Zhao Mingyan took her wrist and began applying ointment to her palm and fingertips.
Ji Qingwu said, "Under the rocks… there was a young soldier. He was trying to protect a sack of millet seeds and was gravely injured. I just couldn't…"
As she spoke, her voice filled with genuine sorrow.
Ji Qingwu's voice choked with a sob. "No matter what I did, I couldn't save him."
Zhao Mingyan placed the vial back in the medicine box, rose, and sat beside her. He wrapped a long arm around her, pulling her into his embrace, his hand gently stroking her back.
His voice was deep. "You did your best."
Being comforted by someone—and by Emperor Wu Su, no less—made Ji Qingwu's sobs impossible to contain.
"If… if it weren't for that fallen pillar, I might have… I could have saved him…"
Her crystalline tears fell like pearls from a broken string, striking Zhao Mingyan's Xuan Armor one after another. Moistened by her sorrow, the dragon scale pattern glistened in the faint light.
