Xing opened the scroll and the scrambled handwriting made her head hurt. She wondered how the others were able to read anything from it.Can"t Siming at least put some effort in his writing?
Then again, he writes a lot. It is understandable if he does not care about his handwriting.
Xing skipped the first part and went to the middle part to see her fate was to meet Lu Junjie in the western mountains in a spring day under a cherry blossom tree.
"How romantic! Wait.. who is Lu Junjie again? Don"t tell me, it is the Emperor!"
Both of them fall in love at first sight and he brings her to the capital city as his Consort.
"No originality there! "
Xing skimmed to the next parts there and there was no mention of her father or Shengli but her blood brother who seems to be a good warrior. The her in that scroll is an elegant and delicate lady who depends on her brother and the Emperor to save herself each time she lands in trouble and there seems to be lot of it for her - from other women.
"Huh! Now I know why women hate me... It"s fated! He he he... Not my fault...! And how come my brother is a great swordsman here? "
She read further to see the fall Of Shu family, Zhong family as orchestrated by her brother and the fall of Ran Family as it happened now.
" Ooookaay! Why is my brother a villain here? And Zhong family is fine though! "
Xing continued to read the scroll as if she was reading one of those fictions she reads and it continued talking about how much she and the Emperor were in love making her cringe hard and also how the Emperor went against everyone to make her the Empress even though she was allegedly from a fallen n.o.ble family.
" Wait... Fallen..? Allegedly...? What was that about...?My family is fine though! And how come Rijun is a sly and strong person in her fate?"
Suddenly realisation hit her as Xing was deep in thoughts,
"Rijun is not my brother by blood!
So who is this blood brother they are talking about?"
Xing chided herself for starting a book from the middle missing all the introductions from the first chapters.
How stupid of me!
Xing hit her forehead with her palm making everyone in the temple, except Shengli to look weirdly at her. She didn"t notice the weird looks she was getting and started to read from the first paragraph.
The abstract was like this- On New year of year 978, the destined children were born, one male and one female. Their birth caused a stir in the city bringing down their birth family which will be hidden from them till they are seventeen. The girl will be the star of fortune and a heaven defying beauty that could cause the fall of a nation and the boy will be the star of tiger and mighty with his sword. When the boy learned that his father"s family was brought down by the then Emperor, he decided to avenge their family and he helped his sister secure a position in the Imperial Harem and eliminated all the other n.o.ble families who did nothing to help their family from ruins.
Xing who wasn"t fazed by much things felt her scalp go numb with everything that followed. She who was reading like she was reading a fiction felt the weight of the scroll of fate in her hands after that and she felt her hands go cold out of fear.
Her "supposed" brother had made the Emperor too dependent on him with no other strong family to support him and he became the highest authority of the land with the Emperor becoming his puppet. The her in the fate was a naive girl with her head in the clouds and didn"t know the intentions of her brother and let her husband suffer unknowingly. But still the Emperor loved her deeply.
After the Emperor"s coronation, what followed was years of war and destruction. So there was her being pregnant with the Emperor"s child and her brother brought the Emperor to war to "lift the spirits of the troops" but the Emperor gets gravely wounded in the battle and dies even before his son was born.
After that, war continued and her brother became the Regent and raised the crown prince as he wished... She falls ill thinking of the dead Emperor... and it went on.
Xing dropped the scroll on the ground as she didn"t want to read further and her face paled and she wetted her lips as her throat went dry. She knew how this would go.. Her death, followed by the accidental death of the crown prince followed by her brother becoming the Emperor.
She remembered how the prophesy the Emperor showed her talked about how her blood will rule the nations.. Is this how it is going to happen? And her brother is the supposed golden tiger while she is the beauty that brings the Lu dynasty down?
How s.a.d.i.s.tic was this Siming to write such a fate? And how come the me in this scroll is plain stupid? And where is my Prince in this scroll? I"m not even meeting him? What a terrible fate for the Emperor? No wonder he looked frightened reading this.
But all this starts with the fall of the Huang family and her brother"s plans of revenge. But I don"t have a blood brother that I"ve known of and the Huang family is fine. And would mother have hid my brother from me too... Like she hid the name of my father?
"Do I have a blood brother?", she asked Fei Lian as he is the only one she had at least a little faith on.
"You were supposed to", Fei Lian paused making Xing stand on edges, " But that couldn"t happen"
Couldn"t happen? What does that mean? Xing was confused.
"Your mother hid from the G.o.ds when she got pregnant and even the G.o.d of fate could not reach her. So only you were born, unfortunately! Mortal sc.u.m! Changing fates " ZhuRong spoke with the contempt for mortals clearly visible in her eyes.
Wait... So I was supposed to have a twin brother but he didn"t even born because my mother was hidden? Xing felt extremely confused.
" Then your mother made a deal with the heavenly Emperor to save the Huang family in exchange for her not revealing your father"s name to you. And he agreed to her on account of my screw-up even though it was because she was hidden by a spell and not entirely my fault. He also asked to give you a one-off chance to alter your own fate as a punishment for me and you did it when you were six ", G.o.d of Fate spouted these words filled with bitterness. No one likes to be criticised about their work and publicise their screw-ups.
So that"s why mother refused to tell my father"s name right till she died? A deal to not utter the name of the person you love deeply in exchange for their safety? How heartbroken my mother must have been when I bothered her to tell me my father"s name! Mother, I really hope for you to have a good life with father in your next life... And what happened when I was six?
" I met him", she pointed at Shengli. Xing still didn"t know that she didn"t just meet Shengli but set out a domino that caused the fate to deviate by a large extent.
Seeing her made Shengli want to live and his fate that was supposed to end that day changed followed by everything he did for her and what she did for him.
Siming shook his head, "You cut your strings with him", he pointed at the Emperor.
Is he referring to the red strings that connect soul mates? Well, if so then I don"t feel bad for cutting the strings meant for me that day! I"d prefer My Prince for me over anyone else!
"Is that why you try to separate us? To make sure everything goes according to your writings?", Xing asked and her voice was trembling. Surely that cannot happen!
Shengli and the Emperor standing beside her were flabbergasted with all the revelations and while Xing was talking she didn"t know the Emperor picked up her scroll of fate to read and he was given another fate scroll that belongs to her brother who wasn"t even born.
"All my writings became trash a long time ago!", Siming shouted. "You changed too much...!"
OK, what did I change? I changed my soul mate.. So what is the bother?
" He was not supposed to be yours... But... In the pond of the G.o.d of Marriage , he made a promise to you that sealed you two and that changed everything with the G.o.d of Marriage accepting your union", Fei Lian explained her.
That"s when Xing realised, if she cut her strings with the Emperor, they"d have found a way to reattach it. With their elaborate plans, Shengli"s life would have been worthless. So this is how they failed. That pond belongs to the G.o.d of Marriage? How perfect! But, The promise he made to me.. what is that? He never mentioned it to me.
"What promise?", Xing"s eyes looking at Shengli had become soft and her voice gentle and there was a slight blush in her cheeks thinking about the day they found each other in that pond. He mentioned she sank in the pond and he followed her but what promise?
"You live, I live. You die, I"ll die with you!", Shengli looked right at the dark obsidian orbs of Xing that had clouded by now with his clear green jade eyes and the golden streaks in them were prominent in that lantern lights. His eyes were filled with the gentle and extreme love that could be considered a sin that he had for her.
"I then gave you the kiss of life with my last breath"