Resentment clung to Shi Zhen like a second skin in adulthood. He resented the battlefield that forged him, yet…
Resentment clung to Shi Zhen like a second skin in adulthood.
He resented the battlefield that forged him, yet left him unvindicated. His honor was still stained, the territories still unreclaimed, his blade sheathed too soon.
He resented his adoptive father, a revered general who'd surrendered power willingly despite his lifelong loyalty to the crown.
He resented Princess Yanqing, whose childhood bond with him meant nothing when politics wedded her to his callow younger brother, Shi Baoji.
Resentment festered, useless and inescapable.
He buried that bitterness underground, drilling combat forms until muscle memory eclipsed thought. Never forget, he'd tell himself with every strike. Never soften.
Then Murong Yuan crashed into his solitude.
Lately, Murong Yuan had been circling him, subtle probes about his loyalties. As someone who served the imperial court, she should've repelled him. Yet during her work on the Martial Temple's contraptions, she'd linger silently in his training yard. They coexisted like parallel stars: her sketching blueprints, his sparring shadows, neither acknowledging the other.
"Does it eat at you too?" she asked abruptly one day.
"...Yes."
"Same."
That single exchange, stripped of formalities, haunted him.
What could she resent? The famed "Admiral Rong," architect of the empire's warships, seemed untouchable. Curiosity gnawed at him. He began piecing together her past and present from others and his adoptive father.
He started understanding Murong Yuan. While idly twisting grass into a dragonfly (a childhood skill learned from frontier soldiers), it struck him: the dragonfly was practically Murong Yuan remade...Next time she comes, he decided, I'll talk to her.
But "next time" never came. News of her death arrived weeks later. In a shipyard explosion, no body recovered.
Shi Zhen resumed his drills, movements sharper than ever. Nothing left to unsettle me now, he thought.
"Well?" He stopped, and with a smile, he continued practicing.
"General, what happened?" A soldier cautiously asked.
"Nothing."
"But General, you got the wrong move..."