Snow Falls, Returning to the Abyss

In his previous life, he bestowed three yards of white silk upon him. In this life, he would offer him ten thousand miles of rivers and mountains as a bride-price. The thing Xuanyuan Jingchen regretted most in his life was listening to slander on that snowy night and throwing his imperial uncle, Xuanyuan Jingyuan, into the imperial prison. Jingyuan had fought for him for half his life and was covered in scars. Only when he saw his uncle's belongings in the prison did he realize how terribly wrong he had been: the old jade pendant he'd casually given him as a child, the stack of intelligence reports that had shielded him from every attack, open or hidden, and the bottles of medicine his uncle always kept ready to ease his heart condition during late-night memorial reviews... Given another life, Jingchen returned to the day his uncle came home victorious from battle. This time, he tore up the memorials full of slander and pushed his uncle's wheelchair past the astonished officials, setting a seat beside the imperial throne just for him. He searched the land for the finest physicians, all to treat the injuries and illnesses his uncle had brought back from the battlefield. He dismissed every official who claimed his uncle's achievements “threatened the throne,” and declared, word by word: “My uncle kept this empire safe for me. What is mine is his.” But the man who had once conquered the world for him merely lowered his eyes and avoided his touch, murmuring, “Your Majesty, I... am not worthy.” He didn't know that when his uncle coughed blood in the grip of a grave illness, clutching half of the tiger tally, he was thinking: “Chen'er, this time... your uncle may truly be unable to protect you.”