Rising Phoenix

Qiu Mingying stared weakly into her daughter’s reddened eyes, the fury and hatred within implacable. She saw the creases and tears of her daughter’s unquenchable regret, but also the great determination and heroic resolve of her daughter’s heart. She knew that one day her daughter would ride out, snowy white blade in hand, and slash this fake era’s prosperity in twain.

So she smiled and let go, content. The dust of the earthly world was too heavy, and she could no longer bear the weight of a single mote.

All her bitter plans and silent pain were over, and it was over. Her death was the beginning of this Imperial Dynasty’s fall.

She was tired; the future would rest in the hands of the living.

Finally, she could accept her death with a smile, her conscience clear as she went to reunite with him.

Oh… almost… forgot…

She stirred one final time, struggling against her eyelids as she gestured for her daughter to come close.

Feng Zhiwei dipped her tear marred face, brushing her ear against her mother’s lips.

Both daughter and mother were icy cold, her skin and her lips like permafrost on the far-north mountains, never disturbed by the heat of earthly light.

“Don’t blame mom… don’t blame… your brother…” Madam Feng murmured weakly, her smile apologetic. “He lived… only… to die for you…”

And then her breath shuddered and faded, a frost flower quietly dissipating.

Those last words were easy light as the wind and as heavy as a hammer, smashing into the young woman’s shattered heart.

“Ah…”

A mouthful of blood spilled from her lips, her heart’s shock and horror falling to the golden floor!

——————————

The Imperial Palace opened up to the sky in a bound triangle, perfect and square like the rules and rites that bonded all lives.

It was like a coffin, trapping the flesh forever and ever until the end of time.

Feng Zhiwei sat crosslegged in a side-room of the Ning An Palace facing two coffins as she read a hidden letter she had found in Madam Feng’s waistband.

She poured over each and every word with all her strength and attention, and after a long, long read, she held the paper to the flame of an opened lamp and watched it burn.

The paper curled on itself as it died in the fire, slowly flaking into dust.

The flames danced coldly in Zhiwei’s eyes, the heat never touching the darkness looming in her gaze.

Finally, she shuttered the Ever-Burning Lamp and stood with it, swaying together with the white silk curtains flowing in the midnight breeze. Lamp in hand, she wandered between the two coffins like a lost spirit.

Feng Hao.

After the Emperor confirmed Feng Hao’s death, his corpse was fated for the crematorium, but when the Tian Sheng Emperor looked down into Feng Zhiwei’s bloodshot eyes as she fell to the ground and begged for her brother’s body, he eventually agreed.

“His Majesty is merciful.” The eunuch had said as he brought her the corpse. “Never has a corpse sent to the crematorium been left whole.”

His Majesty’s mercy.

Feng Zhiwei quirked her lips in a humorless smile.

Handing over a corpse is also considered mercy.

But in the end, it mattered not. Compared to her, he was indeed merciful.

She added some oil into her lamp and leaned down to examine Feng Hao.

The child lay wide-eyed, the wild horror and pain still marring his gaze as he died an unwilling death.

Feng Zhiwei did not know how long she stared down at his face, but finally she reached out to touch his cold cheeks. When had she last touched him? She did not remember. She had always hated him too much to touch him, frustrated by his pettiness and foolishness. When she was young, she had thought him a waste of space, and as she matured, she knew him to be her greatest burden.

So in the half year before his fated death for her, she had him locked away in a prison.

His final days spent in a cell.

It turned out that she was the great burden, and he had paid a price she could never repay.

Mother had at least spoiled him for sixteen years, trying her best to balance the pain, but it was she who owed him, and it was she who had treated him coldly these sixteen years.

She brushed her fingers down his face… the first and last time she would ever be able to touch her little brother.

You lived for your sister, and you died for her, never knowing a sister’s love. Let me show you that love at least once, even if it is already too late.

She stared down into Feng Hao’s wild eyes.

Hao er.

Watch me. See me.

Look at your cruel, heartless sister. The coldest of family, the stupidest of women who failed you all the years of your life.

Her lamp’s light flickered in the darkness, dancing like a will-o-wisp.

She turned to Madam Feng’s coffin.

Mom.

I always asked you where the proud, brilliant Fire Phoenix General had gone, shaming you for the loss of your edge and your glory.

You never had to answer, so why did you have use your death to reply?

We agreed to leave Dijing together, but Heaven laughs. Fate has never given me anything I wished for, no matter how humble the request. You were never going to wait for me, and we were never going to see the mountains and seas, happy and free together.

Is this fate?

I cannot even imagine how you lasted these sixteen years.

And when you came to gift me the dress you made me and I ignored you because you refused to send Hao er away… I left you in the rain until you gave up and left. How long did I sit by that door?

I waited until I almost fell asleep… and you stood in the rain, waiting.

And I finally understand.

You could not send him to Mount Shou Yang because it was too far away. He would be too far to die for me.

You could allow his exile because he would die on his own, and then he could not die for me.

Mom.

With the corpses of my last family, you’re teaching your final lesson. Time cannot turn backwards, and all the regret in the world cannot pay back our debts and failures.

Even if I thrust myself into these coffins alongside you, I will never be able to share a steamed bun with you as you smile, and we will never sit with Hao er as he enjoys his cabbage soup.