Haven't we seen each other somewhere before?
Haven't we seen each other somewhere before?
"Glug, glug! Kyaaaah~~ That's the stuff!"
"Pwaaah... Truly excellent! As expected of thirty-year-old wild ginseng liquor! The taste is thirty years' worth, I tell you!"
"Indeed... No wonder Colonel Ji Ling coveted it. I almost pity General Sun Jian for missing out on such fine drink."
"Right? You have no idea how badly my mouth watered every time I laid eyes on this, tucked away in the Yuan Clan's main family wine cellar. If there's liquor, you drink it. What's the point of leaving it on display for years?"
"A hundred times true, that! This time, I, Hua Xiong, shall pour you a cup myself!"
Ji Ling, Hua Xiong, and Xu Rong were pouring and drinking with great cheer.
Sun Jian could not attend, regrettably, busy managing the troops, but the three of them were happily enjoying wine and meat together for the first time in a while.
"So, Hua Xiong, what have you been up to? I passed through Luoyang a few times, but I never caught a glimpse of you."
"This and that happened, I tell you. But most memorable was keeping that brat called Lü Bu—who hates the Han imperial house—under watch, I tell you."
"Lü Bu? Ah... I've heard the rumors. The Unmatched Under Heaven, or whatever they call her, right? Never actually seen her in person. What's she look like anyway? Some hulking, brutish monster?"
"Surprisingly, a tiny little girl, I tell you. We drank together once before, and she passed out after barely a cup or two, I tell you."
"Tch... seriously? And here I was expecting someone called the Unmatched Under Heaven to hold her liquor. Don't tell me that so-called peerless martial might is all just bluster too?"
"I doubt that. I've seen it myself a few times—the way she handles a Fangtian Halberd twice her height is no ordinary skill. She seemed at least on Colonel Ji Ling's level."
"Oh? At least my level, conservatively speaking..."
Ji Ling showed considerable interest at the unexpected information.
At that moment, a figure began to surface in her mind.
'A small girl, with martial strength equal to or surpassing mine... Now that I think about it, there was one such kid.'
A young girl she had met during the first battle of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, four years ago.
Even then, the child had possessed martial strength that seemed roughly on par with her own, a memory that lingered in Ji Ling's mind still.
Since the child had departed for Bing Province, the same place as Lü Bu, Ji Ling briefly entertained the thought: what if...?
'Well... the likelihood is almost nonexistent. For starters, that kid's surname was Gung. And if it were her, she'd have rushed over long ago to pay her respects, or throw herself at my knees.'
Ji Ling knew perfectly well that Ding Yuan's foremost confidante, and one of the reasons he could swagger around wielding power as he did now, was none other than Lü Bu, famed as the Unmatched Under Heaven.
The one person who was practically the greatest obstacle to her lord Yuan Shu.
Ji Ling believed there was no way that Lü Bu could be the little runt who owed them so much—Gung Seon.
'Still... perhaps I should at least see her face, given the chance? We're bound to fight as enemies before long, after all.'
With that thought, Ji Ling refilled her empty cup and plunged back into the merrymaking of pouring and drinking.
*
"Mm..."
A girl moved with careful footsteps.
Lü Bu.
Fangtian Halberd in one hand, she headed for Yong'an Palace, deep within the Imperial Palace.
Ordinarily, it was heavily guarded and watched over by Zhang Rang's men, a place even she could not easily approach.
Yet despite that, Lü Bu could not bear to stay still.
She had followed her father's will in all other matters, but this time she simply could not.
No matter how much it was for the "great cause," she could not let an innocent child be killed.
The bare minimum of human decency.
To uphold that, Lü Bu was moving, determined to do something, somehow.
A familiar figure came into view.
'!... That woman...'
A figure entering Yong'an Palace alongside a squad of soldiers.
Lü Bu could recognize who it was in an instant.
Zhang Rang's stooge,
and that obnoxious woman with the only thing big about her being her chest.
Dong Zhuo.
The sight of that bitch, whose mere appearance provoked instinctive irritation, made Lü Bu's grip tighten on the Fangtian Halberd in her hand.
'No way, that pig of a woman is actually going to...'
Gripped by fury, Lü Bu was about to charge in and sweep them all away in an instant.
Just then.
"You there."
"!"
A voice reached her ear.
At that, Lü Bu could only stop the foot she was about to move.
A voice she could never forget, even after all these years.
At the same time—a voice she never wanted to hear again.
"You're that Lü Bu, right? The flat one holding the Fangtian Halberd."
"Flat?! What kind of—... Gah!"
In a surge of reflexive indignation, Lü Bu turned her head.
But the moment she faced the person before her, Lü Bu could only stiffen.
She'd had some suspicion from the voice alone, but the shock of seeing the face head-on was greater than she'd expected.
Blonde hair, brown skin, her sizable chest wrapped in bandages—
the woman who had not changed a single bit from before.
Ji Ling.
Faced with the one who had saved her life alongside Yuan Shu once, Lü Bu felt for a moment as if her heart was shriveling in on itself.
Still, Lü Bu did her utmost not to show it.
With her mouth going utterly dry, she carefully opened her lips.
"Th-... That's right. I am the Unmatched Under Heaven, Lü Bu, but you... who are you?"
"Hmm... So it really was you, Lü Bu? I had wondered. My name is Ji Ling. I serve under the General Who Conquers the North, Lord Yuan Shu."
"Yuan... Yuan Shu's general? What... what business does someone like you have with me?"
Lü Bu's voice trembled as she asked, though Ji Ling's reply was exactly what she had expected.
Ji Ling answered with her characteristic smile.
"Well, I didn't come here especially for you... I just happened to spot you on my way to take care of something. I'd been curious what that famous Unmatched Under Heaven was like, anyway. There's something I wanted to check on, while I'm at it."
"Ch-... Check...?"
At Ji Ling's meaningful words, Lü Bu took an involuntary step backwards.
A feeling as if she were standing on thin ice began to coil around her.
The sensation of cracks spreading beneath her feet, her legs trembling, a splash echoing as the surface gave way.
Watching Lü Bu stand there, utterly at a loss,
Ji Ling asked in a calm voice.
"Haven't we met somewhere before?"
"!"
A question that drove the wedge home into the shattering ice.
"I'm pretty good with faces, you see... Could it be, once before, in Hedong..."
"No... Never! I... I haven't!"
In the end, gripped by extreme terror, Lü Bu bolted.
She was someone who wouldn't bat an eye before thousands or tens of thousands of enemies.
Yet a single sentence from that woman's lips struck a fear more dreadful than a hundred-thousand-strong army, sending her fleeing in a senseless daze.
How far did she run?
Reaching a dead-end wall, Lü Bu barely managed to halt. Ji Ling did not seem to have followed, but the mad pounding of her heart and the chilling dread wrapped around her refused to vanish.
"Huff... huff... huff..."
Panting, Lü Bu wiped the sweat away.
Just as she recovered some measure of calm...
"... Huh?"
A realization came belatedly.
Lü Bu wore a blank expression as she stared toward Yong'an Palace.
Toward that place, where everything must already have been over...
"Ah... aah..."
*
A morning of cold wind.
She looked out with empty eyes upon the courtyard below the palace hall.
A desolate courtyard where not a single blade of grass grew.
Gazing at that scene, which seemed to mirror her own self now,
she was swamped by a profound emptiness.
Ha Eun.
Born the child of a lowly butcher,
she had once been Empress of this land,
and risen even to become Empress Dowager.
But now,
at this moment when all of it had withered and fallen away,
nothing remained in her heart but a feeling more barren and hollow than that empty courtyard.
"Mother. The wind is cold."
"... Your Majesty."
A girl called to her in a voice full of worry.
The Deposed Emperor, Liu Bian.
Seeing the child's face,
Ha Eun smiled darkly and pulled that small frame into her arms with all her strength.
"Mo... Mother?"
'So... it ends like this after all. It all ends... without my being able to protect my child.'
A small, innocent daughter nestled in her embrace, knowing nothing,
yet Ha Eun already knew all too well: her child's life, too, had little time left.
She was a woman who had drenched her hands in so much blood on her way to this place.
By any and every means, she had driven from the palace every woman who had received the Emperor's favor,
and even poisoned Lady Wang, who had managed to bear a prince despite Ha Eun's efforts to check her.
Ha Eun had committed atrocities so dreadful that her childhood self could never have imagined them.
Now, and in the future,
the world would surely name Ha Eun an arch-villain, a human condemned to hell.
But despite that.
In this moment, she did not regret her choices.
The Imperial Palace—a symbol of power, which many imagined to be filled with endless wealth and happiness.
Before she entered the Imperial Palace, Ha Eun too had thought it must be paradise on earth.
However, once she had the fortune to enter as the Emperor's consort, Ha Eun realized the truth.
Despite its splendid exterior,
this Imperial Palace was neither heaven
nor paradise.
Gu Poison.
A place where venomous beings devour one another, screaming to survive.
A pit of ceaseless scheming among desire-drunk people, so awash in blood that calling it a hell on earth would be no exaggeration.
In this place where she could never let her guard down for even a moment, she had to thrash with all her might to protect her family...
to protect the daughter she had come to hold in her arms.
She ate a poison-laced sweetmeat in the child's place and spat blood;
she took a would-be assassin's dagger in the child's stead and lingered at death's door for days.
Yet the invisible threats never stopped.
At last, seeing her wounded daughter lying in bed despite all her efforts,
Ha Eun finally understood.
To protect the child she had borne in agony—a woman with no background, with no connections of any real worth—
she had to become a demon herself.
Before someone else could sink their teeth into her child's throat, she had to chew and swallow their head first.
By that principle, driven by the single-minded will to protect her daughter, Ha Eun had lived a life of washing blood with blood.
She did not care what the world called her.
She did not care if heaven raged at her sins,
or if her soul fell into hell.
If only she could protect her child—
if only, amidst this horrific carnage, she could somehow ensure her daughter overcame it and survived—
she would gladly bear it all.
But.
For a brief moment, she thought she had finally cast down all rivals and succeeded in protecting her daughter.
Yet, in her foolishness, at the very last moment, she had made a decision that was utterly complacent.
And that decision had, in the end, brought everything crumbling down in an instant.
Her older brother, who had been her shield, met his death before her eyes.
Her daughter, whom she had believed would never face peril again, had fallen so low that even whether she would live to see tomorrow could not be assured.
In the end.
Ha Eun had failed.
As a younger sister.
And as a mother.
In the end, unable to protect anything,
she could do nothing but hold this pitiful little one, who knew nothing at all, in her embrace.
And then.
—"Wh-what is the meaning of this!"
—"Your Majesty! G-get away, Your Majesty!"
"..."
At last,
the hour of fate was drawing near.