In the distant alleys, the sound of firecrackers continued to echo intermittently after the fireworks display. The night air carried occasional barks of dogs.
Xie Zheng lightly rapped his half-clenched fist on the table where Fan Changyu was slumped. “Wake up.”
Under the influence of alcohol and fatigue, Fan Changyu only mumbled a response, adjusting her head to a more comfortable position on her arm before falling back into a deep sleep.
Seeing that he couldn’t wake her, Xie Zheng hesitated for a moment before walking over to lift her, intending to carry her back to her room.
This movement caused Fan Changyu to open her eyes drowsily. Her cheeks were still flushed, leaving Xie Zheng unsure whether she was awake or still intoxicated.
He supported her with one arm to prevent her from falling and asked, “Can you return to your room on your own?”
Fan Changyu tilted her head to examine him. Her hair was disheveled from her sleeping position, making her look both dazed and docile. Her gaze was vacant as if she couldn’t recognize who was in front of her.
Xie Zheng was taken aback at first, then averted his gaze and frowned, saying, “You shouldn’t drink recklessly if you don’t know your alcohol tolerance.”
He tugged at her hand, intending to help her up when he heard her mumbling something incoherently.
Unable to make out her words, Xie Zheng leaned in closer. “What?”
Fan Changyu was barely conscious. As her head bobbed, it happened to dip just as Xie Zheng leaned in to listen. Her lips lightly brushed his cheek, and her head nestled into the crook of his neck. Her already drowsy eyes closed completely, unaware of what she had done.
Xie Zheng froze entirely.
Time seemed to stand still at that moment. The sound of wind, snow, and the crackling bonfire all ceased.
Her fluffy hair rested against the side of his neck, her breathing long and shallow, indicating she had fallen into a deep sleep.
Xie Zheng remained motionless for a long while until a weak voice came from nearby: “Sister?”
Xie Zheng turned his head to see Channing, who seemed to have just woken up. She was still clutching her red envelope in one hand while rubbing her sleepy eyes with the other, looking at him and Fan Changyu with confusion.
His long, slender finger lightly pressed against his lips, making a “shh” gesture. His bangs fell across his forehead, and his eyes were dark and calm in the lamplight. “Your sister is asleep. Don’t disturb her.”
Channing nodded obediently.
Xie Zheng pointed to the oil lamp nearby and asked, “Can you carry the oil lamp?”
Little Channing nodded more vigorously.
She carried the oil lamp with both hands, walking in front. Xie Zheng slipped one arm under Fan Changyu’s armpits and the other under her knees, lifting her horizontally. He walked steadily behind Channing.
Fan Changyu had carried him back from the wilderness twice before, but this was the first time he had carried her.
She was even lighter than he had imagined.
Of course, in just two short months, she had experienced the death of her parents, her childhood sweetheart breaking off their engagement, and her uncle seizing her family’s property. More recently, these two assassination attempts were enough to terrify an ordinary person for life.
On the surface, she acted as if nothing was wrong, going out early and returning late every day to earn money to support her family. At the dinner table, she never seemed to lose her appetite, and when comforting her younger sister, she would still play and joke around with the child.
In the past, Xie Zheng had thought she was simply carefree, but at this moment, he suddenly realized that perhaps… she wasn’t carefree at all. She simply knew that she couldn’t afford to remain grief-stricken and depressed. So she worked hard to earn money, ate well every day, slept well, and didn’t dare to let herself fall ill or become discouraged.
Because her sister had only her to rely on, she couldn’t afford to falter.
The path from the main hall to the north room wasn’t long, but in the interplay of darkness and lamplight, a surge of complex emotions welled up in Xie Zheng’s heart.
Upon reaching the north room, Channing, being too short to place the oil lamp on the table, set it on a round stool instead.
Xie Zheng laid the sleeping Fan Changyu on the bed. Channing scurried over, grasping her sister’s shoes with both hands and tugging hard, trying to remove them.
The child struggled with all her might but still couldn’t manage it. Xie Zheng said, “Let me.”
He helped remove both shoes and was about to cover Fan Changyu with the quilt when Channing said, “Sister hasn’t taken off her coat yet.”
Xie Zheng’s fingertips paused momentarily. He placated the child, saying, “Your sister is asleep. Taking off her coat might wake her up. Let her sleep like this.”
Channing finally relented.
As he covered Fan Changyu with the cotton quilt, the little girl kicked off her shoes and climbed onto the bed, tucking in her sister’s blanket corners like a little adult.
Xie Zheng waited until the child had also lain down before placing the oil lamp on the nearby wooden table. He glanced back at the bed curtains. In the dim lamplight, Fan Changyu’s face bore a light flush from the alcohol, her sleeping posture both docile and graceful.
He suddenly recalled the night he had taught her Da Yin law. She had fallen asleep while reciting legal codes, slumped over the desk, and in her sleep, she had choked out a cry of “Mother.”
That strange and unfamiliar emotion rose in his heart once again.
“Brother-in-law?” Channing, noticing him staring in their direction, blinked and called out to him.
Xie Zheng snapped back to reality and said, “Don’t tell your sister about what happened in the other room earlier.”
Little Channing looked very confused. “What happened?”
Xie Zheng was silent for a moment, thinking that she had just woken up then and might not have seen anything. He said, “Nothing.”
As he prepared to extinguish the oil lamp, the child asked, “Brother-in-law, don’t you need a lamp to return to your room?”
“No need.”
With those words, the oil lamp was extinguished, and the room plunged into darkness.
Xie Zheng left the room with steady steps despite the darkness, carefully closing the door behind him.
Before returning to his room, he took the gyrfalcon from its cage by the fire pit. Once in his room, he lit an oil lamp, ground some ink, and finished writing the letter he had left incomplete earlier that day. He then placed it in a bamboo tube and tied it to the gyrfalcon’s leg.
The gyrfalcon’s wing and leg injuries had mostly healed. In the past few days, since it hadn’t been able to fly, it had been fed a large bowl of minced fresh meat or offal daily, causing the entire falcon to become noticeably plumper.
When Xie Zheng raised his arm for the gyrfalcon to perch on, he felt the weight on his forearm and his brow furrowed imperceptibly. “After delivering the letter, fly around outside until dark before returning.”
The gyrfalcon’s beady eyes instinctively glanced toward the large bowl of minced meat in the main hall. Sensing the sudden chill in the person behind it, it hastily flapped its wings and flew into the deep night sky.
Even after the gyrfalcon had flown far away, Xie Zheng didn’t go back inside. Instead, he stood under the eaves with his hands behind his back, watching the snow fall like willow catkins for a long time.
When he had Zhao Xun buy grain, he had anticipated that the officials would eventually take notice.
A few days ago, when Zhao Xun came to see him, he had already instructed Zhao Xun to first send the grain to a place he specified. The letter the gyrfalcon was delivering was to instruct his former subordinates to transport the grain.
The Wei family thought they could eliminate him without expending any troops or effort, and then take over his 100,000 troops in Huizhou. Their plan was excellent, but since he hadn’t died, the good days of that father-and-son duo were coming to an end.
The rumors about the Battle of Jinzhou sixteen years ago that suddenly spread a few months earlier – he hadn’t believed them at first. But when his dear uncle learned that he was secretly investigating the Battle of Jinzhou and directly set a trap on the battlefield to attempt to take his life, it undoubtedly confirmed that rumor.
Before reclaiming command of the Huizhou troops, he still needed to use the Wei family to first remove the spies they had planted around him.
Thinking about how he had mistaken the enemy for his father for sixteen years, Xie Zheng’s raised corner of his mouth was full of mockery.
If that woman, upon learning of his father’s death, hadn’t chosen to follow his father, would he have avoided being raised by Wei Yan’s hand and mistaking the enemy for his father for sixteen years?
He closed his eyes heavily, the lantern under the eaves casting a shadow across his high, straight nose.
Somehow, his thoughts turned to the two Fan sisters again.
For a moment, Xie Zheng felt a bit envious of that child.
When he encountered misfortune in his youth, he was about the same age as her. But when the Xie family fell, there was no one left behind him to shelter him from the wind and rain.
How fortunate that child was. Even without parents, she still had a sister who could hold up the sky for her…
When he opened his eyes again, all emotions had settled in the depths of Xie Zheng’s eyes.
He turned back to his room, took off his outer robe, and had just lain down when he felt something amiss under his pillow.
He sat up, removed the pillow, and was startled for a moment when he saw a red envelope placed underneath.
New Year’s money.
The character for “age” was the same as for “evil spirit,” and people believed that New Year’s money could ward off evil and ghosts, bringing blessings of peace.
Had that woman placed this for him?
Xie Zheng opened the red envelope. Inside were several small silver ingots.
Each weighed less than one tael, but held in his hand at this moment, they felt incredibly heavy.
Xie Zheng couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had last received New Year’s money. After his parents passed away, the only time he received New Year’s money was when his grandmother was still alive.
Wei Yan had lived a life of cold-bloodedness and rigidity. Let alone his nephew, he had never shown kindness even to his son, naturally never preparing red envelopes for them during the New Year.
Xie Zheng lay back on the bed, one hand pillowing his head, the other holding up a silver ingot to examine in the candlelight. His beautiful brows and eyes held several other emotions.
Her parents had passed away, so no one would give her New Year’s money anymore either, right?
The next day, when Fan Changyu woke up, she felt a slight throbbing in her head.
Due to her drunkenness, she had woken up quite late. Channing was already not in the room.
She slowly crawled up, finding that her clothes were still properly on her body. She tried hard to recall the events of the previous night, but her memories after getting drunk were a complete blank no matter how she tried to remember.
However, since she had made it back to her room, either she had walked back herself or Yan Zheng had helped her back.
Fan Changyu felt her face heating up just thinking about the latter possibility.
This was truly embarrassing. She had gotten drunk on clear wine; if word got out, wouldn’t people laugh at her?
She pressed her slightly aching temples. After getting up and quickly washing up, she heard Channing crying in the main hall.
Fan Changyu walked out and asked, “What’s wrong?”
Channing was crouched by the chicken coop, crying with snot and tears: “Xuan Xuan is gone…”
Fan Changyu, seeing the empty chicken coop, was also stunned for a moment. She said, “Maybe the cage door wasn’t closed last night, and the gyrfalcon flew away once its wing injury had healed.”
Channing cried even more heartbrokenly.
Fan Changyu had no choice but to bring out the explanation about the gyrfalcon having to return to find its falcon father and mother. Only then did Channing slowly stop crying.
Xie Zheng, probably having heard the crying from his room, came out. Seeing Channing still guarding the chicken coop and shedding tears, he said, “It will fly back again.”
Channing raised her tear-filled eyes: “Really?”
Fan Changyu thought he was just comforting the child. Fearing that after telling such a lie, Channing would be even more upset when she found out it wasn’t true, she ignored her embarrassment about possibly making a fool of herself while drunk last night and gave Xie Zheng a look.
At first, Xie Zheng didn’t understand her glance. Later, after Fan Changyu had coaxed Channing away, she said to him, “You don’t need to lie to her like that. Channing is probably just too lonely. I’m planning to raise a brood of chicks in the spring. Once she has new playmates, she’ll forget about that gyrfalcon.”
Xie Zheng said, “I wasn’t comforting her.”
This time it was Fan Changyu’s turn to look completely baffled.
He couldn’t be frank about sending the gyrfalcon to deliver a letter at this point, so Xie Zheng lied without batting an eye: “When training hawks and falcons, they are eventually released to fly. If they return, it means they’ve been fully tamed.”
Hearing this, Fan Changyu realized it was still an unknown.
She eyed Xie Zheng suspiciously: “You’re so certain it will fly back?”
Xie Zheng nodded calmly.
Although Fan Changyu still had some doubts, she didn’t understand falcon training herself, so she didn’t say anything more.
She had smoked quite a bit of cured meat recently, which was still hanging above the fire pit. Most of it was kept for sale, with only a small portion reserved for eating.
In the past, when her parents were still alive, her father would take a piece of meat to visit the Fan family elders on this day every year. Now that her parents were gone, although Fan Changyu wasn’t close to the old couple, they were still elders, and she had to keep up appearances.
After breakfast, she planned to take a piece of cured meat to give to the old couple and then return. She entrusted Xie Zheng to keep an eye on Channing before leaving with the cured meat.
Fan Da had died not long ago, so the New Year at the Fan family’s old home was rather bleak.
When Fan Changyu arrived, only the old couple was at home. Madam Liu had taken her two children back to her maiden home for the New Year.
Perhaps because they had lost two sons in one year, the old couple had suffered quite a blow. Old Mrs. Fan was bedridden, and Old Mr. Fan’s already graying hair had turned almost completely white. Even on New Year’s Day, his clothes were dirty and wrinkled.
It was unclear whether he had no heart to tidy up, or if life had become difficult now that his daughter-in-law was managing the household.
Seeing Fan Changyu, he invited her to come in and sit by the fire to warm up.
But Fan Changyu only wanted to give the gift and leave. She said, “Ningniang is waiting for me at home, so I won’t stay long.”
Old Mr. Fan looked at the cured meat she had brought, probably reminded of how his younger son used to bring a piece of meat every New Year. His eyes reddened as he said, “Come in and sit for a while. There are some things about your father’s past that I think I should tell you.”
Fan Changyu was startled to hear this. What things about her father’s past did she not know?
Seeing Old Mr. Fan hobble into the house after saying those words, Fan Changyu hesitated briefly before following him inside.