Murong Yuan

It was a sunny afternoon when Li Jun cooked her favorite dishes and beckoned her over. Gazing into her father's softer-than-usual eyes, she decided she wouldn't quarrel with him today. "What is it?" Then she heard the absurd proposal: Her father had decided to give her a new father. "Why not? You get along with Murong Yanzhao! You even call him 'Father'... We're father and daughter by fate, but we clash. You suffer with me..." "I'm doing this for your own good." She didn't understand. But more than that, she wanted to share his hardships. She was used to them by now. Her pride wouldn't let her say this. That night, she stormed out without glancing at her father or younger brother. At first, she marched swiftly, then slowed, then began looking back. With every step, she never doubted someone would come for her. Surely her father would follow. But no one came. Two hours passed. Her legs felt leaden. After half a day, she forced herself not to turn around. As she trudged toward Mohist Hill, her anger cooled, and the spark of hope in her chest died. Finally, she accepted the truth: she'd been abandoned. Her feet ached, but she shed no tears. This road is so hard to walk, she thought. No, it isn't the road. It's the waiting that hurts. The hoping. If I could just stop expecting someone to come for me, maybe the road wouldn't feel so long. From that day on, she stopped hoping. Hope, she realized, is harder to carry than the road itself.

Her father replaced her father. That was why she left. Her father killed her father. That was why she returned. Murong Yanzhao had aged. Li Jun was dead. Now she sat across from the man she once called Father. His hands, the hands that murdered Li Jun, were shackled in chains. His once-powerful frame was withered beyond his years. At the sight of her, his madness seemed to deepen, his speech fracturing into incoherent fragments. He could not answer Murong Yuan's questions, but she asked them anyway, her voice as cold as forged steel, every ounce of rage hammered into its flat tone. She asked, "Did you think of this moment? What were you thinking when you led your troops to crush him? Did you see this day coming?" "Or did you only imagine endless glory, becoming a noble of the new dynasty?" But this version of Murong Yuan would get no answers. At last, she gazed at her adoptive father, now lost in madness, and slowly became the A'yuan of a time before everything shattered. "Father." His clouded eyes flickered upward, staring blankly at her for a long moment before warming with affection. "A'yuan? Have you been at ...?" "I've simply missed you, Father." She remembered the girl she had once abandoned, her former self. "I heard the Zhao brothers still value you highly..." On the road away, she had become the Murong Yuan of today. On the road back, in a fleeting moment, she became the Murong Yuan of the past.