After Shen Zhiyi had been in the cold palace for eleven years, she thought she would spend the rest of her life inside those four high walls.
On the third day after the death of the first emperor and the new emperor's accession to the throne, a shoulder carriage carried her out of Qingyi Pavilion and sent her to Chonghua Palace where only the favorite concubines of past dynasties lived. Everyone said that the new emperor cared about old favors and wanted to give the fallen former empress a decent home.
Only Shen Zhiyi knew that she had no memory of ever having any interaction with this decisive new emperor.
Until the young emperor dressed in black clothes stood in front of her, the first thing he did was not to reminisce about the past or give a reward, but to bring a bowl of Bizi soup with his own hands.
"You don't have to bear children for me."
When he said this, his tone was calm, but his eyes were filled with the turmoil that he had endured for eleven years. Shen Zhiyi didn't know that the man with all the power in front of her was the young hostage who was covered in wounds in the corner of the imperial garden, holding her handkerchief and calling "sister".
He hated her for forgetting him. But he was even more afraid that she would think of him.
Over the years since then, he has given her the utmost honor, but he has not gone beyond the reach of the throne; he has promoted her to a high position, but he has never set foot in her bedroom. Above the court, he is a young emperor who kills and decides. In the palace, he is a person who is extremely restrained and wants nothing.
And Shen Zhiyi, after a long period of probing and pulling, finally picked up the forgotten memory fragments bit by bit - the way the boy looked at her back then was exactly the same as the way the emperor looked at her now.
She thought she was a dead tree that had come back to life under the palace wall, but she didn't know that he had been waiting for a whole month to water the dead tree.
