The cliff face was bare. Lu Tong stared blankly at the withered wood in her hand.

All the chimuteng on the cliff face had withered.

This plant was cold-resistant and could survive in extremely cold places. Its leaves were highly toxic. In the past when she lived on Luomei Peak, she had gathered it for Yunniang during winter—it had been deep winter then too.

Actually, before coming up the mountain, though she didn’t dare be absolutely certain, she felt there was a sixty to seventy percent chance of success. She hadn’t expected that after just two short years away, the vines she had thought would remain lush forever would also wither. Nothing in this world lasted forever.

Pei Yunying took the withered broken wood from her hand and examined it with lowered eyes.

Lu Tong came back to her senses.

“The chimuteng has withered.” She turned around. “We’ve made this trip for nothing.”

Pei Yunying caught the disappointment in her tone.

He glanced at Lu Tong, the corner of his mouth curving up, speaking with apparent indifference: “It’s not entirely for nothing. We had to try to know the result.”

Lu Tong heard the comfort in his words, but still couldn’t help feeling disappointed.

Cuicui was in mortal danger. The toxicity of houbian was difficult to treat. If Chang Jin and Ji Xun used the new medicine for Cuicui, it would be like drinking poison to quench thirst. The chimuteng from Pingzhou would take too long. At this rate, how could Sunan’s epidemic be resolved?

Was there really no better solution?

A cold wind struck her face, making Lu Tong shiver.

The higher up the mountain, the fiercer the wind and snow became. Large snowflakes fell in abundance. With each step, her lower legs sank into the accumulated snow, making progress extremely difficult.

This was heavier snow than Luomei Peak had seen in the past.

Seeing her face pale from the cold, Pei Yunying reached out to pull her cloak tighter and asked: “What do you plan to do now? Should we go back?”

Lu Tong looked up toward the distance.

The mountain was much colder than the valley below. Sunan hadn’t seen sunlight for half a month. Thick gray clouds piled above Luomei Peak, and it was already getting late.

Lu Tong fell into thought.

Actually, with her pace and familiarity with Luomei Peak, a round trip in one day would be sufficient. However, Sunan rarely had such heavy snow in many years, making the mountain paths much more difficult than before. They had stumbled and delayed quite a bit along the way. If they headed back now, the sky would probably be completely dark before they even got down the mountain.

Walking on snowy mountains at night was far too dangerous, especially given her current physical condition…

Lu Tong shook her head and looked toward higher ground: “Let’s continue climbing up.”

Pei Yunying paused slightly, seeming somewhat surprised, but quickly nodded and readily agreed: “Alright.”

This time it was Lu Tong’s turn to be surprised. She asked: “Why don’t you ask where I’m going?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Pei Yunying smiled carelessly. “You’re a medical officer, I’m a guard. Protecting you is my duty.”

Lu Tong paused, unable to help but look at him.

The person before her looked at her with smiling eyes, his tone serious, as if even if she said she wanted to take him to a mass grave right now, he would gladly agree to go.

Was he giving up completely, or had he decided to stick with her?

After a moment of silence, Lu Tong snatched the withered vine from Pei Yunying’s hand: “Then hurry up, otherwise before we reach the summit, we’ll have to walk at night. Mountain paths at night are very dangerous.”

Pei Yunying raised his eyebrows, looking at her back, and said: “Then Dr. Lu, remember to be careful leading the way.”

Lu Tong: “…Hurry up and follow.”

The higher they climbed, the fiercer the wind and snow became. The flying snow filling the sky almost blinded their eyes. After walking for about half an hour, when the sky grew darker with only a bit of gray light shrouding the mountain peak, a large expanse of red plum blossoms gradually appeared through the swirling snow curtain.

The red plums were brilliant, dots of bright red. Not far beneath them stood a solitary grass hut.

This grass hut wasn’t large and was quite dilapidated. It was almost completely buried by wild grass front and back, showing only a dim shadow. Blown by the surrounding wind and snow, it looked like a phantom on the mountain at night, making it hard to distinguish between reality and illusion.

Pei Yunying was still observing when Lu Tong had already walked forward.

She stopped in front of the grass hut.

It seemed to still be as she remembered, yet completely different from her memories. She had spent long seven years here. Apart from the Lu family home in Changwu County, this was the place she had stayed longest.

She had thought she would never return to this place in her lifetime, never expecting to revisit this old haunt today.

“Is this where you used to live?” Pei Yunying’s voice reached her ears.

There was only this one small house in the vicinity. Earlier when they came, she had already mentioned to Pei Yunying that she had lived here many years ago. This person was always clever—some things he understood at a glance.

So she didn’t hide it: “Yes.”

Pei Yunying looked down at her, thinking of something, the corner of his mouth curving up.

“So you did invite me to your home as a guest after all?”

Lu Tong: “…”

She carried her medical box and walked forward without looking back, saying: “You can also stay outside.”

The two walked to the grass hut, and Pei Yunying pushed open the door.

Perhaps because no one had set foot here for a long time, when the door opened, dust immediately flew about. Lu Tong turned her head away and waved to disperse the scattered dust, telling Pei Yunying to take out a fire starter from the bundle to light. The room then had some illumination.

Pei Yunying looked around with raised eyes.

This was a room that wasn’t spacious enough—even somewhat cramped.

Against the wall was a narrow grass bed that could only accommodate one person sleeping.

By the door sat a square table with a stove placed beneath it. Close to the door was a locked wooden cabinet, and after that there was nothing else—quite desolate with bare walls.

Lu Tong bent down and found a key under the grass bed, using it to open the locked wooden cabinet.

In the cabinet, the utensils were still neatly arranged as she had left them. Luomei Peak was desolate and uninhabited—no one had come to the grass hut. She took out an oil lamp from the cabinet, added lamp oil, lit it with the fire starter, and placed the lit lamp on the square table. The quiet lamplight dispelled some of the room’s desolation.

Lu Tong turned around to see Pei Yunying standing with arms crossed, surveying the surroundings, so she asked: “What’s so interesting to look at?”

This room had almost nothing except a bed—you could see everything at a glance. Why was he examining it so seriously?

Pei Yunying glanced at her and spoke deliberately: “First time entering your boudoir, naturally I’m curious.”

Lu Tong: “…”

This person was simply sick.

He walked inside, his gaze critically sweeping over the crude furnishings in the room, saying: “You used to live in such a shabby place?”

It was damp and dark here, narrow and low. Compared to the interrogation room of the Palace Command, it might just have one more bed, and wasn’t even as spacious as the interrogation room.

“Naturally it can’t compare with Your Excellency’s residence.”

“Didn’t you say you lived on the mountain with your master?” He turned around again, his gaze sweeping the corners. “Why is there only one bed?”

The cramped room had an even more cramped bed that looked like it could only accommodate one person.

Lu Tong pressed her lips together: “She didn’t live here.”

Yunniang didn’t live here.

The sounds from testing medicines would interfere with Yunniang’s work on new medicines, so Yunniang lived in another grass hut. The neighboring hut contained Yunniang’s medical books and pharmaceutical records. Before Yunniang died, she had told her to burn her body together with those medical books.

So that room no longer existed.

Hearing her words, Pei Yunying looked at her with surprise: “So you lived here alone?”

“More or less.”

Most of the time, Yunniang wasn’t on the mountain. Many nights, she had indeed lived here alone.

Lonely, solitary, living days in monotony.

Pei Yunying watched her, his eyes flashing with contemplation.

When he first met Lu Tong, it was already six years ago. Lu Tong was only twelve years old then.

Luomei Peak was desolate. Even Li Wenhu felt fearful when mentioning this place. How had a twelve-year-old girl managed to endure living alone here?

His probing gaze was too intense. Lu Tong turned around matter-of-factly and took out bedding from the cabinet. The bedding hadn’t been aired out and felt gloomy, but fortunately it hadn’t gotten damp. It would do for sleeping on for one night.

Lu Tong: “Tonight I’m afraid Your Excellency will have to make do and sleep here temporarily.”

Pei Yunying made a “tsk” sound, crossing his arms as he looked at that narrow bed, saying: “But there’s only one bed here.”

Lu Tong walked up to him and threw the heavy bedding into his arms: “You sleep on the floor.”

“Is this appropriate?”

Pei Yunying looked at her with a smile: “After all, we’re an unmarried man and woman. A man and woman alone together in one room—if word got out, it would cause misunderstandings.”

Lu Tong turned around and looked at him with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes: “If Your Excellency truly cherishes your reputation, you can also sleep outside the door. For the sake of our past friendship, I’ll definitely collect your corpse first thing tomorrow morning.”

Pei Yunying stared at her expression. After a moment, he spoke with suppressed laughter: “You really do get angry easily now.”

“It’s because Your Excellency is too boring.”

Lu Tong spoke coldly: “I need to start a fire. Please trouble Your Excellency to go outside and cut some plum branches.”

Pei Yunying nodded: “Alright, you’re the host, you decide.”

He turned and went out.

Watching his figure disappear outside the door, Lu Tong finally relaxed and sat down in the chair by the table.

Perhaps her old ailment had been acting up more frequently lately. Her stamina wasn’t what it used to be. Climbing to the mountain top today had been quite strenuous. She was now feeling completely exhausted—if not for this, today’s pace wouldn’t have been so slow.

Lu Tong reached out to wipe the sweat from her forehead and looked around.

After Yunniang died, she had actually wanted to burn this house down too, thinking she would never return. However, when the burning torch was in her hand, at the last moment, Lu Tong suddenly changed her mind.

She had kept this room.

She had lived here too long. If Changwu County’s Lu residence witnessed one “Lu Min,” then this grass hut on Luomei Peak witnessed another “Lu Tong.” She couldn’t deny “Lu Tong’s” existence. It seemed that if she burned it all down, the past seven years would be destroyed with it, leaving no trace.

Therefore, she locked all the utensils she had used in the cabinet and left with Yin Zheng. Perhaps many years later someone would come to this place, or perhaps wildly growing weeds would completely bury this house, and everything from those seven years would disappear on Luomei Peak.

She hadn’t expected that many years later, she would revisit the old place with such an unexpected person.

“Creak—”

The door was pushed open, and Pei Yunying walked in from outside.

He carried an armful of dried plum branches in his hands, apparently having deliberately sought out ones that hadn’t been soaked by wind and snow to cut down. Lu Tong bent down to drag out the stove from under the table that hadn’t been used for a long time. Pei Yunying pulled her hand away: “Let me do it.”

He stuffed the evenly cut small pieces of plum branches into the stove and lit them with the fire starter.

Lu Tong had been somewhat worried that the fire wouldn’t catch, but unexpectedly Pei Yunying’s movements were very skilled, as if he often did such things while traveling. Before long, crackling sounds began.

Half a window was open, and occasionally snowflakes drifted into the room from outside. The dim yellow lamplight cast a warm tone over the small house in the wind and snow.

Lu Tong watched him.

He sat in front of the brazier, head lowered as he whittled the remaining plum branches in his hands to make them neat and easy to stuff into the stove.

The hazy lamplight cast a layer of light on the young man’s delicate and handsome face, like a sheathed silver blade—no sharpness visible, only magnificence and gentleness.

Without looking up, he continued his work seriously. As if knowing her gaze was on him, he said: “What are you staring at me for?”

Lu Tong was startled and looked away.

He smiled without stopping his movements: “Have something to ask?”

Lu Tong was silent for a moment, then finally spoke: “After I left, are Yin Zheng and the others doing well?”

She had been away from the capital for some time now.

Communication by letter along the way was poor, and now Sunan’s postal stations had all been suspended. She wondered how Renxin Medical Clinic was doing now.

“They’re doing well,” Pei Yunying replied.

Lu Tong lowered her eyes. This was the answer she most wanted to hear.

The room was quiet. Pei Yunying’s movements in whittling the plum branches paused, and he suddenly spoke: “Lu Tong.”

He said: “Although you sent me a letter entrusting them to my care, weren’t you worried that I might refuse your request?”

Lu Tong’s decision to go to Sunan had come very suddenly.

Yet that final letter asking him to look after Renxin Medical Clinic was written with exceptional detail.

So detailed in every aspect that thinking about it now still made him angry.

“I wasn’t worried.” Lu Tong said: “I believe that even if I didn’t ask you, if Renxin Medical Clinic was in trouble, you would still look after them.”

Pei Yunying was startled.

Lu Tong’s voice continued: “After all, you’re an honored guest who attended the clinic’s opening celebration—their close friend.”

The crackling sounds from the brazier at their feet became clearer in the cold, quiet snowy night. Light smoke drifted from the brazier, quickly swept away by the north wind outside the window.

Hearing this, the young man chuckled softly and looked at her: “Lu Tong, you have me all figured out, don’t you?”

Lu Tong’s fingers curled slightly as she remained silent.

She did have him figured out.

It was strange. When she first arrived in the capital, she had been wary and guarded against this person before her, occasionally even wanting to eliminate him. He was someone who stood on the opposite shore from her, watching from across the water, and they would never intersect.

But at some point, she seemed to understand him very well. She could confidently entrust everything behind her to him, certain that he would keep his promises.

She had traveled from down Luomei Peak to the capital, then from the capital back to the top of Luomei Peak. Along the way, she had repaid kindness and settled scores, handling everything cleanly and decisively. Only with the person before her—just like that IOU on the ruined temple wall years ago—coming and going, muddled and confused, always leaving some unclear regrets.

Unable to settle the debt.

The fire in the brazier burned vigorously, warming the room. Pei Yunying stood up and took the red clay water pot that Lu Tong had just retrieved from the cabinet. He washed it clean outside the door and brought back snow water to boil.

A cold night guest comes, tea serves as wine; the bamboo stove bubbles as the fire glows red. Lu Tong suddenly felt somewhat grateful that she had kept everything in this room intact instead of burning it all clean.

He sat by the brazier boiling water, with two red clay tea cups on the table. Influenced by his calm demeanor, Lu Tong asked: “What happened in the palace afterward?”

The messenger from Mengtai Station had only said two brief sentences, yet the imperial city had been turned upside down. Though spoken lightly, Lu Tong knew the situation that day must have been very dangerous.

“Don’t you already know?” Pei Yunying lifted the pot lid. White snow accumulated in the pot, and when licked by flames, it immediately melted.

The first time he saw Lu Tong, she had also been boiling a pot of snow water. She had said then that this was called “winter snow.”

Six years had passed in a flash.

Lu Tong looked at him: “Are your people all right?”

Pei Yunying didn’t speak, his eyelashes lowered as he looked down.

That had actually been a very bloody night.

The counterattack that had been dormant for years was always cruel and merciless. Victory and defeat were common in military affairs, but for that position, there was only one chance.

The man who had once been invincible, who had killed his father and brother, had also been worn down by comfort, becoming worthless. His panic and unwillingness made this final battle seem ridiculous—a cornered beast dying in its own prison.

Emperor Liang Ming gripped the dragon throne in the Golden Luan Hall, looking at them with angry, incredulous eyes: “You, you, you actually betrayed me!”

Prince Ning smiled, Yan Xu was cold, the sounds of swords and weapons continued outside the hall, and he wiped the blood from his face, his eyes showing a madness he himself didn’t recognize.

“Your Majesty,” he said calmly, “that sword you owed me from the imperial night banquet five years ago—it’s time to repay it.”

In this world, each person had their own grievances.

Prince Ning bore the revenge for his father and brothers being murdered. He bore the revenge for his mother’s and maternal grandfather’s family’s blood debt. Even Emperor Liang Ming himself, in his final moment before death, believed his past acts of patricide and fratricide were merely born from revenge against the previous emperor’s inequality and injustice.

Some acted for revenge, some for gratitude, and others for love.

Love.

In the room, warm lamplight illuminated the young man’s handsome face. The silver embroidery on his dark brocade robe gleamed brilliantly under the light, yet that bit of brightness outlined his figure with a kind of lonely desolation.

Yan Xu acted for love, so Yan Xu died.

He died saving Xiao Zhufeng, but it was also intentional.

With the new emperor ascending the throne, the past relationship between the Palace Command and the Privy Council would inevitably become fodder for gossip. Even if the new emperor didn’t mention it, court rumors wouldn’t let it rest, making things difficult for him in the Palace Command and Xiao Zhufeng.

Yan Xu had blocked a sword for Xiao Zhufeng.

“Teacher!” He turned to shield Yan Xu, his eyes stinging.

The man who had never shown them a kind face lay in Xiao Zhufeng’s arms. The scar at the corner of his eye seemed to soften in the end. He reached out and tremblingly flicked both their heads, like his dissatisfaction after each training session in their youth.

“Don’t make that expression. It’s ugly as hell. Turn your faces away.” He scolded, but his tone was gentle, no longer having the vigor of the past.

“Let me rest a while. Don’t disturb me.”

“Teacher!” Xiao Zhufeng’s blood-stained hands trembled. “I’ll find a doctor. Hold on!”

But Yan Xu was looking into the distance.

“An old friend… enters my… dreams… reminding me… of long… yearning…”

He lay in Xiao Zhufeng’s arms, smiling as he lowered his head, gradually becoming silent.

Pei Yunying was dazed for a moment.

Yan Xu had never married and had no children in his life, only taking two disciples. And since the Pei family had cut all ties that year, Yan Xu was more like his father.

The pain of losing a father was unbearable.

Because of this pain, he felt surprisingly little about the Pei family’s destruction, as if he were an outsider watching from the sidelines.

Perhaps he had always been such a cold bastard.

“Pei Yunying?” Lu Tong suddenly spoke.

She rarely saw Pei Yunying with such an expression—one completely different from the Pei Yunying she knew. It seemed that if she didn’t wake him up, he would become someone else entirely.

Pei Yunying came back to his senses.

The snow water in the pot was boiling with tiny white bubbles floating up. He used a plum branch to skim off some of the foam, saying: “Qi Qing is dead.”

Lu Tong was slightly stunned.

“I told you,” he said, “I would kill him for you.”

Outside the door, the cold wind was loud, and the sound of tree branches being broken by the wind was like the tearing sound of a blade cutting into flesh.

When the Qi family was confiscated, he had specifically asked the new emperor for the right to handle Qi Qing’s punishment.

The Palace Command’s interrogation room had never held someone of the Grand Tutor’s status. He sat in the chair, watching that usually high and mighty old man shed his former arrogance and become an ordinary person.

Without power, without official position, the Grand Tutor was just an ordinary person.

“I heard the Grand Tutor’s favorite dish is called ‘Golden Minced Jade Strips.'”

He casually wiped the silver blade in his hand. “Select fresh, plump sea bass, remove bones, skin, pat dry, and slice thin.”

“What do you want to do?” Qi Qing spoke hoarsely, his prayer beads scattered on the ground.

“Actually, killing people is the same as killing fish. Hold it down, one cut, slice it open, and that’s it.”

He bent down, picked up a dark prayer bead from the ground, examined it for a moment, and smiled slightly.

“Grand Tutor, have a good taste.”

That night, the screams from the Palace Command’s interrogation room lasted the entire night. The next day when he went out, he stared at the solitary parasol tree in the courtyard for a long time.

The Lu family had perished because of the Qi family. Lu Tong had come to the capital for revenge because of the Qi family, forever living in regret and pain.

Now, old grievances were settled.

Thus, the dust had settled.

In the room, the lamplight was dim, with rustling wind and snow outside the window. The young man sat there with warm colors reflecting on his long lashes, like the shadow of a butterfly that had suddenly arrived on a snowy night.

He moved the boiled water pot to one side and said: “You’ve asked me so many questions. What about you?”

Lu Tong was startled: “What about me?”

Pei Yunying set down the water pot, looked at her, and smiled faintly.

He said: “Lu Tong, during these days in Sunan, haven’t you missed me at all?”