56 Stars and Moon

Cut it... easier said than done!
Shi Nian felt that this job was increasingly resembling something out of a fantasy novel. Nie Cheng had rattled off a bunch of nonsense that sounded no different from ancient scriptures. Perceiving something as abstract as a string was already hard enough for her, and now they actually wanted her to cut it?
How was she supposed to cut it? Just tell her how to cut it!
What was even more exasperating was that, in the face of her interrogation, that jerk had reverted to his smiling expression. "How could we have come to you if it weren't difficult? I've already told you, your mastery over the strings is the strongest in the entire team. If you can't do it, no one can. Great God, we're counting on you entirely!"
He only ever fed her sweet-talking nonsense at times like this!
Nie Cheng and Bruce had both headed back. Harboring resentment and unwilling to walk with them, she sat alone on the hillside, letting out one sigh after another. Footsteps sounded from behind her once more. Irritated, she snapped, "I said I wanted to sit for a while longer! Do you have to police the heavens and the earth, and now you want to police when I sleep too?!"
"Do you want me to police you?"
A soft, smiling voice reached her ears. Shi Nian immediately spun around to see Yang Guang staring at her with amused interest from three paces away.
She stood up. "Why is it you?"
"Who did you expect?"
Shi Nian did not answer. Yang Guang probably guessed the answer anyway; his expression unchanged, he sat down in the exact spot she had just vacated and looked straight ahead. Shi Nian stood nearby, feeling somewhat awkward. With one seated and one standing, they remained in silence for a long while before he finally spoke first, "It's beautiful, isn't it?"
"What?"
Yang Guang turned his head, smiling slightly. "I said, this village nestled against the mountains and rivers, with such picturesque scenery—it is truly beautiful."
A crescent moon hung in the night sky, casting down a silvery radiance like woven silk, illuminating the small village and the river that cut past it like a jade belt. It was indeed a scene straight out of a painting. Shi Nian thought for a moment and sat down beside him. "It's a pity everyone has fled, making it inevitably desolate."
Thinking of the desolate scenes she had witnessed all along the way, this was a rural county near Chang'an, which should have originally been the most prosperous, yet now it was completely emptied out. As books said, it is better to be a dog in times of peace than a human in times of chaos—how true that turned out to be.
"His name is Nie Cheng?"
The sudden question caught Shi Nian off guard. Yang Guang's expression remained calm, though his tightly pressed lips betrayed a trace of emotion.
Shi Nian answered, "Ah," paused, and then kindly added, "The other one is called Bruce."
Yang Guang, however, clearly did not care about the one named Bruce. "You possess the heavenly eyes and wisdom sight, and you can help me return home. What about him? Does he have them too?"
"A bit... worse than me, I suppose. Otherwise, why would he be my lackey? Right?"
As Shi Nian spoke, she suddenly remembered Nie Cheng's injunction to try and sense the strings on Yang Guang whenever she was in contact with him. Did this count as being in contact?
She closed her eyes and followed the method Nie Cheng had previously taught her, but she only felt the endlessly vibrating strings of spacetime, finding no trace of him whatsoever.
Could it be that she needed to get closer?
She shifted her body, inching a bit closer to him, and tried again. Still nothing. Could her method be wrong? She inched away slightly, intertwined her fingers, held her breath, and performed the technique, but alas, it still failed.
Yang Guang lowered his gaze and saw the young girl wriggling back and forth beside him like a small animal. A faint, refreshing fragrance lingered at the tip of his nose—the scent of soap beans. Having spent so long in prison, she had never been able to properly wash and clean herself. The moment camp was set up tonight, she had chased everyone away, hid, and taken a bath. At this moment, her dark hair was half-dry, untied into a bun, and draped loosely over her shoulders. Under the moonlight, her unpainted face was as pure and lovely as a snowy lotus.
Yang Guang unconsciously lost himself in the sight. By the time he snapped back to his senses, he found the girl tilting her head and looking at him with a somewhat puzzled expression.
He gave a feigned cough and asked, "What is it?"
"There's something I'd like to ask a favor of you..." Shi Nian's expression turned surprisingly bashful.
Yang Guang frowned, only to hear her whisper, "Can you... lend me your hand for a moment?"
Yang Guang was utterly and thoroughly stunned.
The moment she voiced the request, Shi Nian regretted it. Nie Cheng had said they needed contact, and just being close wasn't enough, which meant she had to touch him. She had wanted to hold his hand. Yet for some reason, even though they had shared much more intimate actions before, when she formally made this request, she felt a heartfelt embarrassment that even made her cheeks faintly burn.
Yang Guang's reaction only intensified that feeling; he stared at her as if he had heard something unimaginable. Provoked into a state of embarrassment and anger by his gaze, Shi Nian was just about to abandon all caution and say never mind about holding hands, when the man already curved the corners of his lips, a smile blooming bit by bit in his eyes like swirling moonlight.
He reached out his hand—slender-fingered and distinct-jointed—and opened it right before her. "You want this?"
That tone...
Blushing, Shi Nian hesitated for a moment before placing her hand into his palm. The moment their skin touched, he flipped his hand and grasped it tightly. The man's palm was scorching hot, gripping her so firmly within it that Shi Nian had the illusion of being scalded!
"You..."
She was dumbfounded, but he suddenly yanked her backward, causing both of them to tumble onto the hillside together. From this angle, the night sky looked like an unfurled tapestry; the sickle-like cold moon and stars all across the sky crashed straight into her eyes like falling gemstones.
Shi Nian stared in a daze. With her complicated feelings earlier, she hadn't paid attention to her surroundings at all, nor had she ever lain out in the wild to look at the stars like this. She had no idea the ancient night sky could look like this. After a long while, she remembered to turn her head and look at Yang Guang, only to see him pillowing his head with his arm, saying, "The heaven and earth are vast, the universe infinite; how insignificant an individual is within them. I didn't understand this in the past, but now I finally realize why my imperial father loved observing the stars and moon to reflect upon himself."
Shi Nian felt that this man thought way too much. She didn't have all those profound sentiments; her mind was filled with only one thought: Oh my goodness, the stars are too gorgeous, simply too gorgeous! Next time she definitely had to bring a DSLR camera here to take pictures!
The two of them lay like that on the hillside, quietly watching the stars for a long while. His hand kept holding hers, and she had forgotten to struggle.
"A few dots of cold crows flying, running water encircling an isolated village. Where the setting sun is about to fall, a single glance dissolves the soul in sorrow," he suddenly recited softly.
"What?" Shi Nian asked.
"This is a poem I wrote. What do you think of it?"
This question... was simply too difficult. Shi Nian's literary literacy was limited to reading web novels on Jinjiang during her spare time—and even then, only the brainless kind. Asking her to evaluate poetry truly exceeded her capability range. Fortunately, knowing Yang Guang's standard, she immediately fawned over it: "Good. Especially good. Way better than that fellow Li Bai! Li Longji was right; if you were a poet, your name would echo through history!"
"Li Bai..." He chuckled softly. "I know you love telling lies, but what you just said is too fake. Li Taibai's peerless masterpieces are something I can never hope to reach. Actually, it's fine if you tell the truth, because after all, I didn't write that poem."
Shi Nian was left thoroughly confused. What utter nonsense—did he write it or not?!
"To be precise, someone else told me that poem was written by me. I didn't know it myself."
Just like how his country fell and his family perished, and he was strangled by the Yangtze River—he had no memories of those events either. Those were things yet to happen, recorded into the history books alongside his poetry to become an eternal disgrace, only for him to stumble upon them hundreds of years later.
"Chen Shubao's country was destroyed by me. His governance as an emperor was truly absurd; history books say of him, 'indulging in wasteland for all-night drinking, favoring darlings like the bane of seductive wives,' which is completely true. So after he died, I bestowed upon him a posthumous title: Yang (炀).
"The character 'Yang' means scorching and roasting. It implies that under his rule, the common people were treated as if placed over a fire. Long before, when I was still the Prince of Jin, I had already preemptively drafted this character for him during a casual chat with my imperial father. I admit I harbored malicious intentions, but at the same time, I believed that giving him this character was not unjust.
"Yet, I never expected that after my death, someone would bestow the exact same character upon me."
Yang Guang turned his head, lying on his side, and gently touched Shi Nian's face. "Little fox, are you truly a fox? Can you see through human hearts? Do you know what I wanted to do when I found out about all this?"
Under the moonlight, the man's dark eyes flashed with a brief moment of self-mockery.
That handsome young gentleman buying wine in the pleasure quarters, that pale, gloomy, and arrogant emperor—for the very first time, he revealed his vulnerability before her.
Shi Nian suddenly felt she couldn't bear to see him like this. He shouldn't be like this. This man should be coldly and detestably smiling, treating everything in the world with utter indifference, the corners of his mouth forever curling in an infuriating sneer.
"No, that's not it! You aren't as terrible as they say! You also did many right things! Just like..."
She desperately wanted to mention his achievements, but her mind was in complete chaos, unable to recall a single one at the moment. Anxious to the point of sitting straight up, her peripheral vision caught the small river ahead, and inspiration finally struck like a flash of lightning.
"Just like how you built a canal, right? The Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal! When that canal was being built, many people cursed you, and many people died. Yet even after a thousand years passed, that river is still there, nourishing generation after generation of common people. Later on, someone even wrote a poem, do you know how it goes? 'They all say Sui perished because of this river, yet for a thousand miles we still rely on its flowing waves. If not for the affair of the water palace's dragon boats, your achievements could rival the Great Yu's without much comparison.'"
Looking at Yang Guang, she said very earnestly, "You made mistakes, but I don't think you're as wretched as the history books describe. You simply... lost."
It felt as if a hand had fiercely clutched his heart.
Yang Guang trembled in body and mind.
He looked at Shi Nian, almost doubting whether he had heard correctly. A fallen ruler reviled for a millennium—he had already accepted all of this over the past three months, even using it to mock himself. Yet now she was telling him that it wasn't like that, that he wasn't that wretched. She was so anxious, as if afraid that if she spoke too late, he would be saddened.
He suddenly recalled that night before Hanyuan Hall, when Li Longji mentioned Yang Guang, the look the girl had given him. At the time he didn't understand, but now he finally got it.
She was pitying him.
The man suddenly grabbed her wrist. With the two of them so close, a blazing light flickered in his eyes. "You're right, I just lost. History is written by the victors; since that Li Tang could seize my empire, I have nothing to say. But if I could do it over again, I definitely would not lose."
Shi Nian was stunned. He had already pulled her into an embrace. "Little fox, you can send me back, right? Once we return, I will make everything different. The Great Sui will not perish, nor will I be a mediocre ruler who lost his empire in the history books. This time, my ideals will definitely be realized. I will create a dynasty as powerful and prosperous as the Great Tang."
"Little fox, do you believe me?"
The man's voice was full of grand ambitions and aspirations. It was precisely at this moment that Shi Nian suddenly realized a problem—a problem she had overlooked all along.
Wanting to send Yang Guang back was merely a task for her to complete, but to Yang Guang, it was a brand-new opportunity. He believed he could go back and rewrite his own fate, believing that with the memories of the Tang dynasty, he could start everything anew.
Yet he did not know that these memories would ultimately be erased by her.
The only path history ever left for him was a fixed one. And she was the one who would personally send him back to that wretched destiny and ending.