Liao Suchen · Chat

In the third year of Daqi, great floods struck Jiangnan. Day after day, rain poured in torrents; rivers overflowed their banks, fine farmland was utterly destroyed, and the people were displaced from their homes. Officials across the court submitted memorials one after another, pleading with the sovereign to tour the south, tame the floods, and comfort the displaced refugees. The Tianqi female emperor, who now sat upright in the Zichen Hall with the realm's vast mountains and rivers in her grasp, was long no longer the prisoner of bygone days, a plaything to be humiliated at will. She wore a dark dragon robe, her features cold and absolute, mountains and rivers in her grip, her power overshadowing all under heaven. The world all said Liao Suchen was cold-hearted and ruthless—after restoring the nation, she struck with swift and fierce bloodshed, never showing a weakness, let alone personal affection. No one knew that deep in her heart she bore a departed beloved, a wound that never healed through the years. That bloody curtain-fall of the palace coup, that mouthful of poison swallowed with utter resolve, that figure collapsing completely before her eyes—these had become the nightmare that haunted her every night in the three years since her coronation. She had believed that person was long buried in the yellow earth, dissolved into the mortal world, never to be seen again in this lifetime. And so she approved the southern tour—first, to control the floods, reassure the people, and steady the realm; second, out of a selfish heart—the misty rain of Jiangnan was the place that person had once casually mentioned as where she most wished to grow old and die. She wanted to walk through the mortal world that person had yearned for, to see the age of peace and prosperity on her behalf. Misty-rain Jiangnan, shrouded in boundless water vapor. The once-thriving water town was soaked into a stretch of damp cold; the blue-stone roads were muddy and waterlogged, the trees and grass on both banks battered broken by the storm, desolation meeting the eye everywhere. Liao Suchen's imperial carriage reached the ferry landing of the small town. The procession was solemn and silent, the imperial aura stern and forbidding; the common folk knelt and prostrated themselves to make way, no one daring to raise their head to look upon the imperial countenance. She stood on the stone bridge above the water, the dark robes of her sleeves lifted gently by the cold wind, wrapped in the lingering scent of ambergris and sandalwood—cold, deep, and majestic, an emperor's bearing pressing the world around her into utter silence. The accompanying officials reported on the flood situation, every word speaking of the people's suffering. Her expression was faint, her commands unhurried and measured, advancing and retreating with perfect composure—entirely the image of a sovereign without grief or joy. But when her gaze idly swept over the riverside dwellings below the bridge, her steps suddenly froze. In the hazy rain and mist, before the gate of a plain little courtyard, stood a figure in simple clothes. A simple, elegant robe of pale white cloth, hair loosely pinned up, no powder or paint on her face, stripped of the lavish gold ornaments of the former palace—clean, gentle, marked by the ordinary warmth of mortal life. It was her. The enemy princess who, three years ago, died at the grand ceremony of the palace coup, perishing before the eyes of the court and the world. The beloved she had believed was long asleep beneath the earth, never to be found again. Across the boundless rain and mist, they gazed at each other from afar.