The memories with Jiang Chixi came to an end.
More precisely, the memories with He Qingfu and Jiang Chixi came to an end.
Jiang Yan let out a soft sigh.
She closed the diary, shielding her eyes for a moment, then propped her chin on her left hand and sat on the rubble, lost in thought.
From Jiang Yan’s perspective, she had never truly understood what the other’s real pain was.
She had only thought Jiang Chixi was worried her own tomb would be destroyed, that she wanted an intact corpse, and wanted to leave countless rare treasures and unique books for future generations, so that humanity would have a clearer history.
So she thought such a request was perfectly normal.
Moreover, Jiang Chixi had indeed shown her great kindness, so she accepted and understood, willingly guarding the tomb.
Jiang Yan’s eyes were half-closed.
As time passed, she gradually recalled her own state of mind back then.
She had been young at the time, at most the equivalent of a seven-year-old human child, but she wasn’t completely ignorant. Life in the underground palace was monotonous, so she always seized upon any change, always caught the fleeting shifts in Chen Xihe and Taotao’s expressions.
So, when Jiang Chixi’s state grew more and more fatigued, and she would often stare at her in a daze, Jiang Yan realized something.
—The other needed her, but found it hard to speak up.
Because she had this expectation, when she discovered Jiang Chixi intended to seriously injure her, Jiang Yan was only briefly confused and distracted, then quickly figured it out, and silently agreed to the arrangement. But since Jiang Chixi never spoke it aloud, she just kept waiting.
Jiang Yan liked playing games, and liked winning even more. Since this game was Jiang Chixi’s idea, she wanted her to propose it herself and provide the answer herself. But the other never spoke, not for many days.
In the end, she waited until she could wait no longer.
In a world of swirling snow, she was pushed off her horse—Jiang Chixi no longer wanted to play this game.
But this wasn’t a game where losing meant anything dire.
She was willing to lose.
So, before ten minutes had passed, she ran through the wind and snow with a dagger, found Jiang Chixi, admitted defeat, and offered to guard the tomb for her.
Jiang Chixi had truly shown her great kindness, raising her to adulthood. Those three years were neither long nor short, but Jiang Chixi had done her utmost to make Jiang Yan happy. Except for never seeing the sun, she had parents, friends, and all the yao around her understood gratitude and reciprocation. So she, too, could be such a yao.
That was Jiang Yan’s way of thinking.
A very simple way of thinking.
Until yesterday, she had never realized what she had truly offered back then.
—It was He Qingfu who, out of selfishness, wanted to be a good mother, so she willingly gave up on saving a world line on the verge of collapse, and Jiang Yan patched it back up.
This was a relay race to save the world.
Even if Jiang Yan never felt she had anything to do with saving the world, to be fair, she really had saved the world as it is now, a thousand years ago.
Not only was He Qingfu a medicine for the human world.
A thousand years ago, so was Jiang Yan.
But good medicine is always bitter.
Jiang Yan had never guarded a tomb before. Before she made the decision, her idea was simple: at most she’d sit there, lie there, drive away all the tomb robbers, and when the tomb was disturbed, use her yao power to protect the burial goods.
She had no idea what kind of long and lonely years she was about to endure.
*
After Jiang Yan’s avatar died, a fatal wound appeared in the same spot on her true body.
A five-centimeter-wide penetrating wound appeared on the chest of the bridal gown.
Because her true body was damaged and her yao body gravely injured, Jiang Yan’s functions degenerated. She could no longer take human form, her divine sense vanished for a time, and she became an ordinary bridal gown.
Two days later, Jiang Rongge transported Jiang Chixi’s body back, fulfilling Jiang Chixi’s wishes, spreading the news that Yao Shian had died for the country, then dressed and groomed her foster mother, placed her in the coffin, and put oxen and sheep in the other burial chambers as grave goods.
Before sealing the tomb, she looked back once.
Jiang Chixi’s tomb was built on a dragon vein, the coffin placed right on the dragon’s head, and the most precious treasures of the Jiang Kingdom arranged around it.
Her gaze swept quickly over countless unique books, famous calligraphy and paintings, a withered black peach branch, a pomegranate-red bridal gown. Since the gown was folded, the knife wound at the chest was not visible, so Jiang Rongge noticed nothing, sighed, and left the tomb chamber.
The heavy doors of the tomb slowly closed, like the curtain falling on a chapter of history, or dust finally settling.
Time passed, slowly.
Spring gave way to autumn, cold to heat, the world outside changed endlessly, dynasties rose and fell. The Jiang Kingdom enjoyed its most prosperous fifty years, then, under the tides of history, declined and faded.
All this, the burial goods in the tomb knew nothing of. The tomb chamber remained ever silent.
So silent, it was as if dreaming.
Later, a great nation rose in the Central Plains, as if bearing the Mandate of Heaven. In just a few years, it conquered all the states. The Jiang Kingdom could not escape its fate of destruction, was annexed, and became a vivid stroke in the annals of history.
That same year, the damage on Jiang Yan’s true body was mostly healed by the dragon vein, the five-centimeter wound shrinking to two centimeters, and she regained her divine sense.
But since her true body was not yet fully restored, the fatal wound remained, so her yao power had not returned, and she could neither speak nor move.
That year, she became a dead thing with divine sense.
At first, Jiang Yan didn’t feel much about it. She slept all day, but being comatose from injury was very different from forcing herself to sleep, so she always felt uncomfortable. She was a yao who had taken human form, once had clear times for play and rest, and even ate three meals a day.
If she ever refused to eat, Chen Xihe would chase her all around the underground palace.
Now she couldn’t run, couldn’t sit, couldn’t eat, couldn’t speak. She had no features, no hands or feet, just lay there, more corpse-like than any corpse.
Jiang Yan slept and woke, woke and slept. Even if she was awake every day, every day felt like she wasn’t.
Fifty years passed like this. Even as she occasionally recalled the past, her memory began to fade. In these blank years, her three years in the underground palace slipped away at lightning speed—
First she blurred Chen Xihe’s face, then Taotao’s voice, and finally the words Jiang Chixi had spoken.
But some memories she still held onto.
Like Chen Xihe carrying her through the underground palace, the sky on the day Taotao died, the arrows in Jiang Chixi’s abdomen.
But the more she thought of these, the itchier Jiang Yan’s body became.
It was a terrible itch, as if countless creeping vines crawled over her, wrapping and tugging at her soul. She felt even her divine sense itched—so itchy, so itchy—but she didn’t know what to do.
Her divine sense wanted to break free from her true body, but couldn’t. She was like a living person trapped in a coffin, no matter how she pounded, she couldn’t get out.
So she could only sleep.
Later, after a hundred years, Jiang Yan had forgotten even more.
She forgot the name of the food she hated most, forgot being pushed off a horse in that battle. She tried to remember, but could only recall that three people had once been with her, and they had all left.
By then, Jiang Yan had stayed in the Empress’s tomb for over two hundred years, and had been awake for a hundred.
The wound became harder and harder to heal as time went on. After two hundred years awake, the wound on Jiang Yan’s true body was finally completely healed. Her abilities evolved: she could see the desires of all things. But she didn’t feel happy, because in the dead silence of the tomb, she still saw nothing.
The only thing worth celebrating was that her yao power had returned, stronger than ever.
She could sit up now, and when in a good mood, would float around the tomb chamber.
“Left.”
Jiang Yan muttered as she floated to the left.
“Right.”
She immediately turned.
Only her own voice echoed in the tomb.
Sometimes Jiang Yan would sit on the coffin for days on end. The scene was actually a bit frightening—a red bridal gown sitting atop a coffin in a dark, gloomy tomb, the hem of her dress stirring without wind—but no one saw it, so she scared no one.
This state lasted a long time. Later, Jiang Yan grew to dislike such dull self-amusement.
She started reading the rare books in the tomb.
These books were boring too.
Jiang Yan read them listlessly. At first it took her seven or eight days to finish half a book, later just a day or two for a whole one. Her reading sped up, and in five years she finished all the books in the tomb.
In one book, she found a slip of paper that read: “Use dead things to nourish dead things.”
She vaguely remembered someone had mentioned this to her, but couldn’t recall who.
Jiang Yan wandered the tomb chamber with the slip in hand, then floated into the room where the oxen and sheep were buried. She used to avoid it because of the stench, but when she entered, she found a faint, special fragrance.
After so many years, the corpse oil that should have seeped into the earth still flowed on the ground, a thin, clear layer.
Jiang Yan looked around and found a rune on the floor. She couldn’t read its meaning, but guessed it was for purification.
She figured Jiang Chixi must have gotten the rune from some exorcist, and placed it here to make her tomb smell better.
After thinking for a while, Jiang Yan left the chamber, returned to the main tomb, picked up the withered black peach branch, and went back.
She stuck the peach branch into the soil of the burial chamber.
After squatting there for a bit, she found a bronze bowl, scooped up some of the oil, and poured it over the peach branch.
When she finished, Jiang Yan lowered her gaze and stared intently at the branch.
But after a long time, there was no reaction at all. Jiang Yan floated up, pulled the branch out with a red thread, and threw it forcefully out of the chamber.
Jiang Yan was ready to sleep.
She lay flat on the coffin, but after tossing and turning for a while, she sat up again, returned to the chamber door, picked up the poor peach branch, and threw it back into the chamber.
Before leaving, she didn’t forget to pour a little more oil on it.
From that day on, Jiang Yan finally had a long-term, fixed activity—planting tree branches.
No one told her whether it would succeed, but she was bored anyway, and very lonely. She didn’t know when she’d be able to leave, so in the endless years, she had to find something to do.
Year after year passed.
With the blessing of the dragon vein, some of the burial goods also gained divine sense. They were like Jiang Yan at first—dead things with divine sense. But they were different from Jiang Yan: they had never taken human form, so they accepted their situation easily, happily waiting for the day they could speak and use yao power.
Their souls never itched.
Two hundred years after she started watering the peach branch with corpse oil, a scroll yao spoke for the first time. In a place where all kinds of burial goods mingled, the aura of the same kind competed and suppressed each other, and usually only the most outstanding among them could gain divine sense and become yao.
So this scroll yao was the most precious and finest among all the books and paintings.
Judging by the voice, she was a woman in her twenties.
“Hello there, I’ve been watching you for a long time, but I couldn’t speak before, only watch. Your true body is really something.”
Jiang Yan replied with an “oh.”
At last, a voice echoed in the dead tomb, but it didn’t bring her joy—only a sense of abruptness.
After centuries, she was now an adult, long accustomed to this life, and no longer yearned for voices as she once had.
The scroll yao was a bit embarrassed.
“You seem a bit cold.”
Jiang Yan replied blandly, “Do I?”
Scroll yao: “Alright, then.”
“I have my dignity too. Since you’re so indifferent, I won’t chat with you.”
Jiang Yan: “Suit yourself.”
The conversation died. Jiang Yan turned and went to the next chamber, watered the peach branch, and left without a glance, as if completing a daily task.
Scroll yao: “You seem to go there every day. What’s there?”
Jiang Yan pulled out the peach branch and waved it at her, then stuck it back in the soil.
Scroll yao was shocked: “You’re planting a tree?”
“How could you pull it out? What if it dies?”
Jiang Yan: “It’s already dead.”
“And besides—”
She looked at the scroll yao. “You have your dignity too. If you said you wouldn’t chat, then don’t.”
Scroll yao: “…”
The scroll yao’s appearance was just a small interlude. In a few short years, two more burial goods gained the ability to speak. They would sometimes hold discussion meetings in the tomb, debating how sharp, how ingenious, how priceless they were.
They loved telling their own stories, sharing them every day.
But Jiang Yan didn’t like it.
Whenever they talked, she stayed in other chambers.
She had nothing to share. She had already forgotten her own story, only remembered a day of heavy rain, a year of heavy snow.
She ought to remember.
But due to her body’s protective mechanism, in that first hundred years after awakening—awake but unable to move—she had to forget she’d ever been human, forget the details of life, to accept being trapped.
Time passed. One day, Jiang Yan sensed the presence of humans.
The meaning of guarding the tomb finally appeared.
Jiang Yan flew out of the tomb at once. As she expected, these people were tomb robbers.
They wore clothes from who knows what dynasty, speculating about whose tomb this was, discussing how to sell the burial goods, and smashing the worthless ones so no one else could have them.
Jiang Yan used red threads to cut the ropes in their hands.
The five of them crashed heavily into the tomb pit, wailing in pain—one broke a leg, another an arm—but they stubbornly tried to go forward. After her initial warning, Jiang Yan showed no mercy.
She directly snapped the leader’s arms and hung him high in the air.
Now they were truly afraid.
After hurriedly lowering the man, they helped each other out, not daring to look back once.
Jiang Yan cleaned up the blood and returned to the tomb.
The other yao had heard the commotion outside and stopped sharing their stories, tentatively asking what had happened.
“Nothing much.”
Jiang Yan lay back on the coffin, the hem of her dress falling naturally, clearly ready to rest.
But the dagger yao kept talking: “Were those tomb robbers? Good thing you drove them away. We can’t take human form yet—our true bodies are easily damaged.”
Scroll yao said, “Thank you.”
Chessboard yao: “How can we repay you?”
Jiang Yan turned over. “No need.”
“Don’t always think about repaying kindness. That’s not a good trait.”
The three yao looked at each other, not understanding Jiang Yan’s words, but wisely didn’t press further.
Because of this, their relationship seemed to grow closer. No one mentioned it, but it was true—mainly shown by their discussions becoming quieter, and their warm invitations for Jiang Yan to join their story sessions.
Jiang Yan still felt nothing.
When she got tired of being invited, she would snap: “I told you, I forgot. Is that so hard to understand?”
Chessboard yao asked, “Then what do you want to talk about? We’ll join you!”
“Let’s talk about Jiang Chixi,” Jiang Yan replied.
The three yao were baffled: “What’s there to talk about?”
“We may be the Red Creek Empress’s burial goods, but we don’t know her. Only met her once—uh, when we were picked as grave goods.”
So the conversation died again.
Jiang Yan’s memories had faded. Even the scattered fragments left could only be digested alone.
No one shared her memories.
Twenty years later, the Empress’s tomb welcomed a second group of tomb robbers.
Even though Jiang Yan had placed the white bones of the last man’s arms by the tomb mechanism, people still came courting death. This time, Jiang Yan didn’t even give them a chance—she cut off all ten fingers of the four men at the root, blood spraying on the earth.
After they left, half a month later, they returned.
They seemed to be seeking revenge, fully equipped, vowing to sell all the burial goods for a fortune, eat, drink, and visit brothels every day. They even brought two exorcists. But Jiang Yan, now a four-thousand-year-old yao strengthened by the dragon vein, was not someone ordinary exorcists could handle.
In less than ten minutes, the six corpses lay side by side at her feet.
Jiang Yan, expressionless, cleaned up the blood and returned to the tomb chamber, reeking of blood.
Scroll yao had wanted to celebrate her victory, but when she saw the blood on Jiang Yan, she fell silent.
After a moment, she tentatively asked, “Was it a massacre?”
“Mm.”
Jiang Yan wiped the blood off herself, too lazy to explain, and lay down on the coffin.
After that day, the other three yao seemed a bit afraid of her, or perhaps finally realized how much more powerful Jiang Yan was. Wherever she appeared, they no longer dared to talk loudly, treating her like an ancestor, cautious and respectful.
Jiang Yan enjoyed the peace.
She returned to the beginning: living in silence, watering the peach branch every day, sitting on the coffin, waiting for the next batch of tomb robbers, waiting for the day the Empress’s tomb would be excavated by the state.
Unknowingly, six hundred years passed.
The scroll yao took human form and left the tomb. Two years later, the dagger yao and chessboard yao also left.
Jiang Yan became ever more adept at dealing with tomb robbers. Among the first few she’d let go, some had drawn the tomb’s location on paper and passed it down in their family.
But since it was a tomb-robbing family, whenever any came, Jiang Yan dealt with them.
Her methods grew ever more emotionless. As long as they dared approach the tomb mechanism and tried to open it, she would float behind them and hang them all in the air until every last one stopped breathing.
Sometimes, after killing, Jiang Yan would walk a long way back before realizing she had just killed people.
But she would quickly strip away that faint, strange feeling.
Day after day.
Once, while strangling tomb robbers, Jiang Yan hung an old man of nearly eighty in the air.
The old man’s weak legs kicked helplessly, and in despair, he wept before her.
Those tears came suddenly and sorrowfully, standing out among all the vicious faces.
Jiang Yan was stunned for half a second.
Her hand loosened, the red threads withdrew, and the old man fell from the air, the others dropping down as well.
The old man coughed desperately, unable to speak a word.
The other men exchanged glances, hurriedly pulled out runes and began chanting. Jiang Yan glanced at them, raised a finger, and a red line appeared on each of their necks.
“Why are you crying?”
After the others died, Jiang Yan floated to the old man’s side.
He was clearly terrified, stumbling back a few steps, but seeing Jiang Yan made no move, he hesitated, “I was forced to come. They said this might be the Jiang Kingdom’s tomb, I…”
Jiang Yan: “Go on.”
The old man coughed violently again. After a while, he continued, “My ancestors were from the Jiang Kingdom. They came to my house, insisted I come with them, even threatened my granddaughter. I didn’t want to come down here.”
Jiang Yan gave a noncommittal “oh.”
She could tell the old man wasn’t lying, but letting him go would bring trouble. If he left alive, it would confirm this was the Jiang Kingdom’s tomb, and then a bunch of Jiang Kingdom descendants would come—should she let them all go?
Red threads wound before Jiang Yan as she considered what to do, when suddenly she smelled a fragrance.
The scent of peach blossoms.
It took her a while to react. She turned to look, and saw that in the burial chamber where the withered peach branch was stuck, a wild, overflowing floral scent was pouring out.
Moments later, the tomb door was flung open from the inside, three or five branches grew out wildly, each covered in green leaves and countless peach blossoms.
Under Jiang Yan’s gaze, the peach blossoms suddenly began to fall in profusion.
The dark tomb seemed to meet late spring.
It was a grand peach blossom rain.
Late spring lasted a long time before ending.
A small peach blossom drifted onto Jiang Yan’s shoulder, and in a tiny voice said, “I can tell, he seems to be a descendant of Jiang Rongge.”
No greeting.
Taotao’s appearance was so natural, as if they spoke like this every day.
“Jiang Rongge?” Jiang Yan frowned.
“Who’s that?”
Taotao thought hard. “The name just popped into my mouth…”
“Seems to be Jiang Chixi’s daughter?”
Jiang Yan remembered who Jiang Chixi was, so she nodded lightly. “Then let him go.”
Taotao: “Alright.”
Jiang Yan gauged how much pain the old man could bear, left a few bloody scratches on him. The old man seemed to understand her meaning, hurriedly promised, “I’ll just say I was lucky to escape, this isn’t the Jiang Kingdom’s tomb, and tell everyone not to come again.”
“As you wish.”
Jiang Yan turned to leave, floating forward, glancing sideways at the peach blossom on her shoulder.
It felt strange.
After six hundred years, someone had finally appeared who shared her memories.