She Holds the World After Being Reborn-Chapter 570 - 569: Taking Responsibility Alone, Let Her Go
Along the way, no matter how much Su Bai tried to evade, the pursuers always managed to catch up.
"Just like dogs, these people," Su Bai muttered angrily after quickly dealing with the last of his pursuers.
Yan Wanqing quickly realized the crux of the problem from his words.
"Do your clothes smell of anything unusual?" she asked.
She carried nothing with her, and the clothes she wore had been stripped from a soldier.
Sniffing his clothes, Su Bai replied, "The stench of sweat and a faint... the scent of gardenias."
She sniffed again. "How strange, the soldier even used incense." 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚
"It’s not incense. It’s Xiao Pingfeng’s unique scent," he explained, his body always having a faint gardenia smell. "It’s a special fragrance concocted for tracking."
It was the tracking scent of the eighteenth level of hell.
Yan Wanqing gave a bitter smile. "True to his style, not a single detail overlooked."
Su Bai quickly grasped her meaning and clicked her tongue twice. "Such strong possessiveness, and so calculating, too. Tell me, were you initially mesmerized by his face?"
"...I don’t know," Yan Wanqing replied, feeling helpless.
Their entanglement had begun by mistake, due to Qin Wu’s drugging, without a proper start; how could there be a happy ending?
She once thought that she would, like many other women, eventually lead a mundane life of helping her husband and teaching her children, with a loving spouse and a well-behaved, adorable child. They would enjoy the joys of family life until the children grew up, and after a hundred years, they would be buried together, concluding what seemed to be a fulfilled life.
After her resurrection, she had not broken out of this vicious cycle until she died once again.
Ah... only then did she finally see clearly the entangled feelings of affection between men and women.
Love was real, so was hate, and she could not deny that Xiao Pingfeng had the power to affect all her emotions.
"If you could do it all over again, would you still choose him?" Su Bai, sensing her desolation and sorrow, couldn’t help asking.
"There will be no do-overs. Your hypothesis is invalid," Yan Wanqing refused to answer.
She didn’t know, and she didn’t want to answer such a hypothetical question.
In her previous life, she had assisted Xiao Hongshen, only for her entire family to be executed. In this life, she had loved Xiao Pingfeng, and yet, she still ended up fleeing to a foreign land.
Seeing that she clearly didn’t want to talk about it, Su Bai awkwardly changed the subject, "If you take a fancy to any man in the future, I’ll definitely remind you not to forget, this body is now Su Bai’s too."
Just then.
"There she is! Catch her!" The shouts of the pursuers surged one after another, quickly cornering Su Bai by the raging river.
Clutching her long saber tightly, Su Bai’s expression was fierce.
"Empress, it’s best you come back with us. There’s no escape for you now," the leading soldier said with a cold sneer.
Su Bai glanced at the oppressive crowd behind him and frowned slightly.
Xiao Pingfeng really went to great lengths to capture her.
There had to be at least a thousand men here.
Was it necessary?
"Dream on." She would not go, no matter how many there were.
When words failed, the only option was to fight.
Continuous battles soon left Su Bai, already drained of strength, covered in wounds.
Yan Wanqing could no longer stand by and watch. "Let me take over."
"In this situation, it’s all the same whoever it is," Su Bai gasped, exchanging words with Yan Wanqing.
Yan Wanqing insisted, "Let me."
Su Bai closed her eyes tightly, "Not sure if it’ll work, let’s try."
The next second, the sensation of drowning rushed over her, and when Su Bai reopened her eyes, she was already in the Inner Sea.
And Yan Wanqing regained control of her body.
Feeling the numbing pain in her palms from the shock, she took a deep breath, no longer holding the saber with one hand but starting to use both.
After round after round of fighting, there were hardly any unscathed spots left on Yan Wanqing’s body. The clothes, already filthy, were soaked through with dark blood from cuts inflicted by weapons.
"Stop," a hoarse voice called out from behind the crowd.
Breathing heavily, Yan Wanqing watched as the soldiers parted to reveal a carriage in the middle of the road.
The curtains were lifted to reveal Xiao Pingfeng’s weak and pale countenance.
"Yan Wanqing, come back with me," he said.
After he spoke, he couldn’t suppress a coughing fit, his throat filled with the taste of blood; it was obvious he had come straight here upon waking.
"I’m not going with you," Yan Wanqing shook her head, emphasizing her words, and began to consciously retreat. "I want to go home. I don’t want to go with you."
"I am your home!" Xiao Pingfeng barked.
Why did the person who needed his embrace to sleep now insist on leaving him?
Xiao Pingfeng found such a change utterly unbearable.
"Xiao Pingfeng, even if it costs me my life, I won’t go back with you," Yan Wanqing rejected the notion without a second thought, "That life where you kept me like a canary in a cage, I, Yan Wanqing, disdain it!"
She could never learn to live without freedom in this lifetime.
Xiao Pingfeng, infuriated, repeated vehemently, "Fine, fine, fine."
A violent cough broke out, startling the attending Palace Attendant, who hurried to support him to rest, but he stopped her.
"I ask you, what did you mean by the words you said before leaving?" What did you mean by saying you also have the face to die at her hand?
That sentence was clearly laden with deep meaning.
The person in front of him, from appearance to conduct, was the Yan Wanqing he knew, yet the one who just stabbed herself in the chest with a hairpin was decidedly not!
What in the world was going on?
Seeing that his dark pupils were firmly fixed on her, his gaze stubborn, insisting on an answer, Yan Wanqing’s throat tightened.
She couldn’t speak.
She couldn’t reveal Su Bai’s existence.
Already maligned, the discovery of this secret would surely lead to her being seized as a chaos-spreading demon and burned to death.
She knew all too well the taste of being attacked by a mob.
"It means nothing," Yan Wanqing responded coldly, with peach blossom eyes.
At this moment, her little face was smeared with blood, resolute in the face of death.
"Xiao Pingfeng, if you have the ability, kill me now. If I have even a breath left, I will definitely escape!" That was her determination!
Even in death, she did not want to stay by the side of such a repressive person.
Xiao Pingfeng felt a surge of blood rush to his head, his throat tasting sickly sweet, at these words.
"Your Majesty!" the Palace Attendant cried out.
Xiao Pingfeng shook his head, swallowing the fresh blood in his throat.
His lips turned pale, "...In that case, Yan Wanqing..." his eyes nearly bleeding with red, "then I’ll let you leave..."
No sooner had he spoken than the generals expressed their disapproval.
"Your Majesty, she is the slaughterer of the Chu Kingdom, you are releasing a tiger back into the wild!"
"I said, let her go!" Xiao Pingfeng looked coldly towards the dissenting general.
The general, equally stubborn, pleaded, "Please reconsider for the sake of Dawei’s people’s safety!" After speaking, he knelt down straight-backed, followed by all the soldiers kneeling as well.
Xiao Pingfeng trembled with rage.
They were forcing him.
Yan Wanqing also understood that they were forcing Xiao Pingfeng to choose between herself and Dawei.
When she had followed him back to the Capital City, full of hope, she thought that no matter what, he would ultimately stand by her side.
But in the end, he always stood against her, demanding her to compromise.
This time, Yan Wanqing’s eyes held no expectations.
Behind her was a swift-flowing river, her last resort.
Even as a last resort, she preferred it to going back with Xiao Pingfeng.
Just then.
She heard Xiao Pingfeng speak.
"I am the Emperor of Dawei, I will bear the responsibility for this alone, let her go!"
As soon as his words fell, Yan Wanqing threw herself into the river, the swift waters immediately engulfing her figure, and in an instant, there was no trace of her on the surface.
Xiao Pingfeng rose in haste to look, unable to contain the fresh blood in his throat any longer, spewing out a mouthful, and then his whole body stiffly fell backward.
In the last moment of darkening consciousness.
His heart ached.
She was so guarded against him!
She would rather jump into the river than believe he would let her go...
