Reborn To Be The Imperial Consort [BL]-Chapter 152: Dancing Yellow Chrysanthemum — III

Warning: Depiction of PTSD

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Before Hu Lijing could say even so much as a word of consolation, he saw the younger fox spirit stumble backwards, nearly collapsing into the stream, his legs losing their strength.

"!!" Hu Lijing’s eyes widened in alarm. He launched forward swiftly to try and catch him. But then he stopped.

No, more aptly, the raw anguish in the four-tailed fox’s eyes forced him to a halt. Almost instantaneously, he could feel the frigidity in the air. Stiffly, his amber gaze flickered to glance down—

And there he saw it—the alarmingly quick spread of ice on the forest floor. Instinctively, he flinched, memories of the disgraced ten-tails barging into his mind. Like a crisp, throbbing slap, it struck across his cheek, all but flinging him backwards.

Wracked with the fear of the past, his hands trembled, his fingers shook, his face paling while his heart and breath faltered together.

Dryly, with his eyes trembling and throat closed up, he swallowed tightly, feeling fire and ice and sand clawing down his throat.

"Stop." He whispered, eyes wide, pupils shrunken and face pale as he watched the ice spreading under them. "Huiqi, stop—" he choked out, eyes following the ice, watching the flowing stream freeze. "Stop!"

In that moment, sitting on the ice that clawed its cold up his fiery person, the fox spirit felt as though he had been flung back into that hellish yet frigid pit of purgatory.

That accursed battlefield.

He saw himself, reliving the very memory, surrounded by the heaping corpses of his brave and fallen kinsmen. He saw the sea of blood, that burning dance of flames seeming taller than clouds and daring to mock the heavens.

He saw the blood, the fallen young, the frozen grey visage, the slashed desecrated bodies. He heard the howling wind, the grieving roars of flames being governed.

He saw himself, broken and pushed to madness, he saw himself—isolated and pregnant. He felt himself seized, heard the venomous whisper of those slithering words, the tantalizing hiss of a trade.

A trade that demanded life and control in exchange for revenge. He felt himself drowning in deep shadows, saw the blinking—mocking—red eyes.

He felt the bone-chilling cold. He saw the dancing shadows—the bloody eyes, the dancing tails. The grating voice that promised sweet, sweet vengeance.

And he—he saw himself succumb to that temptation. He let the frost crawl up his kneeling self, feeling himself held prisoner to that damned power.

He felt his control slip.

And—

And before he could process himself and order his thoughts, his hands moved. Flames roared in his veins and blazed on his palm. It was a desperate bid to seize lost control back.

The next moment, barely snapping out of his head, Bai Huiqi threw himself aside. Burning flames flickered, smoke rising as it hurled past him. The fire brushed past him, roaring a searing hiss.

Shaking, his head snapped to look back at Hu Lijing.

There, he saw not the man he respected or admired or envied. Instead, he found himself watching a man more pallid than the moon hanging above them. Instead, he saw a man shaking like a tree in a storm, an untethered kite.

He saw a victim and a survivor wracked in shadows of fear and festered pain.

"...?" Without words, he let out a wounded noise from the back of his throat. His own pupils shook, eyes filled with fear reflecting the shadow of a man he thought he knew.

Hu Lijing, too, let out a sobbing choke, his outstretched hand falling on the frozen floor, cutting against the frigid leaves until his divine blood flowed, staining the iced ground.

"I’m sorry." He whispered hoarsely, eyes hollow and shoulders shaking. "I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—" —his head dropped, his voice shaking like a newborn fawn taking its first steps— "forgive me— forgive me. I... I lost myself."

Bai Huiqi was silent, eyes wide and shaken with fear. His voice was low, trembling as he whimpered softly, fearfully. "... Why did you attack me?" He sounded heartbroken.

Hu Lijing turned his eyes away, shame crawling on his face as he shivered, the night breeze slithering its treacherous tongue against his very being.

"Instinct." He murmured, unable to find in himself the ability to weave a lie. "It was instinct."

"Instinct?" He heard the younger spirit choke out, swallowing back a broken sob.

"... You, you..." Hu Lijing stammered, face dark and shadowed beyond the flowing paint of the night. "You remind me of a ghost I thought I left behind in the past" —a bitter laughter bubbled in his throat— "but clearly, that ghost never did leave me to my damnation, huh?"

He stole a mournful glance up at the crescent moon. His throat was tight, heart hammering in his chest, squeezed as though someone had seized it in their vice grip and cruelly held it down.

"I understand if you can no longer forgive me." He whispered in a voice broken at seams, fraying on his threads. "I doubt I deserve your forgiveness." He looked away, shame dousing him in its cruel concoction.

Bai Huiqi sucked in a deep breath, heart thundering against his chest, rattling his ribcage as blood roared in his ears. He kept his head down, eyes trained on his lap, pupils shaking.

"Instinct." He echoed once more, a near haunted cadence lacing his voice. "If your actions are instinctual then there is truly nothing unwarranted of my forgiveness." He swallowed. "I should have controlled my powers better."

Hu Lijing ground his teeth together, jaw ticking as he exhaled forcefully through his nose.

"Don’t." He all but hissed, voice low and wavering. "Do not blame yourself" —slowly, he stood to reach down and give him a trembling hand— "You lack stability."

Bai Huiqi’s entire body shook under the roaring force of terror gripping him. Wrought with tremors, he carefully accepted the extended hand. "Stability?" He croaked, thin voice tearing apart at the hems, brain opting to latch onto the comfort of a familiar word. "What does that mean?"

Hu Lijing squeezed the slender hand in his own, his touch scorching against the ice of Bai Huiqi’s flesh. If not for his opposing nature, his ember essence, and the sacred flames; the younger fox would have turned him into ice ten times over.

Carefully, he retrieved his hand, allowed it to drop by his side, and discreetly shook it to be rid of the ghost of freezing winter whispering against his skin.

"Without stability, you are a volatile power source waiting to turn askew." He began, casting him a sidelong glance before he continued. "What happened just a few moments prior could happen once more. Whether in the near or the far future depends entirely too much on a blind gambit."

Bai Huiqi listened to his words, not quite understanding what the nine-tailed fox spirit was trying to convey. All he could feel was his erratically beating heart accompanied by a world-spinning dizziness embracing him.

"Oh." He answered dazedly, Hu Lijing’s words passing through his one ear and escaping through the other, with no retention whatsoever.

"..."

Bai Huiqi fidgeted on his feet, once more feeling the discomfort return at the dawning silence.

Then, Hu Lijing heaved a sigh, defeated and helpless, but not quite cold enough to raise the four-tailed fox’s hackles.

"You did not understand a single word, did you?" Bai Huiqi heard the man ask. And before he could conjure up a believable excuse, he heard himself blurt.

"Yes." Oh heavens, no.

"..." For a long moment, Hu Lijing stood with his head bowed and eyes stabbing at the stream. Then, with a purse of his lips, he replied. "No matter. I am here to teach you."

Teach... Him...

What?

Bai Huiqi wasn’t sure if he made some noise or did something foolish, because the following second, the nine-tailed fox spirit’s attention—sharp as a sword’s edge—fell on him.

The amber eyes boring into his very soul narrowed. For a fleeting moment, Bai Huiqi saw exhaustion and exasperation flash in his gaze.

"Come here," Hu Lijing murmured, his deep voice, carefully schooled, barely above a whisper as he stepped forward and balanced himself so delicately on a minuscule, singular surface of a stone peeking through the running water. "Allow me to show you."

And so, the nine-tailed fox stood on the needle-pin’s worth of space, balancing himself on the delicate tightrope of stone, water, and the nexus of his toes.

Languid under the silver stream of moonlight, he looked at Bai Huiqi from above his shoulder. Expertly, he was standing—almost as if on the running water—on a single point of his foot without alarm.

"Stability."

And so, the flames danced around his breathtaking person, the roaring body of it ravaging nothing at all.

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