Chapter 29#
Extra: Second Life (Part One)#
Chu Ruiyuan never expected to live a second life—returning to the time just after his childhood encounter with Liu Jun’an.
The moment he awoke, he resolved to make amends for everything he had missed, done wrong, or regretted in his previous life.
Yet in life, eight or nine things out of ten go against one’s wishes.
He reunited with Mingzhi—but Mingzhi no longer remembered him.
He wanted to treat Mingzhi well—but Mingzhi treated him with even more courtesy and restraint than before.
He saved the Empress Dowager and his younger brother, who had met tragic ends in the previous life—yet the Empress Dowager forbade Mingzhi from serving as his study companion.
Even Liu Junping’s wife—who, like him, had also been reborn—initially suspected he had ulterior motives and tried to obstruct him.
Still, he ultimately removed every obstacle and ended up with Liu Jun’an.
From the very beginning this time, it was he who loved Mingzhi, and Mingzhi who loved him. There were none of the twisted entanglements of the previous life. In that sense, it was better.
When the Empress Dowager began probing not long after, Chu Ruiyuan was not surprised.
She had ruled the inner palace for nearly twenty years. Even though in recent years she had poured most of her attention into her younger son, she still wished to maintain firm control over the new emperor’s affairs—likely even having already chosen a candidate for his empress.
But he was no longer a true seventeen-year-old youth.
In his previous life he had reigned for twenty years, and several years had already passed since his rebirth. He possessed his own foundations, his own methods, and his own calculations regarding the balance of power in court.
So in court he subtly warned the Empress Dowager’s maternal clan. Thereafter, she wisely turned a blind eye to the matters of his harem.
For three years, Chu Ruiyuan indulged freely with Liu Jun’an—making his Mingzhi once more into “Mingzhi.” The satisfaction he felt was beyond words.
Until he followed Mingzhi’s lead and silenced the officials’ petitions to establish an empress, delaying marriage for several more years;
Until he sent men south to seize “Broken Fate” and personally fed it to Liu Jun’an in advance;
Until he watched the ungrateful wolf from the previous life fail to plant his gu and flee in disgrace like a stray dog—
Through all this, Chu Ruiyuan believed he had mended every regret of his former life.
Yet the spy he had planted beside Dugu Yan reported that although “Broken Fate” could dissolve a love-gu, it would cause the one who took it to grow disgusted with the person they loved.
The deeper the love, the deeper the revulsion.
When Chu Ruiyuan read the secret report, he found it absurd.
If “Broken Fate” truly twisted love into hatred, how could Liu Jun’an still be so intimate with him day after day?
And yet—
Mingzhi did not seem as inseparable from him as before.
Mingzhi did not gaze at him as he once had.
Mingzhi did not seem as eager to kiss him.
Mingzhi seemed… perhaps truly only acting—playing out a drama of mutual affection.
When Liu Jun’an unconsciously shook off his hand, Chu Ruiyuan finally accepted it.
All his earlier satisfaction and pride had been nothing but a one-sided farce.
No wonder Dugu Yan had reacted the way he did that day. While he had laughed at another’s folly, others were likely laughing at his stupidity.
That “Broken Fate” pill—he had fed it to Mingzhi with his own hands.
How foolish.
More foolish still: even if “Broken Fate” were truly irreversible, even if he had to deceive himself for a lifetime—he could no longer let go.
In his previous life he had endured alone for so long that longing had long since transformed into obsession.
Only by binding that person forever to his side could the ghost who had once died feel less alone.
And yet Chu Ruiyuan could not help but wonder—if there had been no “Broken Fate,” how would Liu Jun’an have treated him?
Would he have been more intimate? More childish? More foolishly devoted?
At the very least, when the ministers again petitioned him to establish an empress, his Mingzhi would never have said something like, “Matters of state cannot be neglected for private affection.”
As if his wholehearted devotion were, in Mingzhi’s eyes, nothing but reckless indulgence.
As if the deep love of the previous life had merely been a youthful mistake.
That night, holding the already sleeping Liu Jun’an in his arms, the young emperor deliberated until dawn.
When he resolved to name his full-blooded younger brother as Crown Prince, he felt an unexpected relief.
In this reborn life, he had saved his younger brother. The son born of the former empress in the previous life would never exist again. Why not entrust the empire—once intended for that son—to his brother instead?
When an elder brother dies without issue, succession by a younger brother has precedent in history.
Though his brother had been raised by the Empress Dowager and grown up in women’s quarters, he was only fourteen. With several years under his own guidance, he would surely become capable.
Some time later, one day, Chu Ruiyuan suddenly realized that for a long while he had not looked Liu Jun’an in the eyes or kissed him face to face during their intimacy.
Looking at Mingzhi’s pale, bare back, he was struck by a memory: in the previous life, when they had first come together, it had also been like this. They had shared the closest acts, yet exchanged not even a moment of conversation or eye contact.
At that time, he had treated Mingzhi as a substitute.
But retribution comes in kind—what, then, was in Mingzhi’s heart now?
Chu Ruiyuan endured for half a year, nearly reaching the limit of what he could bear.
But before he truly reached that breaking point, he no longer needed to endure.
Chenghe Year Nine, Seventh Month, Twenty-Ninth Day.
Liu Jun’an fell suddenly ill and died.
It was said to be an epidemic disease. The coffin lay less than a day before, without waiting for him to see the body again, the Prime Minister’s household interred him in the ancestral grave.
***