With their foreheads touching, Shen Yuance kept his eyes closed, unable to suppress the hot breath pouring out of him.

The surroundings were quiet, but the voice in his heart grew louder.

He had only blocked her constantly moving mouth because he was irritated to the extreme. He didn’t know how, but in that moment, he seemed to possess a hunting instinct—without even thinking about what to do, he had already done something that frightened her.

If she hadn’t fearfully retreated backward, he might have forgotten that his original intention was just to make her quiet.

…He wondered if she had gone silent like this because she was scared witless.

As this thought crossed his mind, Shen Yuance’s five senses, which had been chaotic with agitation, regained their sharpness. He suddenly noticed something was wrong and abruptly opened his eyes, lifting his head to see the unnaturally quiet person before him falling straight toward him.

Shen Yuance reached out and caught her in one motion, lowering his head in shock: “…Jiang Zhiyi?”

The person in his arms had flushed cheeks and tightly closed eyes, giving no response.

After checking her breathing, neck pulse, and forehead, Shen Yuance turned his head toward the door: “Qing Song—”

“I m-I’m here…”

“Call Li Dafeng, quickly!”

A quarter of an hour later, in the west wing room, Shen Yuance sat on the edge of the bed, closely watching Li Dafeng’s expression: “What’s happening?”

Li Dafeng released the wrist he had been feeling for a pulse and stepped forward to lift one of Jiang Zhiyi’s eyelids: “What happened before she fainted?”

Shen Yuance glanced at him.

Li Dafeng said: “You think I’m some divine immortal who knows everything just by taking a pulse? How can I diagnose without knowing what happened?”

“…We argued.”

“She fainted in the middle of arguing?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then what—?”

Shen Yuance watched Li Dafeng, opened his mouth, then closed it, turning his head away. His gaze fell on Jiang Zhiyi’s unusually red lips, and he quickly averted his eyes.

Li Dafeng raised his hand: “I understand. A physician has no distracting thoughts when saving people. Next time, just speak directly.”

“…”

Shen Yuance frowned impatiently: “So is there a problem or not?”

“About her fainting, there’s no problem. Her emotions fluctuated too much, causing temporary insufficient blood flow. She’ll wake up soon.”

“What do you mean ‘there’s a problem’?”

“When I took her pulse just now, I discovered her blood stasis condition hasn’t been completely cured. Are you certain she didn’t injure anything other than her ankle last time?”

“The female physician examined her injuries personally. There couldn’t be a mistake.”

Li Dafeng took Jiang Zhiyi’s pulse once more: “Then there’s only one possibility—she had unhealed old injuries before the last incident, so they weren’t apparent from external examination.”

Shen Yuance furrowed his brow, looking at the person on the bed: “How serious is it? Can you determine where the blood stasis is located?”

Compared to last time, the blood stasis has somewhat improved. It must be that the medicinal soup she drank for her ankle wound had some beneficial effects. But I can’t pinpoint the location just by pulse diagnosis. I need her medical records from the past year.”

Shen Yuance summoned Qing Song and instructed him to fetch the records from the Marquis’s residence immediately. Turning back, he asked: “What can we do now?”

“My suggestion is, if you plan to continue arguing when she wakes up, it would be better to light some calming incense and let her make up for last night’s lost sleep. Otherwise, her physical strength will be insufficient, and she might faint again.”

“…”

Before he clarified the truth about today’s matter, further argument would only leave both sides with no way to explain. Not only would Jiang Zhiyi suffer, but he might also have a reversal of qi and blood.

Shen Yuance lit the calming incense without hesitation.

After sitting by the bedside for a while, waiting until Jiang Zhiyi fell into deep sleep, he rose and left the wing room. Returning to his study, he closed the door and picked up the “Yi” jade pendant again, beginning to sort through this matter from the beginning.

The same jade pendant could only have one owner. Between the two people, one must be lying.

If Pei Xueqing was the one lying, how to one explain the other half of the jade pendant? And how would Pei Xueqing know exactly where this jade pendant was hidden in her brother’s study? That was a place even Qing Song didn’t know about, and even Jiang Zhiyi’s holding onto this jade pendant at that time had been an accident.

But if Jiang Zhiyi was the liar… after spending days together with her, he couldn’t possibly have missed every sign. Whether her emotions were genuine or false, he believed he could discern.

So was there a possibility that neither of them was lying—

Shen Yuance sat at his desk, pondering repeatedly, losing track of time, until suddenly he heard a knock at the door.

Mu Xinhong entered the study and handed over a note: “Young General, Miss Pei sent this. She said if you can understand what’s written on it, she will wait for you at Tinglan Pavilion until dark. You may go at any convenient time.”

As if anticipating something, Shen Yuance stared at the note, showing rare hesitation. After a moment of silence, he finally accepted it, slowly unfolding it. There was no greeting, only two simple lines of poetry:

“You lie buried underground, bones dissolving in mud;

I remain in this world, with snow covering my head.”

Half an hour later, at Tinglan Pavilion.

Shen Yuance dismounted at the shore, raising his eyes toward the center of the water.

The octagonal water pavilion faced the water on all sides, with one side connected to a wooden bridge. All eight sides had floor-to-ceiling windows with intricate lattice work. It was a place suitable for private conversations.

Shen Yuance stood on the shore for a moment, then walked onto the wooden bridge, step by step, toward the water pavilion where one door had been opened.

Inside the pavilion, the young lady sitting quietly at the railing heard footsteps and turned her head. Slowly rising from her beauty couch, she looked toward him.

Across the long wooden bridge, he vaguely saw the person opposite him’s eyes instantly darken.

She was waiting for him here, yet hoped he wouldn’t understand those two lines of poetry, hoped he wouldn’t come.

Shen Yuance crossed the wooden bridge, entered the pavilion, and saw her staring at him fixedly, yet it seemed as if she wasn’t looking at him, but seeing someone else through him.

Pei Xueqing walked forward in a daze, approaching him, tilting her head to look at his features. She raised one hand and, keeping some distance, gently traced the outline of his face in the air, then smiled with moist eyes: “You’re not him, are you?”

Shen Yuance remained silent for a long while, then nodded with some difficulty.

“Is he…” Pei Xueqing took a deep breath, “Is he no longer with us…?”

After an even longer silence, Shen Yuance nodded again.

Pei Xueqing tightly closed her eyes, trembling as she suppressed a pang of anguish, and turned away, unable to bear it.

She thought her tossing and turning over these days had prepared her sufficiently, thought her desperate desire for answers had overcome her fear of those answers. But when this moment truly arrived, all her efforts to accept it seemed to have been in vain.

She had been chasing this answer, traveling for two long months…

Since his return to the capital, when he had failed to meet with her, she had spent these two months going from never leaving the inner courtyard to frequently attending banquets of nobles and aristocrats, all to find opportunities to see him.

Yet every time she spotted him in the crowd, she found his gaze never included her, not even once giving her a meeting of eyes. Unlike before, when no matter how far away her gaze waited in a corner, his eyes would always find her.

At first, she thought he had some difficulty. After all, he had always been skilled at pretending—feigning indifference despite harboring great ambitions, appearing unaccomplished despite studying diligently every night.

She thought that now, forced by circumstances to reveal his talents, how could a general commanding troops marry the daughter of the Prime Minister? This would be a great taboo in the Emperor’s mind. It was reasonable for him to be more cautious than before.

She thought she would wait patiently until he felt the time was right and would come to explain to her.

But as she waited quietly, she instead heard about his private meeting with Princess Yongying at the restaurant, and then saw with her own eyes how intimate he was with the Princess at the academy. When she stood right in front of him, he looked at her with such unfamiliar eyes, as if seeing her for the first time…

She could understand his lack of interest in romance now, but couldn’t believe he would engage romantically with another lady, especially without resolving things with her first.

She indirectly asked her brother about matters at the academy, inquiring about everything related to him. She secretly observed him in places where he couldn’t see her or chose not to see her. The more she watched, the more she felt he had become a different person.

Indeed, everyone said he had changed. A young man who had suffered the pain of losing his father, then shouldered heavy responsibilities alone, experiencing several life-and-death situations within a year—if his temperament hadn’t changed at all, that would have been strange. No one thought there was anything wrong with him changing; even the most unruly young noble would grow up after experiencing such things.

But only she knew he had never truly been unruly. She understood his real nature, and she felt something about him was truly different now.

So, when that day he handed her a package of sugar that could have taken her life, after feeling heartbroken, wronged, and even hateful, she suddenly thought of another possibility—

When he handed her that sugar, his expression genuinely seemed not to know it could kill her.

Just as every glance he had given her during this period truly seemed like he didn’t recognize her at all.

Didn’t recognize her…

She silently repeated these words, and in her daze, suddenly remembered the night before he left for war, when he came to see her for the last time.

That night, he appeared more troubled than ever, several times hesitating to speak, but finally only leaving these words: “If we meet again in the future and you find I don’t recognize you, then consider we never met. Don’t look for me, and don’t wait for me.”

At that time, with the frontline war situation critical, she thought he was worried about not returning alive, which was why he said such nonsense.

But now, thinking back after a year and considering his attitude toward her since returning to the capital… if he was worried about dying on the battlefield, then he wouldn’t be able to meet her again at all. Why would he talk about “meeting without recognition”?

That night, what was it he wanted to say but couldn’t?

She began to imagine wild possibilities, recalling more and more past events.

She remembered when they were talking at Tinglan Pavilion, he had mentioned often having a strange dream—dreaming of being beaten in the mud and rain at the border, dreaming his father trained him like a death soldier, making him fight the strongest warriors of the Xuance Army. When he was knocked down, he couldn’t cry out in pain but had to get up and fight back as quickly as possible, or else the sword above his head would truly fall…

He said he felt the little boy in the dream looked exactly like him, but wasn’t him. He could feel the boy’s pain, but also sense how different their temperaments and thoughts were.

Then suddenly she had a very, very frightening guess—

If there was someone in this world who looked exactly like him, who had returned to the capital in his identity, when that person discovered the carefully hidden “Yi” jade pendant, compared to Pei Xueqing’s “Pei,” wouldn’t he be more likely to associate it with Jiang Zhiyi’s “Yi”?

After pondering for days and nights, she anxiously knocked on the door of the Shen residence, insisting on seeing him.

She thought this guess was so absurd, it should only be a one-in-ten-thousand possibility, hoping he would today completely reject her like an unfaithful man.

But he didn’t.

Everything at the Shen residence today confirmed her guess.

After a long while, Pei Xueqing raised her eyes, looking toward the northwest direction, and asked softly with a choked voice: “When he left… was it painful?”

Shen Yuance’s brows furrowed, his hand at his side lightly clenching into a fist, giving no answer.

“When-when did it happen? Was it in May this year…?”

Shen Yuance’s gaze flashed: “You… knew?”

Pei Xueqing had her back turned as she blinked, tears falling in large drops.

She didn’t know, not at the time. She had only awakened one night with a sudden pain in her heart, shedding tears for no reason. Later, news came from the border that the main force of the Xuance Army had suffered a great defeat, almost completely wiped out, but fortunately, reinforcements arrived in time to save the Young General. She thought that night she had only sensed his distress.

“Perhaps there is an innate connection in the universe…” Pei Xueqing was lost in thought for a moment, then turned back, “Just as he said, he had dreamed of you very early on, but did he only learn of your existence the night before he left for war?”

Shen Yuance nodded once.

Pei Xueqing said nothing more, as if she had asked everything she wanted to know.

Shen Yuance, his fist rigid for a long time: “I’m sorry, I—I couldn’t save him.”

“And after returning to the capital, I didn’t know—”

Pei Xueqing, seeming to cry and laugh at the same time, shook her head: “It’s not your fault. If not for this, I might have been kept in the dark much longer. By knowing his whereabouts earlier, there’s one more person in this world who remembers him, isn’t that right?”

Pei Xueqing lowered her head to compose herself, taking a deep breath: “Rest assured, not even my father or brother knows about my relationship with him. The words spoken today will remain only in this pavilion. In the future, whatever you do using his identity, you need not worry about me. I won’t speak of this to anyone.”

Shen Yuance raised his eyes.

“In life, he was a hostage, unable to be himself. In death, he should at least have peace. I couldn’t protect him, but at least now I can protect his family.”

Shen Yuance: “…Thank you.”

Pei Xueqing forced a smile: “I’m not keeping your secret for nothing. I want to ask you for a favor.”

“Tell me.”

Pei Xueqing pointed to the path he had come from: “When you leave, walk slowly along this wooden bridge. Let me pretend you’re him one last time, as if he came to say goodbye to me today. Can you do that?”

Shen Yuance remained silent for a moment, then nodded: “All right.”

Pei Xueqing wiped away the tears blurring her vision and quietly watched him turn around, saw him step onto the wooden bridge, taking the first step, the second step, the third step, slowly walking further and further away, all the way to the end of the wooden bridge—

She smiled, raising her arm and waving forcefully at the departing figure about to disappear, blinking her eyes, blinking down hot tears.