Chapter 39: The Truth the Plot Didn’t Write
Soon, the scene began to flow again. It was as if the heavens took pity on the two young cubs and started to pour down rain.
Gan Qiongying was once again pulled into a state of forced perception. She felt herself being jolted awake by the raindrops, then struggled to open her eyes and mouth to catch the rainwater.
The metallic tang of the rain, mixed with the taste of blood in her mouth, rushed down her throat. She gathered a little strength, began to crawl up, and hoisted her brother, who was hovering between life and death, onto her back. With great difficulty, she shuffled toward the house.
They spent their most difficult days in that courtyard, suffering from fever, infection, and hunger, clinging to each other for warmth.
Just as they were about to die in that courtyard, a group of people burst through the gate, rushed in, and carried them out.
However, they couldn’t separate the two children at first. The rescuers discovered that they were tightly bound together, their tattered clothes used as ropes tied around their waists and arms.
The last thing Gan Qiongying was forced to feel was the pain and stench from the wound on her waist, which had already begun to rot.
Then the scene changed. They were both saved. Prince Hui had returned in triumph, having slain the enemy general and burned their granaries. With his own power, he had forced a stop to the war that had dragged on for years.
Bearing military achievements that no other prince at the time could match, he returned to the capital in glory and was immediately named Crown Prince. The fortunes of those around him rose with his own.
The reason he remembered the children he had left at the imperial villa for years was that during the time he was missing, nearly all his other children had been murdered.
And this pair, retrieved from the villa, had also survived a brush with death.
But thankfully, they were saved.
In the dream, Gan Qiongying watched as the real, young Duan Rong, who had risked her life to protect Prince Hui’s sixth son, Gan Lin, also managed to turn her fate around, despite having been a disgrace to the imperial family.
The scenes began to flash by very quickly. Everything fell into place as smoothly as flowing water. With the protection of Prince Hui, who had become the Crown Prince, Duan Rong held her head high at last, and her arrogant, unruly nature began to emerge.
Furthermore, after the old Emperor passed away, Prince Hui, the Crown Prince, ascended the throne as Emperor Huicheng.
He skillfully used rumors to rewrite the story of Duan Rong’s mother, who had given birth out of wedlock and was once the shame of the imperial family, into a moving and tragic tale of loyal love and shared destiny with a great general of the dynasty.
Duan Rong was unconventionally granted the title of Princess. Grateful to her for saving his only remaining bloodline, Emperor Huicheng doted on her to an extent that drew criticism.
The newly titled Princess Duanrong and the Crown Prince were as close as biological siblings, spending their days together, laughing and bickering, even eating and sleeping in the same space.
Having the same interests and having grown up depending on each other, the two children shared a bond that no one else could possibly have.
But as time went on, Princess Duanrong gradually realized that her thoughts when looking at her younger brother were becoming more and more inappropriate.
Who can stop the stirrings of a young heart?
A reckless, drunken test of his feelings created a distance between the siblings.
For Duan Rong was the only one who had fallen in love. Gan Lin, as the Crown Prince, already had someone he admired: the daughter of the Minister of Personnel. She was beautiful, intelligent, and exceptionally talented, and was about to be betrothed to him as the Crown Princess by the Emperor.
Duan Rong flew into a rage. She deliberately invited the minister’s daughter to admire flowers and boat on the lake, then plotted to have her fall into the water.
Although she ultimately rescued the girl and did not kill her, a rift formed between the siblings, and they did not speak for a long time.
Before time could dilute the twisted affection that dared not grow between them, Emperor Huicheng suddenly fell gravely ill, to the point where he could barely get out of bed.
His already precarious power faced a new round of turmoil and suppression. The daughter of Chancellor Kou, whom the Emperor had married to consolidate his position—the woman Emperor Huicheng believed was his respectful and loving equal—pushed him into hell.
The Kòu Clan was like a great tree, its roots dug deep into the earth for many years. Its gnarled power, like those roots, could no longer be shaken by anyone.
And it was the Empress of that time, the current Empress Dowager Kou Ning’an, who had ended Emperor Huicheng’s life, bit by bit, with the Yibu Decoction she personally brewed for him over the years.
With the great edifice toppled, Crown Prince Gan Lin, his wings not yet full and with no one to rely on, became a puppet of the Kòu Clan, constrained at every turn even after ascending the throne.
Princess Duanrong, once the most glorious imperial princess of the nation, became a laughable, fallen phoenix overnight.
Court officials jointly impeached her, listing numerous crimes. The long-arrogant Duan Rong became the target of public condemnation, on the verge of being cast down from the heavens.
The final scene in Gan Qiongying’s long dream was of Empress Dowager Kou Ning’an, once again brewing the Yibu Decoction.
With a sickeningly false smile, she handed the medicinal soup to the current Emperor, Gan Lin.
Forced to experience everything in the dream, Gan Qiongying felt as if the tears from her eyes had nearly drained her soul dry.
She felt as if her soul had been forcibly stitched into a broken shell, a shell in which the love, hatred, sorrow, and lifelong resentment of another person clearly remained.
Gan Qiongying gasped and awoke with a jolt. The moment the dream shattered, she heard herself scream hoarsely, “Changshengnu!”
Her flailing hands were caught by a pair of strong ones. She opened her eyes, her spirit not yet returned to her body, as if she were still floating in the illusion, or as if she had become Duan Rong.
Changshengnu was Gan Lin’s pet name.
It was the name Gan Lin had wanted Gan Qiongying to call him back in the palace, when he had meekly asked if she was still angry with him and why she called him “Emperor.”
In Yinian Hall, the bowl of medicinal soup that the Emperor had rushed to drink was the very same gut-rotting poison that had caused Emperor Huicheng to waste away and die.
And Gan Lin had willingly agreed to all of this, because only by being a puppet emperor could he protect his elder sister.
And the Duan Rong of the past, the Gan Qiongying of today, was the weakness the Empress Dowager held tightly in her grasp to control the Crown Prince.
It forced that ever-gentle boy to shoulder a burden not his own with his thin back, to consume gut-rotting poison day after day, to endure a life whose end he could see, unable to live as he wished, unable to die as he wished.
Tears streamed down Gan Qiongying’s face, and her head felt like it was splitting apart.
“Princess, it’s alright. Just bear with it a little longer. The Imperial Physician will be finished with the needles soon,” a familiar voice soothed by her ear.
Gan Qiongying blinked hard, trying desperately to dispel the anguish in her heart.
Her blurry vision was quickly wiped clear by a handkerchief, and she saw Lihua’s worried eyes looking at her.
Gan Qiongying closed her eyes. She finally understood a part of the truth that the plot had never written.
She also finally understood why the Emperor was so emaciated.
Why her heart would ache with a suffocating pain whenever she saw the Emperor.
Because she… was Duan Rong.
Or rather, all of Duan Rong’s memories still remained within this reborn body of hers.
And she had become Duan Rong.
She was watching the child she had once protected with her life, the man she loved too much to ever blame or pressure, the cousin she had depended on and deeply loved since childhood, being trampled upon and tormented on the throne for her sake.
How could her heart not break, not ache to the point of death?