The one who rushed over was Gu Nanyi. The one who shouted sternly was Ning Yi. Ning Cheng couldn’t hold back either of them.

Gu Nanyi’s martial arts were exceptional, so naturally he arrived before Ning Yi. He reached out to grab Feng Zhiwei, but Ning Yi had already arrived. Rather than snatching Feng Zhiwei from his hands, he first slapped Gu Nanyi’s hand.

Gu Nanyi, unwilling to have physical contact with anyone besides Feng Zhiwei, instinctively withdrew his hand. Feng Zhiwei fell, landing precisely in the embrace of Ning Yi, who had extended his hand after slapping Gu Nanyi and was already waiting there.

Ning Yi half-knelt on the ground, holding Feng Zhiwei. The moment his fingers touched her pulse, his expression changed dramatically. By this time, Ning Cheng had already rushed over, reaching out to pull him. “Master, you cannot! The plague—”

“Shut up!”

Ning Yi turned his head sharply. His somewhat unfocused gaze “fixed” on Ning Cheng, his voice low and cold.

“Where exactly did you all go?”

Ning Cheng opened his mouth and stammered out an account of passing through that mountain village struck by the virulent plague. The more Ning Yi heard, the colder his expression became. After a long while, he said, “Why are all of you fine?”

“We ate medicinal herbs. I don’t know why she… she was fine just moments ago.” Ning Cheng also didn’t understand.

Gu Nanyi suddenly said, “Diarrhea.”

Ning Cheng froze, understanding his meaning. The night before last, Feng Zhiwei had eaten seafood on an empty stomach and gotten drunk, vomiting and having diarrhea. She’d barely slept at all. Then she’d rushed to Fengzhou to match wits with Zhou Xizhong, then anxiously hurried back to the ancestral hall to handle the crisis. Her physical strength and mental energy had both dropped to their lowest points. Everyone else was more robust than her, so only she couldn’t withstand it.

Ning Yi pressed his lips together. His face was as white as autumn grass struck by frost. Feng Zhiwei’s body in his arms was burning hot, holding her was like holding a furnace. She had clearly been feverish for some time. When had it started? She had remained silent again. She had waited again until everything was settled before allowing herself to collapse!

She must have known early on that she was infected, which was why she kept refusing his approach. Yet he had thought…

Ning Yi half-knelt on the ground, heedless of his robes being completely covered in dust, holding Feng Zhiwei. His hands trembled slightly.

How hateful that he couldn’t see. How hateful that he couldn’t see!

Gu Nanyi stood behind him, clutching a handful of walnuts, staring blankly at Feng Zhiwei’s brow and eyes gradually taking on a blue-black tinge… She was sick? When did she get sick? How did she get sick? Why didn’t he know?

That Ning Yi—why did his expression look so terrible? Would she die?

Would she die?

As this thought emerged, he suddenly felt alarmed.

He suddenly felt uncomfortable somewhere, as if something was pressing down and blocking, making even breathing difficult. This was truly a strange sensation, one he’d never experienced in all these past years.

Throughout his life, his emotions had always been a pool of stagnant, dead water. Just as his heartbeat always maintained the same rhythm, sadness, distress, joy, conflict… all these various emotions that belonged to ordinary people—he didn’t have them, didn’t understand them.

When his father died at age three, he was very calm.

When the wet nurse who had cared for him died at age eight, on her deathbed she held his hand with tears streaming down, saying, “Poor child, someone like you, why must you bear such…”

That night under that oil lamp, he had looked at the wet nurse indifferently, calmly withdrawing his hand from her grasp. The first thing he did was wipe off the tears that had dripped onto the back of his hand.

Then he turned and walked through the roomful of people bowing and waiting for him.

What was he like? What was he like? No one told him. Everyone looked at him that way, with a peculiar gaze, then sighed as they passed by him.

He didn’t care about that result, that gaze, that expression. His own affairs, to him, still seemed like a stranger’s affairs, separated by vast mountains and seas, as if in another world.

Yet at this moment, he suddenly wanted to know what he was like.

Was it because he was different from others that even though he was right beside Feng Zhiwei, he couldn’t know what was happening to her?

If she died… if she died…

He stepped back, frowning as he touched his own heart, beginning to earnestly close his eyes and regulate his breathing… he must have been infected too. He was going to die.

Feng Zhiwei suddenly turned her head and began vomiting violently. She hadn’t eaten much food—what she vomited was mostly stomach acid and bile. She vomited so violently, the large amount of green bile spraying out like arrows, not only staining Ning Yi who held her tightly, but even Ning Cheng and Gu Nanyi in the distance couldn’t escape.

No one moved away. Not even the germophobic Gu Nanyi.

Ning Yi held her even tighter, placing her on his knees, gently patting her back to keep her abdomen from being compressed, preventing the violent vomiting from blocking her throat and causing suffocation. He seemed completely unaware of the filth and stench covering his body.

At this moment, a confusion of footsteps sounded. Dark shadows appeared ahead—Fengzhou government troops led by the Fengzhou Inspector had arrived.

Ning Yi turned sharply. His ice-knife gaze “fixed” on the slightly opened door of the Yan ancestral hall. For the first time, his usually cold, expressionless eyes revealed furious killing intent.

“Destroy the Yan ancestral hall!”

“Your Highness!”

“Anyone who resists—kill them!”

Qiyuan fell into a pall of sorrowful gloom.

The news that the Imperial Commissioner had contracted the epidemic and was in mortal danger was strictly sealed from outside and silenced within, but since it concerned their own fates, and Prince Chu had erupted in fury, the entire Qiyuan was plunged into storm and rain. People hurried to and fro. When they met on the road, they didn’t even dare exchange words, only exchanging one frightened glance before quickly passing by and continuing to rush about searching for physicians.

Physicians came in wave after wave. Precious medicines worth their weight in gold flowed in like water at no cost. The twelve medicine cauldrons under the corridor eaves boiled medicine ceaselessly around the clock. Prescriptions flew like snowflakes. Yet Prince Chu’s expression grew more iron-blue with each passing day.

After that day’s explosion of rage, he never spoke another word to anyone around him, nor did he sit by Feng Zhiwei’s bedside for twelve hours. He constantly summoned people, interrogated the agents Feng Zhiwei had captured that day at the ancestral hall, and sent urgent messages by fast horse requesting the court dispatch imperial physicians to save her.

Feng Zhiwei, struck down by the plague, struggled on the edge of life and death. At the moment she fell into unconsciousness, Nanhai also entered a world turned upside down.

The thoroughly enraged Ning Yi finally revealed his iron-blooded, ruthless side.

That day, after the Yan family ancestral hall was opened and Hua Qiong helped out the struggling Yan Huaishi and Chen Shi, Ning Yi didn’t withdraw the siege. Instead, he forcibly closed the Yan ancestral hall, trapping everyone inside. Taking advantage of the surrounding village people rushing to the neighboring county to claim grain and silver, with all sides basically emptied, he used his three thousand guards and three thousand government troops to dig a tunnel beneath the Yan ancestral hall in one day and night. After burying large amounts of explosives and withdrawing, he ignited the fuse. With a muffled boom, the Yan clan ancestral hall that had stood for hundreds of years, that had carried on an emperor’s bloodline, the supremely sacred first great family hall of Nanhai, instantly split and collapsed. The magnificent edifice, painted beams and carved pillars, like a slow-motion scene in the pale red and light gold dawn, came crashing down. The sacred ground where clan members had bowed in worship for hundreds of years instantly became broken walls and rubble.

The male clan members of standing in the Yan family were basically all inside the ancestral hall at that time. The hall was sturdy—the foundation collapsed but not the beams—so it didn’t cause complete destruction, but one person died and countless were injured. The current Yan family head was knocked unconscious by a blow to the head. Yan Huaiyuan had his leg broken by falling wall stones. Old Master Yan was unharmed. When clan members wanted to carry him to safety, the old man refused with tears streaming down his face. He prostrated himself before the shattered Yan imperial ancestor tablet and kowtowed, crying loudly, “Heaven does not bless our Yan family! I have no face to meet our ancestors even unto death!” Then he crashed his head against the hall’s spirit wall and died. Blood slowly seeped from the white jade stone base, faintly revealing flying, leaping dragon patterns.

At that time, Ning Yi stood with hands behind his back outside the ancestral hall. In the flickering torchlight, his face was expressionless. In the four-sided silence of held breath, listening to that ground full of mournful crying, smelling that smoke and stone dust, he smiled coldly.

“Heaven? Heaven is with me!”

He turned and left resolutely, leaving behind a ground full of the Yan clan’s pitiful, wailing people.

“If anything happens to her, you’ll all be buried with her!”

The fury of the strong destroyed heaven and earth. All struggles were but extinguished in a finger snap. When the surrounding villagers returned three days later from the neighboring county, what they saw was the imposing, magnificent Yan ancestral hall reduced to ruins. What they heard was the rumor Ning Yi had people spread—that the Yan family had oppressed descendants and exploited common people, acting perversely until they incurred heavenly punishment. Mountains collapsed, earth split, and the ancestral hall was destroyed.

Common people always believed in supernatural matters. Even those who didn’t believe had no way to find the culprit. Nanhai often had various large and small earth-splitting incidents—those were natural disasters. Without evidence, who could they make trouble for? Some villagers whose houses had also been damaged in the incident received the most generous compensation in government history, so they quietly moved to their new houses and silently counted their silver.

With one move, Ning Yi completely destroyed the pillar in the Yan family’s hearts. Immediately afterward, Yan Huaishi forcefully took control of the Yan family. Under the watchful eyes of three thousand Prince Chu guards with swords drawn and arrows nocked, the Yan family members, silent as cicadas in winter, tacitly acknowledged Yan Huaishi’s temporary assumption as family head. They allowed Yan Huaishi to swiftly and decisively replace clan hall elders, extensively purge personnel, and gather the real power of shops everywhere into his own hands. That unpredicted muffled boom at the Yan ancestral hall, that slow, irreversible collapse of the Yan family’s sacred temple in the morning light, completely destroyed all the Yan clan members’ will to resist. Even knowing the hall’s destruction was suspicious, they were already cowed by Ning Yi’s clean, efficient, thunderous methods.

The Yan family’s concession also allowed Ning Yi to confirm that within the Yan family, the Chang clan and Nanhai officialdom hadn’t interfered. Otherwise there would certainly be resistance. After initially resolving the Yan family matter, he didn’t pause at all. He immediately began intensively purging the Chang family’s infiltrated forces. While interrogating those agents, he secretly sealed the city gates. Before the agents could be fully interrogated, he had people spread word that confessions had been obtained. Then he waited at various city gates and successively captured several groups of Shangguan and Huang family members attempting to leave the city in disguise. Immediately afterward, the Shangguan family was found to have smuggled contraband in their latest overseas shipment. A direct descendant of the Huang family was implicated in a bribery case. Both families fell into a state of extreme alarm.

Naturally the Shangguan and Huang families weren’t willing to be trapped. They secretly contacted the Chen and Li families. However, at the same time, through Zhou Xizhong, Ning Yi announced the establishment of the Maritime Trade Bureau, appointing Yan Huaishi as Chief Bureau Director, with the Chen and Li family heads as Deputy Directors. With a swoosh, he extinguished the Shangguan and Huang families’ hopes of forming vertical and horizontal alliances with the other two families to resist the government.

From the Shangguan and Huang families, gradually more unclean officials in the Nanhai government were implicated. Zhou Xizhong seized this opportunity to boldly and extensively reform the administration, extracting officials belonging to the Chang faction bit by bit—transferring some, demoting others, finding pretexts to handle others. Meanwhile, Ning Yi’s gaze had already swiftly turned toward the Chang family.

Since the Imperial Commissioner arrived in Nanhai, the Chang family’s grand mansion in Fengzhou had long been empty of direct family members, with only some servants and maids watching the house. But undoubtedly, the Chang family must have left behind someone in charge in Fengzhou. From the very first day of arriving in Nanhai, Feng Zhiwei had ordered people to carefully monitor the Chang family mansion’s movements. After capturing those agents this time, Ning Yi didn’t interrogate them all. Instead, he first used cruel methods to pry open their mouths. During interrogation, several died from unbearable torture. Yet he deliberately distinguished severity during torture and created opportunities for two other agents to desperately escape. Those two agents, covered in wounds and having narrowly escaped death, thought it was their own bold wits and good luck. They had long been followed from afar by Ning Cheng and his men, who uncovered the agents’ handlers. Following the vine to find the melon, they pulled out another large batch of the Chang family’s forces remaining in Nanhai.

In just these short days, from aristocratic families to officialdom, from the Yan family to the Chang family, all experienced a sweep that was both silent and extraordinarily fierce. Yet common people remained blissfully unaware. Those uninvolved leisurely passed their days, not knowing heaven and earth had changed in an instant. Only the aristocratic families and officialdom at the vortex’s center secretly clicked their tongues at that unceasing series of actions.

Clicking their tongues that this Highness only now revealed his true colors—the Nanhai reorganization was so swift, one could say Ning Yi borrowed the situation and seized the best opportunity. Nanhai officials privately laughed at Ning Yi’s patience—the Nanhai Circuit Imperial Commissioner lay gravely ill in bed with his life hanging by a thread, yet this Prince Chu who seemed to have good relations with Commissioner Wei hadn’t entered Qiyuan to visit for three days and nights!

Three days and nights later, having basically sorted matters out to a conclusion, Ning Yi finally returned to Qiyuan.

With Nanhai initially settled, he showed no joy. He did these things because this was what Feng Zhiwei had planned to do. Now that she had fallen, rather than guard her sickbed in anxious torment, better to complete her work so when she woke, she could focus on recuperating, while he could also concentrate wholeheartedly on waiting for her to wake.

Everyone was waiting for her to wake.

Gu Nanyi slept all day on that medicine-scented roof, gently playing his leaf flute from morning to night. It seemed that by playing like this, the departure he feared wouldn’t happen. He went out again and again, returning with all sorts of strange things to force down Feng Zhiwei’s throat. Ning Yi watched without stopping him. At this point, in desperate illness one tries any doctor—he was willing to try any method.

Yan Huaishi and his wife guarded Feng Zhiwei’s bedside without leaving a step. They couldn’t be driven away. Ning Yi had expelled the Qingming Academy students outside the courtyard, forbidding entry. They drifted like wandering souls outside the courtyard all day.

Helian Zheng and Yao Yangyu returned excitedly from disaster relief, preparing to happily report to Feng Zhiwei how they’d beaten down the granary guards. They were suddenly struck stupid by this news. If not for the students holding him back, Helian Zheng would have gone to kill people at the Yan family.

Countless people racked their brains seeking methods. Countless priceless medicinal ingredients were thrown at the problem, barely dragging out Feng Zhiwei’s life. Physicians said this type of virulent disease normally came on extremely fast—few lived past twelve hours. But for some unknown reason, Feng Zhiwei’s body seemed to contain something special that prevented the disease’s rapid spread. However, though somewhat prevented, she still weakened day by day.

Everyone was searching for famous physicians they knew. Helian Zheng had even sent his three falcons back to the grasslands to fetch the royal court’s great shaman physician. However, the distance was too far. Even imperial physicians from the capital couldn’t arrive immediately. Gu Nanyi went to the city gates several times each day. When he returned, everyone avoided him—afraid of being crushed to powder like his walnuts.

Though it was a contagious plague, no one chose to isolate the patient. Everyone just diligently bathed, washed hands, and changed clothes. When entering or leaving that courtyard, they would first cleanse themselves with medicinal baths in the side rooms. Ning Yi knew that no matter how urgent, at this time no one else could fall ill, especially himself. Once he collapsed, Feng Zhiwei would be doomed. So he tirelessly went in and out countless times daily, bathing countless times, washing until the skin on his hands and body began breaking down.

At night, he wanted no one to attend him. He slept in Feng Zhiwei’s room himself, sleeping one hour then turning over, getting up to check her complexion. Feng Zhiwei’s condition was so alarming—one moment burning hot as fire, approaching within three feet felt scorching; the next moment cold as ice, the room temperature seeming to drop with her. One moment he applied ice packs to her, which had to be quickly removed to add cotton quilts and stoke the brazier. He didn’t know how many times he struggled through each night.

Once, extremely exhausted, he dozed off in a daze. Dimly he felt Feng Zhiwei had stopped breathing. Bang—he leapt from the bed and lunged toward Feng Zhiwei’s bedside. His eyes weren’t convenient. He lunged too quickly and knocked over the teapot on the table. Shards of the porcelain teapot cut his fingers. He was completely oblivious, only checking her breathing. Feeling the hot breath from her nose swirling beneath his bleeding finger, only then did he exhale deeply.

That night he sat in silence clutching his bleeding finger for a long time, never daring to sleep again.

In just a few days, Ning Yi became strangely thin. His face was so pale one could see the faint blue veins beneath his skin. His eyes instead seemed to burn with demonic fire, blazing intensely, alarming to behold. Ning Cheng truly couldn’t bear watching. One night he barged into the room and occupied that small bed, firmly refusing to yield. Ning Yi kicked him out with one foot. Ning Cheng clung to the door wailing. Ning Yi reached out and smashed a blue and white porcelain vase at his head.

Three days later, Gu Nanyi took action, struck his pressure points and threw him out, then dragged in another bed himself to sleep. After sleeping a while and feeling uncomfortable, he simply moved to sleep on the footstool before the bed. He lay on that rosewood footstool, slowly curling his long frame into a ball. In a daze, he recalled Feng Zhiwei had also once curled up sleeping on the footstool before his bed. When he woke in the middle of the night, he could always see her sleeping with her face turned, clutching the quilt without security, long lashes lowered, a gentle arc of shadow beneath her eyes.

At that time he’d thought she slept soundly, that the footstool must be quite comfortable. Only now did he realize it wasn’t actually that comfortable.

Though uncomfortable, he still lay there unmoving, waiting for Feng Zhiwei to also suddenly wake like he used to when waking at midnight and looking down, to lean down and look at him. When that happened, what should he say? He needed to think it over carefully.

But waiting and waiting, Feng Zhiwei never leaned down to look. He’d thought of what to say but had no chance to use it. He closed his eyes, feeling that blocked sensation rise again. The autumn night was somehow so cold, silently and soundlessly penetrating into muscle and bone.

Later he stopped waiting. He slept on the footstool very habitually and conveniently. When he felt her getting hot, one reach placed an ice pack. When he felt her cooling down, one reach dragged over a quilt and lit the brazier. It didn’t even interfere with his sleep.

One night with drizzling rain, Ning Yi was in the room. Gu Nanyi slept on the roof without coming down. In the rain, the leaf flute sounded long and lingering, tugging painfully at hearts. Everyone waited in the courtyard, listening as the paper door was slowly pulled open. Nanhai’s finest physician stepped out, his face pale, kneeling under the corridor eaves and kowtowing toward the room.

Ning Yi didn’t come out. Inside was deathly silent. Wisps of pale white smoke drifted without dispersing, congealing in the autumn rain curtain into an eerie, desolate image.

Yan Huaishi fell to his knees with a thump in the rain, lost and devastated.

Helian Zheng let out a wild howl and madly ran out—some unlucky soul was about to get beaten.

The Qingming Academy students stood frozen in the rain, not knowing if the wetness on their faces was rain or something else.

The entire courtyard was shrouded in deathly silence. Everyone stiffened into clay sculptures and wooden carvings, completely numb to pain. The physician’s head thumped against the wooden corridor, the sound hollow, painfully striking hearts. Autumn rain endlessly dampened the yellowing, pale tree leaves drooping from eaves, looking remarkably similar to everyone’s complexions.

Inside, no lamp was lit. Behind the half-closed door it was pitch black, scenery invisible. Only Ning Yi’s much-thinned silhouette could vaguely be seen, his back to the courtyard’s autumn rain, motionless.

After a long, deathly silence, his voice faintly emerged.

“Get lost.”

The physician fled in panic, every wrinkle carrying the relief of escaping death. As he passed Hua Qiong, he stumbled. Hua Qiong steadied him, looking somewhat pitifully at this renowned Fengzhou physician now utterly wretched, saying, “I’ll see you out.”

She escorted the physician all the way to the gate. Just as she was about to turn back, she saw Qiyuan’s gatekeeper walk in cursing, throwing down his cap. “Damned thing, at a time like this, still people dare come to the door to swindle!”

Hua Qiong looked inquiringly. She saw someone peeking around not far from Qiyuan’s gate. Behind her, the gatekeeper said indignantly, “Been circling for days and still won’t leave! Coveting the heavy reward we’ve privately offered! But when even Fengzhou’s finest physician is helpless, could he succeed—someone who can’t even write a prescription? Bringing him before His Highness would be seeking death!”

Hua Qiong looked again at that person, meeting his eyes full of expectation. She thought for a moment, then beckoned.

Ning Yi was immersed in a room of faint, misty smoke.

Behind the smoke was Feng Zhiwei’s pale face.

She no longer had fever or chills, nor that terrifying violent vomiting that seemed about to eject heart, liver, and intestines. She lay there quietly, like a cloud about to drift away, weakly light.

Ning Yi stared at her blankly. After a long while, he slowly removed the gossamer-thin human skin mask from her face.

His fingers slowly traced beneath the mask, confirming beneath it was that face with lowered brows and yellow complexion.

This woman, so afraid of the world discovering her true face, tirelessly wore two faces.

Ning Yi smiled without mirth, reaching for the water basin beside the bed, soaking a cloth and slowly wringing it out.

Always wearing two layers of disguise must certainly be uncomfortable. He should at least make her comfortable.

He held the warm, damp cloth, but his fingers were ice cold. Holding that damp mass felt like holding his own heart. His fingers gripped tightly. In a daze, he recalled their first meeting by the lake behind the Qiu mansion—she turned her head, half her body standing in the water, clutching her wet hair.

His fingers slowly descended, starting from her forehead, bit by bit wiping away the disguise.

Unable to see, yet before his eyes was clarity as if seeing—still that day in the jade-blue water, the disguise on her face gradually washed away by water, bit by bit revealing a white forehead, jade-carved nose, pale pink lips. A pair of black, delicate brows soaked with water, dark and deep as feathers. Eyes misty with swirling vapor, when looking at people like veiled in a layer of hazy gauze… finally forming a clear, beautiful face.

He stopped his hand, set down the cloth. His fingers gently curved, starting from her forehead, tenderly stroking the familiar, slightly cool yet delicate skin… in a daze returning to that day at the Wei mansion when he pretended to be drunk, or perhaps that dark room in Shaoning when she secretly met to plot his murder, or perhaps his mother’s abandoned palace in those final ten years, or perhaps recently right here in this room… he had again and again drawn so close to her skin, her fragrance, all her warmth and coolness, engraved beneath fingertips, between brows, upon his heart, so familiar as to be alarming.

Yet that familiarity—from today onward, must it truly return to the origin, return to strangeness?

Some questions he dared not think, dared not even touch. In life, facing countless dangers and pain, he had never feared nor could he fear. Yet at this moment he feared fate’s icy coldness. One answer could crack a person’s heart.

His fingers wandered again and again across her face. Or perhaps, after enduring such long illness and torment, she was no longer as delicately beautiful as before? But what did that matter? Feng Zhiwei would forever be Feng Zhiwei.

Hating himself for being unable to see. Grateful to himself for being unable to see.

If he truly saw that pallor and haggardness, how could he maintain this moment’s calm composure?

That tide of emotion surged so turbulently. All appearances of remaining unmoved were illusion, like reef stones eroded over thousands of years—externally calm and composed, internally long riddled with holes.

Someone seemed to crawl in on their knees, saying in a low voice, “Your Highness… shouldn’t we prepare…” Unable to continue through choking sobs.

It was Yan Huaishi.

He turned his back to Yan Huaishi, carefully putting the mask back on her. His fingers stopped at her neck, motionless for a long time.

Beneath his fingertips, her pulse slowly, gradually weakened. He knew that very soon, these subtle beats, like a spring about to run dry, would gradually become faint and severed, until returning to extinction.

Waiting like this, bit by bit, for life’s breath to scatter—that was unspeakably cruel.

Yet at this point, he would rather count like this, sound by sound. In each pulse beat, recall all their encounters from first meeting until now. In this life, he and she seemed to cooperate and accompany each other, but actually went in opposite directions. To have this one time of shared intention in this life was also good.

He counted quietly. In the curling smoke, it was impossible to distinguish who had the paler complexion.

On the roof, Gu Nanyi played quietly.

Rain kept falling. Inside and out were already soaked through. For him, clothes must be soft and not heavy or else unbearable—at this moment wearing such clothes felt like torture. Yet he never moved, never changed clothes, never left this eave that held her.

The leaf flute was dampened by rain. Playing it lacked clarity and brightness. In that intermittent flute sound, he heard her gentle voice.

“It’s agreed. I’ll play the leaf flute and follow your markers all the way to find you.”

Didn’t even ask you to play. Why are you planning to run away?

Across a layer of roof tiles, he could still sense below, some heavy breath slowly floating up. Once it completely floated up and dispersed, perhaps in this lifetime no one would play this leaf flute for him again.

He had sensed this kind of breath once before—when his wet nurse died, the whole room was filled with this breath. He felt uncomfortable because of it and was eager to leave.

Would she become like the wet nurse?

Would he never see her again after this?

Then what else should he do?

Gu Nanyi felt somewhat tired. Recently he’d been thinking about too many things. This wasn’t the former him. In all those past years, his world had been blank, monotonous, orderly and uniform. Never had there been so much doubt and unease.

He sat there blankly, feeling that breath quietly float up a bit more. He frowned, then suddenly flipped over and prostrated himself on the roof tiles.

He pressed himself down heavily.

Pressing down on this kind of breath—don’t let it float up!

In the courtyard, half the people stared blankly at Ning Yi inside the room with closed eyes and silent lips. Half stared blankly at Gu Nanyi prostrate in the rain on the roof.

Everyone wanted to express their own sorrow, yet felt that before these two, any expression seemed superfluous and affected. They didn’t even seem sorrowful. Gu Nanyi was somewhat different from usual. Ning Yi hadn’t even changed his expression once.

Yet in that grave silence, one could hear the sound of hearts breaking.

“Your Highness…” Yan Huaishi kowtowed again with tears. “We should… prepare…”

Ning Yi’s hand trembled, slowly withdrawing. He seemed very calm as he made a sound of “Oh.” But Yan Huaishi heard a trace of trembling and desolation.

Ning Yi beckoned. Ning Cheng silently brought over another basin of water. Ning Yi said indifferently, “You all go out. I’m going to cleanse her body.”

Yan Huaishi didn’t think much of it and carefully withdrew. Ning Cheng stared at him blankly but ultimately also left silently.

Ning Yi fumbled at Feng Zhiwei’s clothing, carefully undoing her buttons. Many times before he’d tried to approach this body, yet only at this moment was there no improper thought.

The cloth was dampened with warm water. He wiped carefully. In Tiansheng custom, for deeply loving spouses, the deceased could be cleansed by the other.

He pressed his lips together, using fingers to gently trace the contours of her body. This was the her he had yet to see before losing forever. After today, there would never be another chance to meet.

My… Zhiwei…

“Crash!”

The paper door was suddenly pulled open forcefully. Rain from the whole courtyard drifted in. He turned his head angrily.

“Your Highness!” That particularly clear, crisp voice belonged to that brave young widow. “There’s still one more method!”

Three days later, when Feng Zhiwei finally opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was autumn chrysanthemums blooming brilliantly against the rose-pink window gauze.

What she heard was the leaf flute sound from above. When she first woke from unconsciousness, it was still intermittent. The moment she opened her eyes, it suddenly became bright and melodious.

Birds throughout the courtyard began chirping, singing in harmony.

She turned her somewhat dry eyes and discovered the room was actually full of people. Ning Cheng hung from the beam, drooling in his sleep like rain. Bathed in that rain was Helian Zheng, sleeping in a very strange posture with his head in his arms, as if afraid his snoring would wake someone. Yan Huaishi pillowed his head on his wife’s thighs in deep slumber. Yao Yangyu pressed on Yu Liang’s stomach, sleeping with exposed belly.

Everyone slept in complete disarray on the floor. The room full of curling medicine fragrance also held some strange yet familiar scent.

Opposite sat Ning Yi, seemingly regulating his breathing with closed eyes. The moment she opened her eyes, he also immediately seemed to sense it and opened his eyes, smiling faintly at her.

Feng Zhiwei also smiled. As she smiled, her eyes suddenly reddened.

Was this person Ning Yi?

Who had starved him, beaten him, made him suffer, turning a perfectly fine jade-like elegant Prince Chu renowned throughout the Imperial Capital into this appearance—unloved by grandmother, uncared for by uncle, looking like he’d done three years of hard labor in a Guangzhou exile?

And this group of people—one by one with disheveled beards, didn’t they know how to groom themselves? And they were all sleeping in her boudoir?

Her gaze flowed, carefully sweeping across each weary face, and she smiled again.

Her body was very tired, like being beaten for a hundred days, but her heart was warm as if soaking in hot springs, comfortable blood flowing throughout.

Ning Yi seemed to listen to her breathing in the air, revealing a trace of faint smile. Then he stood up, dragging some and kicking others, throwing that whole group out.

The pregnant woman didn’t need him to move. She climbed up herself, dragging her drowsy husband, still not forgetting to close the paper door on the way out. “Clearing idle people, please avoid!”

Ning Yi smiled gratefully. Through the paper door he said, “Madam Yan is forthright, bright, and possessed of both wisdom and courage. I wonder if in future you would be willing to serve the court?”

“This commoner woman thinks that’s not impossible.” Hua Qiong’s hearty laughter receded.

The door closed. Ning Yi walked toward the bed. Feng Zhiwei showed him a shallow smile from the bed, asking in a tired, hoarse voice, “Very exhausted?”

Before the words finished, she suddenly found herself in a warm embrace.

That person held her tightly, body trembling slightly, breathing low by her ear, each word seemingly forced through gritted teeth. “Zhiwei… Zhiwei…”

He said nothing else, calling her name again and again, crushing her even more forcefully into his embrace, as if afraid that loosening his hold even slightly, she would fly away, impossible to find again.

That trembling voice by her ear was like a silk string simultaneously plucking the music of Feng Zhiwei’s heart. Unknowingly she also trembled slightly, deep in her heart sometimes loose, sometimes tight, hazy and flickering, as if something was connecting, as if something was breaking. She shrank back somewhat fearfully. As she shifted, she touched his shoulder bones—that gaunt, hard sensation made her eyes instantly redden again.

But he had already released her, smiling. “You just woke. Don’t tire yourself.” He sat opposite her, smiling as he looked at her. Clearly unable to see, yet that gaze seemed insatiable.

With a crash, a hole appeared in the roof. Gu Nanyi floated down through it. Feng Zhiwei’s eyes widened again, looking at Young Master Gu. She sucked in a breath, murmuring, “I absolutely will not get sick again in future…”

Gu Nanyi stared at her unblinkingly. Clothes unchanged for many days clung messily to his body. After a long while, he slowly came over.

Feng Zhiwei waited for him to stop three steps away. Gu Nanyi didn’t stop, coming to a halt just one step away. Feng Zhiwei looked at him in surprise.

The small walnut pouch perpetually hanging at his waist fell before Feng Zhiwei. Feng Zhiwei took it, slowly counting. Looking at those water-soaked walnuts, she said softly, “You haven’t been eating recently?”

Gu Nanyi nodded, still saying nothing, just looking at her.

He was thin, somewhat disheveled, somewhat dirty. Hadn’t eaten walnuts, hadn’t changed clothes.

“I won’t die.” After a long silence, Feng Zhiwei suppressed a moment’s choking emotion. “If I died, when you got lost, who would find you?”

Gu Nanyi stared at her. Only then did he take out a walnut and slowly eat it.

“That one’s gone moldy from moisture,” Ning Yi suddenly said. “Ning Cheng, go accompany Brother Gu to change clothes and change walnuts.”

Ning Cheng appeared, grinning as he reached to pull Gu Nanyi.

“Brother Gu, go with His Highness to bathe, change clothes, and eat,” Feng Zhiwei said simultaneously.

No refusal allowed. A pile of people were all driven out. By evening, they’d all rushed back, one on the roof, one by the bedside. Feng Zhiwei couldn’t drive them away. She herself lacked energy and had to let them be. Ning Yi on the small bed beside her spoke unhurriedly with her about everything that had happened in Nanhai during this time. His tone was calm, but Feng Zhiwei heard the thrilling danger within. After a long while, she smiled absently. “Never thought that sleeping once, I’d miss so much good drama.”

“This sleep of yours, I almost…” Ning Yi’s words reached his lips and suddenly stopped. Feng Zhiwei remained silent, not pursuing the question. Both lay on their couches, eyes wide open looking at the ceiling. A faint, strange atmosphere drifted apart.

After a long while, Feng Zhiwei changed the subject, asking, “That plague was so severe, others couldn’t survive the night. How am I fine?”

“To untie the bell, one must use the person who tied it,” Ning Yi said. “You contracted the plague passing through the village, but it was also someone from that village who saved you.”

“That child?” Feng Zhiwei immediately realized.

“Yes. That village chief vaguely heard Qiyuan was seeking famous physicians and guessed perhaps someone who passed through the village that day contracted the plague. He felt his nephew was quite unusual, so he brought him seeking an audience. But how could Qiyuan’s gatekeeper believe him? He was blocked outside the gate and not allowed in. It was Hua Qiong who encountered them and boldly took the initiative to let him in. After he came, we didn’t know how to handle it—he was a living person, not medicine. Fortunately, a great physician Brother Gu had invited from the capital arrived in time. They extracted his living blood, supplemented with various medicines, and pulled you back from the gates of hell.”

“Where is that child? Where is the physician?”

“The physician is with Brother Gu. That child lost excessive blood and is still recuperating.” Ning Yi smiled. “That fellow Helian Zheng—one knife strike nearly took the kid’s life.”

“Too outrageous…” Feng Zhiwei lacked energy, her speech slightly slurred. “When I’m better I’ll discipline him…”

“Sleep.” Ning Yi smiled, tucking in her bedding. Feng Zhiwei’s mind vaguely turned over a thought, but she lacked the energy to open her eyes. Hazily she fell asleep. She didn’t know how long passed when suddenly she felt wind against her face, as if someone rushed over. Then came a thump of a body hitting the bedside. She opened her eyes and saw Ning Yi standing by the bed with a panicked expression. Hearing her movement, the fluster on his face gradually faded.

He leaned against the bedside. Sensing her surprise, embarrassment gradually appeared on his face. He reached out to tuck in her quilt, then turned and limped back to his own bed, trying to smile naturally. “…Had a nightmare, thought you…”

The words weren’t finished, but Feng Zhiwei already completely understood.

During those days of unknown life and death, he had kept watch like this, hadn’t he? Through those long, fearful nights, he had been alarmed like this, hadn’t he? Constantly having nightmares of her losing breath, constantly waking in alarm to rush over and check her life or death, until it formed a habit that even after escaping danger, he still woke from nightmares.

How many times waking in the night, how deep and heavy the worry, to form such a nearly compulsive habit?

Feng Zhiwei said nothing, staring straight at the ceiling. After a long while, she blinked.

Tears fell.