Please Look Back When You Reach the Shore

Shen Heng stayed with Xiao Yan for twelve years. From the moment she climbed onto the threshold of the East Palace at the age of five, she had tied her life to him. On a snowy night when he was being punished by kneeling in the Ancestral Temple, she ran over with her old cotton robe in her arms with her face covered in blood; when Qiu Lie's cold arrows flew towards him, she stood in front of him; when he went on an expedition in person, she became a phoenix crown to raise military pay and sit in the capital. She guarded the country for him, shielded him from open and covert attacks, and served as his queen for twelve years. She thought those words didn't need to be said between them. Thinking he understands, thinking she understands too. Until that day, he said: "I want to establish a noble concubine." Shen Heng didn't cry. She took out the old cotton robe that had been sewn for more than ten years from the bottom of the box and looked at it all night. The next morning, my hair was gray. On the night of the imperial concubine's canonization ceremony, she leaned on the bedside of Kunning Palace and kept looking at the door. Every time the wind blew the door curtain, she thought it was him coming. He didn't come. When she was dying, she thought-never meet him again in the next life. When she opened her eyes again, she became the apple of the eye of Shen Wei, the Minister of War. At the age of sixteen, he was frail and was raised by his father in the palm of his hand. In this life, she has a home she wants to return to, a father who knows how to taste medicine himself, and a wet nurse who talks about "the girl is too thin." She just wants to live a stable life. However, due to the Queen Mother's decree, she was forced to enter the palace for the draft. At the talent show, she knelt in the crowd with her head lowered, and the bright yellow clothes passed in front of her, and she paused for a moment. Later she bumped into someone behind an abandoned rockery. The hem of the dragon robe was dragged in the mud, and the crown was taken off and put aside. In front of her lay an old cotton robe, a bowl with a missing mouth, and a faded red rope—all items from her previous life.