Chapter 613: This is Goodbye

As the flowers faced the late evening, their brilliance drifted away.

In a decaying world, fate had become unbearable.

A woman in a palace dress sat quietly in the desolate hall. The once lively and luxurious empress's chambers were now devoid of maids, with not even a single candle lit. As the sky darkened, shadows shrouded the room.

The emperor stepped in slowly, each step heavy with burden. Though he had been at the seventh realm for years and even though he no longer had the time to focus on cultivation right now, he remained far stronger than that of an ordinary person. Yet, it was the first time he felt such physical exhaustion.

Within a day, he realized that the two women he loved the most each had ulterior motives. While his affection for the imperial consort was merely physical, he had genuinely considered the empress as his lifelong companion.

To think even she was an imposter.

At this moment, as he stood before her, he couldn't even recognize the person before him.

The empress had always been graceful and slightly plump, yet the woman before him bore sharp, thin features and her face devoid of warmth. Politely speaking, she was not very attractive.

Even as the emperor could not recognize the person before him, his thoughts churned.

He gazed at her white attire, which was what she would always wear, and her expression, which appeared icy and distant.

After a long silence, he finally spoke, "You have been with me since I was still a prince, back when I held no power. How did you know I would become the crown prince and ascend the throne? If I didn't, wouldn't you have sided with the wrong person?"

"The Celestial Master can see everyone's destiny." This most familiar stranger before him finally spoke, "You were destined to become emperor. I knew it even before you did."

Before the emperor's arrival, she had refused to utter even a single word.

"So, it turns out in the end that you are really a member of the Celestial Charm Sect." The emperor took a deep breath and held it for a long time.

When Li Chengfeng had mentioned it earlier, he had been unwilling to believe it.

This face was unfamiliar to him, but the senior officials of the Imperial Supervisory Bureau recognized it. The last time Xiao Wuyan had been personally apprehended by the Imperial Supervisory Commissioner, she had reverted to her original appearance after being captured—and it was identical to this one.

Earlier, Li Chengfeng had personally gone to the Celestial Northern Prison to check, confirming that Xiao Wuyan was still detained there. Even if the woman before him was not Xiao Wuyan, she was undoubtedly closely connected to her.

Yet, even so, the emperor held onto a sliver of hope.

Until she spoke the words herself.

If her origins were from elsewhere, he might still have hope of sparing her. But if she was a member of the Celestial Charm Sect, there would be no chance for redemption.

"Your Majesty, you need not hold onto any kindness toward me. You may claim that a member of the Celestial Charm Sect assassinated the empress, disguised herself as the empress, but was exposed and executed by you," she said, shaking her head. "Only Hai'er is innocent. Over the years, I have never revealed the truth to him. I hope you can treat him as usual. Even if you don't let him ascend the throne, please don't let my actions affect him..."

"Rest assured," the emperor interrupted her. "Regardless of who his mother is, he will always be my child."

The Hai'er she referred to was naturally the Second Prince.

After a pause, the woman finally said, "Thank you."

The emperor then asked, "What is your real name?"

"Xiao Wuyin[1]," the woman replied. "The Xiao Wuyan who was captured earlier is my twin sister."

"You two certainly have mastered transformation arts," the emperor sneered, then leaned on a nearby chair as if tired from standing, and gently sat down. "Tell me about yourself."

"I..." Xiao Wuyin hesitated before continuing. "I was born a daughter of the Xiao family and prepared from childhood to cultivate the ancestral Spirit Fox Illusory Transformation technique. But when I was twelve, the Xiao family was annihilated... The Celestial Master saved my sister and me."

She recounted slowly, from her childhood to joining the Celestial Charm Sect, event by event. Many had no connection to the imperial court, yet the emperor listened quietly, showing no impatience.

"That year, the Celestial Master suddenly announced an important task that one of us sisters had to undertake, which could mean losing our freedom for many years," Xiao Wuyin continued. "As the elder sister, I naturally volunteered."

"I never imagined that the task would involve replacing the daughter of the Wu family and marrying a prince of the reigning dynasty.

"Since the court upheaval eighty years ago, the imperial court has strictly scrutinized those entering the palace. At the time, you had already established a residence outside, which was much easier to infiltrate than the palace itself.

"The Celestial Master said it was to set up a long-term plan."

"Heh." The emperor chuckled again. "Truly a scheme carefully crafted with meticulous effort."

"I spent several months secretly observing the Wu family's daughter before replacing her on the day before she was to marry you, thus becoming your wife. The Celestial Master merely instructed me to live in peace, rarely assigning me any tasks. Years would pass before they contacted me, and only my sister kept in touch with me.

"My life suddenly became tranquil. For decades, I almost forgot my true identity. Many times, I would wake up thinking I was truly the empress of the dynasty."

At this point, she gave a bitter smile.

"Three years ago, when the Celestial Master ordered me to arrange for someone to enter the palace, I finally realized that my identity would never see the light of day. I almost refused at the time, but my sister and my identity... all of it was in their hands. I didn't dare. Having controlled the imperial palace for years, it was naturally easy for me to bring a woman in."

"Gong Yu'er?" the emperor asked.

"Yes, you indeed took a liking to her at first glance," Xiao Wuyin raised her eyes. "The Celestial Master instructed us to create the illusion of palace strife, making everyone think we were at odds. But in truth, the fights were merely the schemes of the Celestial Charm Sect."

The emperor held his hand to his forehead, appearing somewhat unable to accept it.

"Afterward, they repeatedly targeted the Wu Family, intending to mislead the court into thinking that the Celestial Charm Sect sought to weaken the Wu family and my factions. This, in turn, strengthened my position."

"It was very effective," the emperor said. "If not for this recent blunder, you would have succeeded."

"Blunder?" Xiao Wuyin chuckled upon hearing this. "The Celestial Master doesn't make blunders. What happened today is because I no longer share the same goal as them."

"Oh?" The emperor turned his gaze back to her.

"Ever since my sister was captured, I have been struggling," Xiao Wuyin said, her eyes drifting to the palace ceiling as she spoke in a daze. "I have lived in the palace far longer than I ever did in the Celestial Charm Sect. I am only attached to my sister, but now she is in the Celestial Northern Prison. Why should I continue helping them?"

She looked the emperor in the eye again. "And the relationship we've shared as husband and wife all these years... it wasn't fake."

The emperor silently shifted his gaze elsewhere.

Xiao Wuyin continued saying, "The Celestial Master had been plotting for years, and when it was finally time to act, he began contacting me more frequently, replacing my messenger with the palace consort. However, I have many spies in the palace, so it was easy to discover how the Celestial Charm Sect was passing messages to her.

"I once considered killing the palace consort to become a true empress and sever all ties with the Celestial Charm Sect," Xiao Wuyin continued. "But on that very day, I received a letter from the Celestial Master, instructing me to prepare to destroy something.

"Then, the real Wu Family daughter's corpse was dug up from the bottom of the lake. They had preserved her body all these years, which sent chills down my spine. The Celestial Master was demonstrating his power, showing me that he could still destroy me with ease if he wished.

"In recent days, I've helped them place many people in the palace. Although they didn't inform me, I learned from the palace consort that a major plan was to be launched during the Qinghong Banquet, and it included an assassination attempt on you."

"So, you killed her and dumped her body at Qinghong Aviary to stop the banquet?" the emperor asked.

At this point, the situation had become clear.

"Yes," Xiao Wuyin admitted. "I didn't dare explain it to you, so I used this method to stop the Qinghong Banquet and trigger a thorough investigation of the palace, giving me the chance to eliminate all the people the Celestial Charm Sect had planted."

"You were still trying to protect me?" The emperor's tone carried a hint of mockery.

"I can't tell anymore whether I wanted to protect you or myself," Xiao Wuyin sighed. "But such is life—when one does something, the reasons are not always clear."

"If your plan had succeeded, with the palace consort discovered before the Qinghong Banquet, the banquet was put to a pause, and the palace would be thoroughly investigated..." The emperor mused, "It wouldn't have been a bad outcome."

"Unfortunately..." Xiao Wuyin said, "there were still things I couldn't foresee."

She could never have predicted that the imperial guardian would bring his daughter to Qinghong Aviary that day to steal the Qinghong birds and stumble upon the corpse of the imperial consort... nor could she have foreseen that the Di Nufeng's disciple would piece the clues together and trace them back to her in just over two hours.

"If not for Chu Liang, this might have all passed unnoticed," the emperor said.

"He was another miscalculation in the Celestial Master's plan," Xiao Wuyin said. "In his predictions, the ones entering the palace at this time were supposed to be people from the Penglai Supreme Sect, and the person the Golden Dragon sought should have been Yang Shenlong."

"Isn't he supposed to see everyone's destiny?" The emperor sneered.

"Perhaps... not everyone and not at all times," Xiao Wuyin said with a self-deprecating laugh. "Take me, for instance—he didn't predict me correctly, did he?"

"If everything went as he predicted, the world would already be his, and they wouldn't have failed eighty years ago," the emperor said coldly.

"Perhaps," Xiao Wuyin said. "He prides himself on being able to predict the hearts of humans, but he could never truly understand the feelings experienced by humans."

What followed was a long silence.

The two sat silently—one on the chair, the other on the ground—until the sound of drums and music echoed from afar.

"The Qinghong Banquet is about to begin," the emperor said as he stood up. "Mei... heh, how should I address you?"

"Call me Xiao Wuyin," the woman said with a sorrowful smile. "We, the daughters of the Xiao Family, were voiceless and faceless from the moment we were born.[2]... We were destined to have nothing of our own, living under someone else's identity...

"Now that it's come to this, I wish to be myself."

"Very well," the emperor replied, nodding in agreement. Then he said, "Xiao Wuyin, I will have your words verified. If you are not lying, I will give you a chance to see your sister."

Xiao Wuyin stood up as well, stepped forward, and, as if it were a normal day, adjusted the emperor's dragon robe collar and sleeves.

In a soft voice, she said, "I am at the end of my road and can no longer accompany you. The future is fraught with storms; I only wish for Your Majesty's safety."

1. Xiao is the surname. And Wuyin means no voice or not having a voice of her own. ☜

2. Wuyin means no voice. Wuyan means no face. This means they do not have a face or voice of their own. ☜