Broken Jade - Chapter 144
Chapter 144
The sweet aroma of pastries mingled with the faint, delicate fragrance of preserved plum blossoms, lingering at the tip of her nose.
It truly was her favorite pastry.
Once, Wei Heng had made it for her with his own hands many times.
After he left, she could never find that same flavor again.
Sheng Zhaoning had not eaten one since.
Wei Yi knew nothing of these secrets buried deep in her heart, unnoticed and unasked about. He had merely inquired about her preferences from the people around her. Knowing she liked these cakes, he often ordered the Shangshan Directorate to prepare and serve them.
Yet he had never noticed that, every single time, the plum blossom cakes went untouched.
Now, the pastries were stubbornly presented to her once more.
Sheng Zhaoning stared at the plate piled high with plum blossom cakes. Her stomach churned violently, and her lips abruptly turned deathly pale.
She truly did not want to eat them.
But when her gaze swept over the people kneeling throughout the hall, she sighed inwardly. Left with no choice, she forced down her discomfort and stuffed the cloyingly sweet cakes into her mouth, one after another. Every bite was torture.
Only then did Wei Yi’s expression ease somewhat.
He could not bear to see Sheng Zhaoning looking so frail and emaciated. He believed that as long as she ate, her health would improve day by day.
But that very night, Sheng Zhaoning vomited until she was barely conscious.
By the time her stomach was empty and there was nothing left to bring up, darkness had clouded her vision. Unable to hold on any longer, she fell into a deep sleep.
Wei Yi nearly went mad.
He could not understand how things had come to this.
The more desperately he tried to hold on to something, the farther it slipped beyond his reach.
More than half of the staff at the Imperial Medical Institute were summoned, every one of them an Imperial Physician. They examined her one after another, then remained silent. Not one of them spoke.
Years of pent-up anguish had taken root as illness, and the disease was now beyond cure.
Her pulse showed almost no trace of life.
This was an affliction of the heart. None of them could do anything.
All they could do was exhaust every possible method to sustain that last breath, forcibly keeping it from fading away.
Sheng Zhaoning sank into unconsciousness once more.
This time, her mind did not return to memories of the past. Instead, she plunged into an unseen abyss of utter darkness, falling without end.
She had no idea how long she had been trapped in that void. When she opened her eyes again, the first thing she saw was an old friend standing beside her bed, someone she had not seen in many years.
“It’s you.”
It truly had been a long time.
Eight years had passed since they parted in Liangzhou.
Zhou Lingsheng looked at Sheng Zhaoning lying on the bed, reduced to little more than skin and bone. She was haggard, and even speaking took tremendous effort. It felt as though something had stabbed him viciously through the heart.
He still remembered the first time he had seen her. She had been a bloodied mess, her bones shattered, without a single uninjured patch of flesh anywhere on her body.
Yet even then, she had never seemed as lifeless as she did now, without the slightest spark of vitality.
“It’s only been a few years. How did you end up like this?” Zhou Lingsheng’s eyes were heavy with pain.
In his memory, Sheng Zhaoning was someone who could fall into the abyss and still fight her way back out.
She was strong, brave, and resilient. Even with only one breath left, she would stubbornly cling to life.
How could someone like her have become this way, bereft of every last shred of the will to live?
Sheng Zhaoning closed her eyes, overwhelming exhaustion filling her entire body.
Her voice was utterly flat. “You shouldn’t have saved me.”
If she simply died, would Wei Yi finally stop making things difficult for everyone else?
She could not understand why dying had become so difficult.
It seemed as though everyone was standing in the way of her reunion with Wei Heng.
Zhou Lingsheng should not have saved her. He should not have done so back then, and he certainly should not have done so now.
If she had died back then in Liangzhou, at Ao Chun’s hands…
Would things still have come to this?
Zhou Lingsheng did not know what she had endured over the past few years. He had only managed to piece together fragments of the story from what little the others had said.
She had let go of Wei Yi and fallen in love with someone else.
But Wei Yi would not allow it.
Zhou Lingsheng had taken no part in the Palace Coup.
He had only arrived in Capital City afterward, when it was already over.
Before he could even meet with her, he hurriedly left Capital City. Then a letter from his master took him to Mobei, where he remained for a year.
By the time he returned, he had already heard the news that she was gravely ill and on the verge of death.
Zhou Lingsheng rushed to the Imperial Palace without stopping to save her, but even he had never imagined her body would be in such ruin.
Her heart meridian was damaged, and every other meridian in her body had been severed.
Zhou Lingsheng exhausted every skill he had acquired in his lifetime and poured countless medicines into her before finally snatching her back from King Yama.
What he had not expected was that her resolve to die would be so unshakable.
There was not the faintest glimmer of hope for life in her eyes.
“Does living truly cause you so much pain?” Zhou Lingsheng asked.
Sheng Zhaoning smiled, her eyes brimming with bitterness. “Every moment, every breath, is agony.”
Hatred had sustained her until now. Everyone involved in the Palace Coup had since been killed.
But her Ah Heng would sleep beneath the earth forever.
What else was there in this mortal world for her to hold on to?
Her love had grown with her longing day by day, transforming into a sharpened blade that plunged into her heart over and over, sinking deeper each time and leaving her drenched in blood.
She truly could not endure much more.
“For the sake of our past acquaintance, kill me.” Just consider it granting her wish.
Zhou Lingsheng’s eyes reddened. He recalled the sight at the city walls that day: the Crown Prince’s broken body being thrown down and discarded, and how he had followed it all the way to the mass grave…
“Sheng Zhaoning, stay alive.”
He crouched beside her and said in a low, trembling voice, “I’ll take you to find him-”
Behind him, the sound of the door opening cut their conversation short.
A cold wind swept in through the wooden door, setting every candle in the room flickering.
Sheng Zhaoning forcibly suppressed the shock that had flashed through her eyes, but beneath the covers, her fingertips began to tremble uncontrollably.
Zhou Lingsheng fell silent and turned around. Beyond the folding screen, a figure was slowly approaching.
A fierce, sharp-eyed gaze appeared from around the screen first, sweeping oppressively across the room. It paused when it landed on Sheng Zhaoning’s pallid face. The man stared at her for a long moment, his eyes webbed with blood.
Wei Yi strode to the bedside.
“How is she?” Wei Yi asked, looking at Zhou Lingsheng.
Zhou Lingsheng clenched his fist and sneered. “Barely alive. The slightest disturbance could kill her.”
Wei Yi gritted his teeth, darkness gathering in his eyes. “I asked about her condition. How long will it take her to recover?”
He deliberately ignored the fact that her illness was already critical, stubbornly insisting on believing that Sheng Zhaoning would not die.
Zhou Lingsheng regarded him coldly. “You ruined her to this extent, and only now do you think to ask whether she can recover?”
“I’d like to ask you something myself. Just how much hatred and resentment did you harbor to drive her to this state?”
Wei Yi stared at him with chilling severity. “This is between her and me.”
Zhou Lingsheng met his gaze in earnest. “I will warn you only once. Do not touch her again. Her body cannot withstand the slightest strain. If you still want her to live, then treat her better.”
