Yao Shen wakes up with a start. His pillow and the front of his shirt are stained with tears.
He doesn't know how long he's been asleep, but the day hasn't yet gone dark outside the bedroom's window.
If he strains his ears he can make out of the sounds of Xin Hulei pacing back and forth in the living room.
If he sees the state Yao Shen is in now, he might want to intervene, either join Yao Shen's dreams, or stop Yao Shen from going forward with it.
He doesn't want Xin Hulei to suffer any more of this. He doesn't want him to see everything else Si Wang has put him through.
Yao Shen needs to know, though.
His curiosity is like a living thing -- eating at him from the inside.
He needs to know what else happened.
He pours another memory into the incense burner and goes back to sleep, falling back into its warm clutches without any conscious effort on his part.
---
This time around, Yao Shen notices something immediately different about the memories he's experiencing.
This version of him leads a happy carefree life as the pampered son of a rich minister. He's happy, bright, surrounded by friends and loving relatives -- until one day, his memories return.
All at once, like a terrible nightmare he can't wake up from.
His idyllic life disappears in the snap of fingers. He can no longer return to his careless existence, nor fulfil his parent's wishes and take the civil servant exam, follow his father into the court as an official.
He's haunted by what he remembers as the Crown Prince. Once, he even tries to look for Xin Hulei, following his last steps to a troupe of wandering performers before his father's men drag him back.
He's whipped for his insolence and callous behaviour, and then fed medicine to try and heal him from the 'diseases of the mind' that have taken over him.
His life becomes a living hell, his loving family dissolves around him like soap bubbles on a stream. Yet, the fire inside him rages on -- he wants to find Xin Hulei, warn him of the threat that Si Wang poses.
Until one day he hears Si Wang's voice in the back of his head, cold and calculating, telling him to stop running from him.
"You'll never be able to run away from me," he hisses into Yao Shen's mind, like a threat and a promise. "Give up now. I'll tell you where he is if you come back to me."
The price of memory, is of course that Yao Shen knows too much to ever trust Si Wang again.
That very night, Yao Shen puts all his affairs in order. He writes a letter to his relatives, and a another to himself, which he seals off.
He hangs himself on one of the branches of a willow tree, under whose shade he used to play as a carefree child.
---
Yao Shen wakes up in tears again. He has two more vials to go. This is becoming harder and harder, he doesn't know if he has it in himself to push through.
The lonely image of those two versions of himself, diligently writing down their thoughts, fears, and the jumbled lifetimes that live inside their minds strengthen his resolve -- he owes it to himself, and to them.
When he next wakes up he's looking at the painting of a familiar face, and he's the one holding the brush.
This Yao Shen is a famous painter, held in high regard by the Emperor, and has been commissioned by him many times over.
This painting, however, is personal. It's something he does for himself, a painting of the face of the man who haunts his dreams. The man to whom none can compare.
Yao Shen has been in love with him as long as he can remember, even though he has only seen his face. He has painted this man in as many ways as someone can be painted, but he's the only one who's ever seen him.
These paintings are his own personal treasure.
One day he's in court, painting a courtly scene in situ when his Majesty the Emperor excitedly announces that some opera singers will be joining them today. The Emperor is a patron of the arts, and delights in discovering the 'next big thing' to introduce it to his court.
These performers are from the south, but the Emperor has brought them to the capital, where their talents will be better appreciated.
Yao Shen's hand freezes over his silk scroll the moment he recognises the face of the man playing the lead role of the spurned concubine.
He'd recognise those cold, flinty eyes anywhere -- he has seen them in his dreams enough to memorise their shape, and painted them even more.
He can't paint anything else for the remainder of the day -- too preoccupied with his own thoughts, too focused on the beautiful eyes that scan over the entire room without ever stopping over anything.
At the end of the day he apologises to the Emperor for his poor showing by saying that he was so moved by the opera that he couldn't paint a single thing. The Emperor is delighted by this and praises him for having a true artist's soul.
That night, Yao Shen is visited by Si Wang's voice again. This time he says that he'll help Yao Shen get close to the object of his affections, if only he does some favours for him.
Reluctantly, Yao Shen agrees. Obeying the voice in his head as he does ever more dangerous things, until one day, Si Wang thinks they're close enough for him to learn the truth.
Which is when Si Wang reveals everything about Yao Shen's past as the Crown Prince, up until him becoming a ghost king.
From his perspective as the observer of the memories, present-Yao-Shen can tell how Si Wang is trying to refine how he handles his reincarnations' knowledge of the past, how he feeds him information in order to better manipulate him.
But once again, he's thwarted by that crucial bit of information -- he still doesn't know how the Crown Prince and Xin Hulei met, or if he does, he ignores the important of that meeting.
The painter can scarcely sleep after learning about it. More shocked to learn that the man he's been dreaming about is in love with someone else than with the knowledge that he's a demon.
It makes him belligerent. He tells Si Wang that he won't help him anymore unless he tells him everything. He demands to know how the Crown Prince died.
Finally, Si Wang gives him access to the memories.
It nearly breaks him. Just like all the other times, he can't go on after having all those memories back.
In the end, he paints one last beautiful painting. Two figures embracing in a lavish room, one of them wearing a veil and flimsy robes, suspended in time as if the moment could last forever.
The painter kills himself by drinking the same acids he used to clean his brushes.
---
Yao Shen wakes up with a scream lodged in his throat. The day is finally turning dark outside the bedroom's window.
One last vial to go. He's not going to stop now.
He's already dreaming by the time his head hits the pillow. This time he knows exactly where he is, or rather when. The destruction of war is everywhere, as are the sounds of shouted, foreign language. Yao Shen isn't a soldier, but his comrades tell him he doesn't need to be, he just needs to be willing to fight, and he is.
He was a writer before the war, he wrote fanciful romance books half based on the dreams that have been plaguing him forever.
But then the Second Sino-Japanese war came, and those flights of fancy seemed in bad taste -- not to mention that people were so desperate that they would sooner eat a book than read it. Things were already bad before the war, but the invasion made everything worse, more urgent.
Yao Shen put his dreams on hold, and focused on the task at hand.
One day he was fighting off an enemy incursion in the capital when a man saves him from being shot in the face.
"Watch out," he says, before disappearing in the same direction he came.
Yao Shen can't shake the feeling that he has seen the man before.
That night, a voice whispers in the back of his head that all his dreams are real, and what he dreams about really happened, many, many years ago, to strange, exotic people, who never thought a war would ever be fought with guns that could kill hundreds at once.
Yao Shen starts writing again, committing all his thoughts to any scrap of paper he can find. It feels urgent somehow, to leave this record behind -- of these lives that were so different from his own, so removed from the violence of war, and yet no strangers to pain.
He's trying to make it through another incursion, when that little voice at the back of his head distracts him. It makes him miss the enemy soldier with the weapon trained on him.
This time there's no mysterious stranger to save him.
Yao Shen dies for the last time, like so many did, at the end of a barrel pointed at him by someone who was happy to have the excuse of someone else's orders to kill and torture at will.