11 Who is calling me?

Death, they say, is the ultimate boundary of human matters—wise words from Horace.

"Every exit is an entry somewhere else," Tom Stoppard.

...

Knock!

Knock!

Knock!

The sound awoke a certain someone from her sedated state. 'What's that noise' she thought drowsily.

"Yunqing… Yunqing… Yunqing, hon… Are you all alright? Sweetheart~~ honey, please open up. You can tell me what's wrong," a soft and tender voice endearingly called out.

'Urgh…. Who is calling me? Why is my body so weak? Wait! Am I still alive? Did the poison not kill me?' Zhao Yunqing's* head was filled with various thoughts as she heard the stranger's voice calling out to her again.

"Sweetheart, please open up dear~ Yunqing…. Is anything the matter? Talk to me please… just say anything," the same tender voice called out to her again, and this time her tone was louder and sounded worried.

Li Qingling was worried about her daughter, Zhu Yunqing. She did not know what was wrong. Her daughter had run past her in tears and locked herself up in her room, not responding to anyone. She's been by the door knocking and calling out to her now for almost an hour, and yet, her daughter had still not responded to her.

"Ughhh!" Yunqing squeezed her eyes shut tightly for a brief second before opening them. The moment her eyes opened, they were met with the unfamiliar setting of a bathroom.

'What is this box? Where am I? What are all these?' Yunqing looked at her new environment, confused as her unfocused gaze swept across the room, trying to figure out where she was.

She had woken up in a bathtub, and since she was unfamiliar with it, she could not tell what it was. Nor could she tell where she was.

When she looked back at what she was inside, she noticed it looked weird. She seemed to be immersed in water, but…

'What a strange colour?!' she thought, still trying to understand everything.

'What is that!' her gaze had finally reached the floor, and she observed the red blotch of stain on it. 'Wait!! Is that not blood?' she thought. She should be able to recognize blood; after all, she had seen it a couple of times when she assisted her mother at their family clinic before getting married to the emperor.

'This is definitely blood,' she thought to herself. She tried tracing from where the blood came from and realized it came from her hand, which was stretched out outside the 'weirdly shaped white box'. Only then did she see the slit on her wrist, which looked like it was still bleeding.

'I was poisoned, so I should not have any injury on my body… so how did this wound come about?' she looked puzzled. She could not understand anything and was beginning to get worried.

Was she hallucinating? Or was she dreaming?

Arghhhhh!

Arghh…..

Urfff…..

A sudden rush of unfamiliar pictures twirled around in her head of people she did not know… places she has never been… events which had never happened to her.

It was like she was seeing the memories of someone else. Are those things real? Did they really happen to… her?

What really is going on here? She had never seen these things or people in her entire life, but she felt this awful and hurt feeling when some images flashed in her head. She was feeling an overwhelming ache in her head and heart as those foreign images invaded her mind. The direful pain reminded her of her horrific experience.

She remembered her mother often spoke about a soul being reborn. Is that what happened to her? Did she become reborn? She was sure those memories were not hers. But if she really was reborn, what happened to the previous owner of the body. Did she die? What really happened to her, and where was she?

'What is going on here? Am I going to lose my life once again? No! No, I cannot let that happen,' she thought as she struggled to reply to the voice that has been calling out to her now, thinking maybe they could help her.

After saying a few words, she realized nothing came out of her mouth. She was too weak, and her throat was parched. She had lost too much blood, but whatever the case, maybe she had gotten a second chance and so would not waste it.

She needed to find another way to ask for help. She remembered the voice asking her to open the door. Maybe the person on the other side could not enter. So she struggled out of the 'white box*' she was in.

Thud!

"Ufff!" as her body slammed onto the floor with a loud noise, she had fallen out of the 'white box*' when she tried to come out. It alerted the person on the opposite side of the door, which made them call out once again, "Yunqing hon, are you alright? Sweetheart?"

Yunqing could not talk, so she just struggled as she crawled her way towards what seemed like a door (the bathroom door) from the new memories she just gained. When she got to the door, she had to hold onto a few things just so she could reach to unlatch the door. Though unfamiliar with the door, she had seen a few things in her fuzzy memory and therefore recognized how to open it.

Click! Clack!

She opened it to see another unfamiliar room, but she did not waste any time trying to figure out anything. She held onto various things for support as she struggled to cover the distance from the room she just came out from to what looked like another door.

Click! Clack!

She unlatched the door after briefly searching her memories on how to do so. The door opened, and the person who had been calling out to her burst in early enough for her to see her daughter falling to the floor.

"Aah! Oh my god!" she screamed, horrified at the scene that greeted her. Her daughter, Zhu Yunqing, looked as pale as a corpse. Her clothes were her completely drenched with red stains on it.

By this time, Yunqing felt relieved that help had come and the little strength she had left waned out.

...

NOTE: Zhao Yunqing is the name of the empress of BeiMing State. Zhao Yunqing died, and her soul transmigrated. She has been reborn into the body of Zhu Yunqing, who had killed herself after she caught her cheating boyfriend. Hence the first mention of Zhao Yunqing. Hopefully, no one is confused about the name after this.