TCPM 25

Chapter 25

"Get up! Xu Jianyou! Hurry up and get up! You're going to be late!"

Wei Zai shouted while jumping up and down on her, but because she lacked physical weight, Xu Jianyou didn't feel much; she was simply woken up by the noise. Poking her head out from the blankets in a daze, she asked Wei Zai, "What class is it today?"

Wei Zai was holding an iPad and looking at her class schedule: "Dynastic Changes from the Perspective of Economic History, it's a lecture."

Xu Jianyou pulled the covers back over her head: "An interdisciplinary knowledge expansion lecture, we don't have to go."

"I want to go! Get up quickly!"

Xu Jianyou closed her eyes and sighed, struggling to sit up from the warmth of her bedding. As she shook off her sleepiness, reason flooded back into her body. For Wei Zai, only a single night had passed, but for her, it spanned a long millennium. She was Xu Jianyou, and she was also Xu Qingchu; she now possessed Xu Qingchu's composure and foresight, while Xu Qingchu had inherited her openness and liveliness. Waking from that sleep felt like being reborn.

She suddenly realized that Wei Zai was the same—to the former Xu Jianyou it had been a single night, but to Wei Zai it was a journey across a vast, distant expanse of time. Imperial majesty and youthful spiritedness coexisted within her; this, too, was Wei Zai's rebirth.

She gazed blankly at Wei Zai, swallowing the words of confession forming on her lips. She didn't know how to speak of it; last night, she had quietly watched Wei Zai, running through how she might tell her over and over again in her mind until she drifted off to sleep unawares. But now she chose not to speak. She wanted to gaze a little longer upon this carefree, uninhibited Wei Zai. She didn't know if introducing such a variable would shatter the peaceful status quo, so she rare-formly chose to evade it. But it didn't matter; she no longer needed to shoulder such heavy burdens, and stepping back or evading no longer felt unforgivable.

The morning lecture was a double-period block class, taught by a professor from another university who was a leading figure in the field; a few words from such an expert could provide profound benefit. Xu Jianyou was glad she had come today. Her primary research direction was political theory, but her past-life existence gave her a deeper understanding of Chinese politics, and her fusion of practice and theory generated fresh insights. Wei Zai was likely experiencing the same.

They conversed quietly in their minds, listening to the lecture while discussing their respective impressions. Every past class had been like this, except that previously, the modern content was mostly explained by Xu Jianyou to Wei Zai, while the traditional Chinese politics segment was dominated by Wei Zai; today was a rare match of equals.

Wei Zai looked slightly surprised: "You've finally enlightened yourself?"

Xu Jianyou kept a straight face: "I've been doing some research lately, my next short paper will be on these topics."

"What content will you write about?" Wei Zai asked with curiosity.

Xu Jianyou made something up on the spot: "The governance community of traditional Chinese villages."

"Oh, rural China."

Xu Jianyou glanced at her sideways, astonished by Wei Zai's theoretical progress—she could even understand industry jargon now. But come to think of it, Xu Jianyou was indeed considering shifting her research direction slightly toward Chinese politics, so it wasn't entirely nonsense.

They chatted idly back and forth. Just as it was the recess break and the classroom grew somewhat noisy, Xu Jianyou returned with a cup of hot water, sipping it in small intervals. Amidst the chaotic ambient noise, her ears suddenly caught a name, causing her heartbeat to skip a beat.

"Xu, Yue, Yao, chairperson of Gengshan Group..." A classmate nearby was talking to herself while looking at a magazine in her hand.

Xu Jianyou whipped around, staring straight at her: "Who did you say?"

"Xu Yueyao, the cover subject of this issue's Financial Monthly!" That classmate pointed at the magazine in her hand. "This person has such an interesting name, both her given name and the group name have 'mountain' in them, does she lack earth elements in her destiny or something, hahaha... There's an exclusive interview with her in this issue, what an amazing female entrepreneur..."

"Can I borrow that to look at?" Xu Jianyou asked the classmate next to her.

"Sure." Though not well acquainted with her, the classmate generously pushed the magazine across the desk.

"Thank you." A slight tremor laced Xu Jianyou's voice. She took the pushed-over magazine and saw that extraordinarily familiar face on the cover.

Distant conversations came surging back across thousands of mountains, rivers, and ages:

“...Teacher, why did you take 'Gengshan' as your style name?”

“Geng means firmness, standing like a mountain or peak, unmoving, unyielding, never retreating. It also means stopping; when movement and stillness do not miss their proper time, then the Dao is... luminous.”

"Ah, don't cry, what's wrong?" The classmate nearby scrambled in a panic to dig tissues out of her bag.

"It's nothing, nothing at all," Xu Jianyou wiped away the tears at the corners of her eyes and handed the magazine back to her classmate. "Just thought of some things."

Though puzzled, the classmate saw that her emotions had stabilized and considerately stopped asking.

Xu Jianyou regained her composure quickly; her thumb brushed past the corner of her eye, and the tears seemed as though they had never appeared.

Yet Wei Zai had seen it. She was right there beside her, how could she possibly miss it?

She asked in a cold voice: "You remembered, didn't you?"

"Wh... what?" Caught off guard by being called out, Xu Jianyou's heart fluttered anxiously.

"Don't pretend, I know Xu Yueyao is your respected teacher." Wei Zai crossed her arms and sneered.

Xu Jianyou lowered her head, not daring to look at her, and gave a soft acknowledgment: "Mm."

"Why didn't you tell me? Watch me make a fool of myself?"

"I didn't..."

The lecture was completely impossible to listen to any further. Xu Jianyou packed up her stationery, shouldered her bag, and slipped quietly away.

"I didn't know how to explain it," she said to Wei Zai as she walked home.

"What's so hard to explain?" Wei Zai was baffled.

Xu Jianyou sighed: "A-Zai, do you know what surname the imperial court after Wei Zhou had?"

"The dynastic title was Qi, the imperial surname was Xu."

"Then do you know which Xu it is?"

"The Taizu of Qi originated from the Zongshan Xu clan of Fengzhou; I know the Zongshan Xu and the Lixian Xu shared a common ancestral lineage, it's the exact same Xu as yours."

"Mhm, it's Xu Yueyao's Xu, and it's also Xu Qingchu's Xu."

They remained silent the entire way home, until they stepped inside the front door. They couldn't afford to act abnormal outside, but inside the house it didn't matter. Almost the exact moment the door clicked shut, Wei Zai's questioning, suppressed of its anger, came crashing down: "What? Do you feel that since your Xu family descendants overthrew Wei Zhou, you owe me something?"

"No, not descendants—starting from my teacher, we were already plotting to overthrow Wei Zhou..." Xu Jianyou closed her eyes and blurted out everything in one breath, spilling every single word that had once remained unspoken. That massive weight pressing upon her heart day after day for decades, that sharp sword suspended over her head—now, she was finally letting the sword fall.

Wei Zai stepped closer, backing her into a corner, and looked down at her with crossed arms. Xu Jianyou cowered in the nook, her eyes fixed on Wei Zai's belt, not daring to meet her gaze. Wei Zai looked somewhat agitated; her fingertip tapped lightly against her opposite elbow at a quickening rhythm, several times wanting to interrupt Xu Jianyou, but holding back until Xu Jianyou stopped speaking.

"Finished?"

Wei Zai took a step forward, completely trapping her in the corner now, and rather roughly grabbed Xu Jianyou by the chin, forcing her to lift her head and look straight into her eyes. When their gazes locked, Wei Zai said in a deep voice: "Xu Qingchu, did you really think I valued this empire more than you?"

"..." Xu Jianyou wanted to say this wasn't some cliché choice between the empire and her love, but under Wei Zai's intense scrutiny, not a single syllable would come out.

Overflowing sorrow filled Wei Zai's eyes, though she had no intention of waiting for Xu Jianyou's reply, continuing instead: "I never wanted this empire, I only ever wanted to live like a real human being. But the subjects of Wei Zhou couldn't live a human life, and so the emperor of Wei Zhou could never live freely either. A Wei Zhou like that, I never wanted it. You wanted it, so I gave it to you."

Waves of anger surged within her; Wei Zai hadn't truly lost her temper in a very long, long time, but at this moment, past sorrows and pain churned up from deep within her blood and flesh. Those things she had hidden away, those things she thought she had already digested, all rushed to the surface at this instant, rendering her utterly incapable of restraining herself, and her hand gripping Xu Qingchu tightened with force. She felt profoundly, agonizingly aggrieved. She had been Xu Qingchu's pillow-companion; she wasn't completely oblivious to Xu Qingchu's concealments, she had simply chosen to place her absolute trust in Xu Qingchu, which was why she neither asked, nor pried, nor thought too deeply on it. Yet no matter the time or circumstance, Xu Qingchu always had a way of being cruel enough to make her heart ache fiercely.

"Besides, we already extended Wei Zhou's lifeline by a full sixty years, if the little brats afterward still couldn't hold onto it, what did that have to do with me? What did it have to do with you?"

Xu Jianyou felt a dull ache from the tight grip on her chin, but she paid it no mind, staring blankly at Wei Zai. They had spoken countless words before—official pleasantries on the surface, private murmurs in the dark, whispered love words behind closed doors—yet they had never laid their true feelings so bare and direct to one another. They understood each other so thoroughly that they had tacitly chosen to lock away their true inner voices. But when all those words were finally unfolded, it wasn't her chin that felt pinched, but her very organs; her vital point had been captured, and the slightest movement sent a sharp, agonizing pain rippling through her. She finally realized what she had gotten wrong: in her eyes, Wei Zai and the imperial throne were forever inseparable, whereas Wei Zai had always, from beginning to end, been simply Wei Zai.

"Xu Qingchu, I am no longer the emperor of Wei Zhou, I am only Wei Zai. Do you understand?" Wei Zai pressed in close, loosely wrapping an arm around her waist, her voice dropping intensely low, sounding part warning and part enchantment.

With tears in her eyes, Xu Jianyou nodded vigorously, as if trying to carve every single word into her heart.

Whereupon Wei Zai tightened her hand, clutching Xu Jianyou's waist, her thumb rubbing against her waistline through her clothes, and whispered heavily into Xu Jianyou's ear: "Now, tell me, do you miss me?"

Xu Jianyou's eyes reddened—how could she not miss her? Every day and night without Wei Zai had ached with a piercing, bone-deep agony, and those pains were now churning through her body just as fiercely. Reaching up to wrap her arms around Wei Zai's neck, she trembled as she forced out an answer: "I do. I miss you so much."

A pair of icy hands cupped her cheeks, and a fierce, brutal kiss came crashing down—forceful, intentionally designed to make her gasp, to make her suffer, to make her lose herself. She couldn't hold back her response, refusing to push her away even when bitten until bleeding and kissed until suffocating; she pulled Wei Zai tighter against her, exactly as Wei Zai was holding her.

This Wei Zai was ice-cold, breathing no air and carrying no physical weight, but Xu Jianyou could see her and touch her, and that was enough. This was her love delayed by a millennium, her prayer for a reunion repeated countless times. Her consciousness was entirely consumed by Wei Zai; amidst a hazy blur, a cold hand slipped beneath her clothes, sending shivers rippling across her skin, while another hand pressed upward against her spine, forcing her chest to arch and her head to tilt back, as another hand thrust downward with unyielding force.

Amidst the fierce, breathless intervals of their kiss, Xu Jianyou heard Wei Zai's command:

"Then let me hear you say it."

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