Jiang Nong had been hovering around Yu Lingxin for three or four days now. Every day, she personally handled the medicinal decoctions and fed them to him—attentive, diligent, doing everything herself.
Yet Yu Lingxin’s illness showed no sign of improvement—if anything, it grew worse.
Heaven could bear witness—she hadn’t actually done anything yet.
The imperial physicians had examined the medicine and found no issues. Under the weight of both their gazes, they reluctantly changed the prescription twice more—still to no effect.
Yu Lingxin coughed incessantly and showed signs of fever, so he used the opportunity to skip morning court and set aside all state affairs.
His illness was peculiar—it only ravaged himself, never spreading to others. He had been sick for nearly half a month, yet no one around him had caught it.
With Situ Ming’s precedent fresh in mind, even if Yu Lingxin took two months off sick, no one would dare speak up.
“Truly no improvement? Should we try another prescription?” Jiang Nong handed the lukewarm medicine to Yu Lingxin, her other hand hidden in her sleeve—fingers tightening, nails digging into her palm.
Yu Lingxin glanced at her, took the bowl, and felt her slightly trembling, cool fingertips. When their eyes met, Jiang Nong instinctively looked away.
“We’ve changed the prescription so many times and nothing helps, cough…” Yu Lingxin stirred the medicine and coughed into his hand. “Maybe I’d recover faster without it.”
“Don’t say that. Just drink it.” There was even a hint of urgency in Jiang Nong’s tone.
Yu Lingxin suddenly wasn’t in a rush. He lowered the bowl from his lips.
Jiang Nong’s hidden hand tightened further.
“Do you think there’s such a thing as medicine that isn’t bitter?”
“No. Drink it.”
“You’re so eager to make me drink—you haven’t poisoned it, have you?”
Jiang Nong felt sheepish. If you know, why ask? Yu Lingxin was deliberately baiting her. She replied with feigned openness: “Don’t you trust me?”
Yu Lingxin curled the corner of his mouth—a look that said you guess whether I do or not.
Jiang Nong had quite a track record. She had no credibility whatsoever.
Yu Lingxin didn’t call her out, and Jiang Nong didn’t admit to anything. She swallowed, snatched the bowl back, and said matter-of-factly: “Then I’ll feed you. You’re so slow—the medicine will get cold.”
She lifted the spoon to his lips, signaling him to drink. Yu Lingxin was still smiling: “Are you sure you want me to drink it?”
Jiang Nong pushed the spoon closer. Yu Lingxin’s smile faded slightly, replaced by a visible trace of dejection: “But it’s so bitter.”
His voice was very soft—casual, like a bird passing overhead stirring a faint breeze, barely perceptible. Jiang Nong looked up and saw only the sparrow’s snowy-white belly, cold and damp with overnight dew, brushing against her eyelids.
Her lashes trembled. Her heart pounded like a war drum. Just as Yu Lingxin was waiting for her reaction, she too was waiting for his.
When she thought he would remain silent and her hand with the spoon began to loosen, Yu Lingxin unexpectedly lowered his head and swallowed the medicine from her spoon.
He held her wrist and told her not to shake—only then did Jiang Nong realize how violently her arm was trembling.
It wasn’t that she had fed Yu Lingxin the medicine. It was Yu Lingxin holding her hand, spoonful by spoonful, feeding it to himself.
He winced at the bitterness. When he looked up again, he saw that Jiang Nong was crying. He took two pieces of candied orange—one for her, one for himself—and asked, between bites: “Why are you crying?” He turned the bowl over to show her: “Didn’t I drink it all?”
“I drank the poison you put in it too. Stop crying, alright?” He wiped her tears with the back of his hand—but they only came faster, and he grew flustered. Jiang Nong clutched his lapels, pressing her forehead to his chest, weeping silently.
“If you knew it was poisoned, why did you drink it? Yu Lingxin, are you a pig?”
Yu Lingxin rested his chin on her head, nuzzling for a moment: “I was willing.”
“It’s all my fault. I gave you the medicine, I forced you to poison it—don’t cry,” Yu Lingxin sighed. He had always held back his words before, unwilling to speak them until death—but now that the time had come, he couldn’t say them all at once.
He wanted to tell Jiang Nong that he had actually been gambling on a possibility.
He gambled that even after all his misdeeds, even after crossing those she cared about, even after relapsing into his old ways—when she had every means to kill him without consequence—she still couldn’t bring herself to poison him. He wanted Jiang Nong to admit her love for him, to stop wavering.
But it seemed he had lost the bet. He had watched with his own eyes as she slipped that packet of powder into his bowl—the same color, same appearance as the unused poison from Lü Chengcheng’s execution.
Still, he didn’t say it. Yu Lingxin knew Jiang Nong was soft-hearted—if he told her, she would only grieve more.
“Jiang Nong, you won’t have to struggle over me anymore. That’s a good thing.” The anticipated searing pain never came—different from the previous life—but Yu Lingxin still felt himself growing drowsy, his consciousness slowly fading.
He didn’t want to cough blood into her hair, so he shifted his chin onto her shoulder instead, speaking quickly: “Xunliang won’t pursue this. He will help you manage the court and the harem. With him, no one will oppose you. I’ve placed the decree appointing an heir among the bamboo slips—write whichever child you favor. After I’m gone, my spies in Dang will clear Chao Ning’s name and support his succession. He will be your outer shield, watching over you.”
Chao Ning had never wanted the throne—but Yu Lingxin, paving the way for Jiang Nong, couldn’t care less about his wishes. If he had miraculously won the gamble and survived, he would have installed Chao Ji instead.
Yu Lingxin had been planning this for a long time—he had arranged everything, even for after his death.
“One last thing—I must tell you this final word. Never regret anything you’ve done. You are always right. Even if I love you, that is my affair, nothing to do with you. You don’t need to take responsibility for my love. Killing me is the most correct choice you’ve ever made. With Yu Lingxin dead, you are free.”
That wasn’t the truth—not really. How he wished Jiang Nong would take responsibility for his love. He loved Jiang Nong; he wanted her to love him in return. But she couldn’t. Even killing him had taken immense resolve—and she would suffer for it for the rest of her life.
Jiang Nong bit his shoulder, sobbing: “Why did you have to take things to such an extreme?”
Only now did she fully understand Yu Lingxin’s thinking. Either force her to admit she loved him—even if he was utterly despicable and would never change—or kill him. He would accept death willingly, and he would have everything arranged for her.
Why couldn’t there be a middle ground? Why wouldn’t he just talk to her? Why did he have to use such a drastic act to prove her heart?
“If I’d asked you yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that—do you love me?—would you have answered?”
No. Jiang Nong wouldn’t have. Just as Yu Lingxin wouldn’t say he loved Jiang Nong, she hadn’t figured things out for herself, so she certainly wouldn’t answer his question.
Actually, Yu Lingxin had thought of plenty of harsh words—he’d promised that even in death, he would haunt her midnight dreams, make her regret it for life, never forget his face. But in the end, he thought better of it.
Don’t say such sentimental things. If he said too much, she really would never forget him—and might regret it forever.
So he only mustered the last of his strength to pat her back and encourage her: “You did nothing wrong. You killed a villain.”
Jiang Nong, I have spent three lifetimes changing your fate.
I don’t know what freedom you wrote on that prayer ribbon—but with power, you will always have a choice.
The anticipated pain never came. Yu Lingxin lost consciousness and sank into darkness, his hand falling slack from her back.
In truth, during that moment of Yu Lingxin’s silence, Jiang Nong had imagined many possibilities—that he would knock over the bowl and denounce her scheme, or that he would endure silently and pretend nothing had happened.
Yu Lingxin remained silent. Jiang Nong thought it might be the second option—and she breathed a sigh of relief. That was enough. She had practically told him outright that she intended to harm him; her poisoning had been far from subtle. Yu Lingxin knew full well that she had put poison in that bowl.
Jiang Nong understood that when it came to matters of life and death, no one should gamble with their own life.
Yu Lingxin wanted to test whether Jiang Nong would kill him—and through that, test her true feelings. Jiang Nong, in turn, went along with it to test him: knowing she had poisoned the medicine, would he drink it or not? How much did he truly love her?
Jiang Nong held Yu Lingxin’s unconscious body and wept for a long time—from soft sobs to full-blown wails.
The attendants on duty outside Xuan Shi Hall heard her crying and exchanged uneasy glances, silently questioning whether they should go in—until Xunliang stopped them.
He lowered his head, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and said in a hoarse, reedy voice: “Mind your own duties!”
The attendants, trembling, returned to their posts and dared ask no further.
…
Strange. He was still conscious.
He hadn’t died?
In the dark chaos before opening his eyes, this was the first thought that surfaced.
Had he died and been reborn again?
He pressed his throbbing, aching forehead and slowly opened his eyes—only to find the room pitch black, not a single lamp lit. He lay on the soft couch, his waist tightly wrapped in an embrace. Jiang Nong was curled up against him, her face pressed to his chest.
Still Xuan Shi Hall. Jiang Nong was still here. Everything looked the same—yet their clothes were different.
He pressed his temples, which were pounding. The moment he moved, Jiang Nong woke as well.
She looked like she’d cried herself to sleep—eyes swollen, voice thick with congestion. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed close: “Husband, you’re awake? You’ve been sick for so long, unconscious for so long—I thought you were going to leave me all alone.”
Yu Lingxin flung her off, pulled his sword from beside the bed, and demanded coldly: “Who are you?”
Jiang Nong would never call him “husband.” She would never be this warm to him!
Having died and come back twice already, Yu Lingxin’s acceptance of the supernatural was beyond remarkable. His mind was already racing through countless possibilities.
Jiang Nong found the sword at her throat. His motion was so fluid, so practiced—as if he’d rehearsed it a thousand times. She hadn’t expected that even with the same face, the same person, the slightest difference would make him not recognize her.
She clutched her neck, shrinking back, and said: “The wicked woman who poisoned you—is that good enough?”
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