The Glory After Rebirth

Yuwen Tong, surprised, felt a sudden, strong sense of loss which almost rendered him unable to breathe.

After taking another couple of steps forward, Yuwen Tong came to a halt again and stared at the position where nobody was standing.

Ling Zhang was wondering whether or not this Yuwen Tong was fake when he observed Yuwen Tong pause again a few paces off and gaze fixedly at him.

“You can see me?!” Ling Zhang asked happily. If Yuwen Tong could see him, then it would mean that he was not fake!

“Are you seeing anything there, Marshal?” Yao Yi asked, bewildered.

Yuwen Tong shook his head. “No. Let’s keep moving.”

The delighted look on Ling Zhang’s face froze at these words.

Yuwen Tong walked over in two strides, brushed past him and left the residence without a backward glance.

Ling Zhang felt a sudden pang of misery and involuntarily gasped. Then he turned on his heel and looked at Yuwen Tong who had just walked out of the residence.

Yuwen Tong took the reins of North Wind the horse from a soldier’s hands, stroked the horse’s head, patted him and then mounted, preparing to leave.

But before leaving, he kept having this feeling that someone in the gateway was looking at him. He was sure that he was being watched, but the gateway was indeed deserted.

Yuwen Tong frowned. Nothing around him had felt right since he had woken up from his dream in the morning. Clearly it was about time he gave North Wind the instruction to leave, but he found himself unable to do it. It was unmistakable that there was nobody in the gateway, but all his thoughts seemed to have been confined to that non-existent gaze, and every step he took away from there made him distressed.

“Marshal?” All those in the vicinity looked perplexedly at him.

As Yuwen Tong did not move, none of the others dared depart.

Then they saw him suddenly dismount and make towards the gateway.

Yao Yi and the others also dismounted from their horses and bewilderedly watched Yuwen Tong doubling back.

Ling Zhang could not help but tense his muscles as he saw Yuwen Tong abruptly pause again and walk back squarely towards him. “You … Can you see me or not? We’re trapped in this reverie. We need to figure out a way to get out of here right away. Nothing here is real. You must not believe any of it.”

Yuwen Tong stood still on the bottom step and raised his head slightly to look at the empty gateway. He could not ignore the strong sensation of being watched. On top of that, he seemed to be hearing someone’s voice. It was very indistinct and he could not make out any words, but he was positive that he was hearing it.

Seeing that Yuwen Tong was looking at him but showed no inclination to speak, Ling Zhang got anxious and made an attempt to grab his arm. “You … ”

As his hand closed around Yuwen Tong’s arm, he gripped something solid.

Ling Zhang, “!!”

He could touch it!!

And Yuwen Tong, at the same time, felt a hand grasp his arm. The touch was so real that the look in his eyes immediately changed.

He had not been hallucinating. There was really someone here. It was just that he … could not see them.

“Who are you?” Yuwen Tong asked involuntarily. With that he could not help but wonder whether he had gone crazy, and why he was speaking to a deserted gateway.

Ling Zhang standing opposite him was astonished at this question. “You don’t recognize me? You can see me? I’m Ling Zhang!”

After saying this, having received no response from Yuwen Tong, he was very anxious and stared into Yuwen Tong’s eyes. Slowly he discovered that something was not quite right, that Yuwen Tong’s eyes were not really on him but merely gazing in his direction.

Wh–What was going on? Ling Zhang was perplexed. He raised his hand, waved it in front of Yuwen Tong’s eyes and found that they were not moving, which meant that Yuwen Tong could not see him.

Ling Zhang, ” … ”

What on earth was going on?

He had just loosened his hold when Yuwen Tong’s hand abruptly shot out like lightning and grabbed his.

Ling Zhang gave a great shudder and immediately looked up at Yuwen Tong, whose face registered shock.

Yuwen Tong had just felt a breeze brush by his face. That had been a very weird sensation, as though someone had been waving their hand in front of his eyes. He had instinctively reached out his hand, but unexpectedly, he had really grabbed someone’s hand. How could he not be shocked?!

“Who are you?! What kind of skulduggery is this?!” demanded Yuwen Tong.

Ling Zhang was rendered speechless.

What the hell was going on? Yuwen Tong was unable to see him but could feel him? Judging from the shock on Yuwen Tong’s face, he was probably astounded as well.

“Can you hear me?” asked Ling Zhang.

Yuwen Tong suddenly heard the voice again, which issued from right in front of him. This time it was no longer vague but quite distinct. It was a silvery, pleasant, male voice.

He did not scare easily, otherwise he would probably have sent for a Taoist priest or a Buddhist monk without a second thought!

Was he having an encounter with a ghost in broad daylight?

“Of course I can. Are you a human or a ghost? Why are you here? And what do you want?” demanded Yuwen Tong, now positive that there was a man or a ghost standing in front of him, because he was not only gripping an arm of this man or ghost but also hearing him speaking.

“Thank goodness. Finally you can hear me.” Ling Zhang felt greatly relieved as he heard Yuwen Tong persist with his questioning. “Why didn’t you stop when I asked you to just now? We’re now trapped in a reverie. None of these things or people is real. Do not fall for it. We need to figure out a way to get out of here as soon as possible.”

Yuwen Tong heard his every word but could not quite understand him.

A reverie? What kind of paranormal thing was that? Everything here was unreal?

But he still forced himself into calming down, trying to grasp what the invisible speaker meant. “Are you saying that everything here is fake?”

But Ling Zhang was silent for a moment. Yuwen Tong did not recognize his voice. But he should have, unless this Yuwen Tong did not know him.

Why?

“Speak.” Yuwen Tong, having received no response, became inexplicably uneasy and unhappy, his grip on the speaker’s arm considerably tighter.

“Yeah. None of this is real.” Ling Zhang answered the question, but a suspicion had risen up in his breast. Was this Yuwen Tong, who was standing before him but did not recognize him, real or not?

“Why?” Yuwen Tong inquired of him. There was a vague, strange feeling in him which was telling him that this invisible speaker might be telling the truth. Hadn’t all the oddities he had seen since he had got up this morning been quite preposterous? But he would not be convinced so easily that everything he was seeing was not real. By comparison, this invisible speaker, who could be a human or a ghost, was more suspicious. “How am I supposed to believe you when I couldn’t even see you?”

Ling Zhang was now unsure whether this Yuwen Tong was real or not, and he did not know how to explain it, so he decided to figure out why Yuwen Tong did not recognize him first. “Why do you not recognize my voice?”

“Should I recognize it?” Yuwen Tong asked back.

“You really don’t recognize my voice? I suspect that you, like everybody else here, are not real. Maybe I’m just wasting time on you. I’m going to find the real Yuwen Tong,” said Ling Zhang.

Not real? What did he mean by “the real Yuwen Tong”? For some reason Yuwen Tong felt a flash of anger. “You’re not going anywhere!”

Ling Zhang, ” … ”

Though uncertain about whether or not this man was real, this jealous tone struck Ling Zhang as quite characteristic of the Yuwen Tong he knew.

“Tell me who you are,” added Yuwen Tong.

“Ling Zhang,” answered Ling Zhang, fixing Yuwen Tong with a gaze.

Ling Zhang? Something flashed across Yuwen Tong’s mind as he heard this name. He kept having this feeling that there was something he should have recalled by now, but he was unable to figure out what it was.

Looking at the seemingly distressed expression on Yuwen Tong’s face, Ling Zhang, though not sure whether this Yuwen Tong was real or not, couldn’t help but feel worried. “What’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?”

Yuwen Tong shook his head. “It strikes me that I forgot something, and I can’t remember what it is.”

Subconsciously, Yuwen Tong disclosed his true thoughts, as though not at all guarded with Ling Zhang. After saying this, he seemed to be momentarily astonished.

Ling Zhang caught on to what was going on as he heard Yuwen Tong say that he forgot something.

He had been wondering why he was so clear-minded in this reverie. Now, it would seem he was not in his own reverie but in Yuwen Tong’s!

“You fell prey to some kind of illusion charm. You’re in a reverie. All occurrences here happened ten years ago. I think the illusion enchantment caused you a temporary loss of memories of everything that happened from this point in time onwards,” Ling Zhang explained.

“An illusion charm? Even if that kind of thing does exist, what I’m seeing is too real to be a reverie,” said Yuwen Tong after collecting himself. He would not fall for this story so easily.

Ling Zhang could tell from his tone and facial expression what he was thinking about. Having been married to Yuwen Tong for so many years, he knew Yuwen Tong too well not to guess it.

“I’m just as surprised as you are by how real this reverie looks. The only explanation is that the one who did this has consummate skills. But spell-casters could only take advantage of those who have obsessions and send them into reveries, in which they would immerse themselves in what they want to see and eventually lose their minds. I’m a little confused as to why you want to travel back ten years – no, over ten years, actually – I don’t know what year it is according to the Great-Yue calendar. Why do you want to return to this particular point in time? Are you thinking of waging a war against the Wan Kingdom? You’ve already subjugated that country. Why bother doing this? Or is it because you miss the battlefield that you want to come back to this time? But that doesn’t seem to be the case either, because if you miss the battlefield, you would have been on a battleground rather than in Marshal’s Abode. I could tell that the atmosphere in the city is pretty relaxed, and there doesn’t seem to be a war coming. If it’s not about waging a war against the Wan Kingdom, what or who is it that is in Shengzhou Pass and has been bothering you? If it’s a person, I don’t remember you mentioning anybody apart from Jiang Ke, Jiang Xi, Yao Yi and some others. Have you by any chance been keeping something back from me? Like you used to be in a relationship with someone in Shengzhou Pass, whom you broke up with for some reason afterward? Although my father told me you were not seeing anybody at this time, but what if you were? Come on, be honest with me. If you tell me the truth, I’ll forgive you after we’re rid of this reverie; if not, there will be consequences.”

Yuwen Tong standing in front of him was speechless.

After a long silence, he managed to cotton on to the meaning of these words.

But Ling Zhang felt his heart drop during Yuwen Tong’s silence. “Why are you silent? Am I to take this as a tacit admission that there’s indeed someone you couldn’t forget in this place? That you’ve been concealing it from me all this time? Why? We’ve been married for so many years, but you’ve never mentioned it. It never occurred to me you had such a deep obsession. I was so stupid to believe that … ”

Ling Zhang could not bring himself to finish his sentence. The more he thought about it, the more intense his foreboding was. His heart was sinking deeper and deeper and he felt as though a bucketful of ice had cascaded into his stomach. Yuwen Tong had never breathed a word of it. At the thought that Yuwen Tong had been keeping his feelings for someone else hidden fathoms deep for so many years that they had evolved into a strong obsession, Ling Zhang’s insides went cold. He could not help but persist with his questioning. He did not dare believe it. What he was supposed to do if it was true?