Chapter 140: Twenty-Seven

In a person’s life, they were always playing some role or another. Take Ye Can, for instance. At first, she played the role of a young noble in the Yan Kingdom. Then she became a disciple of the royal court priest, the King of Yan’s mad dog, and now, finally, the King of Yan herself.

Her identity kept shifting, her roles constantly updating. With each new role came richer experiences, and the people and pursuits around her underwent profound changes.

Now that she was king, there were bound to be a few archetypal figures orbiting her: the upright loyal minister, the sycophantic villain, the cunning powerbroker, and the gentle wise queen—or perhaps the alluring favored consort.

In this game of playing the king, Ye Can assessed her own abilities and state, choosing to embody a Faint Lord. And as a Faint Lord, she naturally required a favored consort for her pleasures.

Just as the histories recorded, Ye Can became a tyrannical monarch known for “drowning in wine and lust, brutal and inept.” Like those faint lords consigned to a few scant lines in the annals, she committed her share of absurd deeds.

For example, she doted on the Beauty, heeding her every word. When the Grand Preceptor declared before the court that the Beauty spelled Calamity Nation, the king flew into a rage and had him executed.

Another time, the vassal lords heard of the king’s fondness for beauties and scoured their lands to tribute hordes of them. The king was overjoyed, hosting grand orgies in the royal court: pools of wine, forests of hanging meat, naked men and women chasing one another through it all, providing entertainment through the long night.

Such outrageous acts drew the resentment of countless subjects. Ye Can knew that one day, she would meet a bad end.

Every night, she jolted awake amid the shrill howls of souls like vengeful ghosts. She sat up, gazing at the dim patches cast by the flickering lamplight, feeling an inexplicable absurdity.

She lifted her eyes to the treasured sword hanging on the opposite wall, convinced that the absurd figure from daylight hours wasn’t her. That was the king, not Ye Can.

But if the king wasn’t her, then what was she?

Ye Can thought, This woman shouldn’t be the storybook consort who brings calamity to the realm. She shouldn’t be the king’s Beauty.

Yet Ye Can had forcibly kept her, bestowing upon her the title of Beauty.

This is wrong. This shouldn’t be, Ye Can sometimes thought.

But a king’s side demands a Beauty—to be pampered, loved, protected even at the cost of the kingdom, she thought at other times.

In these late nights, Ye Can felt her soul torn in two. One half begged for forgiveness, struggling to ask the woman’s true name, to set her free and escape the curse of her roles. The other half indulged its wicked desires, binding her tightly, recklessly staining her with its colors, dooming her to be etched in the histories amid curses.

Time flowed on, fleeting away, and such thoughts only deepened Ye Can’s sense of fracture.

When the long night descended and their lingering intimacies ended, Ye Can always donned her outer robe, stepped down from the bed, fetched the sword from the wall, and returned to the Beauty’s side.

She stroked the sword’s keen edge and, back turned to the naked woman behind her, asked, “My love, will you join me in death?”

At such moments, the woman always wrapped herself in the sheets, trembling as she clung to Ye Can’s shoulder and softly replied, “Yes.”

But come daylight, gazing at the woman’s face, Ye Can couldn’t help caressing her cheek and sighing, “I should seek out immortals and the Way, so your beauty might endure forever.”

Ye Can did want to die, but sometimes she wanted to live, too.

Fate soon chose for her. When the woman offered the first cup of poisoned wine, Ye Can drank it without hesitation. When the woman whispered in her ear, luring her sword to slaughter, Ye Can obeyed.

In the end, they plummeted into the abyss together.

When it all concluded, Ye Can cast off her crown, wandering the chaotic palace like a forsaken child of the world, free at last—and ready to release her caged bird.

She had finally ended her final role-play, shedding the king’s identity for a fleeting freedom.

But what Ye Can hadn’t expected was that the king’s Beauty did not leave.

The woman she had abducted, whom she had forced night after night, who loved and hated her in equal measure—this king’s Beauty, in the dim twilight of late spring amid thick mists, offered her a cup of poisoned wine.

Only then did Ye Can realize deeply that, in the woman’s eyes, she had always been that absurd king from start to finish.

Yet even such a king—this woman with her defiant gaze and noble soul—had fallen in love with her.

Perhaps it wasn’t merely a simple role-play after all, for Ye Can realized that not even death brought a sense of the curtain falling and the actors dispersing.

Because Ye Can was the king. The king was Ye Can.

Thus, as the King of Yan, Ye Can accepted that cup of poison, letting the Beauty “kill” the king. Then, to absolve her of regicide, Ye Can slew the king within herself with the dagger at her belt.

Her brief, absurd life—like something out of a twisted tale—came to an end.

Inevitably, Ye Can descended into Hell.

The Deity, clad in white robes and wearing a ghastly pale mask, pronounced her sins, then those of the Beauty beside her.

The last sovereign of the Yan Kingdom, Ye Can, shouldered the sins of all her subjects. She willingly transformed into the object of wrath for every soul perished in Yan’s famines and wars, kneeling as a sinner atop the mountain piled with countless ghosts.

This burden won freedom for the Beauty and all the innocents.

As the King of Yan, she knelt on White Bone Mountain for two thousand nine hundred years.

The souls wretchedly slain by famine, war, and noble brutality tore at her body after her arrival. They cried, “King! Oh, king, save us! King!” then transformed into crows time and again, arrowing toward her like darts to peck at her flesh.

The first millennium was a frenzied mob overwhelming her; the king kneeling on White Bone Mountain remained a blood-drenched skeleton.

The second millennium left half a body clinging to the frame, streams of blood flowing in the wailing ghost winds.

By the third millennium, the souls on White Bone Mountain gradually awoke, departing one after another from this land of resentment, sparing the sin-laden king.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the crows dwindled. The king regained a full body. Yet crows born of phantoms still pecked at her heart daily, the numbing agony unrelenting.

No one knew how much time passed before the last crow on the mountain took wing. The king, nailed to the bone mountain, was suddenly released and crashed heavily atop it.

With a boom, the bone mountain collapsed.

In the darkness, Ye Can lay sprawled on the ground as a pair of icy hands lifted her face.

Her head still buzzed. Dazed on the ground, Ye Can blankly raised her head. She heard a trembling, gentle voice call to her: “My king… my king…”

Whose voice? Who was the king?

The woman cupping her face answered, “It’s you. You are the king. In the next life… in the next life, I’ll wait for you…”

“In a place bursting with spring’s splendor, we’ll meet again. That’s our promise.”

Ye Can couldn’t make out her face but felt a warm imprint on her forehead.

The woman held her close and whispered softly, “Next time… next time, I’ll find you, my king. I’ll always wait.”

Suddenly, Ye Can understood who this was. She frantically reached out, clutching the woman’s arm, stammering in panic, “Your name… tell… tell me your name.”

She had never asked her true name, never properly entered her world. But next time, they surely would.

Ye Can heard a soft laugh: “Next time. Next time, you have to remember to ask my name. My king, live well. Live happily.”

The woman caressed Ye Can’s cheek and murmured, “Wait for me. I’ll come for you.”

“Ye Can.”

The woman called her true name, then faded into the wind within her embrace. Ye Can suddenly hugged herself, kneeling on the ground, shedding tears in a daze.

She didn’t know how much time passed before she heard a calling voice.

“Ye Can…”

“Ye Can…”

“Ye Can…”

“Wake up, Ye Can…”

It seemed a thousand voices converged, calling her name. Ye Can rose from the darkness, racing heedlessly toward the source.

As she ran, the emerging memories sealed themselves deep in her sea of consciousness once more. Gradually, Ye Can felt as if she’d forgotten something vital, halting in stunned confusion.

Suddenly, the calls sharpened. A beam of white light pierced from the heavens, rending the dark. Ye Can squinted, raising an arm against the glare. At that moment, hands seemed to appear in the sky, yanking her upward.

Abruptly, Ye Can awoke from her slumber.

“Ye Can, Ye Can!”

Ye Can lifted her gaze toward the voice. In the dark room, beneath a beam of white light, Dr. Yang gripped her wrist. Seeing her tear-streaked face, she let out a long sigh: “You’re finally awake.”

She exhaled in relief, released Ye Can, and handed her a box of tissues. Ye Can, having forgotten everything prior, stared blankly at Dr. Yang with her tear-soaked face and asked, “We… didn’t find her, did we?”

“She’s no longer in my body, right?”

Dr. Yang looked at her tear stains, shook her head, and said, “You could say yes, or no. Ye Can… I think you’ve just forgotten.”

Ye Can stared at her in a daze, clutching the tissue box tightly, and asked, “What does that mean?”