Chapter 50

The imperial palanquin stopped at a remote palace building.

Unlike the central palaces of the rear court, this place was utterly desolate. Along the entire route here, the walls on both sides were crumbling and peeling. The paths were buried under thick snow — signs of long neglect.

After Jin Wang ascended the throne, he had dispersed the late emperor's rear court and sealed the various palace buildings. The cold palace was naturally among them.

It had snowed the night before. Ye Shu had the palanquin stop at the outer gate, stepped through the soft snow, and approached the wooden door.

The wooden door had warped from years of weathering and could no longer close properly. Standing before it, one could feel the thin threads of cold air seeping through the gaps.

Ye Shu's heartbeat quickened inexplicably. He drew a long breath and pushed open the unlatched door, stepping into the courtyard.

The courtyard was not as desolate as he had imagined.

The space was small. A bare, snow-covered peach tree stood in the front yard, with a stone table and four stone stools beneath it. There were only two small rooms, and in front of the doors sat a few potted plants — clearly tended with care.

Ye Shu walked into the main room directly opposite the gate. The furnishings inside were sparse and simple, yet everything was swept immaculately clean — not a speck of dust.

He looked up. The damaged roof he remembered from before had been patched. All four windows had been freshly sealed against the cold wind.

This place had clearly been unoccupied for a long time, yet everywhere there were traces of someone having lived here.

Ye Shu went into the inner room.

No matter how tidy it was kept, nothing could change its bare conditions. The inner room held only a hard plank bed with a thin mattress on top, the fabric washed so many times it had gone slightly white. No one could say how long it had been in use — it was covered in mending stitches.

The palace's daily necessities were regularly distributed by the imperial household, but no one would think to send anything to the cold palace.

In the hardest times, the original host had had to go to other palace buildings to collect things others no longer needed — mending and washing them himself, making do.

Ye Shu sat down at the small table by the window.

One of the table's legs was missing a corner, propped up by a piece of broken tile. As he looked up, he noticed faint markings on the wall just above the table.

Two crude little figures.

Two small stick figures sitting side by side — the taller one with an arm around the other, smiling broadly. The other figure was comparatively reserved, its mouth only just barely curved upward.

All the years of two children growing up had been preserved here, intact.

Ye Shu's eyes suddenly stung.

He stood to leave, but the tip of his foot caught the corner of the table.

The small table was light, and the slight knock shifted it just enough to reveal what was carved beneath the two figures.

A line of neat, slender characters.

— "Ye Shu and Jin Wang. Fifth year, spring."

Ye Shu froze immediately.

The line of characters was just slightly lower than the table's height, which was why he hadn't noticed it at first glance. More importantly — the script was not the seal script commonly used in Changlu. It was the simplified characters used only in modern society.

The color drained from Ye Shu's face in an instant. He stood rooted to the spot, his gaze fixed on that line of characters, until he finally noticed his own abnormal heartbeat.

That was… his own handwriting.

This was what he had come here to find.

The young Ye Shu of those years had used this oblique and singular method to leave behind a mark that was uniquely his — proof enough of identity.

Ye Shu closed his eyes. His breathing was slow to settle.

Jin Wang hadn't recognized the wrong person.

There was no so-called "original host." The one who had always been with Jin Wang, from the very beginning, was him.

Ye Shu closed his eyes. The tip of his nose ached and stung.

Suddenly, an odd sound came from outside in the courtyard.

It was coming from behind the smaller room beside him. Ye Shu composed himself and followed the sound.

There wasn't much snow behind the room. A weedy little path stretched to the corner of the wall, where a small doghouse had been built from bricks and straw.

It was the one Jin Wang had built for Awang — the little yellow dog they had kept in their childhood.

Ye Shu softened his steps and carefully approached. He parted the grass in front of the doghouse.

A small yellow dog had its back to him, both front paws wrapped around a bone it had procured from somewhere, gnawing away with great enthusiasm.

As though sensing someone approach, the small yellow dog turned its head. A pair of perfectly round, jet-black eyes met Ye Shu's puzzled gaze.

Ye Shu: "…"

The small yellow dog: "!!!"

The small yellow dog gave a yelp and leapt up in a panic, scrambling to flee in whatever direction was available, and accidentally crashed into the side of the doghouse — nearly bringing the whole thing down on top of itself.

"Ow…" The small yellow dog staggered, dazed, and tottered over to Ye Shu's feet.

Ye Shu quietly stepped back half a pace.

The first sound that dog had made just now — it hadn't sounded like a dog at all. It had sounded like… a person's voice.

The small yellow dog shook its head, sat down at Ye Shu's feet, and looked up with a perfectly guileless expression. "…Woof?"

"…" Why did that sound so unconvincing.

Ye Shu narrowed his eyes with suspicion. "Awang?"

The small yellow dog looked back at him. "Woof woof."

This couldn't possibly be Awang.

Perhaps because of all the hardships both of them had endured from childhood onward, Awang had passed away peacefully just before Jin Wang's ascension, and had been buried by both of them on a scenic hillside outside the city.

Yet this dog looked far too much like Awang.

Its back was a light yellow, its belly and all four paws snow-white — every aspect of its appearance and coloring was identical to Awang.

Ye Shu thought for a moment. "Are you Awang's son?"

"…"

The small yellow dog did not answer.

An intuition flashed through Ye Shu's mind, and a vague guess began to take shape. He shook his head and muttered to himself: "Better to take it back to Yangxin Hall and ask Jin Wang…"

Then he called out loudly toward the gate. "Someone come!"

"No no no!" A young man's voice rang out from behind him.

Ye Shu's expression stiffened. He turned around. The small yellow dog was waving its front paws in frantic urgency.

"That just now… was you talking?"

Before any answer came, several attendants had already pushed the door open and entered. "Young Master, what is your command?"

The small yellow dog said urgently: "Don't let them see me!"

Ye Shu glanced at it, then turned to the attendants. "Never mind — you may go back outside for now."

The attendants paused, then said obediently: "Yes."

The courtyard was left with just one person and one dog.

Ye Shu asked: "Who are you?"

The small yellow dog sat down on the ground. Its voice carried a note of weariness. "The one who brought you here."

Ye Shu's expression grew even more puzzled.

The small yellow dog swished its tail nervously and scratched at an ear, then said vaguely: "Well — this is a world inside a book, and naturally not just anyone can enter, so…"

Ye Shu: "So?"

"I am the system guide of this book-world."

Ye Shu looked it up and down.

"Ahem — this isn't my original form. I'm merely inhabiting this small yellow dog."

Snow had begun to fall outside. The small yellow dog jumped in through the window with practiced ease and shook the accumulated snow from its coat. Ye Shu walked slowly inside, closed the door, and sat down at the table.

Ye Shu asked: "You can explain properly now. What exactly is going on?"

"There are countless book-worlds, and the one we're in right now is just one of them." The small yellow dog explained. "Once a book-world takes shape, the characters within develop their own autonomous consciousness. As a result, they can easily deviate from the intended trajectory — whether due to their own subjective will or due to logical gaps in the plot."

"My work is to find suitable hosts to enter the book-world and help guide the characters back onto the correct path."

"…"

Ye Shu pressed his fingers to his temple. His mind was so full of questions he didn't know where to begin. "…So you pulled me into this world over ten years ago?"

The small yellow dog said slowly: "Actually… this is your second time entering here."

Ye Shu: "What do you mean?"

"Over ten years ago, you entered this world for the first time. Your assigned task was to help Jin Wang become sovereign. Your reward was to have your legs healed."

Ye Shu went blank.

"Three years ago, Jin Wang ascended the throne, and your task was considered complete. As per procedure, we erased all your memories of the book-world and sent you back to the real world." The small yellow dog continued. "The flow of time is different between the real world and the book-world. You spent ten years here, but only a few days passed in the real world."

"The memory-clearing process affects part of the host's original memories as well — which is why your recollections of the time before you transmigrated are hazy. But from when your legs were healed to when you entered the book again this time, you lived in the real world for over ten years. That much you should remember?"

Ye Shu nodded.

But something didn't add up. "If I left three years ago — then why did I live in the outside world for over ten years, while only three years passed here?"

The small yellow dog hesitated and said slowly: "It's true that quite a few years passed here."

Ye Shu frowned in confusion.

"After you left, this body was taken over by the system's programming, which continued executing the plot." The small yellow dog draped itself on the small table, its tail swaying gently. "Chancellor Ye plotted rebellion and was executed by Jin Wang — that all went according to plan. But after the Chancellor's execution, the plot spun out of control."

"More precisely — Jin Wang spun out of control."

"He grew increasingly cruel. He even provoked wars in all directions, causing widespread suffering."

"…In short, that storyline drifted very far from its intended path, and we had no choice but to reset and start again."

"We ran many tests — we even assigned hosts to other characters in this world to try to repair the plot. Nothing worked."

"Eventually we discovered that the reason the story was derailing was because of you."

Ye Shu's eyes gave a faint stir.

"A host who is compatible with a world-character is rare. Once that match is made, it is unique. So we had no choice but to bring you back."

Ye Shu couldn't help asking: "Then why didn't you appear when I first arrived?"

"About that…" The small yellow dog paused, then grinned at Ye Shu. "As you may have noticed — when we ran the reset this time, we adjusted some of the world's fundamental settings."

It glanced at Ye Shu's gently rounded lower belly.

"…" Ye Shu pulled his fox fur around himself in a huff.

"And also…" The small yellow dog deliberated for a moment and settled on the truth. "Having a host come back for a repeat assignment has never happened before. If it got out, there'd be trouble for us."

Ye Shu was indignant. "And if I'd been killed the moment I arrived?"

"…" The small yellow dog said seriously: "Dying in a book-world does not affect the host's safety in the real world. You need not worry about that."

Ye Shu was silent.

The small yellow dog sighed heavily. "As for me — ten years ago I used the little dog called Awang as a vessel, checking in on you now and then to monitor task progress. But now, because this task has been going unfinished for so long, the main system has penalized me. Every day the task remains incomplete, I stay here one more day."

Ye Shu watched its wagging tail, and after a moment could no longer resist asking: "Did you ever think about doing something else? Like… becoming a person?"

"What would I do in a palace as a person — be a eunuch? I'd rather be a dog."

Ye Shu: "…"

The small yellow dog scratched its ear and continued: "Anyway, that's how things stand. We were completely out of options. Once the task is complete, you can ask for whatever reward you like."

Ye Shu didn't answer.

After a long silence, he let out a quiet sigh. "Rewards and all that — we can talk about it later."

"You said the previous storyline deviated from the intended path — what happened to him in the end?"

"In the end of that storyline, Jin Wang sent armies to conquer both Xixia and Dayan, plunging the entire central plains into suffering. On the night he returned to the palace after his campaigns, Jin Wang set fire to the cold palace, and in the end… perished in the flames."

By the time Ye Shu returned to Yangxin Hall, the sun was setting.

An attendant had barely helped him out of the palanquin when Ye Shu was already walking quickly toward the hall, not waiting for anyone to hold an umbrella for him.

Jin Wang was lying on the small couch directly opposite the hall's entrance.

Seeing Ye Shu return, he smiled at him gently. "Where did you go? I've been waiting nearly two hours."

The snow outside had been falling heavily. Ye Shu had only walked those few steps, and he was already covered in it. The snow melted quickly in the hall's warmth, and his fox fur was damp on the surface. Against his pale face, it made for a rather disheveled picture.

"What's wrong?" The smile in Jin Wang's eyes dimmed a fraction. He gave an instruction: "What are you all standing around for — help Young Master change out of those clothes and bring a bowl of ginger soup."

Before the attendants could obey, Ye Shu crossed the room in quick strides, bent down, and held Jin Wang tightly.

— "You performed too well those years. Jin Wang could not face the shadow of 'your' betrayal and his own hand in killing 'you'."

— "He developed a profound psychological deviation and became a true tyrant — completely, utterly unhinged."

— "On the night he returned to the palace after his campaigns, Jin Wang set fire to the cold palace, and in the end… perished in the flames."

Ye Shu's body trembled faintly. The force of the embrace was enough to almost press against Jin Wang's wound.

Jin Wang naturally sensed something was wrong. His voice softened. "What happened?"

Ye Shu said in a muffled voice: "…I'm sorry."

I'm sorry for leaving you back then.

I'm sorry for deceiving you all this time.

I'm sorry for being so hesitant before, making you suffer so much.

Tears slid down his face. Jin Wang's shoulder grew damp before long.

Ye Shu closed his eyes and said quietly again: "I'm sorry."