Shaxi Moon Crossing - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I had never once defied the Empress.

She had shown me kindness.

In this imperial palace, a place that devoured people whole and spat out not even their bones, she had protected me for seven years.

So it was not only Wanxin who was stunned.

The Empress, who had been choosing how she would die, was stunned as well.

She set the dagger down on the table.

Then she helped me to my feet.

“Fuwei, you are steady by nature, and you were born beautiful.”

“His Majesty… has long had feelings for you.”

“If you stay, one day you will surely be granted the title of Noble Consort.”

The Empress was not lying.

Leaving aside whether Xiao Yin truly had feelings for me,

in my previous life, I was first titled Meiren.

Later, I was made Consort Shu.

In the seventh year, I became Xiao Yin’s only Noble Consort.

I possessed unmatched dignity and honor.

But life in the depths of the palace was too hard to endure.

Within red walls and vermilion tiles, all I could see was a square patch of sky.

Yet I could never walk out.

And the women of the harem-even the Empress’s son and daughter-under Xiao Yin’s hints, all decided that I had climbed my way up by clinging to power.

That the moment the Empress died, I had been unable to wait before crawling into the emperor’s dragon bed.

That I was truly treacherous and ungrateful.

No one looked up to such a person. Everyone only kept their distance.

So I had no friends.

Even Wanxin, the sister who had once been closest to me,

resented me too.

She resented the Empress for favoring me, for leaving all the honor and glory to me,

while sending her away to distant Jiangnan.

Little did she know, the Empress was the one who truly loved her.

Wanxin had the same brightness, the same lively spirit.

In Wanxin, the Empress saw her former self.

So she risked everything, desperate for Wanxin to obtain freedom.

As for me, I was steady by nature.

During those seven years in the deep palace, I had blocked many schemes from the harem on the Empress’s behalf.

I did have some means.

And every time Xiao Yin came,

his gaze would always fall on me, whether intentionally or not.

The emperor and Empress had been husband and wife since youth.

No one understood Xiao Yin’s thoughts better than the Empress.

Thus, the future she chose for me was to become one of Xiao Yin’s consorts.

She knew-

with my methods, plus the emperor’s favor,

I would have a bright future ahead.

But I was unwilling.

I was unwilling to bury the rest of my life in the deep palace again.

Yet the Empress still had a son and a daughter.

The deep palace was treacherous and ever-changing.

Someone had to stay behind to look after them.

“Then let this servant stay.”

Wanxin stepped forward.

She knelt before the Empress and kowtowed three times, each one loud and heavy.

The Empress hurried forward to help her up.

“Wanxin, you are lively by nature. The deep palace is not suited to you…”

“But this servant wants to rise above others.”

Wanxin cut off the Empress.

There were tears in her eyes, but beneath them was a bright, unmistakable ambition.

In that instant, I knew she had been reborn too.

I could not help thinking of my previous life.

Back then, not long after the Empress passed away, I served in the imperial bedchamber under her arrangements.

Xiao Yin titled me Meiren.

Countless jewels, silks, and brocades were delivered to my palace like flowing water.

Wanxin had not yet left the palace.

She came to see me, her face cold. “Her Majesty truly did favor you.”

So she would not allow me to see her off.

At dawn the next day, Wanxin took her token and quietly left the imperial palace.

She did not leave me a single word.

In that vast, deep palace,

I no longer had any friends. I became truly alone.

In outsiders’ eyes, Xiao Yin treated me extremely well.

He let me live in the largest palace.

He gave me the finest care.

When I was still a Meiren, he allowed me to wear palace attire beyond my rank.

He let me wear kingfisher-feather jewelry only consorts were allowed to wear.

Everyone in the harem envied the favor I received.

But no one knew

that in the bedchamber, Xiao Yin never stopped humiliating me.

He would order people to bring in a tray of ornaments.

Gold, silver, kingfisher feathers.

One by one, he would pin them into my hair.

Until there was no more space left.

With my head covered in pearls and jade, so heavy I could barely lift it,

my neck would ache terribly.

But Xiao Yin would not allow me to remove them.

His words were full of mockery.

“Fuwei, did the Empress know your thoughts ran so deep?”

His scorching breath spilled over the nape of my neck.

I forced myself to endure it and refused to speak.

So he deliberately used more force, and I was struck into crying out in shock.

Xiao Yin laughed again.

“Look at you. Being favored by Us clearly makes you very happy.”

As soon as he finished speaking, his expression suddenly changed again.

His eyes filled with hatred.

He reached out and clamped his hand around my throat.

“The Empress had only just died, and you climbed into my bed. You really are heartless and ungrateful!”

“Tell me, do you think she hates you from the heavens?”

“She loved you so dearly and treated you like her own sister, yet you slept with her husband and climbed over her bones to rise in status.”

“When you wake from dreams at midnight, aren’t you afraid the Empress will come for your life?”

“…”

Every word cut straight to the heart.

But I had truly never once thought of clinging to power or marrying above myself.

Yet no matter how I explained,

Xiao Yin refused to believe me.

He even cursed me for being silver-tongued, saying I was always skilled at excusing myself.

So every time I served him in bed,

he would not allow me to sleep. He made me kneel beside the couch and atone for my sins.

For a time, my knees hurt terribly.

So I stopped wanting to attend him in bed.

That way, I would not have to kneel through the entire night.

But Xiao Yin came in the dead of night, climbed soundlessly onto my bed, ignored my struggles, and took me by force.

Afterward, he cursed me again for being scheming and calculating.

He said I was playing hard to get, all to make him miss me and think of me.

And so, I had to kneel through another whole night.

But not beside the bed.

He dragged me to Kunning Palace and made me kneel before the Empress’s portrait from the depths of night until dawn.

Xiao Yin said, “I want the Empress to see whether a woman like you, so desperate to climb the dragon and cling to the phoenix, was ever worthy of her sincere affection.”

The Emperor and Empress had been husband and wife since youth.

Their love ran as deep as the sea.

Though Xiao Yin deeply loved the Empress,

it did not stop him from filling the harem with three thousand beauties, with Meiren gathered around him in droves.

He even coveted me, someone at the Empress’s side.

Simply because that was his supreme right.

But then… the woman he loved left him in the most tragic way possible.

Xiao Yin was in agony.

He was also guilty.

Guilty that, for the sake of stability in the court and harem,

he had spared Consort Shu Chen, who had caused the deaths of his and the Empress’s children.

He had even lavished favor upon her.

But as an emperor,

peerlessly noble, how could he ever easily admit he was wrong?

And at that very moment, I became one of his consorts.

A consort, and also an outlet for his rage.

His guilt toward the Empress became humiliation inflicted upon me.

As if only this way

could he find peace.

The humiliation in bed never ceased.

Every time, Xiao Yin would say how much he despised me

while pinning me beneath him and doing everything that husbands and wives did.

He favored me, but he did not protect me.

The battles in the harem never ended. The schemes between consorts never stopped.

But no matter how clumsy the plot was,

as long as it targeted me,

Xiao Yin would fly into a “towering rage” without any careful investigation.

Then he would punish me severely.

I once knelt barefoot in the snow for an entire day and night.

My knees were badly damaged because of it. Whenever it rained late at night, the pain became unbearable, yet Xiao Yin scolded me for being too delicate.

I was also once confined in a cold courtyard, with all the doors and windows sealed shut. For more than thirty days, I lived without seeing the sun, accompanied only by rats, flies, and insects. I was nearly driven mad.

He mocked me, too, for my lowly birth.

I was nothing but a laundry maid.

So he punished me by making me wash clothes with my own hands for the consorts he favored, stopping only after my hands were covered in frostbite.

The long kneeling in the rain utterly ruined my health.

I was only in my early thirties, yet my qi and blood were already depleted, and old illnesses had settled so deeply that I could no longer recover.

Only then did Xiao Yin begin to regret it.

With scarlet eyes, he summoned every imperial physician to treat me, shouting that if they could not cure me, he would have them all buried with me.

Then he held me tightly in his arms and said, over and over, that he was sorry.

“You were the Empress’s palace maid, yet I fell for you. I wronged the Empress, and that made me even less able to face you.”

“But I regret it now.”

“As long as you get better, I will love you properly. I will give you endless honor and spend the rest of my life with you as husband and wife.”

“Fuwei, let us live well from now on…”

So, in the name of love, he humiliated me for thirteen whole years!

How utterly ironic.

I had no clan to implicate.

The Empress who cherished me had already passed away. Wanxin, my only sister, had severed ties with me. Even the prince and princess for whom I had stayed in the palace hated me to the bone because of Xiao Yin.

As for me, I was nothing but a solitary soul.

So I decided to do something outrageously bold.

I pulled the gold hairpin from my hair.

When Xiao Yin was utterly unguarded, I stabbed it viciously into his neck.

As blood gushed out,

his eyes went wide. Blood spilled from his mouth, and his gaze was full of disbelief.

In the end, all life left him.

I laughed like a madwoman.

Then I, too, violently coughed up a mouthful of blood and slowly closed my eyes.

Only, before I died,

I thought that if I could live this life over again, I would want freedom for once.

I would live only for myself.