The Youth of the Cold Palace

001 The Youth of the Cold Palace

"The general trend of the world—after long unity, comes division!" An old cultivator with crane-white hair and a youthful face stroked his long white beard with one hand and flicked his horsetail whisk with the other as he gazed southward.

A thousand years ago, they had been driven away like stray dogs, and even their ancestral treasures had been battered to pieces. For countless years, they had hidden in the northern winds and cold, painstakingly plotting, all for the sake of fighting their way back.

In the ancient Great Jin Immortal Dynasty, this was a world filled with mystery and legend. Immortals had once left their footprints here, only to vanish with the wind, leaving behind countless legends and ruins. In one corner of this world, deep within the Cold Palace, a youth's fate was quietly taking a turn.

The youth's name was not Ming Shu yet, but no one had called him by his original name for a very long time.

When he awoke in the cramped, ramshackle room deep within the Cold Palace, his whole body felt limp, as if he were suffocating to death. It was a frigid winter night.

He felt the weakness of his new body and the stifling, rotten air. His memories were in disarray, his past and present lives tangled together, making it difficult to tell reality from dreams.

He forced himself to stand, swaying and trembling, but finally gave up struggling. He rolled with difficulty to the doorway and at last managed to open a crack, breathing in the fresh air outside, cold enough to pierce his bones.

It was as if he had gone to sleep and been reincarnated.

Was he a reincarnator or a transmigrator? Those were two different things.

After catching his breath, he began sorting through the jumble of matters in his mind.

Now, he had become a deposed prince, living in the bleakest corner of the Imperial Palace.

Amid the chaotic memories, the youth had already been here for nearly a year. Not long ago, his mother, a secondary consort abandoned by fate who had accompanied him all this time, had chosen to take her own life because she could no longer endure this desperate environment.

The youth who would later be renamed Ming Shu had also, after countless struggles, thought of ending his own life.

The original owner had, of course, succeeded. He had successfully ended his own tormented life.

Only then did Ming Shu reincarnate into his body.

He unexpectedly discovered that his soul had resonated with the youth's body in this world. He had been reborn. What story lay hidden behind it, he had yet to recall.

And this new identity seemed to be entangled in quite a lot of karma!

After waking, Ming Shu gradually adapted to this new world. He began learning about his identity and the surroundings. His mother's family had been implicated in a failed rebellion and punished with the extermination of the entire lineage. Though Ming Shu was young, he had not escaped the disaster. He had been stripped of his status and reduced to a commoner, then sent to the Cold Palace with his mother.

The youth roughly calculated that this body of his was probably a little over nine years old.

He was almost ten now, yet still as thin as a stalk of hemp, with a sallow, emaciated face. His growth was clearly stunted compared with others his age. He had merely kept forcing himself onward. It was truly too agonizing.

As for his previous life, his memories were also a blur and would need time to return bit by bit. He seemed to have been nothing more than an ordinary clerk, and for now, he could not even remember his original name. Perhaps he had drunk fake Meng Po Soup.

He had lost the identity and status of a prince, and had even been struck from the records by the Imperial Clan Court. Now he was helpless and alone, a lone leaf drifting through the bitter winter.

Perhaps simply staying alive had already become a pipe dream. That was why he had wanted to die—and why he had been given another chance at rebirth.

I'll live on in his place. He's still so young. There will be hope in the future.

It was only the Cold Palace. There would always be a chance to leave. He just had to be patient.

Fortunately, at that moment, an old eunuch brought a young eunuch through the wind and snow to deliver some food. They discovered the youth lying on the floor in a daze just in time.

The two hurriedly lifted the youth up and found that the charcoal fire inside had long since gone out. The youth's body was so cold that he kept shivering, his lips turning purple.

The old eunuch told the young eunuch to look after the youth, then hurried back to find something.

He spent more money to buy specially prepared hot porridge mixed with Spirit Medicine, then took out the life-saving pills he had kept hidden away, preserving the frail youth's life.

From then on, every day, they brought over a little food. Through companionship and care, they saved that desperate youth. They simply did not know that the person inside him had been replaced by a considerably older soul.

When the wind and snow stopped, Old Zhao also brought over three old reclining chairs. Every day, during the sunniest hours, the three of them would take a moment to lie in the open space of the little courtyard and bask in the sunlight.

Those were the most comfortable moments the three of them would have over the next three years.

The old eunuch often told the two youngsters some "stories."

They could only be called stories. No one knew how many hands the plot had passed through. By the time it reached them, it had already become distorted and twisted "fact."

For example, one day, while basking in the sun, the old eunuch told the young eunuch and the youth about the Sky-Toppling Observatory. The great figures there could see the past and the future.

Thus, the Great Jin Immortal Dynasty had been able to continue for over a thousand years without falling into decline.

Yet on another day, he said that the people everywhere were living in misery. So, over the past few years, several princes had either rebelled or been on the road to rebellion.

These matters had implicated many people in the palace. The old eunuch and the others had not originally been eunuchs of the Cold Palace either. Their masters in other places had met with disaster, and they had been dragged into it.

As time passed, the youth gradually adapted to life in the Cold Palace. He began studying the knowledge of this world and learning about his mother's family and past. His maternal uncle's family had once been a small cultivator lineage with some influence within the Immortal Dynasty.

But the youth did not understand why they had not supported their own nephew, and had instead been "preparing" to support other princes.

By rights, the old emperor was already an ancient relic of one or two hundred years. Yet he was still scheming to use various treasures left among mortals by the Immortals to extend his own lifespan.

The old eunuch was always calculating how he could climb back out and escape this suffocating Cold Palace.

After the three of them had depended on one another for more than three years, all three were still alive. That in itself was practically a miracle.

It turned out that several palace coups and rebellions had erupted over those years. They had fought with real blades and guns, and each one had been livelier than the last. No one was paying attention to the youth anymore.

The constant rebellions had caused the old emperor's suspicions to grow heavier and heavier.

Several princes whose maternal families had neither background nor strength were all directly reduced to commoners. Given only a little settlement money, they were driven away to the border regions.

Perhaps that was the last shred of reason he had left.

In those short three years, who knew how many princes and consorts of the harem, along with those implicated, had died?

Anyone could feel the Immortal Dynasty's fortune beginning to shift unpredictably.

These three-plus years had been more than enough for him to adapt to his new body and this new world. Though the world he saw was only the narrow Cold Palace, like a frog in a well, it was all he had.

Day after day, it remained quiet!

He had endured the bitter winter and the lonely dead of night. The light in the youth's eyes had improved somewhat. Instead, the eyes of the young eunuch, who had countless things to handle every day and was constantly rushing about, had grown increasingly hollow. The old eunuch had been diligently training him, too.

Most of the old eunuch's energy went into rushing around and contacting every side, seeking ways to smooth over all kinds of connections. He also hoped that in his lifetime, he could escape the Cold Palace, avoid the final calamity, and secure a chance to leave.

In the years spent in the Cold Palace, spring, summer, autumn, and winter all wore the same drab colors.

Only a thick stench of decay forever permeated the air.

And in the youth's memories, he could no longer clearly recall his mother's voice or appearance.

Fear might be contagious, and so was the desire to survive. Even his longing for freedom still barely kept a spark of hope alive.

The old eunuch looked at the two children and merely shook his head and sighed from time to time.

One day, he ran back with delight written all over his face and told the two children some good news—the old emperor had died.