Wish You All the Best - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The late autumn season was in full bloom when Jiafu was forced to be buried alive with the Emperor. She remembered it clearly: the garden in the Golden Jade Palace was a tapestry of hibiscus flowers, their vibrant colors looking like a cloud of neon mist suspended in mid-air from afar.

She also remembered that afternoon with absolute clarity.

She had not seen the Emperor for several days. The palace servants whispered that Empress Zhang had been tirelessly attending to him by his bedside, refusing to even unrobe to sleep.

When she entered the inner chambers, she saw Empress Zhang with swollen eyelids and a haggard expression. Before leaving, the Empress told her that the Emperor had summoned her and instructed her to serve him well.

The Empress’s tone was gentle and warm, just as it had always been.

Between the layers of bright yellow silk curtains hung a bitter, pungent scent—a mixture of spices and medicinal herbs. The windows were tightly sealed; the light in the depths of the palace was dim and oppressive, as if a great shadow had enveloped her entire being.

Jiafu gazed at the man on the dragon bed named Xiao Yintang. She had been kneeling there for half the time it takes an incense stick to burn.

In the span of barely ten years, the imperial power of the Great Wei had shifted four times. Reign titles had changed from Tianxi to Chengning, Yongxi, and finally to Zhaoping, the era of the late Emperor Shizong. In between, there had been wars—the changes were indeed frequent. However, starting from the late Emperor’s reign, the internal turmoil of Great Wei had been completely quelled, national strength had grown increasingly robust, and the people’s livelihood had stabilized. After Xiao Yintang took the throne from his father, Shizong, the northern borderlands grew restless again. The new Emperor, filled with ambition, had disregarded the desperate pleas and obstructions of his ministers in the second year of his reign to lead a personal expedition against the Turks. Although the campaign was eventually won, it was a bitter victory. He had been accidentally injured, and after returning to the capital, his condition deteriorated. The imperial physicians were at their wits' end, and now, grim rumors had begun to circulate in the shadows.

Xiao Yintang had been in a deep, fitful sleep when suddenly, his hands rose into the air, flailing wildly as if struggling against an invisible enemy.

His eyes remained closed, but his brows were knit tightly together. His expression was one of agony and terror, cold sweat constantly beading on his forehead; it appeared as though he were being tortured by some horrific nightmare.

Jiafu hurriedly scrambled up, moved closer, and grasped his ice-cold, sweat-drenched hands.

"Your Majesty, wake up—"

The next moment, she was violently shoved aside by the Emperor. She fell hard onto the floor, but ignoring the pain, she climbed up and leaned in again, only to hear him let out a few garbled, incoherent mutters.

"You An! You An! Is this the retribution you’ve brought upon me? Let me go! Don't blame me! If you must blame someone, blame the late Emperor! All of it was his sin—"

Xiao Yintang’s throat rattled, as if a pair of invisible hands were strangling him, making it difficult for him to breathe.

Jiafu’s heart hammered against her ribs. In his nightmare, Xiao Yintang continued to ramble, but his tone shifted.

"I am the Emperor! I am the Emperor of the Great Wei! Pei You'an, I do not fear you! You were never meant to live in this world to begin with! Even if you have turned into a ghost, what can you possibly do to me!"

He gritted his teeth, his face twisted in a snarl. His flailing hand happened to grab Jiafu’s wrist, his fingers clamping down instantly. His teeth ground together, and in an instant, it felt as though all the remaining strength from his dream had been concentrated into his grip.

Jiafu felt as if her wrist bone were about to be crushed. Enduring the searing pain, she called out to him again.

Xiao Yintang finally awoke. He opened his eyes wide, drenched in cold sweat, his gaze fixing intently on Jiafu, who stood by his side.

Jiafu’s face was slightly pale. After looking at him for a moment, she offered a faint smile: "Your Majesty, it is me..."

Xiao Yintang released her wrist, his arm falling limply to his side.

Jiafu wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

He looked deathly pale. After closing his eyes for a moment, he asked in a weak voice: "A-Fu, did you hear what I said in my dream just now?"

Jiafu’s hand, holding the handkerchief, paused for a heartbeat.

Pei You'an was the eldest son of the Duke of Wei’s estate. Born with a frail constitution, he was sickly from a young age, yet he possessed transcendent talent and a photographic memory. He passed the imperial examinations at fourteen. The then-Emperor Tianxi had been very fond of him and broke protocol by appointing him as an attendant in the Hongwen Pavilion. He was known by the epithet, "The Scholar-Official, the Young Prime Minister." The late Emperor Shizong had also held him in high regard. Three years ago, he died while serving as the Jiedushi of Anxi. He never married and was not yet thirty years old at the time of his passing.

It was said that on the night before he died in Suye City, his old illness flared up. He vomited blood into a basin, yet when he received his subordinates who had come to visit, he remained composed, chatting and laughing as if nothing were wrong. He remarked that he had lived his whole life alongside medicine and had been predicted to die before the age of ten; having survived until then, he had already borrowed twenty extra years from the heavens, and thus had no regrets in death.

When the news of Pei’s death in that lonely frontier city reached the capital, it was said that the late Emperor Shizong was so overcome with grief that he fainted on the spot.

After his death, he was not interred in the Pei family’s ancestral tomb. Instead, in accordance with his own final wishes, he was buried outside the city of Suye. The soldiers and civilians wept so loudly the heavens shook, and for half a month, they refused to disperse. The late Emperor Shizong broke imperial protocol to bestow upon him the title of Prince of Anxi, granting him the utmost honor and mourning for his funeral rites.

In terms of lineage, Pei You'an and Jiafu were cousins, but aside from an accidental encounter many years prior, they had never had any real contact.

"I did not hear anything."

She replied, continuing to wipe the sweat from his brow.

Xiao Yintang let out a long breath. After closing his eyes for another moment, his expression grew calmer. He gently took hold of Jiafu’s hand and said, "A-Fu, I love you more than my own life. From the first moment I saw you, I have held you in the very center of my heart. All these years, apart from failing to give you an official title, I dare say I have pampered you to the absolute limit. I am about to depart, and I have made arrangements for all matters following my death. As for your maternal family, I have also made provisions. The only thing I cannot bear to leave is you..."

"When I am gone, would you be willing to follow me?"

He slowly opened his eyes and turned his head to look at her.

His face was grey and white, with a faint greenish hue at his temples—a subtle, dying aura cloaking what had once been a handsome countenance.

Jiafu knelt, half-sitting, as she gazed into the eyes of the Emperor that were locked onto her own.

"Why, are you unwilling to accompany me any further?"

He asked, a half-smile playing on his lips.

"Your Majesty, I am willing."

She pulled back her hand and instead prostrated herself toward the direction of the dragon bed, her forehead touching the ground. She remained kneeling, unable to rise.

"Come closer to me." He reached out to her once more, using his final bit of strength to hold her tightly, and heaved a long sigh. In that sigh lay endless regret and unwillingness.

"I fear the silence of the underground palace. Once I am gone, there will be no one left to understand me or bring me comfort. I fear even more that if I leave and you remain in this world alone, you will be left helpless and destitute. It is better for you to go with me; only then can I be at peace."

"A-Fu, do not blame me. If there is a next life, I will certainly grant you the position of Empress..."

His lips were pressed against her ear, whispering murmurs filled with tenderness.

...

In the autumn of the second year of Shenguang, the Emperor of Great Wei, Xiao Yintang, who had been on the throne for less than two years, passed away in the prime of his life. His posthumous title was Dunzong.

"Dun" meant to be sincere and harmonious with one’s kin. "Dun" also meant to be steadfast and firm in cultivating virtue.

Just as this posthumous title highlighted the virtues of an emperor, Xiao Yintang had left behind a final decree that was praised by all before his death.

He stated that he could not bear the thought of human sacrifice, and thus, after his departure, all concubines were exempted from being buried with him, to be allowed instead to live out the rest of their lives in peace.

Since the early dynasties, there had been a palace rule that if an emperor died, his childless concubines must be buried with him—some instances involving a few, others hundreds. The Great Wei had inherited this old system. Xiao Yintang was barely over thirty when he died suddenly; to the women of the harem, this was like a bolt from the blue. They had been weeping day and night, waiting only for the time to hang themselves and follow him into the underground palace. They had never imagined that the Emperor would pardon them. While they were still destined to grow old in the cold loneliness of the palace, compared to being forced to die, being able to live was still a blessing. Everyone was filled with gratitude, and their wailing before the spirit tablet was exceptionally sincere.

But none of this mattered to Jiafu anymore.

She had already become indifferent to joy or sorrow, accepting this preordained fate.

Her entire life had been like duckweed without roots. After giving herself to Xiao Yintang, she had no status or name, living in the shadows. Ending up like this was not beyond her expectations.

However, what awaited her was not the three feet of white silk she had expected.

The newly promoted Empress Dowager Zhang ordered her to be nailed inside that expensive golden silk-nanmu coffin, which had been prepared specifically for her, to be buried in the underground palace with the late Emperor as a companion.

"The late Emperor ordered me to take good care of you and your Zhen family. You may rest assured and follow the late Emperor; I will certainly not fail the trust he placed in me."

Empress Dowager Zhang no longer displayed her usual magnanimity. Staring at her, she spoke each word with unconcealed, hateful venom.

The heavy coffin lid was lowered, and the final trace of light was squeezed out.

Jiafu’s world turned to total darkness. She was sealed forever in this narrow, cramped space beneath the palace, never to return to the world above.

There was no struggle, no crying out. She knew that whether she struggled or screamed, it was all in vain.

This was her destination; it was fated.

Her life was not her own, her marriage was not her own, and even her death was not her own.

The air grew thinner and thinner. Her chest burned with the pain of being unable to breathe. In the long, agonizing torture of dying, her fingernails began to scratch uncontrollably at the coffin walls she could touch, leaving deep marks on the hard, gold-touched wood.

Only then did she realize that she, too, feared death—and the boundless, dark oppression from beneath the earth that accompanied death, something impossible to imagine while still among the living.

She realized that she actually wanted to live—to go on living, no matter how difficult, she wanted to keep on living.

But it was too late. In this life, she had reached the end. Her journey had come to this conclusion.

If she hadn’t married her second cousin back then, and if she hadn’t met Xiao Yintang later, what would her life have looked like?

She began to weep, tears streaming down her face, but weeping only consumed more air, plunging her into even greater agony.

Bizarre hallucinations began to flicker before her eyes. At the very edge of the light and shadow, in a hazy trance, she seemed to see a man walking through the endless darkness of the underground palace, walking toward her with a smile.

She recognized him; it was her father.

Many years ago, when she was only thirteen, her father had set sail. She had accompanied him to the port, and before he stepped onto the deck, he promised her that on this voyage, he would definitely bring back a necklace made of purple mermaid pearls for her.

Purple mermaid pearls were produced in distant, exotic lands. Not only did they glow at night, but legend said they brought good fortune. For those who traveled the seas, to encounter them was to be lucky.

"Once you wear it, Daddy’s A-Fu will be smooth and steady for the rest of her life, free from illness and disaster."

Her father’s appearance and smile from that time were still fresh in her mind.

But after that voyage, he had never returned.

"A-Fu, Daddy is back. I brought you the necklace. Do you like it?"

In her father’s gaze as he looked at her was endless love.

"Daddy—"

Jiafu smiled as she wept, reaching out toward him, calling for her father—the man who had once loved her most in this world.

The last precious breath of air escaped her lungs. Her hands, with their broken, bleeding fingernails, slowly and powerlessly fell from the air to rest upon her soft, warm chest, a smile lingering on her lips.