93Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVbsx6N31fx
Xiapi. The White Gate Tower
On a night of rolling thunder and torrential rain.
“Little one…”
Watching the lightning clash beyond the window, Lü Bu stepped out of his bedchamber and made his way toward Xiao Meng’s room — the same room where the little one’s mother had once lived. They had barely arrived in Xiapi when she had succumbed to illness and passed.
Lü Bu’s youngest daughter had always been more mature and sensible than other girls her age, yet her fear of thunder was exactly like her mother’s. On nights like this, whenever there was no urgent military matter demanding his attention, he had always made a point of staying home — keeping mother and daughter company.
Since her mother’s passing, this was the first such stormy night.
Walking along the corridor, he paused involuntarily, turning to face the courtyard and gazing up at the sky.
The moment the rain stopped, he would take the little one to Shouchun, to be wed to Yuan Shu’s son — a marriage alliance in exchange for Yuan Shu’s troops to relieve the siege on Xiapi.
The political marriage he had despised above all things his entire life — and now he was forcing his own flesh and blood to make that very move.
Layers of black cloud pressed down upon the world like a crushing weight, and flashes of lightning bled through the gaps between them. Lü Bu thought: even the heavens are furious. Even the heavens are cursing me — cursing me as something less than a beast. For the sake of one slender, desperate thread of hope, I have sold away my only daughter.
“Do you know what pains your father most? It is the very love I have for you — a love that wounds.”
Lü Bu could not help but recall the moment he had held the little one in his arms and spoken those words to her.
Every syllable was a blade, boring into his heart, carving out a small piece of flesh. He bit his lip until it bled, yet he faced the heavens with cold composure.
If Heaven will not suffer me to live, then let it destroy me. I, Lü Bu, will never yield.
With that thought, a crack of thunder split the sky above.
He arrived at Xiao Meng’s door to find, as expected, the dim amber glow of candlelight still burning within. He stood before the door, pressed his hand flat against it, held himself still for a moment — and finally drew a breath. A single soft knock, and he pushed the door open.
Inside, Xiao Meng sat upon the bed, with the little one asleep in his arms. Somewhere along the way, without anyone quite noticing, the thunder had grown distant and the rain had begun to ease. Xiao Meng raised a finger to his lips, signaling Lü Bu not to wake her.
Something shifted in Lü Bu — a tremor in his chest, like a door blown open by wind. He was carried back to a time now far away, to the nights when the little one’s mother would coax their daughter to sleep and then make that same gentle gesture, warning him not to startle her awake.
Now Xiao Meng rose carefully from the bed and, with the utmost tenderness, drew the blanket snugly over the small girl who had cried herself to sleep.
It was fortunate that Xiao Meng’s back was turned, for in that moment Lü Bu felt a burning behind his eyes — an indescribable ache surging and churning in his chest, too deep for words.
Xiao Meng did not know. Every ounce of strength Lü Bu possessed was being spent on a single act of will — restraining the impulse to step forward and pull him into an embrace. He needed comfort, even the smallest fragment of it, with a desperation that frightened him. But if he moved, he would lose control of the tears he had been holding back — and more than that: he feared he would come apart entirely.
At last, Xiao Meng turned, and with a quiet look, invited him to step outside together.
Xiao Meng eased the door shut with careful hands, then turned to face him.
The two stood in silence.
“Lü Bu… are you… truly set on doing this?”
It was Xiao Meng who spoke first. Lü Bu understood at once what he meant.
He did not answer immediately. Instead, he studied Xiao Meng’s face, searching his eyes for some trace of feeling — or of intent. But Xiao Meng’s gaze was calm and open, resting steadily on this father who had run out of roads. Only if one looked closely could one see it: the faint trembling of Xiao Meng’s lashes.
At last, Lü Bu’s throat moved. “…I cannot… nor will I… give up. Not now.”
He added, “Sending the little one as Crown Princess — it is only a temporary measure.”
The final word had not yet left his lips before regret had already settled in his chest.
No one was a fool. Anyone could hear the hollowness beneath those words.
Xiao Meng continued to look at him. His lips seemed to tremble slightly, as though he wished to say something more; then his gaze shifted, and he let it go — lowering his eyes, saying nothing further.
Lü Bu said nothing more either. He turned and walked away, suppressing the urge to break into a run.
With each step he took, he felt something inside him — something he had long held precious and close — being crushed beneath his own feet. He knew that Xiao Meng was still watching his retreating figure.
And in the silence of his heart, Lü Bu was begging.
…Xiao Meng… I implore you…
Please… say something more…
Even one more word of persuasion, and I would… I would…
Lü Bu pressed his lips together. He hated that the rain was thinning now — no longer enough to hide the tracks of tears upon his face.
93Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQeEOZa6COh
93Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6F6vqneOwh
In the blink of an eye, the moon had darkened and the stars had sunk below the horizon. The world was pitch-black in every direction, and all that reached his ears was the howl of wind and the thunder of Chitu’s hooves in full gallop. The little one clung to my back.
She held on tight — her fingers like ten small thorns, pressing through the armor, one by one into my heart.
“Little one, forget it. We’re not going to Shouchun. Let’s go back.” I said to her.
“No! We can’t turn back, Father! If we turn back now, there is no hope left for any of us!” The little one’s voice was fierce with a passion I had not expected.
I regretted having raised a daughter so wise beyond her years. She should never have had to understand any of this.
“Father! On the left!”
Before I could react, Chitu was struck and reared backward. I felt the absence behind me — the little one had fallen.
Several of Cao Cao’s generals had already closed in around me, a wall of iron on every side.
A flash of steel —
In one stroke of a blade, my little one was cut in two.
And my heart, split with her.
In the chaos, we fell to the ground together, separated by a dozen feet.
Iron hooves trampled her body without mercy. Battle cries shook the heavens.
But through all of it, I heard her clearly — two words, shouted into the din —
It — doesn’t — hurt!
In an instant, all sound ceased. There was only a boundless, desolate grey, empty of everything and everyone.
Only the little one remained.
She propped herself up on what was left of her — the upper half of her body — rising from the mud, and smiled at me.
“Father, it’s alright. It truly is.”
93Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvoA3SnV2Xf
Lü Bu’s eyes snapped open.
He immediately suppressed the ragged breathing that came from waking out of a nightmare, and swept his gaze around the room.
Pale moonlight filtered through the window — still the farmhouse, still the suffocating heat of a midsummer night. Xiao Meng was still asleep in the inner room.
What had just happened — all of it — was a dream.
A man of Lü Bu’s vigilance and self-command never cried out from nightmares, never lurched bolt upright in bed. This time was no different.
Only once he had confirmed he was safe did he slowly sit up on his sleeping mat, pressing one hand to his temple.
…Besides, he rarely dreamed.
But ever since he and Xiao Meng had begun living together, though his days passed as they always had — unhurried, untroubled on the surface — his nights had grown restless. The nightmares came with increasing frequency. He knew the reason, of course.
Because seeing Xiao Meng made it impossible not to think of his beloved daughter.
Lü Bu lowered his head and dragged his hand across his face — and felt the dampness on his fingers.
Only then did it strike him —
I… wept in my dream…?
The moment he understood this, real tears began to fall of their own accord — arriving even before the grief itself had fully formed.
Human emotion is a strange thing. It is like water. No matter how high or how solid the dam, water will always find the first hairline crack and seep through — relentless, unstoppable — until the dam gives way entirely, and everything pours forth at once, beyond all recovery.
Lü Bu felt that his life had been full of things he had never anticipated.
After killing Dong Zhuo, he had believed he stood at the threshold of the heights — only to find himself at the beginning of a bottomless fall. He had thought himself complete in both arms and strategy, with a counselor’s cunning at his side — yet he had been outmaneuvered again and again by Jia Xu, until at last his forces crumbled like a landslide.
He had never foreseen that the one who would ensnare him — like a poison he could not stop drinking — would be a man who could not quite be called a man. Still less had he imagined that the daughter he loved most in all his life, the one he had cherished above all else, would one day be staked by his own hand as the last wager in a final, desperate gamble.
And the most absurd thing of all — he, who bore the name of a war god — had been able to do nothing but watch, helpless, as his daughter was cut in two before his eyes, as the iron hooves of warhorses ground her into the earth before him, leaving nothing whole behind.
He buried his face in his trembling hands, fingernails digging in as though he might claw shut the dam that had already broken.
But the tears poured through his fingers regardless. Nothing he did made any difference. Between his palms, a thin thread of blood appeared — he had bitten through his lip to keep himself from laughing aloud, yet he could not stop the ragged, convulsive heaving of his breath.
Yes — he wept, and yet he wanted to throw his head back and laugh at the sky.
Because it all seemed so absurd to him — his entire life, and every conviction he had ever held.
There was no one in this world more ridiculous, more laughable than he.
Just as Lü Bu’s hands, no longer able to endure, were about to claw the skin from his own face — a warmth spread suddenly across his back. A pair of small, soft, pale hands reached around from behind and encircled his waist.
His hands fell, limp, to his sides.
“…Little one…”
He looked down at those small hands, murmuring.
He must still be dreaming.
Then a gentle voice rose from behind him.
“Lü Bu — did you dream of the little one again?”
…It was Xiao Meng. Only then did he understand: his dream had, in fact, already ended.
End of Chapter Thirteen
93Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJqHOd31jbw
Chapter Thirteen "Nightmare" of The Record of Burning Dreams is protected by copyright. Without prior written authorization from the author, no reproduction, reprinting, adaptation, redistribution, translation, or commercial use of any kind is permitted.
© Jing Xixian (King Heyin) (Vampire L), All rights reserved.
ns216.73.216.66da2
and then Add to home screen.