Chapter 88#

Dream Within a Dream#

So hot.

It felt as though a fire had ignited somewhere inside his body, burning along every inch of skin pressed together, scorching through every inch of blood and vein, until even the most clear-headed person would lose themselves in a hazy, wavering sea.

Yin Yuheng opened his eyes — blurred with involuntary tears — and cast an accusatory look at the figure above him. In the next instant, the tears at the corner of his eye were kissed away with a touch of gentle warmth.

“Lu…”

His voice was swallowed too.

It was the first time Yin Yuheng had ever felt the supremely yang power of the Golden Crow bloodline. It was as if golden flames had erupted all around him, and yet at the same time as if he were standing on the softest clouds.

“A-Heng.” Lu Yan traced the contours of Yin Yuheng’s brows and eyes.

Outside the window, dark clouds had gathered at some point without him noticing. Suddenly a bolt of lightning split the sky, and a crack of thunder roared.

Outside it seemed to be raining — or perhaps snowing — because a thread of cold air seeped in through the gaps in the window frame, only to be instantly burned away by Lu Yan’s Golden Crow fire.

Lu Yan glanced toward the window, furrowed his brow slightly, then reached up and covered Yin Yuheng’s eyes.

Yin Yuheng let his eyes fall shut. He could hear the thunder, but he didn’t care about the weather raging outside, didn’t care about the sudden storm of rain and snow, and certainly didn’t care about what seemed to be the furious will of Heaven. If anything, he found it faintly amusing.

What he cared about right now was only the person in front of him.

Yin Yuheng simply reached out himself, wrapped his arms around Lu Yan’s neck, and curved his lips into a provoking smile.

Outside, the wind surged again at once. The sky and earth shifted, dark clouds churned, and the gale snapped the long branches of the green bamboo outside — like helpless, resentful fury, raging and howling.

The earth-shaking gale could not breach the palace walls. Lu Yan slowly tightened his hold, enfolding Yin Yuheng in his arms in a posture of absolute protection, and continued, with complete seriousness, to kiss him.

His movements were careful — as though afraid the person in his arms might break. Even though they both knew the Yin Yuheng of today bore the weight of the nation’s fate, and was no longer the fragile young man he had once been.

“Are you cold?” Yin Yuheng heard Lu Yan’s voice. Careful. Worried. Suffused with tender concern. It even seemed to carry a faint tremor of aching care.

Yin Yuheng’s thoughts had gone unusually slow and hazy. After a moment he suddenly understood, and his smile softened.

Yin Yuheng pressed his head against the side of Lu Yan’s neck, his dark hair cascading down in loose, tangled waves, like scattered silk. They were that close — their hair had fallen together — and Yin Yuheng could feel the warmth of Lu Yan’s breath.

“Didn’t I say so already?” Yin Yuheng’s voice was soft, his eyes curved with a smile. “Hold me tight, and I won’t be cold.”

So Lu Yan fixed his gaze on him without blinking, one arm holding him more firmly, the other gently tidying the loose strands of his hair — a rare, quiet possessiveness.

Yin Yuheng knew that Lu Yan’s feelings had always been intense but restrained. He had never let his desire for control show too plainly before him. But because of everything they had been through, deep in Lu Yan’s heart, there still lurked a profound unease. That unease could not be easily set down — perhaps only when everything had truly settled, when every danger had been put far away, would it slowly be worn smooth.

And Yin Yuheng — wasn’t he the same?

He had lived through too many storms in his dreams. On illusory snowfields, he had died before Lu Yan’s eyes again and again, while Lu Yan only gripped his sword and watched with cold indifference as Yin Yuheng’s life drained away, letting him fall into bone-deep cold.

Fortunately, they both had enough patience to soothe each other.

A faint ache rose in Yin Yuheng’s heart, inexplicably. Looking back now, all those countless dreams he had endured — they seemed to have left behind only a thin, not-quite-real residue of memory. Dreams were, in the end, only dreams. Yin Yuheng no longer felt cold. The blazing heat made his thoughts hazy and distant. The one who had been foretold to kill him now wanted nothing more than to hold him so close he became part of his very blood and bone.

Yin Yuheng rested in Lu Yan’s arms, the sense of peace easing his thoughts gradually toward sleep.

When Yin Yuheng opened his eyes again, he found himself sitting inside a small pavilion.

It was evening. Dusk clouds gathered on all sides, and the light at the horizon was slowly going dark. A bitter autumn wind lifted the ends of his hair. Yin Yuheng realized he was dreaming again.

…Or at least, it should be a dream.

In the next moment, Yin Yuheng found himself strangely disoriented, with the sense that he had forgotten something. The scene around him was half-real and half-illusion, neither one nor the other, and he couldn’t tell them apart.

Yin Yuheng tried to stand, but something stopped him. He looked down, and found his wrists and ankles wrapped in golden chains.

The chains were beautiful — fine and long, but extremely sturdy. Yin Yuheng gave a tug, then gave up the futile attempt.

Where am I?

Yin Yuheng looked down at his own thin, pale wrists, unable to sense so much as a thread of spiritual energy — and suddenly remembered.

He had been punished by Lu Yan. His immortal bones shattered, his spiritual meridians severed, imprisoned here, a living death.

At that thought, Yin Yuheng tucked his pale hand back into his sleeve. He turned his head sharply — and saw a figure standing in the dusk behind him, watching him with cold indifference.

It was Lu Yan.

The chains on Yin Yuheng’s wrists jerked sharply. He stumbled a step, nearly falling. Dragged forward by the chain’s pull, he staggered toward Lu Yan until he came to an unsteady halt beneath that icy gaze — looking, in some ways, rather pitiable.

Yin Yuheng’s head was pounding, and his mind was spinning. All he could summon were fragments: memories of Lu Yan tormenting him. He couldn’t recall anything more.

But something in him instinctively felt that something was wrong here.

Why would those eyes look at him like that?

No matter how many memories told him that Lu Yan despised him — Yin Yuheng felt that it still shouldn’t be this way.

“Yuheng. Take a good look at yourself.” The figure before him looked at him like he was a plaything, and smiled — a mocking, contemptuous smile.

“…” Yin Yuheng found that smile deeply unsettling.

Not because of humiliation. But because that expression had no business being on that face. A powerful sense of wrongness, of falseness, made him uncomfortable — the scene before him felt like a failed painting produced by a talentless artist.

“My little Highness, what do you have left to be proud of? You’re nothing more than my prisoner now.” Seeing that Yin Yuheng was silent, “Lu Yan” reached out, seized Yin Yuheng by the throat, and yanked him forward, forcing him to tilt his face up.

Yin Yuheng was forced to meet that gaze, and his headache immediately worsened.

“Where is Lu Yan?” Yin Yuheng opened his mouth instinctively, his voice weak and a little rough.

The figure paused, then gave a cold laugh. “Not recognize me? Pretending to be confused won’t help you. Better drop to your knees and beg.”

“…I’m asking — where is Lu Yan?” Yin Yuheng locked eyes with the figure, the words coming out almost by pure instinct. “You are not him.”

The figure seemed to flare with rage. Its grip clenched hard — and in the moment of suffocation, the splitting pain in Yin Yuheng’s head suddenly faded, and all those “memories” of torment dissolved like foam.

Yin Yuheng’s mind grew clear. He remembered now — this was indeed a dream.

Imprisonment, suffering — nothing but a dream within a dream. At this very moment, beyond the real dream, he should be sleeping deeply in Lu Yan’s arms.

Lu Yan would never speak to him in a voice like that. He would never look at him with eyes like that. Yin Yuheng was certain of it.

Yin Yuheng let a faint smile show. “Poor performance. Too hollow, too false. What shall I call you? The Will of Heaven? The original plot? What — found that your old dreams stopped working, so you came up with a new trick?”

The “Lu Yan” before him went rigid — as if its disguise had been stripped away — and twisted into a distorted expression before shattering and vanishing.

The scene around him lurched and changed. In a flash, Yin Yuheng found himself back in the little pavilion, golden chains still wrapped around his wrists.

Still dreaming. Another loop.

Yin Yuheng had expected to wake up directly. He was briefly caught off guard.

Something made him turn around — and sure enough, Lu Yan was standing behind him again.

What a tedious dream. What was the point of going through it again? Yin Yuheng found it faintly funny, and faintly irritating. Now that he had seen through the illusion, his spiritual energy had returned. He quietly formed a hand seal, preparing to shatter this tiresome dream and be done with it.

But in the next instant, he saw Lu Yan’s face — haggard and exhausted, utterly drained of its usual light.

Yin Yuheng: … Starting over with a different approach?

Lu Yan lowered his head, like a man who had done something terribly wrong, unable to meet Yin Yuheng’s eyes. He hesitated — but in the end, he stepped into the pavilion and carefully lifted Yin Yuheng’s wrist, examining the chains there.

“Does it hurt?” he asked, abruptly, his expression dim.

“No,” Yin Yuheng answered honestly. The material of the golden chains was unusual.

“I’m sorry.” The Lu Yan before him spoke in a low voice, barely a sound.

“If you’re sorry, then let me go,” Yin Yuheng said plainly, thinking: so this dream’s strategy is gentle persuasion?

“…” Lu Yan was silent. Then, as if steeling himself: “Let you go? So you can go and die?”

His voice was saturated with a grief that had nowhere to go. Slowly, he pressed his face into Yin Yuheng’s palm.

Yin Yuheng felt his palm grow slightly damp. It took him a moment to realize — those were Lu Yan’s warm tears.

…Tears?

Yin Yuheng heard Lu Yan’s trembling voice: “A-Heng. You can’t be this cruel to me.”

Yin Yuheng went still. His head began to ache again.

And somehow, without being able to explain why, a sudden intuition told him: this dream, perhaps, was not the same kind of false illusion as the one before.