Empress Fu Yao [Volume 1] (COMPLETED)✔

I will be in hell

It seemed like only a long dream. In the dream, there was a scene of dawn breaking and waters surging - it was the clear blue waters of the Namtso Lake [1]. Far above, the cloudless sky and silver snow peaks reflected a pure white brilliance onto the lake surface, which looked like crystallized waves of silver. Occasionally there would be fish leaping out from the waves, and the sunlight would flash off their scales in a myriad of vivid colors.

Mother still appeared the same as she was before falling ill, faintly standing by her side. When the wind blew her hair into disarray, her mother's fingers stroked the sides of her ears, helping her tuck it back behind her ears with a familiar, warm touch.

Absentmindedly, she recalled that this was the one time she and her mother had traveled out together. Her father had left when she was only a child, and her mother could only raise her and struggle for survival in an earthly world that even poor people would consider particularly cramped and narrow. Fortunately, her mother was an open-minded and generous person - she was someone who could bitterly work overtime through the night for an extra ten yuan, yet was also someone who, because of her daughter's wish to one day visit the high plateaus, could spend ten years' worth of savings.

Standing before Namtso Lake, the vast winds of the high plateau swayed and swirled without rest like sharp swords passing between the ice peaks in the sky, and with air whistling, they shot towards the boundless earth. From far away beyond the horizon, there came a faint whisper like the chanting of Buddhist sutras, circling overhead along with the low-flying Himalayan vultures. In that moment, she seemed to hear in the depths of her heart, some sediments of haziness and obsession being shattered by the gusts of snowy wind.

After returning from Namtso Lake, she chose to study Ancient History and Archaeology.

She had chosen to accompany the endless earthen yellow wilderness, the thousand-year-old gigantic Buddha carvings, the long-untouched wild ruins, the deep and unknown valleys, the steep cliff sides where ancient coffins still hung in the air. [2]

In a blink of an eye, she was walking down a dim, long passageway. Blue and white porcelain oil lamps flickered, while the wide blocks of massive stone that paved the ground were trod on by her army boots, sounding with the echoes of empty spaces underneath. Her feet moved under the golden light, and spaced every three steps on the stone surface would be carved a huge lotus blossom. Gradually, the "品" shaped underground chamber came into view, and inside the side chambers of the passageway, emerald sculptures of large beasts stared across at each other.

The distant noise of what sounded like Buddhist mantras could be faintly heard chanting by her ear once again, seemingly nowhere and everywhere at the same time. She restrained her heart that wanted to jump up, and, following her instinct, she continued forward towards the main tomb chamber.

Yes, it was there.

A towering, vast, pure white stone column, majestic and mystical beyond what the mind could imagine, had images of auspicious beasts that seemed to want to leap up into the skies. The pale gold domed ceiling had tens of night-luminescent pearls embedded in it, each one flashing with light, as if creating another Ninth Heaven.

Her eyes only stared at that golden coffin.

Who was silently in a deep sleep inside it?

On the huge gold coffin was carved a pattern, vaguely looking like a person's face.

She went forward step by step.

"Fuyao."

The call from behind her was intimate yet mournful, a familiar voice, yet an unfamiliar tone.

She quickly turned back.

"Mom ..."

A pillar of white light beamed down from an unknown location. Inside the white glow, her mother's body was frail and thin, the blue-striped white hospital gown so bright that it hurt her eyes.