Chen Ning slowly approached Chu Shaobai in the quiet atmosphere.
“Empress, you…… Don’t touch the needles on his body.” Imperial Physician Zhang couldn’t help but advise.
“I know,” she softly said.
She was very close to Chu Shaobai now. She was close enough to see each of his eyelashes. She was close enough to see his chest faintly rise and fall.
Yes, Imperial Physician Zhang did not lie to her. Shaobai was indeed alive.
But, he was just alive.
She did not see any life in him. She did not get any familiar feeling from him. Her eyes landed on his right hand. That hand was just bones wrapped in leather. It looked unspeakably awful.
Once, his fingers were slender and graceful. She always remembered that he had used that hand to hold an ice flower that was so beautiful that it shouldn’t exist in this world. He had held it carefully and excitedly as he ran over to give it to her.
“Do you like it? Smell it. It smells nice.”
“That’s strange. How can a flower carved from ice smell?”
“This is the Ice Fragrance that you want. It’s the Snow Lotus that I got from the snow mountain.”
His clear voice still sounded in her ears. But the person who gifted her the Ice Fragrance had turned into a living dead person.
Chen Ning tightly bit her lips. She didn’t let her tears fall.
She still remembered that the first time she saw him was in Chu Shaoyang’s hall. Among everyone’s contemptuous and disdainful gazes, only he looked at her differently. He smiled at her, like flowers blooming in the spring breeze.
