Cui Jingyu found Ye Qinglan at the lower reaches of the Flower Stream.

She was there with two maidservants, clearing fallen leaves from the outlet of the Flower Stream — lest the flower lanterns collect there and catch alight, threatening the trees along the bank.

She was always the most reliable sister — always foreseeing the most hidden dangers, always quietly tidying up after others from behind.

Fallen blossoms blanketed the water’s surface. The calm lake at the stream’s mouth lay spread like a length of brocade. She stood at the water’s edge, using a long-handled bamboo ladle to scoop up lanterns that had already caught fire, setting them carefully on the stones along the bank to burn out fully. The firelight danced at the hem of her skirt, and she herself looked like a figure from a classical painting of court ladies.

“Why not simply put the lanterns out in the water?” a voice asked.

“If a lantern sinks in the water, the wish cannot reach the gods — better to let it burn to the end.” She answered without looking back, and then realized — and her wrist was caught.

Cui Jingyu, as if capturing a precious deer, closed his hand around her wrist and pressed her back against the flower tree behind her. It was a tall peach tree, wound about by wisteria, already half-withered — but the wisteria had flourished and claimed the canopy entirely, covering it in dense, layered clusters of violet blossoms that cascaded down in fragrant waves. The sudden capture made the branches tremble, and petals fell like rain, covering them both.

In the shower of petals, Cui Jingyu looked at her — his eyes like those of a wounded wolf.

“I know now why you broke off the engagement.” He said it to her, his eyes nearly fierce: “You deceived me. You told Han Yueqi it was because you no longer wanted to marry — you deceived me for four years!”

You wasted four years of us. Qinglan could almost hear him saying it: you, for no reason at all, threw away four years of our time. You crafted an ice river with your own hands and trapped us both within it, torturing us day and night.

But Qinglan only looked at him steadily.

“I did not deceive you. I truly no longer wanted to marry.”

The look on Cui Jingyu’s face in that instant was almost enough to make her swallow those words back.

“Why?” He laughed coldly at once: “Because I was getting in the way of your self-sacrifice for your sister?”

The Cui Jingyu of four years ago would never have spoken like this. He had gone after what he wanted with full force, willing to level mountains and seas to have it. He had not yet learned how cruel fate could be, nor how deeply it could wound when the one he loved turned her own hand to cut straight into his heart.

How shameless — she had turned him into this, and yet she still mourned for who he had been.

But Qinglan still had to say it.

“You already suspected I broke off the engagement for my sister’s sake. You simply did not know the exact reason — is that not so?” She said it plainly: “Or did you truly believe I broke off the engagement because I feared you might die in battle? That I was a coward who deserted at the moment of truth?”

If it were the former, everything since her return to the capital had been nothing more than a penance she had chosen to endure. If it were the latter, it meant they had never truly known each other at all.

But she was Ye Qinglan. She said this not to reproach anyone, but only to state her own reasoning.

“So that was why you never explained?” Cui Jingyu immediately grasped her meaning, and laughed coldly: “Either I knew the truth and still wanted nothing more to do with you. Or I had judged you by the standards of a petty person and misjudged your noble sacrifice entirely — in which case we had even less reason to be together. So you simply passed judgment on us both, all by yourself?”

In the deep of the night, his silhouette was sharp and beautiful, like an immovable mountain peak. This was the bitter wine she had brewed with her own hands — naturally, she was the one to drink it.

Qinglan let out a rueful smile.

She leaned against the flower tree, like a butterfly pinned in place. A strand of hair had slipped from her knot, and a tendril of wisteria had fallen across it. Even her dishevelment was beautiful in its way — like a poem.

“I simply felt there was no longer any point, Jingyu.” Her eyes lowered, and there was a stillness in her, the stillness of someone who has made her peace with fate: “All that came before, I was the one who wronged you. But if you still care about what we once were — if you still carry any attachment to who we used to be — then let us end it properly. This entire spring has been nothing but torment. It should end. I think we cannot go back — perhaps it would be better to let it all go.”

The fire in Cui Jingyu’s eyes ignited in an instant.

“Why should we let it go?” He still pressed her against the tree, demanding an answer: “When it began, you were the one who decided to begin. When it ends, you are the one who announces it’s over. Then what were these four years?”

And Ye Qinglan finally said it.

“They were a mistake we made in our youth.”

They were my failure to govern myself — knowing I carried a weight too great to allow myself the freedom to love someone, and yet being unable to stop myself from being drawn to you. Falling further into your pursuit day by day, like a moth to a flame, hurtling toward a destiny I could not escape. They were my youth and my ignorance, believing I could challenge fate itself — believing that in the season of wisteria in full bloom, I could quietly make a promise, as if hiding a great secret. That secret grew and grew, until it brought us both to ruin.

Cui Jingyu was, as she expected, enraged — but even in his rage, he would not choose to harm her. Instead, his fist struck the tree. The wisteria shuddered and petals fell in cascades, perfectly framing this farewell.

He was like a caged creature, trapped in the spring of four years ago — unwilling to let go, even now, even as both of them were already so different from who they had been.

“It is I who wronged you,” Qinglan said then.

“I don’t want an apology.” Cui Jingyu’s eyes remained fixed on her. This was the young man she had loved. She loved him still, even now.

But she could only do this much.

She was Ye Qinglan — always the most skilled at sacrificing those she loved most.

“Then what do you want, Jingyu?” She asked him. “I am already this kind of person — always thinking of my sister, always putting you last. I have already sacrificed you once. I can sacrifice you a second time. A person like me — I was never worthy of loving anyone to begin with. From the day I met you four years ago, I knew it.”

Yet she had still stolen what she had no right to. Thinking she could evade fate’s punishment, thinking the world offered a way to have it all — like a greedy child who believes she can sneak a piece of candy that was never hers, right under the adults’ eyes.

And so in the end she had been driven to the edge of a cliff — and she had let go of him without hesitation, without even giving him an explanation. She was this cowardly and this selfish. She had never deserved a love that was given with everything.

“None of that matters to me.” He still held out for what she could not give him, and reached up to cup her face: “I don’t want any of that.”

Qinglan caught the scent of wine on him — the kind Lingbo had mentioned: the Emperor, despite his age, sometimes had a mischievous streak, and at what was ostensibly a spring hunt night banquet, he served strong liquor infused with mimosa blossoms, sweet and mild-tasting, utterly impossible to detect — and before you knew it, you were drunk. Wei Yushan had had only a few cups and woken the next morning barely able to get up from the headache.

“You are drunk, Jingyu,” she even found herself trying to counsel him: “Let me have someone see you back.”

He remained unmoved, and only looked at her, then asked: “What road leads back to Tonghua Du?”

Her tears fell at once.

He let go.

This was the first time she had ever cried in front of him. Those tears fell on the back of his hand, burning there — like a wound that had never fully healed.

He had never known what to do with her. She was the one who was in the wrong, and she was the one who was crying — and yet the moment her tears fell, he became again that young man of twenty, standing helplessly before the girl he loved, knowing only that if she would stop crying, he would do anything.

And she knew this too.

Just as she had on the day of the Peach Blossom Banquet — simply being near him made her feel utterly safe. Because she also knew: as long as he was there, he would not allow her to come to harm. Because he was Cui Jingyu. Because he loved her, helplessly and without remedy. Not for a single moment had she ever doubted this.

She simply could not be with him anymore.

“There is no road back to Tonghua Du.” She heard her own voice saying: “Jingyu, let me go — and let yourself go too…”

She no longer wanted the ending she had once dared to dream of. She only wanted to be Ye Lingbo’s and Yanyan’s sister — and perhaps A’Cuo’s as well. She would release him, let him go toward a more fortunate future — one in which she had no part. He would meet someone else, someone whose eyes held only him, who would never bring sudden devastation, never drive a blade into the soft place he guarded, no pain, no tears…

She had not released herself. She could not.

She only knew he could not bear her pleading.

And so he let go of her, and stood there in the forest, at a loss. Chun Ming only dared approach then. She took Qinglan’s hand and led her away, hurrying out like someone fleeing fate itself.

Chun Ming could not help looking back.

In the midst of the fallen blossoms, Cui Jingyu still stood where he was — like a general after a defeat.

He had fought the hardest battles in the world. But this one — he had never been able to win.

He did not even know how to win it. Because Ye Qinglan was the one who stood opposite him. Against her, every strategy failed him. He became a creature that could only struggle uselessly, waiting for the inevitable outcome to arrive.