Lingbo didn’t understand why Pei Zhao had risked being stung to keep running until he carried her into a mountain cave — where she realized he’d known all along that this spot had one.
The cave had only one opening, but it was wide. Pei Zhao drew his sword and hacked off branches to block the entrance, then was about to call Ye Lingbo inside — but she was already using every ounce of her strength to hang off a large branch and wrench the entire thing down from the tree.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” She was even urging Pei Zhao along, and together they blocked the entrance with the cut branches, then piled up stones and earth. It was Pei Zhao’s first time meeting a young noblewoman like this — no tools at hand, and she was scooping earth directly with her bare hands and plastering it against the branches, even more determined to preserve herself than he was.
Pei Zhao was amused by her, thinking of the usually poised and proud Second Miss Ye. He had expected she would be unable to bear the ordeal of hornets — probably frightened out of her wits at the sight of even one. So he took extra care to properly block the entrance with branches, then built a small fire and threw medicinal powder into it, producing medicinal smoke to keep the hornets from venturing near.
“Here, take one.” He also produced a medicinal pill for Lingbo: “This is the best antidote there is — after taking it, even snakes won’t bite you.”
Lingbo’s hands were covered in mud, so naturally she couldn’t take it. She immediately glared at him. General Pei had received proper training after all — he immediately understood, peeled open the wax coating, and fed it directly into her mouth.
“It tastes like medicine.” She complained even after swallowing it, frowning: “Where did you get so many medicines?”
“Stole them.” Pei Zhao answered without hesitation.
Lingbo’s response was to slap his face with her muddy hand: “You have no shame anyway, what does it matter.” Though Pei Zhao was laughing, his reflexes were quick — he dodged nimbly and caught both her hands in one of his.
“I’ll need to disarm Miss Ye before anything else.” He was still teasing her with a smile. At some point he had taken Lingbo’s handkerchief, dampened it with water, and wiped her hands clean. Lingbo complained that he was doing it wrong: “Clumsy hands — you’re worse than I am,” and snatched it back to wipe her own hands.
Pei Zhao was not the slightest bit put out, and stood watching her with a smile, until Lingbo felt unsettled by his gaze and suddenly remembered something.
“Where did the water to wet the handkerchief come from?”
Pei Zhao smiled meaningfully: “Guess.”
Lingbo’s face flushed scarlet. When she worked out what he meant, she immediately set about hitting him. Pei Zhao laughed and confessed: “It was from a water sack — I poured it from my water sack. What were you thinking?”
Lingbo had been spun in circles by him. She couldn’t win in a fight, so she sulked in the corner, refusing to speak with him. Just as she was resolved to ignore him, she heard Pei Zhao call: “Lingbo.”
He had never called her by her name before, so Lingbo immediately knew something was serious. She turned: “What is it?”
Pei Zhao’s expression was one she rarely saw on him — tense. He was staring at her hair bun and said: “Don’t move.”
Lingbo felt the hair stand up across her body. She already had a vague idea of what it was, and was too frightened to move at all. However brave she might be in her own right, she was still a sheltered young lady of the inner chambers, unaccustomed to this kind of ordeal. The mere thought of a hornet perched on her hair bun made her want to scream.
But fortunately, Pei Zhao was there. He fixed his gaze on her bun, seemingly waiting for an opening, then suddenly shot his hand out and closed his fist around the hornet. The hornet had clearly stung him, because he hissed sharply with pain.
They said he was a bird and Cui Jingyu was a beast — it was obvious why. Perhaps it was because he was too beautiful, but when he was hurt there was always a fragile quality that made one worry for him, even though he was hurt more frequently than anyone.
Lingbo was so distraught she was nearly in tears.
“Are you stupid?” She glared at him as he crushed the hornet to death against the ground, and scolded: “Why grab it with your hand? Couldn’t you have used a dagger?”
“And if I’d hurt Miss Ye with the dagger? Would Miss Ye have let me off?” He still had the leisure to tease her.
Lingbo glared fiercely at him — but her eyes were full of tears, which diminished the impact considerably.
So this was how she looked when she was about to cry — still imperious as ever, of course, but with crystalline tears in her eyes, enough to make anyone willing to be scolded by her.
In that moment, he had actually forgotten himself — had only wanted to grab it with his hand. Cui Jingyu would certainly have laughed at him. The peacock always on display — and now it turned out he too had a weak spot.
Lingbo bent his hand back to examine it, and saw that the web between thumb and forefinger was indeed swollen and red. She’d never actually encountered a hornet before, but she knew how fearsome they were — her wet nurse’s childhood stories had always included bears, grey wolves, venomous snakes, and hornets as the things that could take a life.
It would have been so easy to tease her right now. But her tears fell, and they landed on his skin with a scorching sensation, stirring his heart more than the sting itself.
So Pei Zhao smiled and reassured her: “It’s nothing — a few hornet stings aren’t anything serious. Just suck out the stinger and it’ll be fine.”
He had meant only to comfort Lingbo, but he had forgotten about the Second Miss Ye’s capacity for action. Before the words were even out of his mouth, Lingbo had bowed her head and taken the web of his hand gently between her lips.
Because he had been breaking peach blossom branches, his hand carried the pleasant fragrance of peach blossoms. It wasn’t until Lingbo had sucked out the stinger and spat it on the ground that she realized the impropriety of what she had done.
By the etiquette of the capital, this already constituted physical intimacy. If word got out, Lingbo would be completely unmarriageable.
“If anyone ever finds out, I’ll make you pay for it.” She immediately issued Pei Zhao a threat.
Pei Zhao immediately put on a wounded expression. Lingbo ignored him and went rummaging through his things: “Where’s your antidote pill? Take it out, crush it, and apply it externally — Shen Biwei said it’s the same principle whether you take medicine inside or apply it outside…”
“I’m not applying anything.” Pei Zhao immediately dug his heels in: “Might as well let the venom kill me.”
Lingbo was so exasperated she was about to hit him, when he suddenly pointed at the top of Lingbo’s head: “There’s another one.”
Lingbo was so startled she nearly bolted upright — but she didn’t dare move, and could only watch as Pei Zhao leaned in close, as though searching for the hornet in her hair bun. His face drew nearer and nearer, until Lingbo could see clearly that the small mole at the corner of his eye was actually a pale chestnut brown. For one moment Lingbo held her breath…
Just as Lingbo was certain he was about to kiss her, he suddenly turned his face aside and laughed.
“I was lying.”
Lingbo was not about to let that go, and immediately pinched his arm until it went purple. Pei Zhao didn’t dodge at all, just laughed and pleaded for mercy: “You’re pinching me to death — the venom is about to set in…”
“Don’t think you can fool me.” Lingbo showed no mercy: “Keep lying and see if I don’t scratch your face to pieces.”
But in truth she didn’t dare touch Pei Zhao’s face. Even now, in a scene where she seemed to have every advantage — hitting and scolding him — she felt strangely unmoored, like someone drunk standing at the edge of a cliff, as though if he were to pull her, she would fall with him into some unknown abyss.
Perhaps it was the look in his eyes.
At moments like this, he always looked at her with that quiet smile — as though he had set aside all his rakish, devil-may-care manner, as though he were watching a bloom of peach blossoms that were already fated to fall.
Sunlight filtered through the peach blossom branches at the cave entrance, casting a dappled shadow on the ground. The cave fell quiet for a moment. Lingbo felt her mouth go dry, as though there was nothing she could think to say.
Yet even saying nothing, she found this moment extraordinarily fine — like lying in the grass as a child, basking in the sun, drifting off in warmth, and waking still at peace.
Qinglan’s comparison of a ship and its anchor was truly fitting. Being with him was a sense of peace, no matter what.
But she was no longer a child. She was Ye Lingbo, who stood on her own — and Ye Lingbo had her own responsibilities to fulfill.
“Pei Zhao,” just calling his name sent wave after wave of bitterness rising from her heart. “Those things I said in the peach blossom grove just now… please forget them.”
She was no virtuous wife who would cut her weaving to urge her husband to greater effort. Striving upward for her sake might sound moving today — but five years from now, ten years from now? A bird cannot become a fish. Why drag him with her into the water to sink together, ending only in mutual resentment?
Better to stop here. This stretch of flowing water and peach blossoms — beautiful beyond words, something to remember for a lifetime.
Pei Zhao immediately laughed with self-mockery. He was clever — Lingbo knew he understood her meaning perfectly.
“Miss Ye is making decisions for both of us again.” He said with a calm smile, but his eyes were completely without warmth.
Haven’t you been making decisions for both of us? You chose a life lived entirely on your own terms. You decided you would not strive. You won’t even say why you choose your free and unattached life — you’re the one who decided for both of us.
You chose your past over me.
Lingbo’s heart was full of boundless fury. She had never been like Qinglan — she couldn’t transform this pain into tender melancholy, sorrowful but not wounding. She was accustomed to fighting and competing, accustomed to giving her all right up to the very last moment. For this unwilling, unavoidable surrender, she was like a wounded animal in a trap, wanting to sink her teeth into everything around her just to make it count.
Otherwise she would not have lost her temper at Pei Zhao himself.
“Think of me as mercenary, then.” Her face was cold: “I, Ye Lingbo, do not marry a man without rank or title.”
About the hardest period the three Ye sisters had once lived through — she had never blamed her mother. After all, Lady Ye could not have known that the husband she had poured everything into building up would turn out to be such a beast in human form, one who treated his own daughters with cruelty.
But she would never become Lady Ye.
And marrying a man without rank or title was a worse choice even than repeating her mother’s fate. Whether it was the Ye sisters or the wives of the Northern Army generals — the reason they had managed to escape the battles of the inner household was because they still had family wealth and the standing of court-titled ladies. Their so-called “heads of household” were still bound by the rules of the capital’s noble families, still unable to completely tear away the pretense — and so even if faithless, there was still a path to reclaiming one’s position.
But go further down than that — if the wives of the Northern Army generals were not court-titled ladies, if their husbands had no military achievements, no rewards, no fiefdoms — then even if they could dissolve the marriage, what would they have to show for a body full of wounds and a youth entirely spent?
And she still needed to think of her family. Qinglan and Cui Jingyu had already come this far — whether it succeeded or not was heaven’s will. Yanyan was still young and foolish. And then there was delicate A’Cuo. She, Ye Lingbo, had to shoulder this family fortune, to make the safest, most stable choice available to her.
And that choice was absolutely not Pei Zhao.
Even as Pei Zhao’s expression flashed with a look of pain, she had no regrets.
Pei Zhao laughed bitterly, seeming about to say something — but he didn’t get the chance.
Because from outside the cave came Shen Biwei’s voice.
“Lingbo — is that you? Are you in there?” Shen Biwei said: “The hornet swarm has dispersed. Come with me to check on Sister Qinglan.”
“What happened?” Lingbo was so frightened she sprang to her feet. Without pausing to think about whether there might be any remaining hornets, she shoved aside the branches at the entrance and asked urgently: “What happened to my sister?”
Shen Biwei was overjoyed to find her. She first pulled her close and looked her over, then caught sight of the sword marks on the peach blossom branches and instantly turned a sharp gaze toward the cave.
Lingbo immediately turned Shen Biwei’s face back toward her.
“It was Pei Zhao — never mind him.” She pressed: “Tell me quickly — is my sister hurt? What about Yanyan and A’Cuo? Are you all right?”
“Don’t worry — I’m fine, Sister Qinglan is fine, and we’re still looking for Yanyan and A’Cuo.” Shen Biwei said it all in one breath, then paused.
“What is it?” Lingbo picked up on it immediately.
“But Cui Jingyu is not — he saved Sister Qinglan, but his own injuries are quite serious.” After Shen Biwei said this, she noticed that Lingbo showed no surprise at all. She even had an expression of absolute inevitability on her face.