Heavy rain poured down on the mass grave. The sound of thunder grumbled in the sky.
Yu Qinghuan was going to die!
Only her head was poking through the ground as the rest of her was buried under it, her face covered with blood and mud.
"Yu'er... Hang in there, I'm going to take you to a physician!"
In front of Yu Qinghuan, a man was kneeling on his knees and constantly clawing out the soil around her, cracking his ten fingernails and exposing the bones of his fingers. Yet he refused to give up.
"Prince Qi!" shouted Yu Qinghuan at the man.
The blood on her face was flushed by the rain and flowed into her mouth along her cheek. The taste was sweet, but the tip of her tongue was bitter.
"Don't say anything. I'll take you away. Don't close your eyes... Don't..."
The man did not look up. His hands were still digging, and his voice could not hide his anxiety and fear.
"You..." Seeing the man, the woman wanted to stop him from digging. There was no way she could still live after this, but her words failed her.
"Prince Qi, I, Yu Qinghuan, am blind to have escaped from our marriage."
In the end, this was what she uttered.
She was Yu Qian's granddaughter who, for ten years, had been blessed by the Emperor. The Emperor had bestowed a marriage upon her, uniting her and Prince Qi in holy matrimony. They would be husband and wife for as long as they lived.
Under normal circumstances, no one would have dared to disobey the Emperor's decree.
However, she, Yu Qinghuan, did not marry him, for two reasons that made her feel ridiculous every time she thought of him.
Rumor had it that the sexual orientation of Prince Qi
born Zhangsun Dao
was questionable, as he would be seen attached at the hip to handsome court advisors all day and every day. The life of a widow was what awaited a woman should she marry him.
Besides, she, Yu Qinghuan, had given her heart to another. Stubborn as she was, she was determined to marry someone she loved, and nobody else.
Yu Qinghuan looked at the man who had never stopped clawing at the soil and trying to dig her out. She could not tell if he was romantically attracted to men, but her persistence in marrying only the man she loved was a sheer joke.
She, who had been infatuated with the love of her life for longer than she could remember, had risked her life by defying the decree and choosing to elope with him, subjecting herself to unimaginable suffering in the process. But in the end, here she was, with her hands and feet having been broken by the other party, buried alive in the mass grave.
"Prince Qi, please refrain from digging. Nothing will come of it." With resentment plaguing her heart, Yu Qinghuan gave a wry smile and spoke to the man again.
"No! It took me a lot of effort to find you. You're not allowed to leave me behind again! You're not allowed to..." His voice was almost pleading. He was so afraid that she would leave at any time.
Her heart seemed to be tugged by a very thin thread when she compared the fiend Qin Zhen's callousness to the man in front of her, but when she finally woke up from her world of make-believe, all she felt were stabs of pain in her heart.
Amidst her trance, Prince Qi tucked his hands under her arms and pulled them up hard, and with a swoosh sound, her body broke out of the soil and lay loosely in the crook of his arms.
Her dress had been soiled, and her feet under the skirt had been badly mutilated. Dense black ants crawled on the broken limbs and gnawed on the flesh.
"Ah. No wonder the pain has been unbearable. It turns out that the flesh has been eaten by ants," Yu Qinghuan said jokingly.
"No!" This scene had been seared into Prince Qi's eyes. He suddenly enveloped Yu Qinghuan in his arms and hugged her tightly, his lips trembling. "You will be fine. You will be fine! I will save you. I will send for the best physician in the entire world to save you!"
She couldn't see his face. She only felt drops of hot tears falling on her neck, rolling into her clothes, and finally trickling down her camisole.
For a moment, she had no mental wherewithal to care about why this fiance, whom she had only met once, was so affectionate to her. She only felt her chest tighten. The drops of tears with warmth seemed to be burrowing into her heart, reaching the deepest depth of it.
"I didn't expect that in my life, aside from my mother, there is another person who would grieve for me at the end of my life. How... wonderful." Yu Qinghuan coughed and strained a smile.
"No, don't you say this. Don't you dare give up. I will definitely save you!" the man interrupted her.
Wedged between her smile was her dismissal of the man's promise. She knew her own body.
"Prince Qi, may I ask you a question before I breathe my last?"
"Ask away, and I will answer your question, whatever it may be," the man urged.
"Prince Qi, is it true that you are... attracted to men?"
Yu Qinghuan's voice faltered. As soon as she raised her question, she saw the man loosen his arms, widened his eyes, and gaped at her in pure astonishment.
"Silly. Look at me. I'm about to die, but I still asked such a boring question. Forget it." Yu Qinghuan coughed again, and her voice became weaker.
"Prince Qi, I'm leaving ahead of you. I'm sorry that you've been searching for me for so long, and I've made you sad. In the next life, if there is ever one, I'll definitely repay you for this..."
After saying this, she slowly closed her eyes in the man's heart-wrenching cries, and the corners of her mouth froze into a broken smile.
No longer could she hear the string of 'Yu'ers' from the man's lips...