Broken Jade - Chapter 143
Chapter 143
Sheng Zhaoning awoke to lamps burning through the long night.
The candle flames flickered gently, and her vision slowly cleared beneath their wavering amber glow.
It felt as though she had lived her entire life all over again. When she opened her eyes, two clear tears slipped from their corners.
It had been a long time since she had dreamed of Wei Heng.
Every memory had been so vivid in the dream.
Why did she have to wake up?
Why… was she still alive?
Once the dream ended, everything vanished.
In the waking world, she would never see Wei Heng again.
A low, hoarse voice echoed through the empty silence of Changhua Hall.
“Disappointed you failed to die again?”
His weary, gravelly voice was laced with mockery.
Her blurred vision gradually came into focus. Blinking back her tears, she looked up, only to meet Wei Yi’s cold, dark eyes staring down at her.
She instinctively drew back. Yet that tiny movement set off the crisp clinking of chains.
Her gaze inched downward. The moment it landed on the silver chain fastened around her wrist, her pupils contracted and trembled.
She had been utterly imprisoned.
Confined in this humiliating manner, stripped of every last shred of dignity and freedom.
“Why go this far?” Sheng Zhaoning asked, unable to understand him.
Even her voice was terribly weak now, each hoarse word accompanied by a ragged breath.
Did he truly hate her so much that he would not even grant her one final wish: death?
They tormented each other, struggling endlessly in pain with no end in sight…
Why bother?
“Sheng Zhaoning, did you think that after having Zhou Wei rescue the Sheng Family, there would be nothing left I could use against you?”
A faint, chilling smile curved his lips. He reached out and slowly caressed her cheek, winding a lock of her hair around his finger. His gaze was dark and unfathomable.
He tucked the lock behind her ear, then trailed his fingertips down her cheek and over her neck. His thumb rubbed slowly back and forth against her throat, the gesture carrying a trace of flippant amusement.
Sheng Zhaoning went rigid.
As that dangerous hand roamed over her neck, all those unbearable, humiliating memories crept back into her mind.
On the day the Liangzhou Army broke through the Imperial City, the Emperor had used a keepsake belonging to Consort Mei as bait. When Prince Zhenbei lowered his guard, the Emperor stabbed him in the jugular with a knife hidden beneath his pillow, taking them both to the grave.
Wei Yi ascended the throne.
He hated Wei Heng so bitterly that even after Wei Heng’s death, he refused to leave him the slightest shred of dignity.
Wei Yi’s first act upon ascending the throne was to reward her.
He announced to the world that Sheng Zhaoning had rendered the greatest service during the Palace Coup by personally slaying the Crown Prince.
One sword thrust through the heart.
Rewards poured into Sheng Mansion in an endless stream, branding her once and for all as a traitor and rebel.
He kept her at court, yet personally clipped all her wings. One after another, the veteran officials close to her were demoted.
Then, to humiliate her further, Wei Yi summoned her to Changhua Hall every day, where red candles burned until dawn.
At the time, nearly everyone cursed her as a heartless ingrate.
They said she had betrayed her former master and, for the sake of imperial favor, had shamelessly climbed into the New Emperor’s bed despite being his subject.
Her former colleagues scorned her. Her old friends despised her. Her mentor hated her.
Even the Sheng Family, consumed by rage, refused to see her.
The Deputy Minister of the Court of Judicial Review, once renowned for her spotless reputation, had fallen into the mire overnight.
She endured the contempt of the entire world.
Perhaps those memories were simply too unbearable. Sheng Zhaoning closed her eyes in pain. “What more do you want from me?”
She had never owed him anything. Even if he resented her, even if he truly hated her this much, could not even death put an end to it?
Wei Yi seized her face and forcibly turned it toward him, refusing to let her evade his gaze in the slightest.
“Don’t even think about dying. You don’t deserve to.”
What gave her the right to die just like that, without the slightest attachment tying her to this life?
After killing every meritorious official who had taken part in the Palace Coup, she had slit her own wrists without the slightest hesitation.
Wei Yi no longer knew what else he could do to keep her with him.
With her martial arts completely destroyed and her meridians severed, she had been left with internal injuries that could never heal.
Beneath the abandoned hall of the Eastern Palace, the blade had cut deep into her wrist, and the bleeding would not stop.
She should never have survived.
But Wei Yi still had one final pill made from all the priceless treasures Zhou Lingsheng had gathered from across the realm. It had barely preserved the last flicker of life in her heart.
She could forget about dying.
Sheng Zhaoning had to remain by his side, never leaving him for even a moment, and endure every last act of his cruelty as the price of her betrayal.
This was her fate.
The fate he had personally bestowed upon her.
Wei Yi regarded her coldly. His lips slowly curved as he spoke in his usual threatening tone. “There is the Sheng Family, Dai Rong, your mentor Tao Song, and your old friend Li Ji. Then there is the former Grand Secretary He and his daughter, He Sui.”
“And all those former officials in the Court of Judicial Review and the Hanlin Academy.”
“Sheng Zhaoning, there are far too many people and things in this world that can be used against you. You cannot let go of a single one.”
That was the trouble with being a good person.
She would never be able to cross the threshold of her so-called conscience.
She knew he was not making empty threats. She had been able to devise every possible means of killing those around him who had participated in the Palace Coup, and he could do the same.
For him, it would take no effort at all. A single word would suffice.
At last, Sheng Zhaoning stirred.
She gazed earnestly at the face before her. It seemed impossible to reconcile him with the young man she remembered glimpsing from afar beneath the apricot tree.
Now, his entire being radiated viciousness. All she felt toward him was fear and hatred.
The strength that had kept Sheng Zhaoning taut drained out of her in an instant.
She truly had no strength left to resist.
Sheng Zhaoning returned to the cage he had woven around her.
……
That chain bound the last shred of freedom she had left.
The red plum tree outside the courtyard had long since been cut down. Whenever the window was propped open, all she could see was an apricot tree that had been transplanted there at some unknown time.
She never opened the window again.
Sheng Zhaoning’s injuries were too severe this time, and the loss of blood and vitality had taken a tremendous toll.
She was now gaunt and haggard, reduced to little more than frail skin and bone.
It seemed as though she might collapse at any moment.
The Imperial Physician came to examine her every day, prescribing countless restorative medicines one dose after another.
Wei Yi returned every day after morning court. When he was in a good mood, he would occasionally tell her about things happening outside the palace.
Sheng Zhaoning never responded.
Eventually, when he saw that her condition continued to deteriorate day by day no matter how many tonics she took, Wei Yi’s expression finally changed.
It darkened further whenever she had no appetite and went several days barely eating a thing.
He even set aside his aversion to plum blossoms and specifically ordered the Shangshan Directorate to prepare plum blossom cakes for her.
But they were still carried away untouched.
Wei Yi finally erupted in fury.
“Didn’t you always love plum blossom cakes? I’ve had the cooks make them several times, yet you haven’t touched a single bite.”
He suppressed the cold severity in his expression, forcing himself not to speak to her with too dark or forbidding a look.
But Sheng Zhaoning merely turned her face away, unwilling to spare him even a glance.
Wei Yi’s expression darkened completely.
He seized her face and forcibly turned it back, making her look him in the eye.
Sheng Zhaoning let out a soundless sigh. “I can’t eat.”
She was not deliberately defying him, nor was this some calculated act of resistance.
She truly could not eat.
But Wei Yi clearly did not believe her.
He summoned the imperial cooks from the Shangshan Directorate. More than a dozen people knelt trembling across the floor, their faces filled with the terror of those awaiting death. The furtive glances they cast at her were full of desperate pleading.
“Since you refuse to eat, there is no point in keeping these people alive. Why don’t I have them all beheaded?”
Wei Yi smiled at her, his gaze glacial. Sheng Zhaoning did not even have the strength to defend herself.
“What exactly do you want?”
Wei Yi brought the platter piled with cakes before her and ordered forcefully, “Eat every last one.”
