March in the warm spring was indeed a ti when flowers blood amidst gentle breezes.
The spring sunshine spilled onto the glistening lake surface, the lakeshore transford into a sea of flowers vying for beauty and blooming competitively, the air imbued with a serene floral fragrance.
In the midst of the flowers stood a high pavilion.
Beneath the overhanging eaves, Feng Yun and Pei Jue sat leaning against the railing.
An old elm wood table, a few dishes of snacks, a pot of fine wine...
Feng Yun held up her cup for a light sip, drinking a mouthful.
"Though the moon is intoxicating, it can’t compare to the llow richness of Magu Wine."
Pei Jue looked at her and reached out.
A butterfly sohow flew over and landed on Feng Yun’s hair.
Before Pei Jue could touch it, the butterfly flew away.
He said, "Such a pity."
Feng Yun was startled, then smiled.
"What’s there to pity? Caterpillar."
She knew how to spoil the mood.
In a garden filled with romance, a single sentence could shatter it all.
Pei Jue looked at her eyes filled with sarcasm, knowing this was the unpretending Feng Yun, the one who was ready to face him openly, to show him her emotions... even her disgust.
No more pretending.
Good.
He said, "I’ve never had an affair with Li Sangruo. Lady Yun, I am innocent..."
Innocent?
Feng Yun laughed.
On the way from the study to the garden where Pei Jue had pulled her, Feng Yun’s mind uncontrollably flashed back to scenes from her past life.
In the Andu Villa, Li Sangruo’s body marked with pleasures, her face unable to hide her smug disdain.
In Central Capital City, those looks of scorn from noble ladies when they saw her, "She’s but a lowly concubine after all."
In Jiafu Hall, where her fur coat and dignity were publicly stripped away.
Xiaoman’s tragic death before her eyes.
Daman’s scar-laden body.
And...
Pei Jue’s cold expression, along with the scene of the officers sending her back to Andu...
Of course, she also thought of Shiguan Dock.
The raging flas, Ao Qi’s heart-wrenching curses.
Laughter that pierced the ears, cries that were mournful...
The things experienced in her previous life wouldn’t vanish without a trace like this butterfly landing on her hair, as if nothing had happened.
She scoffed coldly, "So you’re saying that Li Sang was one-sided in her affection, sched and frad you, held a knife to your head, forced you to be intimate with her, and forced you to drive out of Central Capital and send back to Andu?"
Pei Jue’s brow furrowed.
Looking into her eyes.
"I don’t know where you got the conclusion that she and I were intimate. But you know what kind of person Li Sang is."
Feng Yun raised her brows and frankly laid it out.
She told him about the most shaful mont of her life, through gritted teeth.
"It was then that I accidentally discovered a black mole on her chest."
She laughed again, "It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. If not for that, I wouldn’t have been able to pin her to the pillar of sha, branded with disgrace and an unshakable derogatory label for life."
Pei Jue seed to have an epiphany, nodding.
"So that’s how it is."
Feng Yun continued, "Have you also recalled? How many bouts of passion did you share with her that day to leave such marks on her body..."
Pei Jue pursed his lips, "I’m telling you it wasn’t , but you don’t believe it. She says it was , and you believe her."
Matters between a man and a woman are the most difficult to explain and the hardest to prove with evidence.
Especially with regard to things from a forr life.
Even if Pei Jue had a hundred mouths, he couldn’t clarify it.
So, he turned back to another matter—why he sent her away from Central Capital.
"I had seen the letter you wrote to Xiao Cheng before."
Feng Yun knew he spoke of the letter Xu Yong had presented to the Empress Dowager in front of the entire court, demanding severe punishnt for her alleged cri of treason.
She said, "I wrote it."
Pei Jue sneered, "You longed day and night for your lover, and I facilitated it. Did I do you wrong?"
Feng Yun was rendered speechless.
Even without that letter, later in the General Residence in Andu, after Granny Han and the entire household were tragically killed in prison, she had grown to despise Pei Jue, not spending a day without longing to return to Tai City.
During that ti, she wrote many letters to Xiao Cheng...
Later, they were all handed over to Pei Jue by Daman.
Feng Yun closed her eyes briefly.
"Yes, you were right to treat like that. I deserved it. Deserved to be a helpless concubine by your side my whole life, subjected to ridicule and abuse by others, forbidden from harboring any delusions or being faithless..."
Pei Jue thought deeply, his dark eyes gently fixed on her.
"From this perspective, you didn’t want to leave Central Capital, to leave , back then?"
Feng Yun glanced at him, "Don’t flatter yourself. I just don’t like being abandoned."
She had already been abandoned once by her father.
She couldn’t erase the shadow it cast upon her...
But did she truly have no other feelings for him?
The Feng Yun of the past might not have admitted it, but now, sitting in this garden abloom with spring flowers, it was hard for her to lie to herself anymore.
After a pause, she looked straight at Pei Jue.
"In our past life, General Pei, if only you could have offered one more smile, one more tender word, I wouldn’t have done those things."
As her voice faded away, she keenly sensed the atmosphere cooling down around them.
One had read a private letter, convinced that the woman by his side was wholeheartedly in love with Xiao Cheng.
The other was trapped and terrified, desperately grasping for a straw like a drowning person...
In such a situation in their past life, whether it was Pei Jue or Feng Yun, it was really hard to say clearly what would have been the best response. Nor was it clear who was at fault, or if they both were...
After all, in their past lives, they had not experienced rebirth or known love; for both, it was their first ti being human...
"It was my fault."
Pei Jue stared at the indelible resentnt on Feng Yun’s beautiful face and slowly reached over the table to hold her hand.
Then, he curved his lips into a smile for her.
His eyes calm, resembling an ancient well dried for thousands of years, that smile seed precious yet desolate.
"I failed you."
Pei Jue did not ntion how his heart was torn to shreds witnessing the betrayal of Feng Yun, being surrounded by the Qi Army at Shiguan Dock, and watching his brothers-in-arms die one by one...
He didn’t speak of how he felt when pierced through the heart by an arrow from Wen Xingsu, watching the tower ship sail away, thinking of his woman nestling in Xiao Cheng’s arms, and how it pained him to the core...
He also didn’t bring up how, while recovering from his injuries in Central Capital City, teetering on the brink of death, he heard news after news related to her, heard of her grand wedding, how she had married Xiao Lang as she desired, and had borne him princes, how it filled him with deep-seated hatred.
Yes.
Pei Jue once loathed Feng Yun to the extre.
Wishing he could strangle her with his own hands—
Having returned from rebirth, he ca back full of hatred, ard with a thousand, ten thousand reasons to seek justice, to exact blood for blood and make up for the deficiencies of the past life, to avenge his fallen brothers...
There were also a thousand and ten thousand ways he could have crushed her completely under his feet, making her the captive consort in his residence, unable to turn over a new leaf for all eternity.
But he had not done so.
He didn’t even know why he had not.
"Lady Yun, I’m sorry."
Feng Yun felt a lump in her throat.
Her hand wanted to withdraw, yet paused, allowing him to hold it.
She replied to him calmly and evenly.
"When my father sent to the Beiyong Army camp, my fear of you outweighed my hatred. When you sent back to Andu County, my resentnt towards you was greater than fear. In my youth, I cherished Xiao Cheng. Later, I also held affection for the General."
She had never imagined that she would plainly tell Pei Jue the truth that even the old her was reluctant to face—
Yes, she had liked Pei Jue.
In those nights filled with passionate tenderness, and in those everyday monts of the life that flowed gently by...
More than three years of companionship, as distant as a dream, yet as vivid as yesterday.
The two of them gazed at each other motionlessly.
Their robes fluttered gently in the spring breeze.
Feng Yun said, "I thought, when you sent away, it was because you were weary of , no longer wanting ."
Pei Jue said, "I thought, you wanted to leave , to return to Xiao Lang."
Feng Yun asked, "If I hadn’t contacted Generals Hu, Chu, and Han, if I hadn’t conspired with Qi Country, would you have co to Andu to fetch ?"
Pei Jue’s Adam’s apple moved slightly, "I would."
Feng Yun asked further, "When would that be? How long would I have needed to wait?"
A haze clouded over Pei Jue’s dark eyes.
He was silent for a long while, then uttered hoarsely, "I don’t know. Xiao Cheng was faster."
Feng Yun chuckled, her eyelids drooping slightly.
She didn’t want to bring up Xiao Cheng, especially not in front of Pei Jue, not during such a springti.
"Let’s not talk about him. I don’t want to spoil the beauty of spring."
Pei Jue slowly curled his lips, his voice unusually tender.
"In that case, you were right."
"About what?"
"My initial suspicion of you started when I noticed your change towards Xiao Cheng..."
From the beginning, when she entered the camp, she volunteered to be a strategist, to work for the Beiyong Army.
How could Pei Jue possibly believe her sincerity?
He was convinced that Feng Yun was faking it.
This lifeti, however, she was cleverer than in the forr one.
Pretending to please him, pretending to resent Xiao Cheng, pretending to get along with those around him...
He thought it was all for profit.
But in Bingzhou, when she held the gaphone and cursed Xiao Cheng at will, and was truly willing to wear the bridal gown and marry him at the altar...
No matter how many doubts he had, he had no choice but to believe that today’s Feng Yun was not the Feng Yun of yesteryear.
However, he couldn’t dare to believe, nor dare to probe whether she, like him, was soone reborn.
The entanglents of their previous life were too many, filled with too much resentnt, and too many unbearable mories...
If she only knew the Pei Jue of this life, that for him would be the ultimate blessing.
He hadn’t asked or probed, until she ntioned Magu Wine.
Only then did Pei Jue have to face the fact that Feng Yun of their past life had returned.
The cowardly woman, wholeheartedly in love with Xiao Cheng, who had stabbed him in the back, leading to the devastating defeat of the Beiyong Army, and while he was gravely injured and at death’s door, turned to marry Xiao Cheng—
That vile woman... had truly co back.
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