Fleeting Passion

[Revised many times. The only authorized version is on Jinjiang Literature City. I am not responsible for pirated copies posted elsewhere.]

(A classic, old-school tale of tortured love and bitter heartbreak)

After the new emperor ascended the throne and peace returned to the realm, Jiang Mei went back to Dongchang. But she suffered from constant stomach pain, and a traveling doctor told her she had a disease that would break her heart and bowels.

An old account once recorded that when the pain of heartbreak reaches its peak, there are few tears, only a piercing, utterly miserable cry.

When the sufferer dies, an examination reveals the intestines broken inch by inch. This is called a broken-heart disease.

It sounded terrifying, but Jiang Mei didn’t think it mattered.

She had suffered greatly in body and even more in heart. After enduring one hardship after another, she had little time left anyway. What difference did a day sooner or later make?

As she lay dying, she visited the Taoist temple one last time. She remembered leaving a prayer banner there, but when she came back, she was holding two.

[To Yuanchen] [The frontier is bitterly cold. Take good care of yourself. I hope you stay safe.]

[Mei'er] [Our debts are paid in this life. May we never meet in the next. I only wish you peace.]

Jiang Mei cried for an entire day. That night, she remembered the love and hatred she had shared with Gu Yuanchen over the past dozen years.

She remembered trying to assassinate Gu Yuanchen, then joining his service; saving his life, then being saved by him at the cost of his own; coming to love him to the depths of her soul, then hating him just as deeply; severing all ties with him; becoming his sister-in-law by a twist of fate; faking her death by setting herself on fire and escaping the palace; then meeting him again six years later, only to part once more...

The love and hate, the anger and obsession of that life were impossible to explain. Jiang Mei only ever thought of the last time she had held Gu Yuanchen’s arm. Her eyes were filled with sorrow, but she had smiled at him.

"We are no longer fated to be together, but we still have to live well. Yuanchen, I’m not dead yet. The realm is at peace, so I can enjoy that peace too. You have to live well."

Jiang Mei lay in bed for a month, but her broken-heart disease recovered. She even began to smile, though no one understood why.

She lived another twelve years and died one night without pain or illness. Gu Yuanchen didn’t learn of her death until twenty years later. Then he followed her in death, taking his own life for love.

-

Their love was fleeting and fragile. In this long life, it could not withstand even one missed chance.

--------The following is the old blurb. Some plot details have been omitted, so it does not fully represent the story.--------

Prince Jing, Gu Yuanchen, was known for his ruthless and sinister ways. When an assassination attempt against him failed, Jiang Mei refused to betray her organization and endured brutal torture without saying a word.

So in the end, he spared her life, lifted her chin, and said with a smile:

"You killed my most loyal guard. You can repay me with yourself."

From then on, she became his secret guard. He was unfathomably calculating, inflicting wounds on her one moment and meticulously treating them the next.

He said she didn’t deserve to be treated like a person, but when they were trapped in a deathly predicament, he asked for no way to save himself, only that Jiang Mei be allowed to escape.

He said he didn’t want to drag her down, but Jiang Mei turned back to save him anyway.

Under the influence of a secret drug, Gu Yuanchen eased Jiang Mei’s pain for a time. A flower-shaped mark appeared on her forehead, and he showed her the wounds in his heart.

Jiang Mei was his first woman, and he wanted her to be his only one. He whispered in her ear that she could trust him forever.

Jiang Mei believed him, lowered her guard, and carefully offered him her heart.

Until she and the childhood fiancée of Gu Yuanchen were captured by enemy soldiers and used as hostages. Without hesitation, Gu Yuanchen chose his childhood sweetheart.

He didn’t choose Jiang Mei. He let her suffer the torture of branding and left her to die.

From beginning to end, she was nothing more than a spy trained by Gu Yuanchen.

She was a gift he had carefully prepared for his imperial brother.

She was a plaything he could cast aside whenever he pleased.

Jiang Mei, utterly hopeless, escaped her personal hell and received help from a gentle, warmhearted, and considerate young master named Chu.

He helped her rebuild her defenses, soothed her pain, and rekindled her will to live.

He said he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Jiang Mei thought perhaps she, too, deserved happiness, until she was caught sharing an intimate moment with Young Master Chu beneath the flowers and encountered Gu Yuanchen again.

"Mei'er, you’ve been a good girl. You really did manage to seduce my imperial brother."

That wasn’t Young Master Chu. It was the current emperor, Gu Yuanheng.

Late at night in the palace, Gu Yuanchen’s face was grim, dark flames smoldering in his eyes as he advanced on her step by step:

"Tell me properly, what did you do to make my imperial brother so besotted with you?"

He would let Jiang Mei hate him if she wanted. Even if she died, he wanted them bound together, never to part.

Jiang Mei agreed. But after he left, she set fire to the palace. She chose never to look back.

*

The empress burned herself to death, and two men went mad.

The emperor was consumed by grief and fell gravely ill. His temperament changed completely, and he became obsessively fixated on her, calling her name again and again beside an empty bed.

The Prince of Jing, who had always hidden his emotions, was equally bereft. At night, he kept company with a curled-up, charred corpse.

"Mei'er, I’ve brought you back. You’re not allowed to run away again."

He was the one who had lost her.

Gu Yuanchen was the one who drove Jiang Mei to her death, the woman he had loved most in all his life.

Bad ending, no one survives.

The first and third male leads are sexually pure, and all three men love only the heroine.

Please do not insult or make hurtful remarks about the heroine based on the blurb.

Theme: Live toward the sun.