Hours had slipped by like ghosts since the chaotic end of the banquet. In the private chambers of Empress Wei Shuyin, the silence was a deep, dark ocean. Seated before her polished bronze vanity, the mirror reflected a tired, fractured version of herself. Her face was a mask of cold perfection, but her eyes betrayed the storm within: her daughter's audacity, her husband's impotent fury, and the chaos, as always, sown by Wei Feng.
With slow, deliberate movements, she began to shed her imperial armor. First, the heavy sapphire earrings. She set them on the fine wooden table, and the sound was a solitary, tiny click. Next, the pearl crown. She lifted it from her head, feeling a physical weight release, and placed it beside the earrings. Finally, the silver dragon hairpin that held her intricate hairstyle. Each piece she removed was a duty she shed, a layer of the Empress that dissolved to reveal the woman beneath. An exhausted woman.
That was when she saw him.
There was no sound of doors opening. No footsteps. He was simply there, in the mirror's reflection, materializing from the deepest shadows of the room: Wei Feng.
There was no longer any trace of the clumsy drunk from the banquet. His movements were silent, fluid, and precise, like those of a shadow cat. In his hands, he held not his usual cheap flagon, but an ancient-looking, dark ceramic bottle and two fine crystal glasses. He approached a small nearby table, the one she used for tea, and began to pour the wine. The sound of the dark red liquid filling the glasses was a soft cascade, the only sound that dared to break the oppressive silence.
He didn't speak. He simply watched her in the mirror as he poured. Watched her as he set one glass on the table and kept the other for himself. Watched her as he leaned against the table, waiting.
She was the first to break the silence. Her voice was an icy whisper, barely audible, yet laden with years of resentment. "Wei Feng."
The name floated in the air between them, an accusation and a history in a single word.
He smiled at her reflection. He dragged over a heavy, upholstered chair, the sound of its legs scraping against the marble was harsh, a deliberate profanation of the stillness. He sat behind her, still watching her reflection, evoking a twisted parody of the scene from that very afternoon, when she had combed her daughter's hair. He held out the glass of wine to her: an offering, or a challenge.
"Your audacity knows no bounds," she said, her voice gaining an edge of steel. "Trespassing in the private chambers of the Empress of the Great Wei Empire is punishable by death."
He took a sip from his own glass, savoring it. "I've always thought you have a lovely room, Shuyin. A bit… rigid, though," he said, his gaze sweeping over the impeccable order of the furniture. "Like its owner."
The duel had begun.
She finally turned in her chair to face him. Her movements were slow, regal. She took the glass of wine he offered. It wasn't a gesture of acceptance, but a move in a chess match they had been playing their entire lives. Their eyes met directly for the first time.
"What do you want, Feng?" she asked. "Haven't you caused enough chaos for one night? Wasn't humiliating my husband and sabotaging a crucial alliance enough for you?"
He ignored the question completely, a lazy smile playing on his lips. "I just came to see an old friend. It's been a long time, don't you think? Lately, whenever we pass each other in the halls, you pretend I don't exist. It hurts, I admit. A little." He leaned back in his chair, the very picture of relaxation. "But I've always enjoyed challenges that take time." He took another sip of wine. "This is an Autumn Harvest from the Forgotten Mountains. Three hundred years old. I was saving it for a special occasion."
"I am not your friend," she spat, contempt dripping from every syllable.
"Always so sweet," he replied, unfazed. He stood and began to wander around the room, touching a vase here, a scroll there. "I must admit, your daughter has your claws. Her little gambit at the banquet was a work of art. Testing the peacock with his own pride… Brilliant. I take my hat off to her."
"She did what she had to do to protect herself from the disaster you created," Wei Shuyin said, her voice tense. "She was forced to act because of your ridiculous intervention."
"Ridiculous?" he inquired, pausing to look at her. "You thought it was ridiculous? I thought it was quite effective. The peacock didn't get to touch her. That's a victory, isn't it?"
"A victory that could cost us a war!" she hissed. "The Golden Sword Sect will not forget this humiliation!"
"Oh, they'll get over it. A few more gifts, a few pretty words, and they'll be wagging their tails again. Besides, Yao'er will win the duel. We both know it." He paused. "You told her the story, didn't you?"
The question caught her by surprise. "What?"
"Yao'er. You told her my story. I saw it in her eyes when she looked at me during Jin Tian's presentation. There was more than just duty. There was… understanding. Or the attempt at it. So you did."
Wei Shuyin clenched her jaw. "She asked. About her father's hatred. As the future Empress, she had a right to know." Her voice filled with bitterness. "I told her the story of the genius we were. And the fool you became."
"We?" he repeated, a sad smile on his face. "No, Shuyin. You were always the genius. You were the one with the patience, the discipline. I just had… a shortcut."
"A shortcut that was taking you to the top of the world!" she exclaimed, standing up. "A shortcut that would have made you a Transcendent Saint! And you traded it for wine and brothels!"
"Brothels are expensive, and good wine is even harder to find," he said lightly, trying to defuse her anger with his usual indifference. "A man must have his priorities."
"Priorities?" she repeated, her voice trembling with a fury she had been suppressing for years. "Your priorities were to drag our family's name through the mud? To abandon your duty? To leave your younger brother—a man who idolized you—with a crown that's far too big for him?"
He looked at her, and for an instant, the lazy facade vanished, revealing an abyss of weariness. "That man you remember with such… passion, Shuyin, is dead. He died a long time ago in the Chamber of Legacy. I am merely the ghost who drinks his wine."
That was the last straw. The indifference. The disdain for the memory of the man she had admired. The dam broke.
With a swift, furious motion, her Empress facade shattered. She lunged at him and slapped him across the face. She used no Qi; it wasn't a cultivator's strike. It was a purely human blow, charged with two decades of frustration, pain, and contained rage. The sharp crack of palm against cheek echoed in the silent room like thunder.
The blow was hard enough to snap his head to the side. A thin line of blood welled at the corner of his lip.
He didn't react. He didn't move. He only slowly turned his head to look at her again, his expression empty, unreadable. And it was that lack of reaction that completely destroyed her.
Tears, held at bay for years, finally broke free, carving hot tracks through her perfect makeup. With a choked sob, she began to beat his chest with her closed fists. Her blows were weak, useless against his body, mere explosions of her helpless pain. "Traitor!" she sobbed, each word a tear in her throat. "Liar! Selfish bastard!"
Her blows continued, a pathetic rain against a stone wall. "I admired you! Did you know that? I believed in you! In Prince Wei Feng! I was the only one who defended you before the council of Elders when you said you would refine the Founder's Decree! I told them it wasn't arrogance, it was destiny! I told them you were destined to lead this empire to a glory we couldn't even imagine!"
Tears now streamed freely down her face, ruining the Empress's mask. "You taught me to cultivate! Have you forgotten? Every foundation! Every meridian! You held my hand and guided the Qi through my body when I was just a girl! The man I admired most in this world was you! Not my father, not your father! It was you! My master! My guide!"
Her voice broke on a heart-wrenching sob. "So why? Why did you have to throw it all away? For a whim? Out of boredom? Why did you have to break the only figure I ever yearned to become?"
Her final confession came out in a torrent of bitterness and self-loathing. "And now I have to live with him! With your brother! A frustrated, mediocre fool who spends every day of his life trying to be a cheap imitation of you! He dresses like you used to dress! He tries to speak with the wisdom you had! He tries to rule with the authority you effortlessly radiated! And it's pathetic! He disgusts me! It disgusts me to see his fruitless attempt to be a man he will never, ever be like!"
She looked up, her eyes filled with a wild desperation. "That's why I'm so hard on Yao'er! Don't you see? I don't want her to end up like you! I don't want another genius of the Wei family to drown in their own whims! I couldn't bear to see that history repeat itself!"
He let her vent. He endured the blows and the tears without a word. When her fists finally lost all their strength and her sobs quieted into a silent tremor, he acted.
With a gentleness that betrayed his reputation, he softly caught her hands. He lifted them to his lips and tenderly kissed her reddened knuckles. "Some fates are already written, Shuyin," he whispered, his voice stripped of all irony.
His gaze fell upon the heavy gold and jade ring on her ring finger: the imperial marriage ring. With infinite delicacy, he slid his fingers over hers and took it off. "This," he said, holding the ring between his fingers, "is the symbol of an alliance. Of a duty. Not of the woman I knew."
He dropped the ring. The sound of metal on marble was small, almost insignificant, but in the silence of the room, it sounded like the end of an era.
He guided her, docile and drained, to a corner of the room where a sandalwood and crystal music box rested—an object she hadn't touched in years. An old gift from him. He turned the small crank, and a melancholy, painfully familiar melody filled the room: the song he had taught her to play on the guqin when they were young.
He took one of her hands and placed the other firmly on the curve of her waist, drawing her to him. They began to dance. A slow, measured dance, their feet moving across the marble to the rhythm of memories. She, emotionally and physically exhausted, allowed herself to be led without resistance, resting her head on his shoulder, inhaling his scent of wine and something else, something that was uniquely him.
As they danced, he spoke in whispers, his breath warm in her ear. "I remember when I taught you this song. You got angry because your fingers were too small to reach the notes…"
With his free hand, he removed the heavy dragon hairpin from her hair. The black cascade fell over her shoulders, releasing the tension from her neck. "Stop pretending, Shuyin," he whispered. "This rigidity… this armor of ice… it's not you."
His fingers moved to the collar of her royal tunic. With deliberate slowness, he unfastened the first jade button. Then the second. The high collar that choked her relaxed. He untied the heavy sash at her waist, the last piece of her imperial armor, allowing her to breathe freely for the first time all night. She didn't protest. She was a broken doll in his arms, being disassembled piece by piece by the only man who knew how.
The dance stopped. He lifted her face tenderly, his thumbs wiping the last traces of tears from her cheeks. Their gazes met, and in his eyes, there was no longer any laziness, only an unfathomable depth.
And then, he kissed her.
It wasn't a kiss of fiery passion, but one of deep and longed-for familiarity. It was a kiss that tasted of three-hundred-year-old wine, of lost memories, and of a yearning that had survived two decades of distance and duty.
Her response was instant and proactive. She kissed him back with a desperation that had been repressed for years, her hands clinging to him, her body pressing against his, trying to erase the years of loneliness and frustration.
They parted slightly, their foreheads resting against each other, their ragged breaths mingling in the air. His lips brushed her ear as he whispered the phrase that would change everything. The one that answered her question of decades and promised a future she had never believed possible. "You wept for a fallen genius, my dear Shuyin…" his tone was impossibly tender, almost a caress. "How foolish."
He paused, letting the weight of his next words strike her with their full force.
"Tonight, don't mourn the man I was. Allow me to show you… the god I have become."