Chapter 30#
Extra: Second Life (Part Two)#
When Chu Ruiyuan heard the report, it felt like a dream.
In the previous life, after so many trials and tribulations, he and Mingzhi had still remained together until the age of twenty-seven.
How could it be that in this life—when everything was well except for “Broken Fate”—that person died at twenty-five?
He felt as though he had only paused to think for a moment. When he came back to himself, the sun outside had already slanted westward.
He ordered the carriage prepared and went to Liu Jun’an’s grave—but standing before it, he found himself at a loss for words.
Should he say that he had long known he was being deceived and yet accepted it willingly?
Or should he resent that Mingzhi had once again left him alone so soon?
He stood in silence until dawn before returning to the palace. Just as he was about to order preparations for court, he suddenly coughed up blood, splattering the golden bricks of the floor with dark red stains.
The imperial physicians diagnosed it as excessive emotional distress and ordered rest.
The Empress Dowager, who had long since devoted all her energy to her younger son, came daily to shed a few tears, muttering that Liu Jun’an had been a calamity, a demon.
Chu Ruiyuan felt only confusion.
If his Mingzhi had truly been a calamity, why was it he himself who died young in the previous life?
He rested seven or eight days before his body gradually recovered.
After attending court and handling affairs of state, he suddenly realized that today was the eighth day of the eighth month.
In the previous life, Mingzhi had intended to marry on this day—only to be “married” into the palace by him instead, dressed in a groom’s robes yet made into a bride.
A faint smile touched Chu Ruiyuan’s lips, then quickly faded.
He had tried these past days not to think of Liu Jun’an, yet in an instant all that restraint shattered. Before he realized it, he had already ordered attendants to accompany him once more to the Liu family’s cemetery.
Standing before Liu Jun’an’s grave, he remained silent for a long time.
At last he leaned close—very close—to the tombstone and whispered softly:
“Mingzhi… I miss you.”
Only ten days apart—
Yet it felt like ten years.
He murmured “I miss you” once more, then fell silent, gently tracing the engraved name on the stone.
As he stood there staring, he noticed something strange.
The soil before Liu Jun’an’s grave looked as though it had been freshly turned within the past two days.
Chu Ruiyuan’s voice trembled as he ordered the guards to dig the grave back up. When the coffin was opened, it was indeed empty.
In that instant, he suddenly did not know which wounded more—parting while alive, or parting by death.
It took the Chenghe Emperor only half a month to secretly uncover the truth. Yet it took him two full years without ever understanding whether he felt more joy that Liu Jun’an was alive, or more anger that he had abandoned him.
Then his Mingzhi returned.
And then he finally learned the answer to the question he had pondered for so long.
He wished he had never known.
When Eunuch Ning reported that the Empress Dowager had taken people to his bedchamber, Chu Ruiyuan’s heart clenched. Casting aside the assembled court officials, he ran through the palace for the first time in two lifetimes—yet he arrived only in time to gather Liu Jun’an, blood at the corner of his lips, limp upon the floor, into his arms.
Perhaps he called for the imperial physicians. Perhaps he did not.
Perhaps he wept. Perhaps he did not.
Even as Mingzhi breathed his last in his embrace, everything felt unreal, as though he were trapped in a play.
Maybe—maybe Mingzhi was feigning death again to deceive him?
This time he would not be fooled.
Chu Ruiyuan carried Liu Jun’an’s body to the bed and kept vigil for three days. Only when the body had grown stiff and mottled did he finally realize in numb bewilderment:
His Mingzhi was truly gone.
At twenty-seven, what had once been living separation became irrevocable death.
Yet he would rather have been deceived again. Rather have someone open the coffin after burial in the imperial mausoleum, restore the living man within, and spirit him away.
If Mingzhi had acted for so many years, why not deceive him one more time?
*
When the Empress Dowager heard that Liu Jun’an had been interred in the Chenghe Emperor’s own mausoleum, to be buried together after his death, she came to admonish him.
“This is sheer nonsense,” she said. “That is the protocol reserved for an empress!”
The young emperor without heirs looked at his mother for a long moment, then replied slowly, leaving no room for objection:
“Mother has labored over palace affairs these many years. It is time you enjoyed peaceful retirement. Have you not always liked that imperial estate outside the city? From today onward, please move there. The palace will be overseen by female officials. You need trouble yourself no longer.”
The Empress Dowager was “invited” to reside at the estate for five years. At fifty-one, she passed away peacefully.
She had long commanded a private force of soldiers. Before her death, she secretly handed them to her younger son.
Chu Ruiyuan received this report from his spies yet acted as though unaware. He remained cordial toward his imperial brother, the Crown Prince, entrusting him with significant responsibilities.
Four years later, the Crown Prince rose in rebellion, leading troops to encircle the palace. But on the battlefield he was struck from behind by his most trusted confidant, dragged from his horse, and captured alive.
A year later, the emperor stripped his brother of the title of Crown Prince and granted him poisoned wine. He died in the imperial prison.
That same year, the six-year-old grandson of Prince Rui was adopted by Chu Ruiyuan and established as Crown Prince.
*
Seven more years passed.
When Chu Ruiyuan once again rejected the ministers’ petitions to establish an empress, he suddenly realized that thirty-four years had passed since he returned to this life at the age of nine—and seventeen years since Mingzhi left him.
Half this lifetime he had spent either near Mingzhi or far from him; the other half separated by life and death.
Another seventeen years passed.
When the Chenghe Emperor died at sixty, he left an oral edict transferring the throne to the adopted Crown Prince at his bedside.
During his forty-four years of rule, the rivers ran clear and the seas were calm; the realm prospered in peace. Even the southern border kingdom eventually bowed in submission. History would name him a wise and enlightened ruler.
Surveying his life, though early years held rumors preserved in unofficial histories, the inner palace remained empty for his entire reign.
And in the places neither official nor unofficial records could fully recount—
Under the final edict, the remains buried for more than thirty years in the imperial mausoleum were unearthed and reinterred within the same coffin and casket as his own.
In this life, they shared the same tomb.
In the next—might they share the same bed?