose the wrong husband.
It was only now…
that she finally awakened from her long dream.
“A-Zhi.”
Feng Che drained the wine from the flask and touched the jade pendant hanging from a black cord around his neck.
“Tell me, if we had married back then, would our children be about the same age as them by now?”
Gao Zhi froze.
Blood began to seep from the corner of the man’s mouth.
Realizing something was wrong, she hurriedly called his name, but she could not stop the light in his eyes from gradually fading.
“So the poison you drank back then was really that potent.”
“A-Zhi, did it hurt…?”
“I’m sorry for making you wait ten years.”
“Even if you hate me, so be it. That way, you’ll remember me…”
“A-Zhi, I’m coming to keep you company now.”
The last trace of longing in Feng Che’s eyes disappeared. Just as Gao Zhi reached out and touched his cold fingertips, the jade pendant suddenly drew her in, swallowing her consciousness whole.
“Take off your pants.”
A cold, rough palm forced Gao Zhi’s thigh apart.
“She is, after all, the only daughter of the Grand General of State. How did she end up being humiliated like this?”
“After all, there are rumors that Miss Gao waited five years for Prince Huai’an because they had already been secretly involved. That’s why she didn’t dare break off the engagement easily, afraid people would discover she was no longer chaste.”
Gao Zhi suddenly opened her eyes and grabbed the hand that was on her lower body.
“Who?”
When the sharp, mean old face of Nanny Zhu appeared before her, Gao Zhi was completely stunned.
Hadn’t Feng Che skinned this insolent servant alive and fed her to the dogs?
How was she still alive?
“Ahem… Miss Gao.”
Nanny Zhu straightened her back. “This servant serves the Empress. I have come here on Her Majesty’s orders to ensure the chastity of the future mistress of the Eastern Palace.
“Since you are willing to marry into the Eastern Palace, surely you wouldn’t want the Crown Prince caught between you and the Empress?”
The Empress ensuring her chastity, marrying into the Eastern Palace…
Had she… been reborn?
“Prince Huai’an has returned!”
“Really?”
“It’s true! Zhu Wen stopped him at the city gates, saying he was going to avenge Miss Gao and cripple Prince Huai’an.”
Alarm bells immediately rang in Gao Zhi’s mind.
That’s right.
Back then, when she heard that Feng Che had fathered children with another woman, she had spitefully agreed to marry the Crown Prince. She had also come to the Eastern Palace at the Crown Prince’s invitation, never expecting the Empress to send people to inspect her chastity.
It was on this very day that Feng Che returned to the capital and was crippled by Zhu Wen at the city gates. From then on, he could only sit in a wheelchair and was never again able to ride a horse and wield a whip as freely as he had in his youth.
Even after her maternal grandfather treated him, he could only walk with a limp.
The culprit behind all this, Zhu Wen, was the Crown Prince’s cousin. On the surface, he claimed to be avenging her, but in reality, he was settling a personal grudge from the time at the academy when Feng Che had nearly blinded him.
Gao Zhi refused to repeat the same fate. She straightened her clothes and rushed out.
Nanny Zhu was kicked to the ground by Gao Zhi. She pounded the floor angrily.
“They say daughters of military families shouldn’t be married. She really is a shrew!”
Gao Zhi rushed out of the Eastern Palace. Her maid Chan Yi was holding the horse.
“Miss, why are you out already? It hasn’t even been the time it takes to finish two cups of tea. Didn’t you see the Crown Prince?”
Two days earlier, rumors had spread that Prince Huai’an was returning to the capital with three children. Their young mistress had been furious. Just then, the Crown Prince had come to propose marriage, saying all sorts of sweet things to her. In a fit of anger, the young mistress had agreed to marry him.
Still, Chan Yi had always felt that the graceful little prince she remembered was not that kind of person.
“To the city gates.”
Gao Zhi was born into a general’s household and had outstanding martial arts skills. Chan Yi and Bai He, the two maids accompanying her, were both martial maids and quickly caught up.
Beneath the towering city walls, a somewhat dilapidated old carriage was surrounded by a short, plump young man dressed in fine clothes and more than twenty servants.
“How dare a traitor return to the capital?”
“If not for my father going into battle to provide reinforcements, Da Feng would have been defeated in the war against the Liao!”
The young man cracked his leather whip against the ground, frightening the three children inside the carriage into trembling.
“Father, that big fat pig outside is even fatter than Ting’er.”
Wen Ting’s little round face trembled with fear.
“Ting’er can’t take a beating.”
Wen Yu looked at her father, who was leaning against the wooden bed. His handsome young face had grown somewhat pale after days of fleeing assassins and fighting for his life. His dim eyes regained a little of their light when he heard Wen Ting.
“Ting’er, don’t be afraid.”
It was Wen Yu who spoke. She forced herself to remain calm and hugged her younger brother.
“Father is here. They won’t dare.”
“Yes.”
The eldest, Wen Yan, was only eight years old. He gathered his younger siblings into his arms.
“With Father and Big Brother here, we’ll protect you.”
“Master.”
The hidden guard Cang Zhu lifted the carriage curtain and looked at Feng Che.
“That dead fat pig is blocking the carriage, saying he’s here to avenge our Princess Consort.”
“Why does he have to avenge Mother?”
Wen Ting had known for a long time that his father had a fiancée he had never married. She had been filled with anticipation at the thought of meeting the mother she had never seen before. Hearing Uncle Cang Zhu’s words, she drooped her little face.
“When can I meet Mother?”
“Wen Ting, don’t say things like that.”
Wen Yu covered Wen Ting’s mouth.
“Father hasn’t married Miss Gao yet. Besides, we heard that Miss Gao likes the Crown Prince…”
“Wen Yu.”
Feng Che’s voice was as calm as an ancient, undisturbed well.
Wen Yu wisely fell silent.
“Cang Zhu, protect the young master and young lady.”
Feng Che forced himself to stand, but Cang Zhu stopped him.
“Your bones have only just begun to heal. Have you forgotten what the physician said? If you injure yourself again, your leg will be ruined.”
Wen Yan supported Feng Che.
“Father, why won’t you let Uncle Cang Zhu deal with them?”
Uncle Cang Zhu was highly skilled in martial arts. He could subdue these people with nothing more than a movement of his fingers.
“Master, why don’t I…”
Before Cang Zhu could finish, Feng Che swept him a cool glance.
“Don’t cause her trouble.”
“…Yes.”
Cang Zhu had known since their academy days that the Princess Consort was his master’s most precious person.
She could not be touched, could not be provoked, and certainly could not be given any trouble.
“Feng Che—”
“Get your ass out here!”
Zhu Wen planted his hands on his thick waist. When the carriage curtain was lifted and the handsome young man slowly stepped out, Zhu Wen immediately noticed something.
The Feng Che standing before him was nothing like the murderous god from his memories who had once beaten him until he cried for his parents.
“Father!”
The moment Wen Yu lifted the carriage curtain, Cang Zhu immediately pulled her back inside.
Zhu Wen saw it clearly.
“You good-for-nothing bastard! Miss Gao waited five years for you, and you really did father three bastards with another woman!”
His shout attracted a crowd of onlookers. Upon hearing that the traitorous Prince Huai’an had returned with three illegitimate children, the people began discussing it among themselves.
“He’s really not human.”
“Over these past five years, countless talented young men sought Miss Gao’s hand in marriage. She remained faithful to him, yet Prince Huai’an had his heart elsewhere.”
“Disgusting.”
Hearing the surrounding people’s comments, Zhu Wen straightened his back even more and swung his whip at the people on the carriage.
“Crack!”
The whip snapped through the air, yet the scene of flesh being torn open never appeared.
Feng Che deftly stepped aside, and the long whip narrowly missed his face.
Compared with Zhu Wen’s clumsy figure as he exerted all his strength, Feng Che looked far more at ease.
“Get lost.”
Feng Che’s thin lips moved, uttering only one icy word, yet it was enough to make everyone shudder.
Memories of what had happened years ago flashed through Zhu Wen’s mind. He swallowed, then angrily shouted,
“How dare you still act so arrogantly?
“If you don’t kneel and kowtow today, I’ll drag those brats of yours out and beat them to death.”
Several servants surrounded the carriage.
Feng Che forced himself to lean his lower back against the carriage. When he heard his daughter’s whimpering from inside, his brows drew tightly together.
Zhu Wen noticed how seriously injured he was and approached with a smug smile.
“But who exactly did you have these brats with? Don’t tell me you colluded with the enemy and secretly fathered them with Liao women?”
The moment he said this, the crowd became even more agitated.
“Liao people must never be allowed into the city!”
“Kill them!”
Zhu Wen lashed out with his whip again.
But this time, he had learned his lesson. He aimed the whip at the carriage instead.
He intended to split the carriage apart.
To expose those lowly little brats for everyone to see.
“Swish—”
A sharp crimson-gold sword sliced through the whip.
The leather whip was instantly cut in two and fell to the ground with a smack.
Everyone’s eyes followed the long sword embedded in the city wall. Someone recognized it first.
“That’s Miss Gao’s Sun-Soul Sword.”
“Miss Gao is here?!”
Upon hearing that name, Feng Che’s fingertips trembled involuntarily. His gaze slowly fell upon the woman riding toward them.
Five years.
Five years since he had last seen her…
The figure that had lingered in his mind for so long, refusing to fade.
And now, she had truly appeared before his eyes.