Apocalypse1 year five, twelfth days of twelfth lunar month, House of Marquis Ding Bei led the army back to the Capital and pacified the rebellion in one fell swoop.
All the rebels and rioting officials have been executed, Concubine Chen ended herself inside her own Palace with a long piece of white silk. The Emperor returned to the Court and announced the closing of Court for seven days. This kind of action, within the five years since this diligent and conscientious Emperor ascended the throne, was unprecedented. Even during the time when the Empress Dowager passed away, the Emperor only tiredly rubbed his eyebrows and announced the closing of Court for three days.
The Emperor was wrapped in his cloak, standing silently by the wall. Watching the guards recovering a bloated and deformed body from the river. The middle at the back of the body was pierced by several arrows. The blood has completely dried up from the body, the wound had turned white from soaking in the water. The body was still wearing the bright golden dragon robe that was hurriedly taken off that day. Freezing cold twelfth lunar month, floating on icy water must be very cold, right?
The Emperor crouched down in silence, carefully cut down the arrows. He prohibited anyone from intervening, carefully removed the arrowhead from the wound. After that, he removed the cloak from his own body and covered up the human form on the ground tightly with care. The bloated, deformed face was wet. The eyebrows and eye areas were sparse, and the lips were black and purple. So he took out a handkerchief from his bosom. During the time while doing all these actions, his hands were calm and steady. And didn’t trembled from the cold wind. One by one, the guards lowered down their gaze. So no one saw, that something silently fell down, wetting the face the Emperor had just carefully wiped clean.
Duan Ming Zhang remembered something from the past, this man entered the Palace half a year ago. Huai Zhen was in the side hall, waiting for him to summon him, ate the yogurt that was on the table. That was something Concubine Chen had specially requested to eat. Getting proud from being favored, she mistook the daring, slender young man as the Emperor’s new favorite. She flew into rage out of humiliation, ordered him to be dragged out and severely punished. By the time LePing managed to arrive, Rong Huai Zhen has already endured the punishment several times. The Emperor put an order of confinement on Concubine Chen. Afterwards, he personally went to visit the wounded Rong Huai Zhen. On his sickbed, Rong Huai Zhen was having a fever, stared groggily at him. Seemed to be delirious, he spouted out a sentence, “You are really good-looking.”
He can’t help but indulged in Rong Huai Zhen. Because no one has ever said such rude, offensive words to him, no one has ever took some spare time to secretly stare at him. In many many years, no one has ever dared to call him by his name in front of him. On that iron-blood colored night sky, Rong Huai Zhen who has been silently following his footstep abruptly crashed into his arms. He was sweating profusely, his eyes shining brightly, shouted his name, “Duan Ming Zhang!”
There are warmth spreading on the lips, at the same time a sharp pain on his neck and everything went black before his eyes. When he woke up once more, that person was no more. He stared helplessly….
The two men who shed blood but not tears on bloody battlefield, hugging their little brother’s dead body and crying painfully. They deeply blamed themselves –
If they were not down with cold,
If they haven’t missed the edict due to sickness,
If they didn’t delay their journey on the road,
If they came back one day earlier,
But in this world, how can there be so many ‘If’ ?
He don’t have any words to comfort them. Rong Huai Zhen died on his behalf, he was main culprit. The rebellion subsided. The Emperor is still the Emperor. Like so many emperors, he have a tangled and complicated harem surging with undercurrent of power behind his back. No one will tell him truthful words anymore, and he don’t have any truthful words to tell anyone anymore. Only the loyal eunuch LePing who have been with him for years knew, every year on the tenth of the twelfth lunar month, the Emperor will sit silently in front of a grave overnight. Then he will quietly leave upon daybreak. He didn’t looked any different from himself from the past. But ever since that year, the Emperor didn’t celebrate his birthday anymore. Because the day after his birthday is the man’s death anniversary.
Please tell me someone shed a tear or two after reading this chapter ;w;
Or I’ll fail to be an ‘okay’ translator for failing to translate the emotions across to English.
I cried a lot don’t worry *sob*
My sister and mom saw me crying and they asked me why I was crying
*pats* (;w;)/
You got like three droplets out of me before I wiped them off.
….
;-;
(;w;)/
Thank you for the chapter~
Ummm, I didn’t shed tears (rarely do)…
but I do experiencing pain, like “NOOOO, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?? WHAT WITH THE TRAGEDY??? WHERE ALL FLUFFY AND CUTE CHAPTERS LIKE BEFORE GO???” ;_;
please don’t hurt my kokoro… *My kokoro crying ;_;
Don’t worry. I’m crying… thanks for translating and you’re awesome. 🙂
Thanks (;w;)/
i cried!!
thank you for beautifully translated chapter! T.T
I cried a lot. this is a wonderful story thank you for translating this..
This extra is bad.. Yabai yo!!!
I shed lots of tears here especially because I just realized what Huai Zhen meant when he said he would die again. At first, I was wondering how romance would develop between them when he didn’t seem all that interested in the emperor. When it was revealed that he died to protect the emperor, it still hadn’t fully sinked in for me. While reading this, I realized that he meant that should the rebellion happen again he would sacrifice himself again. TT_TT
;w;
Wait..wait…
So the MC is already prepare himself from the start of his second life to die again for the Emperor??
Yes 😀
Wow , I’m speechless,shit I can’t stop my tears
I thought MC doesn’t like this emperor
But he choosed dead again in his second life for save emperor T.T
;D the scene was damm sad
Waaah I cried so bad😭 why why….my heart is sinking 😖
*pats* ;3
Why so many tangle of feeling, feEl. ..so miserable, so,,,missery
*pats* dem feels
Luckily each of got second chance to be together and have back that love.
Sad ;_;
*pats* Makes me cry when I translated it
I didn’t expect much of this story but I teared up. This story wasn’t supposed to be so touching and made me /feel/. Chpater 5 and chapter 6 are my favourites now. I’ve been re-reading this again and again and I still feel so touched here.
It took someone’s else comment for me to even realized that Rong Huai Zhen have been determined to sacrifice his life /again/ for the Emperor and that made me hurt even more now. Especially after all those reactions Huai Zhen made whenever he remembers how painful his death was. I really love it when the Emperor asked if it hurt to be stabbed by those arrows and if the moat was cold in the dead winter of December. Obviously it does but it kind of made it feel like the Emperor wish he could take on those pain/cold himself instead of Huai Zhen suffering those. And that the Emperor has been visiting his grave every year on his birthday. It reminds me of that saying of you’ll always remember your first love, even if Huai Zhen isn’t his first love, just this act made it feel like he was the Emperor’s true first love and someone really special.
Thank you for translating and sharing this story! I enjoyed reading it. I had to hold back my tears. Thanks for that too.
Many thanks for your kind comment (;w;)/
The sad part was totally unexpected too, when I started reading the novel.
It makes me really sad to read about the part where he won’t celebrate his birthday anymore.
I don’t know how many times I re-read this story, but everytime I read this chapter it always successfully breaking my fragile heart… ㅠ.ㅠ
Thanks yo~! I re-read once myself and still cried _(;3/
I cried with this touching story ;_;
(;w;)/
😢😭🤧 I just remembered what he thought after he visited the Male Consort at the cell about dying on behalf of your love one (or something like that) and here he is a prime example, even though he kept on thinking “I don’t want to die” after his reborn because of the trauma.
So sad, but i’m glad this ended with happy end! Yaaay! I also read another 2 extra, but i read it from back to front… My mistakes, thats why i coment in this chapter! Thank you for traslating this fluffy, sweet, comedy love story!! Thank you very much 🙌🙌🎂
unspoken love is so romantic and bittersweet, it’s the best kind of pain to read through
my heart is stabbed, stabbed, prodded, and i sighed a lot of sadness away…. their love is so beautiful
after rebirth HZ is still very humble and if not for DMZ also being reborn he will really just admire him from afar
so selfless it hurts *bites hanky
Lol, so that’s why ohr mc said don’t eat a yoghurt that concubine x liked….or something x,,D
He’s really amusing haha
So the emperor had survived, huh.
Thanks for the chapter! 🍀
I didn’t expect to cry from such a short novel ;-;
really really cried Q_Q im in a cafeteria rn reading this and literally trying not to get tears into my soup
Saaaad. This is so saaad. I didn’t expect to suffer this much with a short chapter, but It’s really painful. I cried a river…
Now we know why the emperor was so nice with him.
Thanks for the translation!
My heart hurt so bad. I never can handle well an aftermath scene after someone died. The grief The Emperor felt is being conveyed beautifully, you did a great job translating this chapter.
Thanks for the chapter (●´∀`●)
Thanks for the chapter! 😊😍
Thank you for translating this! This was a nice story :’)
Wow that guy had to wait a long time. Good thing he came back.