Chapter 104: Desperate Resistance

Lih Changan felt as though he had been trapped in a very long dream.

There were too many people in it, too many scenes.

His whole body ached as though someone were carving him open with a dagger, slash by slash; he could hear flesh splitting and the soft drip of blood striking the ground.

What was causing him such pain?

He tried to open his eyes and look, but his eyelids were as heavy as a mountain. No matter how hard he struggled, he could not force them open. In the end, he gave up.

His head swam dully. At one moment his body seemed locked in an ice chamber, the next in a furnace. Torn between frost and fire, he suffered all the more.

He wanted to flee this agony. He wanted to let go, because he could not understand why he was still forcing himself to endure when doing so only tightened his nerves and made his body feel even worse.

He did not know how long had passed before it seemed he had reached some calculated limit, some point at which he could finally stop.

He no longer wished to resist. He let himself go, and at once his mind felt much lighter.

Yet strangely, the pain in his body did not lessen. Every part of him still felt as though it were being torn apart. It was like ants gnawing at those bloodied wounds, an itch and a pain at once.

His head burned and reeled; his consciousness blurred, yet his body was cold and shivering violently.

He felt as though he could not endure much longer.

Was he going to die?

If it was truly this painful, then perhaps death would be better.

Not long after that thought surfaced, he suddenly heard someone stifling their grief in sobs beside his ear.

That crying was heart-rending, suffused with deep despair and helplessness, and carried within it an indescribable reluctance and guilt.

For some reason, his own heart hurt.

Though it was not he who was crying, his nose suddenly stung, as if blocked by something, and he felt an urge to weep as well.

Then a pair of gentle hands softly brushed his cheek, so tender, so lingering, that an overwhelming sense of reluctance and bitterness welled up in him.

After that, he heard her muffled sobbing and broken murmurs.

She cried out for him to wake.

She asked him why it had come to this, why, when she had clearly saved him, she was still the one who had ultimately brought him to such a state.

Again and again, in a voice overflowing with tenderness, she called him Changan.

In those repeated, soul-rending cries, Lih Changan finally remembered who she was.

It was Gu Li.

It was the most noble Princess of Danqing in all the Li Dynasty.

It was the person he had always loved in silence.

It was the one he would have given his entire life to save.

Only then did Lih Changan finally understand why his body had become so broken and battered, and why he had clung stubbornly to that last breath, unwilling to surrender.

He had to save her.

Then had she survived?

Had he saved her?

If so, then he could rest easy.

Once he understood this, a smile of contentment and relief seemed to rise unbidden to his lips.

At last he ceased all futile resistance, letting himself relax completely as he sank into boundless darkness, no longer able to hear a single sound from the world beyond.

He lost consciousness entirely.

Ever since Gu Li had been discovered by the Empress to have grown thin again, she had been even more diligent about eating on time and taking nourishing tonics and medicine, determined not to let the Empress notice any further abnormality.

But Lih Changan's condition still showed no improvement.

The wounds on his body had begun to heal and scab over, yet he remained unconscious, devoid of any awareness.

Gu Li feared that if this went on, even if his external injuries healed, the man himself would probably be ruined.