Chapter 964: How Ridiculous
These three days, Han Litong had not entered the underground palace.
She had been thinking, thinking about the life she had been living all these years, thinking about the liking she had always taken for granted—whether it was truly liking, whether she had truly fallen in love with Fengxi, or perhaps, whether what she felt for him was more guilt than anything else.
She discovered, to her own surprise, that she really did not know.
She had thought that after he left, she had finally fallen in love with him, that she cared for him even more deeply, more intensely than she had ever loved that person back then. She had thought it was like that.
Yet all these years, in her life, he was still absent.
She could not help asking herself what on earth she had been doing.
If one were to say who in this world had treated her the best, then without a doubt, it must be her Brother Fengxi. Yet she had never truly cherished his affection; until in the end, he finally had no feelings left for her. The words he spoke before his death had in recent days become especially vivid to her: if there is a next life, let us not meet again.
If there is a next life, let us not meet again.
When he closed his eyes and his breath left him, she felt as though her entire world fell into darkness; from that moment on, she truly had no one to rely on.
All that stubbornness she had so self-righteously clung to had brought her nothing in return.
She had once believed that the people she saved by sacrificing herself would remember her, yet now, most likely, no one even remembered her name.
And that person she had once loved with all her heart had long since died.
She felt that she had nothing left; in the end, even the Brother Fengxi who loved her most had died, and he no longer loved her.
These past few days she had thought, over and over again, what meaning there was in her remaining sunk in these pains and emotions that could no longer be remedied. Just as Han Jing had said: in refusing to let him go, and refusing to let herself go, what meaning was there in it?
No one had ever harmed her; it was she herself who had destroyed herself.
She had been too proud, too self-righteous; she always believed she could do anything, yet in the end she did nothing at all.
Even her two birth daughters felt not the slightest affection for her, because she had never fulfilled the responsibilities of a mother. Even Qing Jue, who had grown up by her side—she had actually never held her, never given her the slightest warmth of a mother. She was not a qualified mother; in the past she had never cared about this, but when she saw Han Jing getting along with Su Yaogeng, her heart was truly pierced.
She had thought she needed nothing, that she was destined to be alone, that she was not favored by Heaven; she lingered in her own world, cherishing herself in solitary bloom, never once reflecting on how she had ended up in such a state.
Whom did she love? She realized she truly did not know.
"I know that even if I apologize to you now, even if I admit I was wrong, it doesn’t mean anything anymore." Han Litong walked to Fengxi’s coffin and quietly gazed at his face, yet these words of hers were spoken to Han Jing.
"I admit that as a mother, I never loved you, nor did I love Jue’er. I once believed all familial bonds were like this—that they were obligations, not feelings. I used my so-called life’s mission to blind my own eyes, and never once seriously looked at this world."
"I have always used superficial splendor to cover every real emotion, forgetting that the human heart is the softest thing of all."
Just like when she naively believed that the mutual affection and shared interests between her and Brother Jiu were a world-shaking, death-defying love—how ridiculous that was.