The water splashed up violently.
She fell into the pond and seemed not to know how to swim at all. After struggling twice, she quickly sank, leaving only a few strands of black hair and the blue-green sleeves of her clothes drifting on the surface.
The Fourth Imperial Daughter and her attendants were all stunned, frozen in place, not a single one calling out or moving to help.
My mind went buzz—completely blank.
There was no time to think. My body had already rushed forward.
"Someone, help! Someone's fallen into the water!" I shouted with all my strength as I ran toward the pond.
The water was deep, the early spring chill not yet gone. I saw Xiao Yuhuang floating weakly beneath the surface, her face deathly pale, her black hair like desperate water weeds.
There was no time to hesitate.
I kicked off the brocade soft shoes that were in the way, grabbed the icy cold white marble railing, and with great effort flipped myself over.
"Young Master! No!" The wet nurse's scream behind me was so shrill it cracked.
But I had already jumped down.
The icy pond water swallowed me in an instant. The cold pierced my skin like tens of thousands of steel needles, making every bone in my body tremble. The air in my lungs was squeezed out.
My instinct to survive and the remnants of swimming memories from my previous life struggled to awaken amid the panic. I flailed with all my might, swimming toward that sinking blue-green figure.
I caught her!
Her body was even lighter than it looked, her consciousness seemingly already fading. With all my strength, I wrapped one arm around her waist and paddled desperately with the other toward the nearest bank.
On shore, chaos had already erupted. Cries of alarm, running footsteps, and shouted orders rang out together. An attendant extended a long bamboo pole, and palace servants who could swim jumped in to help.
Amid many scrambling hands, Xiao Yuhuang and I were pulled onto the shore.
I was soaked through, like I had just been hauled out of an ice cellar. My teeth chattered uncontrollably as I collapsed on the cold stone, gasping for breath, unable to speak a single word. Xiao Yuhuang curled up beside me, coughing violently, her whole body trembling uncontrollably, her face a terrifying blue-white.
"Yuzhi! My Yuzhi!" Father practically threw himself over, wrapping me tightly in a thick, warm sable cloak and holding me in his arms. His voice shook beyond control, hot tears dripping onto my forehead. "How could you dare… how could you… do you want to scare your father to death?!"
In the chaos, I heard the Fourth Imperial Daughter's shrill voice defending herself:
"She slipped on her own! It has nothing to do with me! You all saw it!"
I also heard an attendant shouting in panic:
"Quick! Report to Her Majesty! Summon the imperial physician! Summon the imperial physician!"
More and more footsteps rushed over.
In the middle of it all, a pair of arms took me. I lifted my heavy, cold eyelids, and my blurred vision met a pair of eyes right in front of me.
It was Xiao Yuhuang.
She had also been helped up and wrapped in a dry cloak. Her soaked black hair clung messily to her paper-pale cheeks and neck, water dripping steadily from her chin.
She looked at me, and in those eyes that were usually still as an ancient well, there now surged a tempest I could not comprehend at all—extreme shock, stunned disbelief, and a kind of… blazing, terrifying light, like someone who had been on the brink of death clutching a piece of driftwood.
She stared at me, lips trembling slightly, as if she wanted to say something.
But in the next instant, Father abruptly took me back, pulling me tightly into his arms and completely blocking her from view.
"Go! Take the young master to the warming pavilion! Hot water! Ginger soup! The imperial physician!" Father's voice was hoarse and distorted from overwhelming fear and aftershock.
I was lifted and carried away amid Father and the palace servants, quickly removed from the scene of chaos. Before my consciousness was completely dragged into darkness by the cold and exhaustion, I struggled to turn my head and took one last look through a gap in the crowd.
Xiao Yuhuang was still standing there, surrounded by people, yet her gaze stubbornly pierced through everything, locked dead on in my direction.
Those eyes, deep as night, shone with a startling brightness.
As if to brand my figure at this moment, without missing a single detail, into the deepest part of her soul.
Then, boundless darkness swallowed me.