Reincarnation of a Thousand Years--Chapter Eight: Struggle
Dan Qing understood that the current situation was exactly like the tripartite division during the Three Kingdoms period. If the Song Dynasty did not ally with the Jin Dynasty, it could only be annihilated by the Liao Dynasty. She was born in the Song Dynasty, her spirit belonged to the Song Dynasty even in death, and even if she existed in a state of neither life nor death, she would inevitably belong to the Song Dynasty. Moreover, the current situation was crystal clear! The Liao army already knew that the Song people had gone to the Jin Dynasty to negotiate the destruction of Liao. Success or not, a grudge lasting hundreds of years had been established between the Liao and Song, and the time to ignite it had come. Therefore, only one could survive between Song and Liao. Matters of war, though women may not understand them, Dan Qing at least grasped one principle: in a war, if there is no decisive victory, both sides are losers, and the people suffer the most. If Liao won, the Song Dynasty would perish, while the Jin and Liao would continue their mutual enmity, leading to ongoing chaos. But if the Song won, the inherent weakness in their lineage would inevitably lead to peace negotiations with Jin, meaning at least the common people would struggle less. In the cruel and eternal flow of history, for humans to be able to choose an outcome with relatively fewer casualties is already a blessing from heaven.\ So, using the decree token of Fu Xiang, she risked climbing the border beacon tower. There were pigeons that could fly directly to the Song Dynasty. She personally wrote a letter analyzing the pros and cons, sending it straight to the Song court. As long as the Jin Dynasty read her letter, they would surely agree to ally with Song to destroy Liao. Finally, worried that the Song might not trust her stance, she signed her father's heroic name, hoping they would believe her out of respect for his loyalty and bravery. Sorry, Fu Xiang, she had always felt this way—and now it only added to her burden. Dan Qing and Fu Xiang had different values. He believed human history should be magnificent and sweeping, while she thought human history could also be peaceful and gentle. Since the two viewpoints could not coexist, she chose to hide it from him.\ In fact, Fu Xiang had to carefully patrol the borders every day. Ever since he learned that the Song planned to ally with the Jin against his country, he had to remain vigilant against those willing to betray their nation for personal gain. He noticed that a messenger pigeon was missing. Who could have quietly set it free? Only someone holding his decree token—Dan Qing.\ A month later, Fu Xiang decided to launch a preemptive attack on the Song before the Song-Jin alliance against Liao could come to fruition. Dan Qing had no choice but to once again climb the beacon tower.\ But he was already waiting there: 'Qinghan, why…?'\ 'Sorry.'I am Song Ren.” She hurriedly tied the secret documents to the pigeon's leg. It flapped its wings and took off.\ Since Fu Xiang knew she was a spy, he had already been on guard against Danqing early in the morning. All of his plans were merely preliminary forms without any orders issued. That is to say, even if Song Ren found out, they would have no way to investigate the truth. It would only expose Danqing's identity. To protect her, Fu Xiang drew a dagger and aimed at the flying pigeon.\ Seizing the opportunity, Danqing jumped off the beacon tower and disappeared.\ Being betrayed by the one he loved was truly heartbreaking. He was full of hatred—hating himself for loving her too much and for being unable to give up his own country because of her. He did not chase after her, despairing alone as he returned to the camp.\ When he got back to the camp, he was shocked to find that the secret deployment for his attack on Song had remained safely on the table, without a trace of being moved. What Danqing had given to Song was her own deployment plan for resisting Liao's invasion, which had nothing to do with him. The dagger hadn't struck the pigeon; it had struck Danqing. She did not jump off the beacon tower on purpose but had fallen.\ “No! Qinghan!” Fu Xiang cried out in alarm and ran madly towards the beacon tower.\ But by the time he arrived, it was already too late. He saw a fully formed baby boy lying next to Danqing.\ “No, son, no.” He mumbled as he walked over and checked the baby's breath—it was gone. “Son, dad is sorry!” Paralyzed on the ground, Fu Xiang crawled to Danqing's side and felt her heartbeat—but it was already so weak that it was about to disappear.\ Danqing felt manipulated. She struggled to get up and whispered in a dreamlike state. Fu Xiang thought she was saying, “Don't care about me,” but when he listened carefully, he realized she had said, “Don't abandon me.”\ Fu Xiang suddenly remembered someone who could save her. When Danqing was beyond help, it was a doctor from Song who saved her life. He lifted her up and rushed quickly to the doctor's house.\ Knocking on the doctor's door, the doctor recognized Fu Xiang at a glance because he had not changed much. Back then, he worried Danqing would die for him; today, he was anxious that without Danqing, he would naturally die.\ The doctor was now too old to go out for consultations. He hurriedly opened the door and let them in.\ “Doctor, please save Qinghan. She is dying.”\ “Ah… you! You've caused trouble!”Quick, put her on the bed. Luckily, this girl has an exceptionally good healing ability... if I remember correctly,” the doctor muttered as he went to get medicine from the cabinet.\
"Am I going to die?" Fu Xiang suddenly asked the doctor.\
"You are doomed by karma!" After all, he was an old man who had seen the world. "She will not die now. You don't need to die either.\
Let me ask you, young man. This girl has repeatedly faced life-threatening danger—is it because of you?"\
"Yes, it's because of me."\
"How reckless! How could you treat her like this!? What you owe her may not even be repaid in a thousand years!" The old doctor became furious. His hands trembled while preparing the medicine: "You need to weigh it carefully. Is it worth sacrificing her for what?"\
"I can give her my life, but... I cannot give her the life of the Liao Kingdom!"\
"I told you from the beginning: she is not an ordinary person. Do you remember?"\
"I remember."\
"Since I warned you early on, and you already knew she was not an ordinary person, who can you blame for ending up in such a situation now!?"\
The old doctor shoved a bottle of pills and two bundles of herbs into Fu Xiang's hands and said, "Now go, pick her up! Return to the Liao Kingdom."\
"But she hasn't woken up yet..."\
"Don't worry! I see that this young man of yours still has some time left to live; you won't die just yet. Only you could have caused her death by tormenting her. So she's safe now. You both go!"\
He said this while pushing them out the door, bracing it with his body. Fu Xiang, seeing that he was speaking vaguely, pounded on the door desperately, but he ignored him. Inside, the doctor began coughing violently. In the candlelight's shadow, after a severe body convulsion, the old doctor lay still.\
"Doctor, open the door!" Fu Xiang cried out in panic. He pushed the door, and it opened quietly. But the old doctor was gone. He recalled a phenomenon that Dan Qing had once explained, and his heart sank halfway.
Reincarnation for a Thousand Years -- Chapter Nine: Always Sorry
Fu Xiang resigned from all his military posts and accompanied Dan Qing to build a small wooden house by a peaceful lotus pond, living a harmonious life of farming and weaving.\
After she woke up, she never mentioned the child. That had already become a permanent regret in her heart, an ailment that would always exist. The hardships of a ten-month pregnancy and the sudden pain of childbirth—how could someone who is not the mother ever understand?When life swells in the womb, which mother wouldn't do everything in her power to ensure her child is born safely and grows up happily?\ Three years later, the couple had a second chance to make amends.\ Unfortunately, unforeseen events arose. Some lotus-picking girls, usually naive about the world, began gossiping at the moment of Song and Liao's life-and-death crisis—and they were overheard.\ “Ah, the Liao Kingdom is finally going to fall.”\ “But will ordinary people like us have good days ahead? I think as long as Emperor Zhao remains weak, the people of Song will be bullied as long as he keeps being cowardly.”\ ……\ Dan Qing had a strong premonition—it was a powerful sign of departure. But the one leaving was not Fu Xiang—it was herself.\ That night, Fu Xiang quietly got out of bed and gently picked up his clothes.\ “Are you really going?” Dan Qing had not slept at all.\ “Qinghan!” He was startled. “Didn't you hear? The survival of the Liao Kingdom hangs in the balance! You want me to lead the troops…”\ “Fu Xiang…” She knelt, tears streaming down her face, pleading bitterly, “Don't go. For me, for our child…”\ “Sorry!” Fu Xiang insisted on leaving.\ Dan Qing blocked him with her hands, but he pushed them away… The couple ended up fighting.\ The noise in the room was like what every soldier experiences before marching out, when the plea of a spouse must be confronted. Both were impatient by nature, both inclined to use force if a siege dragged on. The fight became more intense. Fu Xiang nearly lost his reason and accidentally swung a hand toward Dan Qing's abdomen. Dan Qing had not anticipated: he could, for the kingdom of Liao, disregard even her life and their child's—just as her father once did in his fanaticism for Song. She did not dodge; since she could not stop him, she let him go without worry. Such a man was invincible, and an army he led would surely win.\ What he didn't anticipate was that she could, for him, abandon Song. When Fu Xiang forcibly tried to retract the swing he had delivered, the force doubled back on himself, injuring his internal organs and immediately causing him to vomit blood.\ Dan Qing, powerless, repeated the fate of her mother. She had once endured Fu Xiang's strength and nearly died. That even someone half-dead almost dies showed how formidable Fu Xiang's skills were.How could he possibly endure having twice the power exerted on his body! He also knew he was about to die and couldn't help but stagger. Dan Qing scrambled forward and held him up. But he roughly and stiffly shook her hand off. Fu Xiang had walked only a few steps before falling again.
She gave in. She extended her right hand, and the ring on her index finger seemed to slide along a wire from Dan Qing's glove to Fu Xiang's finger. Fu Xiang recognized the significance of this ring: since she had met Dan Qing, she had never taken it off, not even when bathing.
"No." Fu Xiang watched helplessly as the ring slipped from Dan Qing's finger.
Dan Qing lost the ring and collapsed weakly to the ground. Every time, when she was on the brink of death, Fu Xiang appeared, bringing her back to life. But this time, it wouldn't happen. She was finally going to leave him.
That stubborn mule had lost his temper, refusing to bear the weight of Dan Qing's life anymore. This time he couldn't handle it. In a swift motion, he threw the ring onto the stone ground. The small ring shattered immediately. A tiny fragment, the smallest but subjected to the greatest force, rebounded from the stone and embedded into Fu Xiang's index finger. That happened to be the leftover lotus juice from Dan Qing's mother back then.
It was the accumulation of a life that did not want to be involved. It was as if he could hear the past Dan Qing saying, 'Don't, don't want me.' Fu Xiang steeled his heart and ran toward the Liao territory.
Dan Qing watched his rapidly receding figure, as the little blood remaining in her body flowed uncontrollably. Her wound-healing ability had always been astonishing, but when she could no longer stop the bleeding one day, it meant her time had come. A pain so intense it made her want to die spread from her abdomen throughout her body, and she finally understood why her mother had bled so much when she died. Fu Xiang stopped, but did not turn back. Even just a pause was enough to convey their concern for each other.
She was content. Because Fu Xiang paused briefly for her amidst his hasty departure. She felt her body shatter like the ring Fu Xiang had broken, until he disappeared in the hazy distance, gradually breaking apart, dissipating into the air, and she could no longer see his face or his smile.
The fragments of the fallen ring were ultimately buried in a heap of yellow soil.
Cycle of a Thousand Years—Chapter Ten: After the Mission is Completed
When Fu Xiang did not look back, he already knew that Dan Qing was gone.He never once could keep her when Danqing left. Including the last time she departed.\ Sure enough, in the fourth year of Xuanhe, he was leading troops in Yanjing and defeated the invading Song forces twice. After that, he withdrew from the battlefield and returned to the place he had longed to go back to all those years. But returning took two years to accomplish.\ In the small wooden house, everything remained the same. Only the gentle, paper-soft, ethereal extraordinary woman was gone. Because of the spiritual aura she radiated and the residual energy released after the ring broke, the seal there was not truly broken until Fuxiang returned home. On the bed lay a baby girl, beside her were fragments of lotus flowers drifting in, laid out to form the words:
Scattered into the sky with the smoke,\ Shadows of the evening rain in layers.
This was their daughter—Yanying.
Danqing used her life to end the ominous cycle and bring closure to everything that needed to end.\ Five years later, the Jingkang Incident occurred. People were once again displaced and wandering. Only 5-year-old Yanying saw many people starve to death and cried to her father: “Daddy, save them. These children died so tragically.”\ Fuxiang stared at her in surprise. “Ying in layers”... really like her mother.\ Human love can increase without reason. Because Danqing not only freed Yanying from a doomed fate but also left Fuxiang's love to her. With the double measure of Fuxiang's deep affection, Yanying enabled her father to help the innocent people affected by the disasters.\ Therefore, Fuxiang did his utmost to escort the descendants of the Song dynasty southward. Along the way, he fell ill, and on his deathbed, he vaguely told Yanying: “If your mother and I had been born in the same country, perhaps we could have been very happy.”\ Finally, Fuxiang died in the year 1127 AD. A time when he no longer needed to oppose Danqing. The happiness of converging paths brought him to tears. Different people have their unique love, and because of these differences, the forms it takes vary greatly. In such a context, with such people, even if things were to be repeated, the ending would still be the same.
〈END〉\— — — — — —\ [Note]: Fire God, Qian didn't break his promise; a day has passed…. Short stories, two of them… considered as Qian's support, go! Work hard. With what you want to create, showcase your talent on the 7 forums, and make your stories and novels even better…
