Chapter 159

Chapter 159

Wei Yi suddenly regretted forcing her into this state.

He began thinking of ways to make amends.

More and more people arrived from the Imperial Medical Institute. He asked an Imperial Physician, “Can she still recover?”

No one dared to answer.

As they looked at the emperor before them, they could even see a trace of madness in his eyes…

The Director of the Imperial Medical Institute lowered his head, trembling. “I-if she could see some of her old friends, there might still be hope of restoring her mind.”

Wei Yi believed him.

He lowered his head and seriously considered Sheng Zhaoning’s “friends.” After a long while, he realized that there seemed to be pitifully few of them.

The Sheng Family had been taken away by Zhou Wei, and no one knew where they had gone.

Jin He was far from the palace, and they had lost contact with her.

Tao Song was frail and skeletal, with his death approaching.

Li Ji had been demoted to Qingzhou, a distant place beyond mountains and miles of roads.

After thinking it over and over, perhaps the only one still in the capital was Chi Yu.

Thus, Chi Yu was summoned to Changhua Hall.

It was already midsummer. Cicadas shrilled endlessly outside the hall, and the green trees cast thick shadows. The jade steps were scorching under the sun, while the scene inside the hall was completely different.

Layer upon layer of curtains blocked the sunlight. The chill within seemed to divide the hall from the world outside its doors, as though they were two separate realms. All of Changhua Hall was shrouded in darkness, and only a faint sliver of light filtered through the curtains.

When Chi Yu saw Sheng Zhaoning again, his nose stung, and he nearly burst into tears.

“Zhaoning…”

Sheng Zhaoning remained huddled motionless in the corner of the bed. She did not speak or show even the slightest reaction.

He called her name several more times, but received no response.

Sheng Zhaoning continued to huddle in the corner without lifting her head, as though she had lost her soul.

Chi Yu could not bear it any longer. His eyes bloodshot, he turned around and seized Wei Yi by the collar, demanding loudly, “What have you done to her!”

He had thought… he had thought Sheng Zhaoning had truly followed Wei Yi of her own free will!

He had thought she still loved him!

He never imagined that Wei Yi had forcibly kept her by treating her this way, tormenting her until living became worse than death and turning her into a soulless puppet!

A fist filled with rage struck Wei Yi in the face. He did not fight back, allowing Chi Yu to knock him to the ground and hammer his body again and again, his eyes filled with sorrow.

Chi Yu grabbed him by the collar, tears glistening in the corners of his eyes as he choked out, “How much more are you going to hurt her? Will you only let her go once she’s dead?”

That was Sheng Zhaoning, after all-the woman with pride in every bone, as cold and sharp as a blade.

She had endured Ao Chun’s methods with stubborn resilience, yet now she had been tormented into this state, with not a trace of her former self remaining.

But when asked what it would take for him to let her go, Wei Yi’s answer would always be the same: “Not even death will make me let her go.”

Chi Yu stared at him blankly and murmured, “You’re truly insane.”

He released Wei Yi. Remembering how contemptuously Wei Yi had once treated Sheng Zhaoning’s devotion, trampling it at will and grinding her into the dust, he could not help asking, “Where were you back then? What use is any of this now?”

Wei Yi lay on the ground, bitterness spreading across the corners of his mouth.

He had been wrong. He had not understood love before and had never learned to cherish it. After losing her, he tried to make up for it with even more misguided methods, only pushing her farther and farther away.

But how could he let go?

He had made that mistake once, pushing her into the arms of another man. He had watched her fall in love with someone else and refuse to look at him ever again. All he could do was take her, seize her by force.

Driven by jealousy, he had killed Wei Heng, and she had used every means at her disposal to take revenge on him-to kill him.

What other way could he use to keep her by his side, if not by breaking her wings and imprisoning her there?

Wei Yi’s eyes burned. He turned his head and looked through the gauze curtains at the figure in the corner. “I only want one more chance.”

Just one.

If Sheng Zhaoning were willing to turn around and look at him even once, he would spare no effort to make amends.

But in the end, all she wanted was to leave.

And he would never agree.

That was how they became trapped in an unbreakable deadlock, growing more tightly entangled and hurting each other more deeply with every passing moment.

Looking at Wei Yi, who was still refusing to see reason, Chi Yu ruthlessly shattered his hope. “When she loved you, there was no one else in her eyes. Now that she loves someone else, do you really think she’ll look at you again?”

Chi Yu loved her just as deeply, but he understood that loving someone meant giving them what they wanted.

Back then, Sheng Zhaoning had loved Wei Yi with the reckless devotion of a moth rushing into a flame. He could only silently watch over her from the sidelines.

Even if the two of them had ended up together, he would have sincerely congratulated Sheng Zhaoning on getting her heart’s desire.

Love meant helping the one you loved fulfill their wishes. It meant knowing when to let go.

It did not mean being like Wei Yi, who knew only how to seize and possess.

“Let her go. What meaning is there in keeping her trapped until she dies?” Chi Yu asked, his eyes red-rimmed.

Wei Yi only kept repeating, “No. She can’t leave.”

If she left, she would never come back.

Chi Yu’s voice trembled. “Wei Yi, let her live. What has she ever done to wrong you?”

If this continued, if Sheng Zhaoning remained trapped here, she would only be driven insane and die.

Chi Yu slowly rose to his feet. He closed his eyes and said in the cruelest voice he could manage, “Do you know why she joined the Shadow Guard Camp in the first place?”

Wei Yi’s body abruptly went still.

He raised his bloodshot eyes. His gaze was webbed with red veins, and the violent pounding of his heart thundered in his ears. Every nerve in his body tensed in an instant as he waited, utterly focused, for the answer.

Before his eyes, Chi Yu’s lips moved. Then he fired the sharpest arrow of all, driving it straight into Wei Yi’s heart.

“For you.”

Thinking of what Chi Wan had told him, Chi Yu clenched his fists. “She wanted to stay by your side forever. She wanted to protect you as a Shadow Guard, to become your blade. She was willing to die for you.”

“Funny, isn’t it? The source of your hatred for her is actually the fact that she loves you!”

Even Chi Yu felt that fate was cruel beyond measure after saying those words aloud.

Because Sheng Zhaoning loved Wei Yi, she had been willing to fight her way out of the Shadow Guard Camp, where every step was a brush with death. She had turned herself cold-blooded and powerful, charging into battle for Wei Yi and killing everyone who posed a threat to him.

Yet she had never expected that, in doing so, she would also kill the innocent, gentle version of herself she had once been. She became loathsome, cruel, and bloodthirsty, provoking Wei Yi’s boundless hatred.

Wei Yi hurt and humiliated her because he resented the fact that she could never become the person she had once been again.

He did not know that everything had begun with Sheng Zhaoning’s unwavering love.

Wei Yi’s entire face contorted with pain. He could barely breathe. His chest felt heavier and heavier, while the aching pressure in it turned into a hot current that surged into his eyes.

Like a drowning man, he struggled desperately, yet no matter what he did, he could not escape that despairing suffocation.

Why? Why did fate have to torment him like this…

Heaven was unjust!

Yet Chi Yu still refused to spare him. He forged his cruelest words into a blade and drove it through Wei Yi’s chest.

“Her love for you has always been the blade that slowly tortured her.”

“Let her go. Stop hurting her.”