The Flowers Bloom on the Roadside, You May Return at Your Leisure (Dongzhu Fanfiction)

Flowers bloom, but have no shore; souls sink into the River of Forgetfulness, yet still remain in its waters. Drunk, one knows not how vast the misty waves are; in dreams, the cold lights seem dim and far away. For a thousand years, flower and leaf never meet. Fate ends, fate begins, and they dance in graceful motion. Flowers cannot speak, so they bow their heads; the Buddha saves my heart, yet the Buddha can only sigh in emptiness.

That year marked the third anniversary of Consort Dugu's death.

Emperor Li Yu had yet to bury her body. Every night, he kept watch beside her coffin. His ministers urged him for three years, but he never listened. At last, with the first snowfall of winter, he dressed in white and rode a white horse, following close behind the hearse to escort Lady Dugu to Zhuangling.

Few people still remembered how Lady Dugu had entered the palace, and no one recalled that more than ten years earlier, Emperor Li Yu had clashed with his ministers over making his first wife, Lady Shen, an empress despite the stain on her reputation. It all seemed like a thing of the past.

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