Chapter 2: The feeling of being alive

For several nights in a row, Gu Yu Qi slept roughly.
After falling into the water, she had a fever.
Her forehead was terribly hot and she was confused, sometimes awake and sometimes unconscious.

She seemed to be trapped in an endless nightmare.

Like a movie, the past flashed before her eyes scene by scene.

She still remembered herself wearing a red outfit standing under the peach blossom tree in the backyard of Huguo Temple.
The peach blossoms all over the mountain were no match for her bewitching smile, the smile that captivated countless princes and noble sons.

At the royal banquet, her dance captured the whole city.
With long sleeves flowing like clouds, rolling, thick and beautiful hair, and a slender waist, she was like a heavenly fairy stepping on lotuses descending into the world.

At the Qiu Wei Hunting Grounds, she dressed in fine clothes and rode on a well-groomed horse.
Her longbow was like the moon and her arrows like shooting stars.
As a woman, she was not inferior to the men.
She had a heroic spirit and made innumerable youths bow down.

Therefore, almost everyone remembered Gu Yu Qi, the daughter of Marquis Ding Yuan’s residence, who excelled in both literary and military arts and was beautiful as peaches and plums.

The amount of people who went to Marquis Ding Yuan’s residence to ask for her hand in marriage almost broke their front door, yet she just had to fall in love with a man who was as cold as frost.

She knew clearly that he did not like her, and did not know what evil crime she had committed, but she just wanted to marry him.
She did not even hesitate to resist the imperial edict and wholeheartedly begged for marriage, even giving up the status of being the sixth prince’s first wife, and married him as a concubine.

She thought that what she gave would be what he wanted.
With her talent and beauty, there was no man she could not conquer.

可是她错了，她为他谋划，为他试药，为他挡箭，助他走上帝位，他却只封了她一个才人。

However, she was wrong.
She schemed for him, tested medicines for him, shielded him from arrows, and helped him take the throne, but he only labelled her as a talented person.

She cared for neither status nor fame, as long as he had her in his eyes.
This was how she always comforted herself, yet what of it in the end?

Gu Yu Qi felt that she was a fool back then.
In the end, only his gentle and lovely cousin could catch his eye.
He had always liked that kind of gentle woman.
He had always kept his position of empress empty, waiting for someone from the beginning to the end and maybe it was that woman.
That woman had suffered a little grievance and had been imprisoned in the cold palace for ten years on the account of suspicion, until she drank poison and set fire to the palace.

But was that woman really as gentle as water? The others could not see it, but Gu Yu Qi could.

She remembered the scene of that night clearly.
She wore the red clothes she had worn when she first met him and drank the poisonous wine that woman had brought her.
Her hair was dishevelled and her feet bare, and she danced for the last time at the Shui Yue Pavilion.
The dance was magnificent and beautiful, and she danced specially for him, putting her whole life into that dance.
She had also known that he was watching, because she could feel the focus from his eyes even though they were separated by the Tai Ye Pond.
He had never looked at her so seriously.
It was not until the fire ignited and the sky-high flames were about to engulf her that she saw a crack in his icy eyes. 

She heard his cry from across the water, “Xiao Yu, come here, there’s room for negotiation in everything, I order you to come here!” Only then did she smile miserably.
She swore to the heavens loudly that if she could relive this life, she would never love him or protect him.
She would rather never know him!

“Yun Ke, I, Gu Yu Qi, will use the light of fire to illuminate the road today with my blood as the guide.
Let the gods in heaven stand witness.
If there is an afterlife, you and I will never meet again in any life.”

Gu Yu Qi sighed and woke up from her nightmare.
She could still see her mother’s anxious eyes in front of her and her mind was clear.

She really could not understand why someone like her who was determined to die had been reborn again.

“Ah Nan’s fever has finally subsided.” Liang-shi touched her forehead, giving a tired and relieved smile.

Only then did Gu Yu Qi realise that her mother seemed more haggard than she remembered. 

Her relationship with this mother was not very deep.
In her previous life, she had crossed over because the original Gu Yu Qi fell into the water and died, and she had woken up after being in a coma for a long time.
Soon after she had recovered, this mother had fallen ill because of her weak bones.
Her illness lasted four years and she passed away in the 19th year of the Jing Yuan Dynasty.

Yet this rebirth and the last time she crossed over, Liang-shi had taken care of her like this two consecutive times.
Gu Yu Qi could not help but feel a little guilt and her heart softened.
After all, she was the one who had taken over Liang-shi’s daughter’s body.

Thinking of this, she stretched out her arms and embraced Liang-shi’s warm body, “Ah Nan has worried mother.” Her soft and weak voice penetrated Liang-shi’s heart, making Liang-shi’s eyes burst into tears uncontrollably.

“Just don’t scare mother like that in the future.” Liang-shi patted her daughter gently while crying.

For several days after, Gu Yu Qi enjoyed Liang-shi’s motherly love a little uneasily.

In the last life when she travelled through, she felt that everything was fresh and exciting.
She had proudly believed that because she was from the modern age, she naturally had her own uniqueness compared to all the ladies around her who only knew how to embroider, recite poetry, and catch butterflies.
She put herself on a pedestal and all she thought about were the successful lives written in those time-travel back to ancient era novels.

She had indeed achieved that.
At the age of 11, she composed poetry and sprung into fame.
At the age of 12, she disguised herself as a man and went to the Lu Shan Academy where she defeated gifted scholars with a splendid piece of literature.
With immensely proud culture accumulated over 5,000 years, she used her ingenuity to smugly plagiarise the essence of ancient China in this dynasty which had not appeared in history books.
Then she calmly accepted the praise and envy of others.

She stood on the clouds and looked down at the ancient people who she thought were mediocre.
If it were not for the fact that the emperor at that time was a few years older than her father, she would have even thought about entering the main palace and becoming the empress, ruling over the world.

How ridiculous.

As Gu Yu Qi recalled her past life now, she could not help shaking her head. 

She had been blinded by the prosperity of the world and lost her heart.
She thought she was looking for the best for herself.
She had been extremely arrogant and conceitedly thought that there was nothing she could not have if she wanted it.
As a matter of fact, she had achieved it and had helped her so-called beloved person step-by-step until he obtained the throne.
Unfortunately, she had  miscalculated his heart.
He had never loved her from the beginning to the end and had only used her.
She lost not only her own life, but also her heart.
In the end, she set fire to the temple because she wanted to use this violent method to leave a mark on his heart.

She was already dead, so what was the point of leaving an insubstantial mark? Besides, it was an issue of if it would even leave a mark or not.
With that person’s coldness and viciousness, it was likely just that he would just make a mockery of her. 

Strangely, with her arrogance, she had actually suffered grievances and begged a man in the ancient era for so many years before finally burning herself in flames for him.
It was really painful.
Standing in the sea of fire, that loneliness and hopelessness.
When the flames licked her body, the deep pain cut into her bone marrow and the pain was all over her body and in her heart.
She knew she had done that because she loved that man.

Humans were proud, but love was humbling.
That was why she shouted to the heavens to prove that if there was an afterlife, she would rather never see him again.

She was tired and had given up.

Gu Yu Qi wiped the tears that fell from the corners of her eyes and smiled brightly.
She really had another life.
In this life, she would stay away from him, avoid him, and never see him again.

She jumped out of bed and walked to the window, then pushed it open to find that the old plum tree in front of the window had grown several tiny flower buds.
The wintry day was chilly, but the sky stretched high and the clouds were far away.
When she looked at the sky and clouds in the distance, Gu Yu Qi’s mind broadened.

In the previous life, she had lived for that man, so she would live for herself in this life.

It felt good to be alive.