The Prisoner of Beauty - Chapter 160

Chapter 160

Wei Shao remained in Dongjun for several days.

It was not until Lei Yan sought him out, saying that the military strategist could not wait for the lord's return to Luoyang as scheduled, and that they had previously known the lord was personally escorting the Lady back to Dongjun, that he had sent someone to inquire about the date of his return.

As night fell, Xiao Qiao returned to her room to find Wei Shao lying flat on the bed. Feifei was quietly sprawled across his father's chest, her little head pressed firmly against his chin, and her tiny hands and feet draped over his chest and abdomen.

Wei Shao had his eyes closed, his palm resting gently on Feifei’s back, looking as if he, too, had fallen asleep.

During the day, the family of three had gone out in plain clothes to enjoy themselves. Feifei had been laughing and playing, and must have been exhausted by the end of the day. Xiao Qiao had just finished bathing her and left the father and daughter in the room while she went out with Madam Ding and Chunniang to prepare the dry rations and clothing the party would need for their departure the next day. As soon as she had finished organizing everything, she returned to the room only to find the two of them had simply fallen asleep like that.

Xiao Qiao approached on tiptoe, only then seeing that Feifei had her little mouth slightly open in her sleep, with a thread of saliva hanging from the corner of her lips. It had already dripped onto Wei Shao's lapel, wetting it and leaving a damp patch.

Xiao Qiao wanted to take Feifei away, but Wei Shao suddenly opened his eyes. He straightened his neck, lifted his head slightly to look at the sleeping Feifei on his chest, and made a gesture of silence toward her.

Xiao Qiao was startled, realizing then that he hadn't been asleep at all; he had likely remained lying still just because he was afraid of waking his daughter. She shook her head, bent down to gently scoop up Feifei, and passed her into the arms of Chunniang, who had followed her in.

Chunniang carried Feifei out to rest. Xiao Qiao turned and saw Wei Shao still lying there, watching her. She walked over and sat down beside him, took a handkerchief, wiped the saliva stain from his lapel, and said softly, "The things and rations for the road tomorrow have all been prepared for you. We must leave early, so get some rest soon."

Wei Shao gave a soft grunt and took her hand in his.

The night grew deep.

Outside, no one knew when, a light, intermittent night rain had begun to fall.

It was already late autumn, yet this year's weather had been somewhat abnormal; at this moment, there was even the faint, distant rumble of thunder in the sky.

The candlelight in the room was bright, and it was her husband’s solid arms that were wrapped around her.

Amidst the distant rolls of thunder, Xiao Qiao burrowed deeper into her husband’s embrace. Just as she had found a comfortable position and was closing her eyes, her cheek pressed against his burning chest, she suddenly heard him say by her ear, "Manman, there is something I have always wanted to know. But you never told me the whole story before. I am leaving tomorrow, and I want you to tell me now."

"Hmm?"

Xiao Qiao was already quite sleepy; she closed her eyes and gave a drowsy, indistinct response.

"I have heard you mention your nightmares in front of me twice. I want to know, what exactly are these nightmares of yours?"

Xiao Qiao opened her eyes.

Wei Shao did not seem to be asleep at all; he was looking down slightly, his dark eyes fixed upon her.

"The first time I learned of your nightmares was when I sent troops to Yanzhou and you came to tell me that it was because of a terrible nightmare that you had been guarding against me all along. You said that in your nightmare, I, driven by hatred, annihilated your Qiao family. The second time was when I saw with my own eyes that you were trapped by a nightmare, crying until you couldn't wake up. After I woke you, you said a man wearing a dragon robe was killing you with a sword."

He paused for a moment, as if recalling the scene at the time.

"Manman, this likely isn't everything in your nightmare. I want to know it all. Tell me, and please don't hide anything else, all right?"

"Who was the man in the dragon robe who wanted to kill you?"

"Was it me?"

He asked three times in a row.

Xiao Qiao stared at him. At first, she said nothing, but finally, she slowly shook her head.

"It was not you."

"Then who was it?"

Xiao Qiao bit her lip and fell into silence.

"What is going on? I want you to tell me everything!"

Xiao Qiao closed her eyes.

Suddenly, his lips felt heavy as he pressed against her, kissing her for a moment before moving to her ear.

"Manman, I have always had a feeling that you are too deeply trapped in that nightmare, unable to extricate yourself. Otherwise, you never would have guarded yourself against me to such a degree before. Tell me, don't hold anything back, and you don't need any reservations."

"I want you to tell me everything! Who exactly was that person?"

Xiao Qiao's eyelids fluttered slightly. She slowly opened her eyes and met his gaze.

After hesitating for a while, she finally mustered the courage and said softly, "It was Liu Yan."

Wei Shao's eyes narrowed slightly, a shadow flickering across them. He tightened his arms around her, pulling her even closer to him.

"Tell me everything."

Xiao Qiao took a long breath. "My husband, do you really want to hear it? You won't regret it?"

"Speak!" Just that one word.

Xiao Qiao gazed at him, and finally, she began to speak slowly. "A very long time ago, I don't know why, but I began to have a recurring dream. The dream was clear and coherent. Every time I woke up, I had the feeling that it wasn't an illusion, but rather that I was repeating the experiences of my past life over and over again... Just as you said, I was deeply troubled and completely unable to break free..."

"In that past life of my dreams, the Wei and Qiao families also formed a marriage alliance, but the one who married you was not me, but my elder sister. After she married you, she never won your favor; you loathed and neglected her for a lifetime. Only Grandmother treated her with genuine affection, but unfortunately, Grandmother passed away the very year she married into the Wei family..."

Wei Shao was shocked; his brow twitched, as if he wanted to say something, but he held back.

"From then on, my sister had no one to rely on and lived out her life in loneliness. In my dream, you took the Su woman as a concubine, and later, you became Emperor. During those years, my Qiao family members were killed by you one after another, and in the end, only my younger brother remained. Not long after you ascended the throne, my sister died in illness and solitude, and then you installed the Su woman as Empress..."

When Xiao Qiao recounted this, her tone was calm.

But Wei Shao's expression turned extraordinarily ugly. He stared at her fixedly, his gaze filled with deep, profound disbelief and immense disgust.

"Tell me about yourself. What about you? Did you marry Liu Yan?"

After a long while, he finally seemed to struggle to suppress his emotions as he asked, his voice tight, like a string ready to snap at the slightest tug.

"Yes."

Xiao Qiao nodded.

"I married Liu Yan according to the marriage contract. Later, when the Han Dynasty fell, he, too, was supported by a group of loyalists as the puppet emperor of a minor court, just as in this life, and I became his Empress. But not long after, you chased him down and besieged the city. My younger brother died protecting me as I tried to escape. At the very last moment, when you were about to break through the city gates, Liu Yan killed his harem in despair. I swore to live and die with him, so he killed me, stabbing a sword through my heart..."

Xiao Qiao closed her eyes, then opened them again.

"This was the final scene of the dream of my past life. It is this scene that has recurred over and over in my dreams ever since, leaving me completely unable to escape it."

She finished speaking and looked at Wei Shao.

Wei Shao’s hand was gripping her arm tightly, unconsciously, and he squeezed harder and harder until she felt the pain.

The veins on both sides of his forehead bulged slightly like earthworms, and his grim gaze fixed upon her for a long time.

"So that is why you were restless day and night, and from then on, you looked upon me as a venomous snake?"

He seemed to realize he was hurting her, letting go with a touch of haste, but then asked slowly.

Xiao Qiao sighed softly.

"I hadn't even met you yet at that time. Even in the dream, I never faced you face-to-face..."

She raised her hand, her warm fingertips trailing softly along his rigid face, as if to soothe his emotions.

Wei Shao’s expression finally relaxed somewhat.

"It’s just that this dream was too real. I couldn't help but be influenced by it, but I couldn't tell anyone. I could only bury it in my heart and hope it was just a dream. It wasn't until that year, when Zhou Qun of Rencheng mobilized his troops to attack Yanzhou, that I realized my dream might be real, when my uncle decided to marry my sister to you in an attempt to curry favor with you."

"Because events similar to those in my dream were about to happen."

"I was terrified. I knew I had to stop things from continuing the way they did in my dream. That is why I went to great lengths to finally persuade my sister and Bizhi to leave home. At the time, I thought that without my sister, the marriage couldn't take place, and my uncle would have to follow my father’s strategy to form an alliance to fight Zhou Qun together. I didn't expect my uncle to be so helplessly cowardly that he would come up with the idea of breaking my marriage contract with Liu Yan and having me replace my sister to marry you. Caught in a dilemma, through a twist of fate, I entered your Wei family's gates and became husband and wife with you."

"Husband, you should remember that in the first year of our marriage, after the Luli Assembly, Grandmother fell ill, and you happened to be leaving for Bingzhou to fight a war. Before you left, I tried to persuade you to stay in every way possible. In truth, I was just afraid that Grandmother would meet with the same misfortune I knew of in my dream. Fortunately, Grandmother survived. It was after this incident that I saw the hope of changing the dream-prophecy. However, the shadow cast by that dream was too deep. I still didn't dare to lower my guard, which led to my persuasion of my father to strengthen his military, which provoked your great anger..."

Xiao Qiao’s voice grew soft.

"And you know everything that happened later, husband..."

Wei Shao’s gaze remained fixed on her face.

The light in the tent suddenly dimmed. The candles had burned out, and after a few final flickers, the room plunged into darkness.

"Husband..."

After a long silence, she called his name.

"That night, you told me you were lucky to have married me. You didn't know that for me, being able to marry you in this lifetime was also a stroke of good fortune, wasn't it?"

In the darkness, Wei Shao remained silent. Suddenly, he pulled her into a tight embrace, with such force that it felt as if he wanted to crush her and embed her into his own flesh. Xiao Qiao could feel his heart pounding violently.

She closed her eyes and remained motionless.

...

The night was deep; she didn't know how late it was.

Rumble—

Another roll of thunder echoed across the distant sky.

Xiao Qiao instinctively shrank toward the side of the bed, but the place her hand touched was empty. Damp night air seemed to pour in through the window, stirring the tent curtains.

She opened her eyes abruptly. By the flash of a blue bolt of lightning sweeping across the night sky, she saw a figure standing in front of the window against the wind and rain, their back looking extremely heavy.

Xiao Qiao slowly sat up, lifted the tent curtains being moved by the night wind, and walked behind Wei Shao.

A gust of night rain was swept into the window by the wind, drenching the windowsill and spraying onto Wei Shao.

His clothes were half-wet, clinging tightly to him. The skin she touched was icy cold, as if he had been soaking in water.

She had no idea how long he had been standing there.

Xiao Qiao hugged him from behind, pressing her cheek against his broad back.

"Manman, in that past life of your dream, Grandmother should have been gone by now? Or was she harmed by the Su woman? And I, not only deceived by her, but took her as a concubine and even installed her as Empress?"

He asked suddenly. His voice sounded ethereal, like someone sleepwalking.

Xiao Qiao remained silent.

"And you were not my wife; you married Liu Yan. You and I were nothing but strangers, and my only relationship with you was that in the end, forced by me, you died under his sword?"

Wei Shao slowly turned around. His face was hidden in the darkness of the night, and she could not see his expression.

She could only hear a voice that was hoarse beyond measure, revealing a heavy bitterness.

Xiao Qiao sighed softly. She wrapped her slender arms around his neck, pressed her warm, dry body against his cold, damp chest, stood on tiptoe, and pressed her lips against his cold, rain-kissed ones, bestowing a deep kiss upon him.

"Husband, I didn't say anything before because I didn't want to cause you unnecessary distress. Even if that was truly a past life, it has all passed; it was just an illusion. Everything in the present is the reality..."

Another flash of lightning passed outside the window, illuminating their faces.

Wei Shao’s face was covered in rainwater, looking ghastly pale, his eyes glowing dimly, as if emitting a blue light.

By the sudden, brief light of the lightning, he stared intently at Xiao Qiao’s face. Suddenly, he cupped her head in both hands and kissed her back forcefully.

The blue light of the lightning receded rapidly, and the room plunged into darkness once again.

Accompanied by the successive rumbles of thunder overhead, he used movements so impatient they were almost rude to undo her upper garments. He kissed her greedily and hurriedly used his palms to stroke every inch of her warm skin, which belonged only to him, Wei Shao.

Soon, his cold, damp skin began to heat up, and his blood began to boil.

He could not imagine to what extent he must have been blinded to have made the Su woman Empress.

He could not imagine even more that she had once married Liu Yan and been a stranger to him, until the very moment of her death, in her eyes, he was nothing more than a terrifying, unrecognizable avenger.

Even if that was only a so-called past life existing in her dream, he found it impossible to accept.

He simply could not accept it.

Gripped tightly by unwillingness, shame, and a deep sense of lingering fear, his breathing quick and ragged, he suddenly pushed her down onto a table by the window. He tore away his own restraints and, like a hungry glutton, pressed down upon her.

He had not yet finished his hundred days of mourning for his mother, but at this moment, there was nothing that could not be cast aside.

There was only one thought left in his heart: he had to possess her, right at this moment.

Only by possessing her, and by feeling the reality of her body trapped beneath his, could he convince himself that the things he had finally asked about tonight were all just a nightmare of hers!

"Husband—ah—"

A trembling cry escaped Xiao Qiao’s throat, but before the sound could fade, it was masked by a roll of thunder passing overhead.

The night rain fell softly, the wind flapping against the open window, battering the damp window lattice. From time to time, lightning flashed across the dark night sky. Amidst the ceaseless thunder, Wei Shao was almost fanatical, stealing every inch of her skin, repeatedly and wantonly possessing her, making her swallow him, breaking her heart and liver, devouring her blood and marrow, and entering her very soul.

The long night finally reached dawn; the thunder dissipated, the rain stopped, and the sky cleared.

Xiao Qiao’s cheeks were flushed, her entire body covered in the pitiful little marks left by her husband’s cruel love the previous night. Exhausted and lying on the pillow, she was fast asleep when she was forcibly awakened.

She opened her eyes with a touch of confusion. By the morning light in the room, she saw that Wei Shao had already gotten up. Dressed neatly, with a long sword hanging at his waist, he looked full of spirit as he watched her from the side.

It all came back to her instantly; she hurried to support herself to rise, but was gently pressed back onto the pillow by him.

"Manman, I am leaving now. You need not see me off; stay home in peace. When I return to pick you up next time, the world will surely belong to the Great Yan. You will be my Wei Shao’s Empress, the true Empress of all the world."

He leaned over, kissed her forehead lovingly, and whispered into her ear.

Although his voice was low, every word was hidden with strength.