"F-five… years?" Xiao Yuhuang's voice was so light it was almost inaudible. She slowly turned around to look at me on the bed, her gaze hollow, as if it had lost all focus. Then, within that emptiness, something terrifying—world-destroying madness—rapidly flooded in.
"No—!!! Impossible!!!" She suddenly erupted into a shriek so shrill it no longer sounded human, like a wounded, dying beast. In a single stride she reached the old Imperial Physician, seized him by the collar, and wrenched him bodily off the ground! Her eyes were blood-red, veins bursting with horrifying crimson threads, her face twisted and feral. "Quack! You quack doctor! Nonsense! You dare curse him! I'll kill you! I'll exterminate your nine clans!!!"
"Your Majesty, calm your anger! Spare my life, Your Majesty!" The old physician was terrified out of his wits, tears and snot streaming down his face. "This old servant… every word is the truth, I would never dare deceive the throne! Your Majesty! Even if you kill this old servant, Young Master's illness… Young Master's illness—"
"Silence!!!" Xiao Yuhuang roared, cutting him off, and flung him violently to the ground. The old physician let out a muffled groan, collapsing limply, shaking uncontrollably.
She stood there, chest heaving violently, her breathing rasping like bellows, her entire being radiating a destructive, deranged aura. She suddenly turned her head and fixed her gaze on me. That look was wild, despairing, unwilling, and filled with boundless terror, as if I were sand slipping irretrievably through her fingers.
"No… Yu Zhi, no…" she muttered, shaking her head as she staggered toward me step by step. She reached out, as if to touch me, but at the last instant recoiled as though burned. "I won't let anything happen to you… I won't allow it… I won't allow anything to happen to you!"
She whirled around abruptly, toward the old physician on the ground—and as if toward the void itself—and issued a hoarse command, every word soaked in blood:
"Transmit my decree! Let everyone in the Imperial Medical Bureau hear it! Spare no cost! Use the best medicines! The rarest ingredients! What flies in the sky, runs on the land, swims in the sea—go find them! Dig them up! Seize them! As long as it can prolong his life, I will empty the national treasury without hesitation!"
"And also! Search the entire world for me! Reclusive masters, wandering miracle doctors, foreign shamans—anyone with even the slightest possibility, bring them all to me! Bind them if you must! Cure him, and I will grant boundless wealth and honor! Fail… and I will have them all buried with him!!"
Mad edicts burst from her mouth one after another—disordered, yet carrying an unquestionable, annihilating resolve. She had completely lost the calm and reason of an emperor, leaving only the most primal, most obsessive possession and fear.
The old physician kowtowed repeatedly as he accepted the order, scrambling and crawling as he fled, as if pursued by evil spirits.
Once again, only she and I remained in the hall.
She stood by the bed with her head lowered, her shoulders shaking violently—like silent sobbing, or like suppressing something even more terrifying, about to erupt. After a long while, she slowly raised her head. Tears had not yet dried on her face, but in her eyes had settled a chilling, all-or-nothing resolve.
She walked to my bedside and slowly sat down. This time, I had neither the strength nor the will to avoid her. She reached out and, extremely lightly, extremely carefully, took my icy hand, as if holding something fragile and fleeting, a piece of glass about to vanish.
Her hand was trembling too.
"Yu Zhi…" Her voice was terribly hoarse, heavy with a nasal tone, yet astonishingly clear. Every word seemed dug, blood-soaked, from her chest. "Don't be afraid."
I stared at the intricate yet empty embroidery atop the canopy. My throat moved, and my voice was as light as a wisp of smoke about to disperse. "Your Majesty, I'm not afraid."
After a pause, I gathered a trace of strength and turned my gaze to her eyes, still red, churning with terrifying emotion.
"Only five years… that's fine." I tugged at the corner of my mouth, tasting the lingering bitterness of medicine. "These five years… I don't want to be trapped within these four palace walls anymore. Your Majesty, I beg you… grant me freedom. Let me go out, see the sky beyond, and walk… this final stretch of the road."
"Freedom?" She repeated the word as if she had heard the most absurd, most cruel curse in the world. The madness and violence she had just barely suppressed shattered instantly under my calm request, twisting across her face into near-feral agony and disbelief.
"Yu Zhi—" Her voice shot upward, sharp enough to pierce the stagnant air. She leaned forward, both hands gripping the edge of the bed, knuckles bulging, staring at me with shattered, crazed obsession in her eyes. "Even these five years… you won't… you refuse to stay by my side?!"
"I'll take you out of the palace, take you south. The south is warm—good for your recovery. I've heard there are true miracle doctors there, medicines that can bring the dead back to life. I'll go with you. We'll go together."
Her words came faster and faster, as if speaking with enough conviction could turn that faint hope into reality.
"I won't let anything happen to you. Never."
As she spoke, she pressed my hand to her ice-cold cheek. Scalding tears slid down, soaking the back of my hand.
"When you're a bit better, we'll leave. We'll leave here, leave the capital. I'll arrange the affairs of state, and we'll go find someone who can cure you."
"You'll get better. You will."
She sounded as though she were making a promise to me—yet more like casting a spell upon herself.
I listened quietly, watching this utterly unhinged, fragile, and mad emperor before me. There was not the slightest stir of emotion in my heart—only a desolate, bleak sorrow.
The prophecy of five years was like an invisible shackle, binding me and her together even more cruelly.
So be it.
At worst, it is merely five more years of lingering on.
This body, this soul, has long been a dead pool in an autumn abyss, incapable of stirring even the smallest ripple. Five years… long or short, it makes little difference to me.
Only, perhaps… in the time that remains, I might still do something.
The red that had yet to fade from her eyes, the blood-soaked cruelty in every word of her decrees, the Su family, the Zhao family… those surnames and wronged souls erased without a sound… this towering palace, this vast realm—beneath every inch of its glory, how many white bones and silent laments are piled?
I cannot change her imperial calculus, nor stop the power of life and death in her hands.
But perhaps… perhaps I can be like a single, insignificant drop of clear water, falling into that molten lava of slaughter and violence. Unable to extinguish it—only hoping to bring the faintest trace of coolness. Enough that when she raises the butcher's blade, a moment of hesitation might flicker through her heart; enough that when she weighs gains and losses, she might remember a fraction of the sins that should never be stained upon her hands.
Not for her.
But also… for my own remaining life—forced into entanglement with her fate, watching blood spread everywhere yet powerless to stop it—to seek one final, fragile measure of inner peace.
If this ruined body can be used as a spark to dispel a little violence, to lessen a little guilt…
Then this absurd transmigration of mine—this soul from another world—enduring these five years… will not have been for nothing.