Chapter 68: Everything Is Swollen, Including My Feelings

I didn't sleep. Not even a little.

I cried the whole night—ugly, hiccupping sobs muffled into my pillow until the sheets were soaked and the air around me felt thick with salt and shame. By morning, my eyes were nearly swollen shut. My nose was red. My face looked like I had been punched by grief and then steamrolled by every bad decision I'd ever made.

When I caught my reflection in the bronze mirror, I flinched. I looked like an emotional corpse with puffy eyelids.

That was when Xiaohua walked in carrying a tray of tea—and promptly gasped like I'd been stabbed. "Miss!" she shrieked. "Who did this to your face?!"

I blinked at her slowly. "Me. I did this."

She rushed over, nearly dropping the porcelain. "Did you get attacked by a spirit beast? Did someone poison your rouge?"

"No, Xiaohua."

Her voice dropped to a horrified whisper. "Then what happened? Wait—don't tell me—the Goddess inside tried to escape through your tear ducts?"

"I just cried," I muttered. "All night. That's it."

She darted to the vanity, opening drawers. "Hold on. I have chilled jade rollers, flower balm, maybe a face wrap—there's no way I'm letting Lord Shen see you like this."

"I'm not going to see Shen Kexian."

She froze, squinting. "You're not?"

"No."

A pause. Then, suspiciously: "So… it's about Advisor Liu?"

I said nothing.

She sighed, softer now. "Do you want me to find him?"

I shook my head.

I didn't leave my room until well past noon. Not until the puffiness faded enough that I wouldn't scare anyone in the corridor. My feet felt heavy, my head foggy. It felt like I'd been underwater for hours.

When I stepped into the courtyard, I almost ran straight into Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. The two of them were strolling like they had nothing better to do, robes perfect, expressions neutral—which, for them, was already suspicious.

Wei Wuxian took one look at me and grimaced. "What in the name of steamed dumplings happened to you?"

I glared. "I had a rough night."

He winced. "Yeah. Your face agrees."

Lan Wangji tilted his head slightly. "You look... unwell."

"Great," I muttered. "Thank you both for the emotional support."

Wei Wuxian held up his hands. "Hey, if tragic heroine was the look you were going for, you nailed it."

I rolled my eyes. "Where's Ming Yu?"

Wei Wuxian's expression faltered. He glanced at Lan Wangji, then back at me. "You didn't know?"

"Didn't know what?" I asked, suddenly cold all over.

"He left this morning," Wei Wuxian said gently. "Said he's returning to Daqi. Taking some time. Said he needed to see his master."

I blinked.

The words didn't register at first. They just echoed. Hollow. Distant.

"He left?" I repeated.

Wei Wuxian nodded. "Before sunrise. Didn't say much. But he looked pretty awful when he did."

I didn't answer. I couldn't. Because the moment my mind processed those words, the tears returned. Fast. Hot. They slipped down my face before I could blink them away, sliding over skin already worn raw from the night before.

Lan Wangji stepped closer, voice low. "Is something wrong?"

I tried to answer. I really did.

But all I could manage was a choked laugh that turned into something else—something cracked. My throat burned. My chest ached. Everything hurt.

That's when a eunuch approached, bowing low, and handed me a scroll. "Consort Li," he said, "your new training schedule. Lord Shen requests that you begin at dawn tomorrow."

I took the scroll in silence, unrolled it, and found only one thing—Shen Kexian's handwriting. Elegant, precise, impossible to misread.

With a sharp breath, I clenched the scroll in both hands—and hurled it to the floor with a force that startled even me. The parchment hit the marble with a loud crack, the wooden rod at the end splintering as it skidded and bounced across the stones.

Everyone froze.

Even the eunuch took a step back.

The scroll lay sprawled at my feet like a casualty of my last thread of patience.

And then I turned without a word and walked away—head down, jaw clenched, eyes burning all over again.

I didn't show up to training the next morning.

Didn't even try.

No sunrise robe-donning. No meditative breathing. No emotional self-checks. I stayed in bed, curled in the same blanket I'd cried into the night before, staring blankly at the ceiling like it owed me answers.

My relationship had imploded.

Possibly ended.

And I was currently floating in the worst stage of heartbreak: the nothingness. That thick, pressing fog where everything hurts but you're too tired to cry, too bitter to hope, too numb to plan revenge. I wasn't angry. I wasn't even indignant. I was just… sad.

Utterly, stupidly heartbroken.

Had I been dumped before? Sure. A couple times.

There was that boy in school who literally threw my confession letter on the floor and stepped on it because his friends were watching. Or the ex-boyfriend I broke up with after realizing he had the emotional range of a wet sponge and thought texting "lol" during serious conversations was acceptable.

Those had hurt.

But this?

This ached. And I couldn't figure out why.

Maybe because Ming Yu hadn't yelled at me. Hadn't called me names or blamed me. He didn't rage, didn't storm away, didn't slam any metaphorical doors. He was kind. Gentle. He even said please when he asked to be alone.

He left me with soft hands and a broken voice. And somehow, that made it worse.

Because how do you move on from someone who loved you gently, even when you hurt them?

I stayed like that—silent, motionless—until late morning, when the door creaked open and Xiaohua peeked in, carrying a tray.

She stopped cold when she saw me still buried under the blanket.

"…You didn't go to training," she said, voice carefully neutral.

"Very observant."

She walked in quietly, placed the tray on the table, then hesitated by the bed. I felt her presence linger a little too long.

I sighed. "You're going to give me the 'get up and wash your face' speech now, aren't you?"

"No," she said. Pause. "Because you don't have time."

I blinked. Turned my head slightly.

She cleared her throat. "Miss Mei Lin… Lord Shen is here to see you."

"Tell him I don't want to see him," I muttered, dragging the blanket over my head like that could solve anything.

Xiaohua hesitated by the door. "Miss…"

"Just tell him. I'm indisposed. I've entered a spiritual retreat. I've died, maybe. Make something up."

She stepped quietly toward the screen. I heard the soft shuffle of her feet, the polite rustle of silk, the beginnings of a sentence—

And then the door slammed open.

I bolted upright, hair a mess, blanket tangled around my waist.

Shen Kexian stood in the doorway, looking as if someone had personally offended him with the concept of patience. His brows were drawn tight, his mouth a flat line, and irritation rolled off him in waves.

Xiaohua gasped. "Lord Shen! You—you can't just barge in! This is the consort's chamber! It's highly inappropriate!"

He didn't even look at her at first. Just stared straight at me, annoyance plastered across every inch of his very composed face. Then he turned, slowly, toward Xiaohua and said flatly, "Do you mind if I have a moment with Consort Li?"

His tone was so clipped, so polite in that dangerous way that implied absolute command, that even Xiaohua—fierce defender of propriety and my dignity—faltered.

She glanced at me. I didn't say anything. Mostly because I was still too stunned to decide whether I was about to throw something or cry again.

With a reluctant bow and an unmistakably muttered, "Men have no shame," she slipped out the door and shut it firmly behind her.

Then it was just the two of us.

Shen Kexian took two steps into the room, stopping at the base of my bed.

"So," he said coldly. "You kept me waiting in the training hall all morning, and didn't even think to inform me you wouldn't be coming?"

I blinked. "Good morning to you too."

"This is not a matter of greetings," he snapped. "I could have been using that time to prepare tomorrow's sequence or finish the calibration scrolls. Instead, I spent it watching a basin of water do absolutely nothing while a servant brought me cold tea."

"Oh no," I deadpanned. "Not the cold tea. How tragic."

He exhaled sharply, jaw tightening. "I am trying to help you."

"Well, I don't want your help today."

"That's not how this works."

"It is now."

His eyes narrowed. "You're behaving like a child."

"And you're barging into a woman's bedroom like a warlord with boundary issues."

We stared at each other, the air between us taut with unsaid things and simmering emotion.

Finally, he said, more quietly, "This tantrum of yours won't bring him back."

My stomach dropped. I went still.

He saw it—the way the breath left me—and regretted it instantly, I could tell. His expression shifted, the sharp edge of his anger slipping just slightly.

But it was too late.

My hands clenched in the blanket.

I looked away. "Get out."

He hesitated.

"I said get out, Lord Shen."

And for once, he obeyed.

The door closed behind him without a word. But the silence he left behind was somehow louder than anything he could've said.