Legend of Fu Yao

“What witch?” someone beside her suddenly interrupted.

“It’s not like you didn’t…” Meng Fuyao suddenly stopped speaking and froze, then turned around hurriedly. Her eyes widened as she went, “Zong, Zong, Zong, Zong…”

“Have you gotten dementia after just a few months of not meeting? Or do you not know how to call people by their names anymore?” A certain person’s tongue was as vicious as ever, not caring about how others thought. Habitually, he took her wrist and felt for her pulse.

Meng Fuyao poked her tongue out in surprise and delight, ignoring even his poisonous tongue and said, “Ahh, Zong Yue, why are you here…”

“I heard from the messenger at the Virtuous Guild that someone was looking for a reputable doctor,” Zong Yue said. He was still the same white-robed Zong Yue with snow-like skin; even being emperor for a while did not seem to have any influence on him. He was still immaculate and clean, like snow in a crowd, and people still walked around him as he went by.

He felt Meng Fuyao’s pulse carefully, then relaxed his tightly-knit eyebrows and looked at Zhangsun Wuji disapprovingly. “Did you forget who the best doctor under the heavens is already?”

“Even if I search the entire Five Regions, I wouldn’t dare to find you,” Meng Fuyao waved her hand. “Have you ever heard of calling an Emperor of a faraway country to travel thousands of miles to treat a eunuch’s illness?”

“I didn’t come here for him,” Zong Yue replied simply. Suddenly, he looked around and asked, “Who were you talking to earlier?”

“I don’t know either, she was very mysterious.” Meng Fuyao glanced at him. “You know her?”

Zong Yue pondered for a moment, then replied, “No, just that I find her silhouette rather familiar. Perhaps I was mistaken.” Then, he turned to Zhangsun Wuji and said, “The Crown Prince’s condition looks rather good, much better than Fuyao.”

Meng Fuyao rolled her eyes. Could this person not be so prickly all the time?

“I’ve been lucky.” Zhangsun Wuji smiled slightly. “Your Majesty’s condition looks even better, much better than the two of us combined.”

Every time these two started talking, Meng Fuyao would feel a headache coming. Hence, she quickly moved away until she reached the stables. “Quack Doctor Emperor, you’re not who you were in the past anymore, quickly treat the patient and leave,” she called out.

“I don’t have that much time to argue with you either.” Zong Yue took Old Lu’s wrist, and after a moment, his eyebrows scrounged together, and he said, “His time is up.”

Then he explained, “I can wake him up, but I have to tell you first, once he wakes up, he won’t be able to remain alive.”

Meng Fuyao fell silent. She had always felt that this person did not have good intentions, but before the truth was out, who was she to give him the death sentence?

Zong Yue looked at her, then at Old Lu, then suddenly turned to Zhangsun Wuji and exchanged glances.

It seemed as if quite a bit of information had been exchanged with that single glance, and after a while, Zong Yue said, “It’s getting late, you should sleep.”

“Mn,” Meng Fuyao mumbled. After ordering Tie Cheng to arrange the accommodations for Zong Yue, she headed back to her room, undressed herself, and lay down.

When she was removing her robes, she noticed the paper that the woman had given her. Chuckling, she casually threw it onto the table.

After she had gone to bed, Zong Yue had the old eunuch transferred to the inner room. Pulling out the golden needles from his silk pouch, he began treatment.

And in that bedroom, Meng Fuyao quickly fell asleep.

While she was sleeping, Lord Yuan Bao had just finished a number two outside and returned, crawling onto the table and getting ready to sleep when suddenly, it saw the piece of paper. After getting nothing out of staring at it for a while, it threw it aside casually.

The piece of paper drifted through the air and landed on the incense burner beside the bed, catching fire. The piece of paper began to burn, curling at the edges and shrinking until at last, it became nothing but white ash.

A green smoke wafted through the air, mixing with the white smoke from the incense burner.

Meng Fuyao suddenly flipped over.

In the other room, beads of perspiration dripped from Zong Yue’s forehead as he swiftly inserted golden needles into the back of the old eunuch’s head.

After that, he retracted his hand.

He sat there, silently waiting.

The old eunuch suddenly started trembling like a leaf caught in the wind and let out a low howl.

After his outcry, he suddenly sat up, jumping out of bed with the finesse that a dying patient did not have, and let out another muffled cry, “Don’t kill—”

At that exact moment, a sharp cry came from Meng Fuyao’s room as well.

The cry was shrill and ear-piercing, and even the voice had changed. It didn’t sound like anything that the fearless, havoc-creating Meng Fuyao would ever let out.

Zong Yue’s face instantly changed, no longer caring about the awakened old eunuch and flying out of his room in a flash of white, while a purple flash appeared in the dark outside as well.

Within the dark room.

Meng Fuyao sprang out of bed and collapsed onto the ground, knocking over the table and several chairs as she grasped her heart in shock!

She… she had seen everything!

Wind from an unknown world blew by, carrying the smell of smoke and night. The wind was not clear, carrying the faint smell of fire as it drifted towards her, drifting into a pair of pale, white hands.

Little hands…

She looked down at her own hands. Since when had her hands become so small and frail? They were nothing but skin and bones, and her nails were filled with wood shavings.

Wood shavings…

Where had the wood shavings come from? She remembered her own hands, long and slender, her fingernails clean, when had she have wood shavings?

Wood shavings fell from above, falling on her head. She looked up to see darkness above her, along with the smell of rotting wood.

She was surrounded by boards, an arm wide and two arms tall. She reached out to measure, but in actual fact, she didn’t need to; she had already memorized the size of the space by heart, familiar to the point where she could tell the exact location where there was a little scratch in wood behind her, as well as all the little bumps and splinters along the wood, worn smooth like a red egg after years of touching.

Red egg… Hazily, she felt that she had never seen such a thing before.

Why had she never seen it before?

Meng Fuyao looked down at her small arms and legs, then at the cloth rope binding her legs, then at the eternal darkness enveloping herself. And not far from the darkness, a gentle bell was chiming, crisp, demure voices were speaking, and the light from a palace lantern, light purple in color. Every day, the lanterns would burn for three periods, from 5pm to 11pm, and then be extinguished. After that, she would once again be plunged into darkness, and she would eventually drift off to sleep.

There was no bed nor pillow as she hugged several scraps of silk in winter. In the summer, she didn’t use a single scrap, sleeping bare in the heat and darkness, her sweat wetting the wood. After a long time, the wood turned black, like the color of soy sauce.

Mosquitoes would also fly in and out of the small, stifling space, biting her silently as she flipped around restlessly, scratching herself to sleep only to be woken up by the head again after two or three periods and start hyperventilating in pain, her whole body erupting in red spots, part of which were sores, the other self-scratched.

She grew bedsores in many areas of her body—a person with no illness, developing bedsores.

In the summer, she yearned for winter, as though the coolness of winter was a godsend, yet when winter came, the harsh chill felt even more difficult than the heat of summer as wind entered in all directions, cutting through her skin like little knives and penetrating deep into her bones as she shivered uncontrollably. Every bone in her felt frozen as she bundled herself within every single scrap of old silk she had, yet it was unable to keep the cold out. It was so cold… so cold… It made her worry about developing arthritis at such a young age.

Yet, she wasn’t allowed to speak, not allowed to beg, not allowed to cry out, not allowed to… step out of this locked cupboard.

That’s right, a cupboard.

The beginning of her memories of this life had always started with that cupboard.

And also… the child living in the cupboard.

The entire world was but an arm wide, within the rectangular cupboard. One couldn’t stand in it and could only sit or squat, never sleeping straight.

The flowers, birds, light, fleeting footsteps of freedom and comfort or the tinkling of laughter in the spring had nothing to do with her.

It had nothing to do with the world inside the cupboard.

… Someone was tapping on the cupboard, a familiar three taps, one light tap, and two heavier taps. Then, a slight crack appeared as the door of the cupboard opened slightly, and two cold buns were stuffed through.

A female’s face flashed past the cupboard, a young, beautiful face, yet frail and frightened due to prolonged living in fear.

Her expression was that of despair, filled with suppression as if tears were to fall at any moment. Such was the expression that she had as she looked through the crack, watching her quietly, and in those eyes, Meng Fuyao saw a familiar, smaller version of herself.

Everything was extremely familiar.

The familiarity reached deep into her veins, so familiar that it shocked her as if she had been struck by a white flash of lightning, and her soul was separated from her body!

This wasn’t the present her!

This was a five-year-old Meng Fuyao, this was the five-year-old Nameless Feng.

Nameless, Nameless.

A palace maid’s protection, a little princess, born in secret after a moment of pleasure. Nobody had given her a name.

Nor had anyone given her any chance of survival.

After the Emperor had declared the new Empress, the new Empress was easily jealous and disallowed anyone to receive affection from the Emperor. No one was allowed to give birth to any more children for the Emperor, while she gave birth to one child a year herself. As such, the women in the harem no longer gave birth. If anyone dared to try to seduce the Emperor, dared to give birth to a prince, the consequence awaiting her would be the most painful form of death.

And yet, that year, the hair-combing palace maid from Consort Ying’s palace had gotten herself pregnant.

Nobody knew how she had gotten pregnant, perhaps the Emperor was walking by one day and discovered this beautiful palace maid and had instantly taken a liking to her youthful beauty; or perhaps, the young Emperor felt stifled due to the Empress disallowing him from spreading his seed in the harem and upon walking past a beautiful maiden, he tumbled into the grass with her just like that…