I died once.
It was in the fasting room in the west wing of Xianyang Palace. When the soldiers sent by Ziying broke in, I was arranging my clothes in front of the bronze mirror. The face in the mirror had wrinkles like knives, sunken eye sockets, and pale lips - an old eunuch whose flesh and blood had been drained by power. I heard myself saying: "It's destiny, why say more?" Before I could finish my words, the light of the sword had reached my throat.
Blood sprayed on the bronze lamppost, like a red lotus suddenly blooming. Before my consciousness sank into darkness, I actually remembered the frozen river outside Handan City. When I was seven years old, I squatted on the bank, poking through the thin ice with my frozen red fingers, watching the small fishes fleeing in panic under the water...
When I opened my eyes again, the cold wind was biting.
It's not the incense from the Nuan Pavilion of Xianyang Palace, but the unique coldness of winter in the north, wrapped in the smell of firewood smoke and livestock manure. I was lying on a straw mat in a low earthen house, with a hard reed mat underneath me, and a few rays of pale morning light leaking through the gaps in the thatch above my head. The sound of a woman's muffled cough could be heard in his ears, as well as the sound of pots and pans being clinked.
"Agao, are you awake?" A hoarse but gentle voice sounded.
