It was best if he slept twelve hours a day and stopped spouting his craziness in front of her.
Jiang Nong didn’t know when Yu Lingxin planned to poison her in this life. Before the poison came, she was jolted awake in the night by the sudden roar of an explosion.
Startled awake, she found Yu Lingxin also awake, lying there with half-closed eyes, still dazed. She forgot their two lifetimes of mutual animosity and slapped his face repeatedly, forcing him alert.
“Where did that blast come from? Will you wake up? Stop sleeping!”
“It should be Lingxuan Gate on the west side of the palace. That’s where the defenses are weakest—if someone were to storm the palace, that would be the best entry point. It’s how I got in back then.” Yu Lingxin spoke casually, as if it were none of his concern.
Jiang Nong was clearly more anxious than he was. She kept slapping his face: “It’s already blown up—will you wake up? You sleep like a pig.”
She couldn’t fathom his mind. He treated his own life like a game, indifferent to life and death—what could he possibly care about?
If possible, she still wanted to live. At least while alive, there was hope.
Yu Lingxin rolled over and said slowly, his voice hoarse: “It’s fine—go back to sleep. Maybe we’ll wake up with our heads chopped off, and we’ll be sent back to the past again. Next time, decide ahead of time whether to kill me or reform me… I think killing would be cleaner. That’s what I’d do.”
He was shockingly strong—easily pulling her into his arms, nuzzling her neck, and falling back asleep.
Jiang Nong lay awake, listening to the commotion outside, the shuffling footsteps of attendants, and began contemplating her fate—and how Yu Lingxin had turned Tan into the dominant power among the five kingdoms in her past life.
Her future now seemed even more precarious than before.
If this were a normal rebellion by a prince or a minister, as a marriage-alliance princess, even if she were married to Yu Lingxin, they wouldn’t dare harm her—afraid of offending Xi.
But Tan was in a special situation now—factions at war, conflicts unresolved, most still seeing Yu Lingxin as a weak puppet and vying for the throne.
Her death would be the best outcome for them. They could blame it on political rivals—eliminating the rival while offering Xi an explanation.
Once a daughter was married off for alliance, she wasn’t the most beloved. Xi only needed an explanation—a reasonable-looking one and some compensation.
Just as Yu Lingxin’s brush with death had once bought Tan gold and horses.
At this moment, she and Yu Lingxin were bound together in survival. If she died at anyone’s hands, and Yu Lingxin survived, Xi would demand accountability from him—after all, a husband’s failure to protect his wife was also a crime.
Jiang Nong frowned, biting her nail. This was different from her past life.
Yu Lingxin had been capable before—stabilizing the situation wouldn’t have been difficult. Unless he simply didn’t want to, if he was bent on dying, and Jiang Nong didn’t think that possibility was zero.
Yu Lingxin was slapped awake again—harder this time. He sat up, shook his head, and took a moment to clear the sleep. Perhaps too groggy to be his usual venomous self, he finally resigned himself and left.
Jiang Nong dressed, pinned her hair up simply, and instructed the Chief Eunuch to guard the vicinity of Xuan Shi Hall and reinforce the western side courts. The two side courts flanked Xuan Shi Hall and housed mostly women—the late emperor’s childless consorts and attendants. If rebels entered the palace, they’d go after them first.
The Chief Eunuch, a refined-looking middle-aged man named Tongye, spoke soothingly: “His Majesty foresaw this—Xuan Shi Hall is absolutely secure. Please rest assured, Your Highness.”
Not long after, the clash of weapons rose outside—two or three waves—and subsided within two quarters of an hour.
The refined Tongye then led the guards to clean up.
It wasn’t until dawn that Yu Lingxin returned. His black sleeves were stained with blood, wet and heavy. He brought a gust of metallic scent with each step. Jiang Nong asked what had happened.
He barely lifted his eyelids: “As you can see, Yu Lingxin is dead—the one who returned is a ghost. You’d better pack up and wait to die too.”
She recognized the jab at her blindness. Her expression fell, and she turned away.
The blast at Lingxuan Gate had been set off by his ninth uncle, the Prince of Xishan—his grandfather’s favorite son, never sent to a fief. Even during the late emperor’s reign, he’d been a troublemaker, heavily suppressed but still with a few sycophantic followers. The Golden Guard had trapped the Prince of Xishan outside the city, and he’d committed suicide on the spot. They’d severed his head and brought it back to the palace at full gallop, presenting it at court.
This dynasty held court every five days—conveniently, last night’s rebellion coincided perfectly, saving Yu Lingxin from an extra early rising.
Regular court sessions didn’t require much ceremony. In theory, Jiang Nong should have helped her husband dress—but she’d rather strap fireworks to him and blast him into the sky.
After returning, Yu Lingxin had barely slept and was still drowsy, his eyelids heavy and narrowed. He frowned as he adjusted his own robes. Jiang Nong sat by the window, doing her makeup. The bronze mirror reflected both her face and his figure clearly. She touched her eyelid, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
She tapped the table, drawing his attention: “Once, Minister Zheng asked the emperor: ‘Does Your Majesty know the signs of a dying kingdom?’”
Yu Lingxin knew the rest—that Minister Zheng had said laziness, exhaustion, and fear of court were the marks of a doomed ruler. Jiang Nong was clearly mocking his reluctance to attend court, as if the kingdom were about to fall.
He lifted his eyelids and replied: “Your father and brother are the signs of a dying kingdom.”
She couldn’t beat him at this. She grabbed the nearest rouge compact and hurled it at him. He sidestepped, picked it up, and tossed it back.
On the throne, Yu Lingxin showed no youthful vigor—he was mostly cold and listless, propping his chin up, watching the courtiers argue below, then having the Chief Eunuch call the session closed. Many ministers still looked down on him—a former hostage, lucky in his palace coup, protected by Grand Tutor Lü. How much of a force could he really be at his age?
But after last night’s rebellion at Lingxuan Gate, the ministers felt a new wariness. For once, the court was quiet.
The Prince of Xishan’s head was presented at court. The Golden Guard offered it to Yu Lingxin, who gave it a cursory glance before ordering it shown to all the ministers. After a full circuit, none dared speak—they only bowed, praising the emperor’s wisdom and heaven’s protection.
Three days after the wedding, noblewomen had been received at court to pay respects to the empress. Beyond that, Jiang Nong had met few of them. Several of Yu Lingxin’s sisters had sent repeated requests for an audience, but Jiang Nong—too preoccupied with her own affairs—had sent gifts in lieu of meeting them.
After the rebellion at Lingxuan Gate, invitations flooded the palace like snow. She could no longer avoid them without seeming timid, so she scheduled a snow-viewing banquet a few days hence.
Recently, Jiang Nong had been reading Buddhist scriptures, trying to find some peace of mind—and beginning to understand why the Empress Dowager spent so much time in the Buddha hall.
But every passage she read was punctuated with an “Amitabha.” Harboring murderous thoughts before the Buddha wasn’t a good habit—yet she couldn’t help, every so often, considering how to kill Yu Lingxin without him noticing.
Yu Lingxin’s throne was far less stable than in her past life—evidenced not only by the Lingxuan Gate rebellion but also by the number of poisoning attempts she’d endured in just half a month. Many were trying to take advantage of the chaos—to take either Yu Lingxin’s life or hers. Jiang Nong herself was among those fishing in troubled waters.
Xuan Shi Hall had its own small kitchen, not reliant on the Imperial Treasury’s allocations.
That afternoon’s sweet course was a bowl of donkey-hide gelatin and longan soup—dark and unappealing. Jiang Nong didn’t care for it much either. She’d had little appetite lately. The female official she’d brought from Xi had just finished testing it for poison when Yu Lingxin returned.
Jiang Nong gestured for the official to withdraw, pushed the bowl toward Yu Lingxin, and asked: “Do you want some?”
Whenever she was nice to him, it meant trouble—he knew this well. Pretending not to notice, he took the bowl: “There are quite a lot of things you won’t eat. A lifetime ago, you wouldn’t have survived on that alone.”
They seemed on the verge of another fight. The attendants quietly slipped out.
Yu Lingxin stirred the soup with his spoon but didn’t drink.
Jiang Nong leaned back on her cushion, reading, showing no nervousness at being caught. Both of them knew the soup was poisoned.
After all, their relationship wasn’t good enough to be sharing desserts.
Yu Lingxin tossed his spoon into the bowl with a sharp clatter: “You know perfectly well that the attack on Xuan Shi Hall that night was aimed at you. Poisoning me now does you no good. This life is different from the last. From the moment you stepped into Tan’s den of wolves, you’ve been tied to me. To be honest, I was always going to need an empress in this situation…”
Jiang Nong closed her book and laughed: “Yu Lingxin, are you so starved of love that your brain’s gone soft? If no one loves you, don’t you at least know what hate is? Making your enemy from two lifetimes your empress? You’ve ruined my life—and was any of it my choice? If I’d had a say, I’d have married Chao Ning right now, living free and easy—not stuck here with you, on edge and furious every day!”
Yu Lingxin’s face turned pale. He pressed his lips lightly, then relaxed and said: “You have no one to blame but your own stupidity. No one forced you—did I force you to marry me? You came to me, telling me we’d share weal and woe, that you’d be the hero. There were so many princesses, yet you were the one who married me.”
Jiang Nong slammed her book on the desk: “Yes, I was stupid! Stupid enough to want to be with you—and now I’m being played. What choice do I have but to go along with this?”
On reflection, she realized she’d been a carefully designed pawn in Yu Lingxin’s path to power. Marrying her brought mutual torment—or rather, his one-sided torment—along with an alliance with Xi. A deal with no downsides for him!
Did she have a choice now? No!
How deep was his hatred, to ruin two lifetimes of hers?
Yu Lingxin pressed his fingertip against her bitten, pale lip. Leaning over the desk, he drew close, his gaze locking onto hers. His deep violet eyes were like unfathomable seawater—drawing her in, tempting her: “Being empress, wielding power—is that so bad? Maybe that doesn’t appeal to you. But what about changing Chao Ning’s fate? Or the fate of all the common people? With power, you could even influence wars.”
“Now I have no reason to kill Chao Ning. You’re so selfless—sacrificing yourself to save one Chao Ning, or even more—I think you’d be willing.”
She knew he wasn’t being kind, that none of his temptations would come true—he was just toying with her, enjoying her misery.
But he was right about one thing: in her past life, Chao Ning had died because he was caught in their tangled love and hate. Yu Lingxin had killed him to take her from him. This time, there was no such conflict.
The truly frightening possibility was that she might have remained ignorant of Yu Lingxin’s rebirth, never married him, chosen Chao Ning instead—and then, when Tan grew strong enough, Yu Lingxin would have come for her anyway.
At least now, no one was dead. She was by his side, and she could still act.
Yu Lingxin watched her lashes flutter—he knew she was listening. Did he even need a reason to kill someone? If he didn’t like the look of them, he’d kill them.
Like a slave owner killing a slave—no reason needed.
Unfortunately, Jiang Nong was a woman of reason. She couldn’t imagine thinking any other way.
That was a matter for much later—at least for now, he wasn’t confident of victory in war.
As Jiang Nong’s thoughts drifted, Yu Lingxin kissed her. She bit his lip as he pulled back: “I can also tell you something—about the one you’re thinking of. You miss her, don’t you?”
“In public, I need a loving, dutiful empress by my side—not just to reassure the people, but because watching you smile at me while hating me will be immensely satisfying. Besides, even if I didn’t offer you this deal, you have no choice anyway, do you?”
Jiang Nong’s gaze softened. Her grip on his collar loosened. She stopped resisting. Yes, she missed her—but she was afraid to think about it. She knew he might use it to torment her. But still, she wanted to hear.
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