Her father replaced her father. That was why she left. Her father killed her father. That was why she returned…
Her father replaced her father. That was why she left.
Her father killed her father. That was why she returned.
Murong Yanzhao had aged. Li Jun was dead. Now she sat across from the man she once called Father. His hands, the hands that murdered Li Jun, were shackled in chains. His once-powerful frame was withered beyond his years. At the sight of her, his madness seemed to deepen, his speech fracturing into incoherent fragments.
He could not answer Murong Yuan's questions, but she asked them anyway, her voice as cold as forged steel, every ounce of rage hammered into its flat tone.
She asked,
"Did you think of this moment? What were you thinking when you led your troops to crush him? Did you see this day coming?"
"Or did you only imagine endless glory, becoming a noble of the new dynasty?"
But this version of Murong Yuan would get no answers. At last, she gazed at her adoptive father, now lost in madness, and slowly became the A'yuan of a time before everything shattered.
"Father."
His clouded eyes flickered upward, staring blankly at her for a long moment before warming with affection. "A'yuan? Have you been at ...?"
"I've simply missed you, Father."
She remembered the girl she had once abandoned, her former self.
"I heard the Zhao brothers still value you highly..."
On the road away, she had become the Murong Yuan of today.
On the road back, in a fleeting moment, she became the Murong Yuan of the past.