Wish You All the Best - Chapter 62

Chapter 62

"Why, are you unwilling to accompany me to the end?"

The man's handsome face was layered with the grayish-white pallor of one nearing death. His gaze, cold and detached, fell upon the peerless beauty kneeling before the dragon bed.

Among the three thousand beauties in the imperial harem, she was the only one he truly favored.

"Your Majesty, your servant is willing."

The woman replied, her forehead pressed against the ground, remaining in a long, prostrate kneel.

A look of relief appeared on the man’s face. Using his final reserves of strength, he pulled her into his embrace. Filled with boundless lingering regret and resentment, he murmured to her, "Afu, do not blame me. If there is an afterlife, I will surely grant you the position of Empress."

……

Xiao Yiang let out a sharp cry and bolted upright from his bed, his eyes snapping open. He was drenched in cold sweat, his hands trembling violently from sheer terror.

"Crown Prince, whatever is the matter?"

A concubine sleeping beside him was startled awake. She scrambled up in a panic, kneeling to the side and gazing at him with fearful, uneasy eyes.

Ever since the incident involving the Cao family, the Crown Prince’s temperament had become increasingly gloomy and erratic. The Crown Princess had been ill and had not yet recovered, rarely showing her face. It was rumored that the Eastern Palace was haunted; from the room where the Cao woman had once lived, chilling cries could sometimes be heard in the dead of night. Neither eunuchs nor palace maids dared to approach, and everyone was already living in fear. To make matters worse, the Crown Prince’s uncle had suffered a downfall half a month ago, leading to further reprimands from the Emperor. In private, the Crown Prince had become even more irritable and prone to violent outbursts.

Xiao Yiang turned his head abruptly and glanced at the half-naked woman beside him. Disgust flashed in his eyes as he uttered a curt, "Get out!"

The concubine felt as though she had received a pardon. Not even bothering to dress properly, she snatched her clothes to haphazardly cover her chest and scrambled off the bed, fleeing the room in a hurry.

It was only the fourth watch, the deepest moment of the night.

Xiao Yiang lay back down slowly and closed his eyes, but sleep had completely deserted him.

In his mind, the scene from the previous day flashed before him.

Yesterday, the Lady Pan—mother of the royal clansman, Prince of He-Yang—had passed away. The court had suspended official business for a day in observance of the imperial obituary, and the Emperor had granted funds for the funeral. Xiao Yiang had gone to pay his respects and had caught a glimpse of the women from the Duke of Wei’s manor from a distance.

Among them was the woman from his dreams: the Lady Zhen.

Since his return from Quanzhou last year, Xiao Yiang had begun to dream of this daughter of the Zhen family from time to time.

The dreams were very strange. At first, they were merely fragmented and disjointed. He would dream of being intimate with her, craving both her body and her gentle innocence.

This was nothing unusual, for he had been captivated by this Zhen girl ever since he had abducted her in a carriage to spirit her out of the city that day. Thoughts by day became dreams by night.

But gradually, as the dreams recurred, he vaguely began to realize that he seemed to be experiencing a different life—one that mirrored his current reality yet differed in significant ways.

In this current world, she was married to Pei Youan, the only person in the world he truly feared.

Yet in those dreams, she had first been married to Pei Xiuzhi, only to be seized by him, Xiao Yiang, and turned into his captive. It was not until two years after he ascended the throne that, due to his reckless personal campaign against the Hu nomads, he had suffered a fatal, untreatable injury. Before he died, he could not bear to part with her and had forced her to follow him in death as a funerary sacrifice.

Everything ended abruptly there.

This dream, which felt like a life lived in another world, had been vague at first. He had tried to grasp it and see it clearly, but it had always been shrouded in a thick mist.

But tonight, after waking from that dream once more, he finally grasped everything with perfect clarity.

Pei Youan—from the moment he was a youth brought to Wuding by Xiao Lie—had planted the seeds of discord in Xiao Yiang’s heart.

Even then, he had known that he could never stand side-by-side with this man surnamed Pei, who was only a few years his senior, in the way his father expected.

There had been no conflict between them at that time. His hostility toward Pei Youan had been entirely a product of human nature.

Xiao Yiang was talented and, as the only son of the Prince’s manor, had been showered with favor, which had fostered an extremely conceited character in him.

He could not tolerate others outshining his own brilliance.

Pei Youan’s arrival had shattered all of that.

He was hailed as a "youthful statesman," and the reputation bestowed upon him by the world was not the least bit exaggerated. After arriving in Wuding and recovering from his injuries, he quickly displayed his extraordinary administrative talent. Later, his military prowess—revealed during the Wuding uprising and the wars against the Northern Hu—shone as brilliantly as the stars in the sky.

Xiao Yiang was certainly talented, but he could never surpass Pei Youan. Beside Pei Youan, he was destined to be eclipsed.

By the time Xiao Yiang ascended the throne, Pei Youan had been dead for several years, yet his prestige remained undiminished. In Suoye City, the shrines built by the people for him burned with incense day and night. On his birthday, people traveled from all corners of the land to burn incense, prostrating themselves before his statue and offering prayers for his blessings.

In the eyes of the people, the deceased Pei Youan had been deified, transforming into an idol capable of protecting their peace.

The reason Xiao Yiang had insisted on leading the personal campaign against the Hu nomads after his ascension, disregarding the advice of his ministers, was in large part driven by the intense, repressed psychological need to break free from having lived in another’s shadow for so long.

He was desperate to prove to his ministers and the world that he, Xiao Yiang, was not inferior to Pei Youan; he had simply lacked the opportunity before.

Beyond the jealousy and the feeling of having his talents wasted, Xiao Yiang was also deeply dissatisfied with the extraordinary attention and affection Xiao Lie lavished upon this outsider.

He even had a premonition that if Pei Youan were his father’s own son, his father would have cast him aside without a moment’s hesitation to install Pei Youan as the heir.

The seeds of jealousy and hatred took root and sprouted in the depths of his heart, day by day.

Xiao Yiang endured.

Then one day, an unexpected event occurred.

It was the second year of Xiao Lie’s reign. At that time, Pei Youan’s merits had placed him at the pinnacle of power, as high as a minister could go. Just as his influence reached its zenith, the Hu nomads raided the border. For some reason, he requested to leave the capital, taking the post of Jiedushi (Regional Military Commissioner) to guard the frontiers. In a flash, several years passed, and he never returned to the capital again.

This move shocked the entire court, including Xiao Yiang. Later, although news of his prowess in pacifying the North continued to reach the capital, causing Xiao Yiang occasional pangs of jealousy like needles in his heart, he was still able to suppress his emotions. That was until one day, he suddenly learned of a earth-shattering secret from his mother, the Empress Zhou.

Empress Zhou told him that perhaps it was because of this very secret that Pei Youan had chosen to leave the capital, and that the Emperor had been forced to let him go.

She warned Xiao Yiang not to think that just because Pei Youan had left, he could sleep soundly. This was a terrifying hidden threat. If the Emperor ever changed his mind, Xiao Yiang’s position as Crown Prince would be in grave jeopardy.

Xiao Yiang was jolted awake as if from a dream.

Years of suspicion and hatred flooded his heart completely at that moment.

He made a decision.

He knew that in the years since Pei Youan had gone to the frontier, his health had been poor, and he had been taking medication frequently.

Xiao Yiang planned in secret, sparing no effort. Six months later, he finally bribed a servant at the Jiedushi’s manor who had access to the kitchen and quietly slipped a colorless, odorless poison into Pei Youan’s medicine.

It was a winter night beyond the Great Wall; white grasses, yellow sands, and snow falling on the Jimen Pass. After that bowl of medicine was delivered to Pei Youan’s study, he did not drink it immediately as he usually did. Instead of burying himself in paperwork, he set down his brush and sat in silence before the candlelight for a long while.

The charcoal in the stove extinguished, and the cold air began to invade the room.

The servant was peeking from outside. According to his later description, Pei Youan’s expression was calm, as if he were lost in deep thought.

Years of exhausting administrative work or emotional depletion had left him lean and his face pale, like the white inner garment he wore that night—as desolate as the snow.

He sat still for a long time, until the bowl of medicine turned icy cold, losing all trace of warmth.

Finally, he cast his gaze upon the medicine. He stared at it for a long while, and just as the servant was terrified, thinking he had been discovered, Pei Youan picked up the bowl and drank it down in one gulp.

In the middle of that night, Pei Youan’s old illness relapsed, and he vomited blood in large mouthfuls. His subordinates rushed in upon hearing the news, sobbing and wailing. Yet he remained composed, continuing to talk and laugh as usual, until he passed away peacefully at dawn.

Xiao Yiang did not know what Pei Youan had realized at that moment—whether he had truly lost his will to live and sought death, or if he had accidentally consumed the poison and died vomiting blood.

That did not matter. What mattered was that in the world he experienced in his dreams, he had become the final winner just as he had wished.

The year after Pei Youan’s death, sensing the Emperor’s growing suspicion, Xiao Yiang orchestrated a meticulous palace coup to avoid further complications and successfully ascended the throne, becoming the new Emperor of Great Wei.

In his dream, his only miscalculation had been the personal campaign after ascending the throne. That single, incorrect decision had led to his premature death, leaving him with endless regret!

Xiao Yiang opened his eyes again and leaped from the bed. He strode to the window, threw his arms out, and pushed open the two heavy window panels of his sleeping chamber. Looking out at the pitch-black, infinite night sky, he let out a long, heavy breath, feeling as though all the previous depression and melancholy had vanished into thin air.

During the day, his father-in-law had told him in private that all he needed to do now was endure, meeting changes with constancy.

As long as the Emperor had no other sons and Xiao Yiang knew how to bide his time, the position of Crown Prince would never fall into the hands of another.

He was right. Xiao Yiang also knew that now was absolutely not the perfect time for a reckless move.

But this dream-like experience, as vivid as reality, had not only invigorated his spirit but acted as fertile soil for his ambition, leaving him with a sense of exhilaration as if he held the entire world in his grasp, seizing the advantage.

Compared to being a Crown Prince restrained by others, he craved the unique supremacy of the dream—the feeling of dominating the world from the heights of the throne.

He would indeed continue to endure, until the right moment arrived to strike; he would not miss his chance.

Once he successfully ascended the imperial throne, he would never repeat his past mistakes.

In his dreams, the Lady Zhen was within his reach. While he lived, she was his woman. In death, she would be his ghost.

In this current world, he was so far removed from her; just like their encounter today, she was a figure he could look upon but never attain.

But he knew she would be his sooner or later—this was fated.

Just like that lifetime in his dreams, he was the true Son of Heaven ordained by fate, and in the end, he obtained everything.

This life would be no different.

Of this, he was absolutely certain.