Lu Xinyi wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating because of her fever or not. She could barely remember seeing her husband’s face and talking to him before she entered a deep sleep. She surrendered to slumber to let her body recuperate. She didn’t know that after Shen Yi found her, she entered the same dream that was plaguing her since she was young.
In her dream, a woman was wearing white clothes decorated with plum blossoms—the same hanfu she’d seen in the cave. On her left shoulder, blood started to seep from her wound. She was sitting on top of a cliff, looking over the landscapes below her. She was severely injured from her last battle with another fox spirit.
The woman barely escaped instant death that fight. Although her life had been safe, it came with a heavy price. Four of her tails were gone, leaving stumped to where they were cut. Her golden eyes tried to find someone’s location. She wondered if he managed to find his men. By now, he might have forgotten everything about her.
She lowered her head and smiled bitterly. If only she was stronger… but it was too late. She’d given up her core to that foolish human to stabilize his fading soul. The woman fell to her side. She forced to roll on her back to stare at the full moon above the sky.
The scent of blood filled the air. She knew she was dying, and yet she couldn’t summon her core to come back to her body. If she forced to take it back prematurely, that human would die within seven days. Whoever cursed that man was really something, weakening his soul until he dies—reaping him the option to be reincarnated.
With the fox’s core within his body, his human soul would slowly reignite itself, breaking the nasty curse cast on it. However, it would take decades. Decades that the fox woman couldn’t wait any longer.
“Shen Yi…”
Too bad though, Lu Xinyi could only watch but couldn’t hear what she was saying. Had she heard what the fox spirit said, she would know that this was the memories from her past life.
In the middle of the night, the nine-tailed fox woman died.
The next scene on Lu Xinyi’s dream s.h.i.+fted when a young girl of fifteen woke up from her long coma. The soul of the nine-tailed fox woman wandered around and possessed the empty, dead body of the daughter of the prime minister of the land. It then turned out that the human general the fox woman saved was this girl’s fiancee.
The world was too small for them.
The daughter of the prime minister took a total 360-degree makeover. From the lazy, spoiled brat, she became a refined young woman overnight. The second time the human general and the fox woman met again, he knew that she was that fox spirit he encountered in the mountains.
“You! What are you doing here?!” he exclaimed, pus.h.i.+ng her host’s body against a tree trunk, trapping her in a kabedon.
Contrary to what the fox woman believed, her magic wasn’t able to wipe their memories from him—which surprised her. When the sixteenth birthday of her host came, the fox woman married the general. The two slowly built and strengthened their bond.
The fox woman enjoyed teasing and seducing her mortal husband, liking the way he blushed and denied her advances. During their marriage years, the human gifted her with a mystical white tiger to accompany her. A little tiger cub he rescued from the hunters, but unbeknownst to him, it was a mythical creature like herself.
In return, she commissioned someone to make a dagger using a high-grade metal that no one could break. On its pommel, the character for ‘Shen’ was carved.
On the days when he was out for vacation, the two would spend their time visiting the local shops downtown or with each other as she played a guqin while he played a flute for accompaniment in the garden of their courtyard.
Autumn was the favorite season of the couple, for they first met in late summer and married in the first weeks of the season.
Not too long after, the two gradually fell for each other; but the world didn’t allow them to be together.
The general led a rebellion against the emperor. While the imperial family drowned themselves in a lavish lifestyle, their people were dying from hunger and sickness. This caused an uproar to the citizens, which lead to them supporting the rebellion.
The general marched his troops back to the capital, but the emperor seized all his family’s properties, detained his clan, and took the fox woman as a hostage. Trapped inside the palace, the woman could only wait for her husband to know her fate. Without her strength and powers as a fox spirit, her host was weaker than a normal human.
When the palace was surrounded by the general’s troop, the emperor made use of the fox woman, forcing the general to retreat his forces outside the capital in exchange for the fox woman’s life. The woman knew better. The emperor didn’t plan on releasing her but would use her to pressure the general into surrender and, subsequently, to his death.
In an attempt to free her husband, the fox woman killed herself together with the disposed emperor. The general could only cry in agony as he held her dead body.
‘Ah, what a way to die for the second time around,’ the fox woman thought. The human soul had recently broken the curse on itself, but it would need another thirty years to fully recover. Once again, the fox spirit wandered the human realm.
She could only watch how her husband ascended to the throne as the newly instated emperor without his queen. Throughout his life, he refused to take another wife or any concubine. He killed anyone who dared to disrespect his beloved fox spirit.
He lived a solitary life until his last breath, insisting on keeping her dead wife as the official empress during his reign. On his deathbed, the general once again reunited with the fox woman, giving back her precious core allowing her to reincarnate in the future.
“Why are you sad?” The fox spirit asked him once his soul parted from his dead body, “Don’t think that you can run away from me. In this lifetime and the next ones, you can only be mine.”
Lu Xinyi’s dream came to a blur. Several lifetimes were shown, the same fox woman was there wearing the latest trend in fas.h.i.+on. She was alone, always waiting with a full moon above her. Years pa.s.sed by, she’d already recovered her immortal body. Her sixth tail had grown, but in the end, she was wandering around to find the latest incarnation of her husband.
She was able to find each of his incarnations. Watching as he was born in the world from afar, holding his hand as he dies on his deathbed. It was the same thing all over again as she waited for his return.
As she waited for her husband’s return, it was the same white tiger who accompanied her for decades and centuries. The cycle only stopped when she was killed by the third time.
At this moment, Lu Xinyi who fainted in Shen Yi’s arms finally began to wake up. As her consciousness recovered, her memory of the past days followed. She didn’t know how long had pa.s.sed, but given the long dream she had, she was probably sleeping throughout the day.
When she woke up, she felt so much better. She didn’t feel cold, and her muscles weren’t aching anymore. She snuggled closer to the warmth that covered her, knowing who it was.
“If you continue to pretend asleep, I’ll eat the fried pork ribs for you,” he whispered to her ear with a stifled laugh.
Lu Xinyi jolted up from the bed and sat. She glowered towards her husband who was grinning like a fool. She angrily raised a hand to smack him, but he caught her wrist.
“Wifey, that isn’t the way to say thanks to your savior.” Shen Yi winked at her. The corner of his lips curled up in amus.e.m.e.nt.
“You dare to eat my pork ribs? I’ll kill you!”
“I a.s.sure you, right now, the pork ribs isn’t the one I wanted to eat…” His eyes lowered dangerously and whispered to her ear. The warmth of his breath tickled the side of her face.
Lu Xinyi’s blush spread to her face down to her neck. This perverted husband of hers was really something! She pushed him away from him and covered her face with both hands. His silent laughter sounded like little bells in her ears.
After a long silence between them, Lu Xinyi wrapped her arms around her legs and looked up to her husband dejectedly.
“Shen Yi, how come you are late? Why didn’t you arrive earlier?” Her tone was so somber; it was enough to make Shen Yi stunned.
Was she really scared that no one would come to rescue her?
A wave of guilt washed over him. Lu Xinyi was a strong woman. She wouldn’t easily give up when she faced troubles. He previously thought that she never needed his help, which disturbed him. All he wanted to do was for her to stay by his side.
But this time, he had failed her. He had made her cry.
Shen Yi cupped the side of her face and wiped away her tears. Lu Xinyi pouted at him and slapped his hand away. She stared daggers at him.
“President Shen, if you don’t give me my pork ribs this instance, I’ll sign our divorce papers. You aren’t fulfilling your part in our deal!”
Shen Yi was speechless. She actually wanted to divorce him because he wouldn’t give her her food?
This d.a.m.ned woman still chose food over him?!
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