They called it hibernation, but everyone knew in their hearts. Given Jiang Jianming’s current condition, it wasn’t much different from a final farewell.
That tiny glimmer of hope was less for the commander and more for those who would be left behind.
Jiang Jianming even said to Lin Ge. “Just treat it as a way to deceive him, to comfort him.”
“When he finally accepts my departure, then you can proceed with my burial.”
Regardless of what would happen later, after getting Ryann out of the laboratory, Jiang Jianming finally enjoyed a brief period of leisure time.
The weather was nice during those final days, and he was fortunate enough to sit by the window and bask in the sunlight.
Jiang Jianming stopped worrying about other matters. He sat with His Majesty in the flower shade talking, organized his written books in the study. When he felt better, he would play with Seth who had just been brought over, and when tired, he would let Ryann hold him while napping under the afternoon sun.
Everything was good.
However, Ryann’s emotions remained unstable. Jiang Jianming suspected whether His Majesty had triggered some strange switch—he would cry at the slightest thing!
He wasn’t like this before, having been someone with an extremely proud and aloof temperament who despised crying as a sign of weakness.
Now things had changed. When he wanted to write his will, His Majesty would lay on his light brain with tears threatening to fall, preventing him from writing; when he said they should prepare for hibernation tomorrow rather than delay, His Majesty immediately hugged him with sobs, saying to wait a little longer…
Jiang Jianming: “…”
He finally understood. While Ryann’s grief was genuine, he was also likely using it to manipulate him. Tsk, how calculating…
He had originally backed down because His Majesty looked so pitiful when crying, but ended up being played instead.
“Sigh, alright, alright…”
On the night before the hibernation, the two lay intimately on the emperor’s large bed, rolling until the blankets were all wrinkled.
Jiang Jianming nestled against Ryann’s chest, unable to move his arms as they were being held. He could only rub against him with his legs.
“If we delay any longer, the medicine’s effects will wear off. You wouldn’t want to see me suffering unbearably before death, right?”
“I know!… You don’t need to tell me.”
Ryann clenched his jaw. He lowered his head and held the patient tightly in his arms, mumbling with closed eyes, “I won’t cry tomorrow, so don’t lecture me tonight.”
As he spoke, another tear silently fell.
He knew Jiang Jianming was right. Sylph had already warned once that they couldn’t delay anymore. In two or three days, when the drug’s side effects kicked in, Jiang might die from excruciating pain or sudden organ failure.
Whether to ensure the implementation of hibernation or to preserve Jiang Jianming’s final dignity and comfort, they had to say goodbye tomorrow.
Jiang Jianming sighed, “How can you cry so much? The pillow is all wet.”
He rubbed Ryann’s neck, then suddenly paused thoughtfully.
“…”
Jiang Jianming tilted his head to study Ryann for a while, a glimmer seeming to appear in his eyes.
He said. “If you behave and stop crying, I’ll let you kiss me, okay?”
For so long, he had refused to take this step. Partly for practical reasons—he feared that after officially becoming lovers with Ryann, His Majesty would stubbornly want to give him a public status, causing unnecessary trouble.
Additionally, he truly worried that he wasn’t worthy of Ryann’s intense love, worried about causing His Majesty to miss out on finding his true match.
But now it was the final night.
He would “die” tomorrow, no longer needing to worry about causing trouble for Ryann.
He had also seen clearly the emperor’s obsession with him, and no longer hoped for Ryann to find new love after his departure.
Or perhaps, put another way, since His Majesty could be so fixated on his love to this extent, if Ryann were to fall for someone else in the future, a dead person wouldn’t be able to hold him back anyway.
So Jiang Jianming smiled, beckoning to the somewhat dazed Ryann, blinking as he asked. “Do you want to?”
Want to? Of course he wanted to. Ryann immediately pressed close, his eyelashes still pitifully adorned with tears, and gave a small peck to his palm.
“…”
“That’s not how you kiss, Your Majesty.”
Jiang Jianming felt both exasperated and amused, and very tender-hearted. He stroked Ryann’s face, his other hand resting with measured weight on Ryann’s shoulder.
“Do I need to teach you this too?”
The palace windows reflected the silhouettes of two figures drawing closer. Outside, moonlight played upon the golden roses.
Only then did Ryann understand Jiang Jianming’s meaning.
He opened his eyes in disbelief, holding his breath.
Thump, thump—
His heart suddenly began to race.
“Wait,” the emperor suddenly pulled back, his gaze anxiously avoiding contact, “you don’t need to do this just to accommodate me…”
Jiang Jianming closed the final distance. His fingers threaded through white-gold curls to hold the back of Ryann’s head as he pressed his lips against Ryann’s.
“…—!”
As moonlight kissed the golden roses goodbye, they too embraced and kissed.
It was Jiang Jianming and Kaios, the Empire’s emperor and commander’s first and last intimate moment, occurring in the depths of the unknown palace.
They kissed, and only kissed. Occasional soft sounds escaped between teeth and tongue, but they were very faint, as if just kissing had consumed a lifetime’s worth of strength.
The feeling was like being drunk, everything became hazy, they held each other tightly while kissing, temperature, heartbeat, texture, burning hot, ice cold, everything endlessly consuming their senses.
“Jiang,” the young emperor choked with emotion, holding his lover’s face in both hands, “do you know, do you know…”
“I know, I know everything,” Jiang Jianming said in a trembling voice, “Your Majesty, Ryann… I will always be by your side, watching over you forever, whether in life or death.”
So don’t cry, don’t fear parting.
From gentle to passionate, they intertwined and fell in their gasps, falling into the depths of the universe, caught by the starry sky turned into a flowing silver carpet. The radiance of moons and suns filled the heavens… Finally at the end of life and death they heard love’s melody, love surged like warm tides, lingering, sorrowful, gradually merging them into one. Never to part, never to part.
“Do you want to do anything else?”
Afterward, Jiang Jianming lay on the bed catching his breath, his lips showing traces of color, finally no longer deathly pale.
Ryann held his waist, nuzzling his face against his neck, saying with a slightly clingy nasal tone. “This is enough, I don’t need anything else.”
But after a few minutes, His Majesty changed his mind.
Ryann said, “Actually, I still want to hear you say that word, say it to me.”
After the kiss, Jiang Jianming naturally knew what His Majesty wanted to hear.
He lowered his eyes and shook his head, his expression melancholic. “Spoken words are simple, but Your Majesty, I have never been able to fulfill the duties of a lover to you.”
“Just like you said last year, in those previous years, I relied more on your strength and position…”
“No! No,” Ryann’s expression suddenly changed. He quickly pulled Jiang Jianming up and pressed him into his embrace, holding him tightly. “Those words were calculated by you to provoke me, you know that clearly!”
He frantically reached for Jiang Jianming’s right arm, tenderly caressing the place where it had been injured. “Don’t say anything else, forget those words for me, forget them right now.”
Jiang Jianming couldn’t help but smile again.
“Alright,” he said, “then I’ll forget them.”
Only then did Ryann stop fussing, and he carefully kissed him all over again. Finally, he hugged him and lay down again, covering him with the warm blanket, and said goodnight.
The lights in the room went out.
The next day, the frozen hibernation procedure took place on the second floor of the White Jade Palace, in a large, sun-facing room.
Like the implementation of euthanasia, the patient was first put into a deep sleep, then doctors and relevant technicians operated.
Jiang Jianming sat on the edge of the bed, looking at the small vial of transparent drug, knowing this was it.
When these drugs were injected into his body, he would fall asleep within four or five seconds.
Then, it would be like saying goodbye to this world.
Outside the window was a vibrant summer, and the sunlight in the room was just right. Jiang Jianming, dressed in neat clothes, thanked and said goodbye to the medical team that had helped him over the years.
Maria was crying a mess, and Jiang Jianming gave her a pack of candy to take back to her children.
Old Seth, the dog, sensed the unusual atmosphere and kept whining, nudging towards Jiang Jianming’s bedside. Jiang Jianming patted it and threw the ball for it one last time.
Golden sunlight flooded the floor, and Seth chased after the ball, panting heavily, wagging its tail. A few minutes later, it tiredly brought the ball back.
“Woof! Whimper…”
It placed the ball in Jiang Jianming’s hand, happily sticking out its tongue, and when it looked up, its black grape-like eyes were tinted golden by the light.
Jiang Jianming hugged Seth and kissed it, his eyes filled with sorrow as he said softly, “Good dog, find a good owner in your next life.”
After so many years of rushing about in battles, he hadn’t been able to properly accompany his dog, and now he couldn’t even be there for Seth’s final moments.
Sylph walked over, hanging the medication on the stand, her eyes secretly turning red. “Don’t worry, Commander, we will take care of Seth.”
Jiang Jianming nodded, “Take it away then.”
Maria came to lead Seth away, but Seth refused to leave, nuzzling against Jiang Jianming and whining, its collar tightening.
“Never mind, I’ll do it,” the commander waved his hand. He picked up the dog’s favorite toy ball again, opened the window, and threw it from the second floor into the courtyard below.
He rubbed Seth’s ears, giving it instructions as usual, “Good boy, go play with the ball for a while.”
The old dog was tricked into going downstairs, and the pattering sound disappeared at the end of the stairs. Maria bowed deeply and left too. Finally, only Ryann, Lin Ge, and Sylph remained.
The three of them were in good spirits, deciding to send Jiang Jianming to sleep in a more relaxed atmosphere.
Lin Ge placed a red apple beside Jiang Jianming’s pillow, smilingly reminiscing about the times when she and he used to fight over garbage to eat in the wild areas.
“Dawn,” she said playfully, “when you wake up, I’ll definitely be older than you, truly becoming an ‘old lady’… Oh right, by then this old lady will call you ‘Ming Ming’, who told you to always treat this old lady like a daughter before.”
Sylph inserted a needle into Jiang Jianming’s right forearm and placed the IV switch near his left hand. “Commander, when you’re ready, just push this switch.”
“Alright.” Jiang Jianming nodded gently, the soft daylight giving his thin face an almost sacred radiance.
Ryann helped him lie down slowly. His Majesty really did as he said – last night he said he wouldn’t cry today, and today he truly calmed down.
“I’m sorry for keeping you here for so long.” The Great Emperor carefully tucked Jiang Jianming’s stray hair behind his ear and said in a low voice, “You won’t have to be in pain anymore. Sleep now, and wait for me to wake you up.”
Jiang Jianming grabbed Ryann’s hand, “Then… when I wake up, I want Your Majesty to be by my side. Is that possible?”
This was actually a subtle hint – if he couldn’t be awakened within Ryann’s lifetime, there was no need to leave an old corpse for future generations.
Ryann: “Of course, I promise you’ll be in my arms when you wake up.”
“Thank you,” Jiang Jianming said softly. “After I die…cough, go into hibernation, don’t announce the news of my death immediately. Try to delay it until next year. It would be too strange for the commander-in-chief to pass away right after a campaign. I’m afraid people might gossip about you.”
Ryann: “Understood.”
“That’s it then.” Jiang Jianming lay on the bed, first looking out the window at Aslan Star City, then carefully looking at the three people who were with him at the end.
Before his long sleep, he wanted to say goodnight, but it wasn’t night, and it wasn’t appropriate to be sentimental.
“Good afternoon, don’t be sad for me,” so he smiled, “I’ve had a very happy life. No matter when, there were always people who loved me.”
After saying this, Jiang Jianming pushed down the switch, his demeanor relaxed and natural, as if he was only injecting a routine nutritional shot.
The drug quickly slid down the transparent injection tube.
Suddenly, bells rang in the distance. Apparently, a new church had been built nearby, and today was its first day of bell-ringing.
In a daze, Jiang Jianming’s hearing seemed to become incredibly acute.
He seemed to hear the bells, hear the white doves flapping their wings. The maglev trains dinged through the star city, newborn babies cried, flower buds bloomed on branches, and birds left their nests.
No, he didn’t hear them, he just imagined them.
All the future was in the distance, every second new sprouts were breaking through the soil. That was light, that was new life.
“Oh, right.” The commander’s eyes suddenly gleamed with a clear light. He looked at the Great Emperor, his smile more soul-stirring than at any time in his life –
The moment the drug entered his veins, he said with a smile. “Ryann, I love you.”
I love you, I love you.
My one and only eternal love, please accept the love I’ve owed you for half a lifetime as the farewell bells ring.
As if struck by some invisible spell, Ryann looked up, mouth agape, his emerald eyes shaking violently…
Suddenly, Lin Ge let out a cry like a wail of grief. She pushed Ryann hard, already in tears.
The emperor finally awoke, suddenly grasping the commander’s cold wrist, stammering. “I! I also…”
But Jiang Jianming’s eyes slowly closed, like peach blossoms falling softly in the spring breeze. His lips still held a gentle smile, also like ripples on a lake gradually dissipating, leaving only a faint trace, frozen for eternity.
He fell asleep in the bright summer light.
Tears soaked the white pillow one by one, with one drop falling on the red apple, reflecting a dazzling light.
“I also… love you.”
Ryann gritted his teeth and closed his eyes. He tilted back his neck, veins bulging, and said word by word, “Jiang, did you hear me? I love you…”
Lin Ge and Sylph both burst into tears, but the man on the hospital bed would never wake up again to comfort the two girls, to pat their hair.
Today was as bright and warm as that afternoon when they took photos together, but with Aslan gone, a corner of the photo would be forever missing.
It took the three a long time to compose themselves. Lin Ge and Ryann came out, leaving Sylph to handle the subsequent procedures.
Suddenly, they saw Seth. The old dog had brought the ball up from the courtyard!
Ryann quickly closed the door. Seth drooped its ears, whimpering and scratching at the door, still holding the ball in its mouth.
It still wanted to play with Jiang Jianming. The ball thrown by its master needed to be placed back in the master’s palm… and if possible, thrown once more.
Lin Ge took a deep breath and turned away, unable to bear the sight. The emperor knelt down, hugged Seth’s neck, and said softly, “Don’t make noise, he’s sleeping. No disturbances allowed, shh…”
Seth understood. It spat out the ball, shook its body, and made a series of dejected whimpers.
It didn’t know about death, only thinking that Jiang Jianming was really sleeping. So it would have to wait until the afternoon, evening, or possibly even tomorrow morning for its master to wake up and continue playing ball.
“Good dog, yes, wait for him to wake up,” Ryann’s voice was low, his emerald eyes clouded with a layer of mist, devoid of light, “He’ll play with you again.”
This was early summer in the 2nd year of the New Imperial Calendar.
Seven months later, in the 3rd year of the New Imperial Calendar, the Empire announced the death of Dawn Aslan, the founding commander-in-chief.
