On Pei Yunshuo’s study desk stood a wooden tower. The tower was tall, each wooden block personally whittled by his dagger. Very few people could enter his study, and everyone who did would marvel at this wooden tower, wondering why the Commander of the Palace Guards, skilled in music and archery, eschewed wine and pleasure, preferring such peculiar hobbies instead.

He started building his first wooden tower block after his mother’s death. When the Lady of Zhaoning Manor was surrounded by rebel troops, his father watched helplessly as his mother died at their hands. Upon receiving the news, he rushed there but arrived one step too late. Breaking free from his guards, he threw himself before his mother, only managing to cover the gaping wound on her neck. Fresh blood gushed like a spring, unstoppable, as his mother told him: “Mo’er… quickly… run quickly.”

For a long time, he thought his mother’s “run quickly” meant fleeing from the chaos of rebel blades. It wasn’t until much later that he understood that “run quickly” meant leaving the Pei family.

He didn’t understand.

His mother was dead, Uncle Bai’s family was dead, and his maternal grandfather’s family was gone too. The new emperor had ascended the throne, and Pei Di seemed busy with unknown matters daily. The Pei Manor was shrouded in gloom then, with Pei Yunshu falling ill from the shock, depressed and unable to eat.

He remembered how his mother used to make small wontons, so he made them for Pei Yunshu, feeding her spoonful by spoonful. When they reached the last one, Pei Yunshu’s tears fell.

“Mo,” his sister cried, “from now on, it’s just you and me.” From now on, it would be just the two of them.

His father’s cold indifference was already evident at that moment. Though only fourteen, he vaguely sensed something suspicious about the consecutive deaths in his maternal family. He tried to get his father to investigate thoroughly, but Pei Di coldly refused, strictly forbidding him from mentioning it again.

“Don’t cause trouble for the Pei family, just be a good heir,” Pei Di warned, “Don’t forget, you’re not the only son in the Pei family.”

Of course, the Pei family had more than one son – there was also Pei Yunxiao. Since his mother’s death, he’d even heard matchmakers visiting to discuss remarriage with Pei Di.

The Lord of Zhaoning was in his prime; he couldn’t possibly remain a widower forever. Human hearts change easily, shifting like the wind. So he coldly replied, “Without the Pei family, without the title of Zhaoning Manor’s heir, I can still seek revenge.” “There’s plenty of time ahead, we’ll see how things go.”

Seeking the truth without help was especially difficult. From his grandfather’s surviving confidant, he learned a shocking secret: the deaths of his grandfather’s family, his uncle’s family, and his mother were all connected to the former Crown Prince’s death.

It turned out his enemy was now the supreme ruler and his flesh-and-blood father had chosen glory over family.

On that rainy autumn night, all households were silent, cold rain fell steadily, and the young man sat on the wall, listening coldly to the urgent chirping of crickets in the courtyard, one after another, his eyes filled with desolation.

The path to revenge was fraught with countless difficulties, endless to the eye, and he was all alone, like an ant climbing a giant mountain, uncertain of success or how to succeed, the future path obscure.

In his troubled state, he casually pulled a tree branch from outside the door, carefully carving it with his gleaming dagger until it gradually became a smooth wooden block.

Pei Yunshuo gazed at that wooden block for a long time, making up his mind. People are born, the sun rises, climbing the mountain is slow, and descending is swift.

He was in his prime of youth and vigor. Rather than letting this opportunity slip by, his mother’s death couldn’t be in vain. As her child, if he could tolerate his family’s grievance, how was he different from beasts?

Revenge was difficult, as hard as reaching heaven, but small wooden blocks accumulated over years could build into a towering fortress. To reach heaven, one must first start climbing. He placed the wooden block on his desk, thus deciding on revenge.

An elderly official from the Privy Council who had old ties with his grandfather gave Pei Yunshuo a secret directive, telling him to seek someone in Southern Su. Emperor Liang had plotted the Crown Prince’s death in the autumn flood, then silenced all who knew, but there were always one or two who slipped through the net, sensing something amiss and fleeing far away. He needed to bring this “witness” back to the capital to become a “weight” in his revenge.

So he went to Southern Su, blade in hand.

The journey was harsh with wind and frost. He had once lived in luxury, unfamiliar with worldly hardships, but once on the road, he became just another traveler, journeying day and night with only an oil lamp for company, traveling north and south, gradually coming to understand.

After tremendous difficulties, he found the “witness” and persuaded them to return to the capital with him, but when he turned around, he was stabbed in the back by the “witness.” They alerted the officials who pursued and tried to kill him. He escaped nine deaths out of ten, and when he thought death was certain, he met a small thief collecting corpses at the execution ground.

The corpse-collecting peddler held their hands in prayer while skillfully taking the dead person’s heart and liver. He was bewildered and pursued the small figure with his knife, who had saved his life.

The peddler was a young woman, not very old, with poor medical skills, stitching his wounds messily. In the cold weather, she wore a cloud-patterned scarf, her body full of mysterious scars.

He smiled outwardly while remaining completely indifferent inside.

There were countless pitiful people in the world; he had no interest in others’ suffering, nor did he want to inquire.

But perhaps it was because that night in Southern Su was too cold, or perhaps the oil lamp’s flame beneath the dilapidated deity statue was too warm. In the quiet lamplight, he was momentarily moved, allowing her to force him to scratch a debt note on the wall and give her that bronze ring.

Life-saving benefactor, he thought, this repayment was too light.

He survived and returned to the capital, experienced assassination attempts, and met Yan Xi. Later, this experience became the second “wood block” of his tower.

His third wooden block came after joining Yan Xi. This Privy Council Commander, who had once proposed to his mother and been rejected, and who was known to many as loving without reciprocation, seemed to particularly dislike him. Every day he made him train in combat with different people, rotating opponents without rest, leaving him bruised and battered. Then he began assigning him missions, missions that inevitably involved killing.

The first time he killed someone, he returned and washed his hands many times until his fingers turned red. Later, he lost his appetite and stared blankly at his mother’s memorial tablet.

This was just the beginning; perhaps he would kill many more people in the future. Some things, once started, cannot be ended. This path was indeed difficult to walk; halfway through, unable to advance or retreat, yet one cannot turn back.

He silently carved the third wooden block and placed it on the desk.

The fourth wooden block came from witnessing an interrogation. Yan Xi wanted him to sit and watch as they questioned someone who had been involved in the Crown Prince’s autumn flood incident. Yan Xi needed to interrogate him, but this person was stubborn. The Privy Council’s torture methods were cruel – they cut an opening in his chest, placed a black rat inside, and then applied heat. The rat, fleeing from the fire, continuously clawed at the person’s flesh, leaving him bloody and mangled.

The man’s screams were terrible. Afterward, he held onto the door frame and vomited for a long time.

Yan Xi walked past him with a cold laugh: “Get used to it early, otherwise, you’ll be the one being tortured in the future.” He returned home, closed his eyes for a long while, and added the fourth block to the tower’s peak.

The wooden blocks gradually accumulated like a mountain, each piece round yet sharp. He accepted fewer and fewer missions, killed fewer and fewer people, and still couldn’t handle torture interrogations with ease.

Walking in low places, accustomed to living behind a mask, laughing, killing, walking, his heart showing no ripples. My tower gradually took shape, and I hadn’t placed another block for a long time. Until I met Pei Yun.

Pei Yun was a person without secrets.

From the first time I saw you, from that sharp silver needle flower, although the man was delicate and lovely, pitifully beautiful, I saw hatred and vengeance in your eyes at first glance. Vengeance.

I was most unfamiliar with hatred.

So at the Blue Lotus Festival in Wansi Temple, I became suspicious the moment I first saw you moving through the shadows.

A male doctor with miraculous healing skills and boundless compassion turned out to be a male Yama who killed with his own hands at night – it was too strange. You said you wanted to stay detached, yet wherever you went, whether by chance or design, there was always bloodshed.

When the Imperial Examination fraud case broke out, Pei Yun was involved, pure and untainted, yet your traces were everywhere. So when I received the report, I led people to your door, thinking I would catch the male Yama’s trail.

Who knew that what was buried under the tree was just pork?

The man’s gaze was filled with mockery, turning to say he would frame me for murder. You were outrageously bold, and fearless; in your eyes, I could only see madness.

I admired that calculation and calmness, yet also suspected you were working for the Crown Prince or Eighth Prince, or perhaps for Chi Yutai. Otherwise, without someone backing you, how could you be so fearless? Yet you were just a commoner, and I couldn’t find even a thread of evidence. Each time I tested you, you revealed nothing.

Yet at that time, you saved my sister, and I owed you a debt of gratitude.

In this world, debts of gratitude are hard to repay, and the one you saved was my most important person. I had exposed my weakness to Pei Yun, yet I knew nothing about you.

I had already harbored some competitive thoughts, eight parts sincere and two parts testing, unwilling to be at a disadvantage. I was someone who interrogated the most difficult suspects to break, while you were the most difficult suspect to crack, sometimes even turning the tables.

Chance meetings at Yuxian Tower, hiding in snowy nights, fate seemed determined to entangle us together.

I once laughingly asked Liyue: “As the saying goes, ‘Spread kindness widely, where in life isn’t there karma? Don’t make enemies, the road becomes narrow and hard to turn around.'”

“Young Master Lu, that fate between you, is it kindness or enmity?”

Pei Yun raised his eyelids to look at me once, coldly answering: “Haunted Tower. *Evil fate.”

That fate was indeed confusing,

Especially when I discovered my name was also on Pei Yun’s kill list.

I had considered many possibilities for your identity – Crown Prince, Eighth Prince, Yuyuan, even others, but never expected you to be a special figure, just a lone male doctor who came to the capital for family, without background or support. You deceived me, recording everything like an insignificant “nobody,” making yourself a bargaining chip. All for revenge.

Those who reach desperate straits are always madly reckless, cutting the drugged incense into seven pieces. Your dagger was as determined as you, firelight reflecting a muddy mess, the man sitting amidst the chaos, his voice containing barely controlled sobs.

“If you need justice, you can find it yourself.”

I stopped.

The person before my eyes suddenly overlapped with the one from the ancestral hall years ago.

At this moment, I too was like this, having nothing, except myself.

Time flowed swiftly like water, and I had almost forgotten how I felt at seventeen, but in the man before my eyes, I saw my former self. So I handed over a handkerchief.

On New Year’s Eve, the fireworks at Dechun Tower would last for a long time. When I returned home, it wasn’t very late. Yue Shu and Baozhu were already asleep. I entered my study, and under the desk, the wooden tower I hadn’t touched for a long time stood silently.

I sat down, and that night, I added another wooden block.

Long ago, I had already married Pei Yun. The palace guards on night duty would drink and chat, discussing whether men’s tears were useful to women. Passing by, I was called over and asked for the answer to that question.

I answered: “Depends on the person.”

Someone else asked: “What about Young Master Lu’s tears?”

Another guard teased: “Young Master Lu cries!” Lu Yue’s actions were nervous and calm, indeed looking like someone who would cry.

Yan Xi was about to speak, but my mind recalled the tears from that New Year’s Eve night. I thought, your tears, I actually couldn’t handle them at all.

Things didn’t end on that New Year’s Eve night. The tower I had built for so long gradually began to grow again.

Pei Yun was sent to the Southern Medicine House to copy prescriptions, being ground down by Guo Maoliang. Influenced by the Minister of the Imperial Treasury, Medical Officer Cui Guo deliberately sent you to diagnose Jin Dourong. You always had many troubles, many of which were self-inflicted. I watched coldly from the sidelines, wanting to be like an uninvolved insider, yet always consciously giving attention. I had mixed feelings about the tower.

On one hand, I felt you were overestimating yourself, confronting the Chi family was like eggs hitting stone. On the other hand, I strangely suspected that if you wanted to, you could succeed – you would succeed.

But I couldn’t help worrying, so I secretly helped, as if investing some kind of expectation in you, to the point of doing things beyond my bounds. Going to Mangming Village, speaking to the Yang family.

The tower you knocked down scattered everywhere, some things spinning out of control from that moment. Zhu Feng saw through it all, always mocking and satirizing, but I didn’t agree. Until the siege on the outskirts of the capital.

The anger I felt seeing Pei Yun injured almost made me draw my blade and kill Pei Yunshu in public. I couldn’t bear to see Pei Yun bow his head before others, couldn’t bear to see you endure humiliation before your enemies. The person I wanted to protect, why should they suffer such treatment?

Emotional hearts cannot be denied.

Yan Xi’s aunt wanted to help you recover and was immediately agreed to. Pei Yun always accepted others’ help, while I approached time and again, only to be pushed away time and again. The tower in my study that you had once knocked down, I never continued rebuilding it, but the bitterness hadn’t lessened at all.

You became a new puzzle.

The world always has many puzzles, and I’d heard that women’s hearts are hard for men to understand. Yue was particularly exemplary among them.

Sometimes I felt you must have feelings for me, but the next moment, you would throw away the hairpin, coldly pushing me away.

I didn’t understand what Pei Yun was thinking.

Before the Crown Prince’s ceremony, Pei Yunshu died at his father’s hands. You were cornered and desperate, already resolved to die, willing to perish together. I rushed to stop Pei Yun, but upon seeing his eyes, I suddenly understood – you didn’t want to live at all.

Shortly after, I prayed you would go to Southern Su.

Everything had already been arranged properly. I had no worries, staying in the capital to add the final stroke to the long-planned revenge.

During Emperor Yue Yuan’s reign, the court was full of bribery and corruption, selling official positions and titles. The Grand Tutor Pei Yuntie especially loved evil and hated good, suppressing the virtuous, and many in court secretly couldn’t stand it. The Privy Council and Palace Guards’ military power were unified under Prince Ning’s control, succeeding unbelievably smoothly.

The Eighth Prince and Crown Prince fought openly and secretly, neither ever taking the idle prince seriously – one side indulging in comfort, one side lying in wait.

During the massacre, Chi Yutai pointed at me and accused: “Yan Xiying, he dares to commit treason!”

I smiled faintly: “Speaking of committing treason, who could compare to Your Majesty?”

“Someone like him,” Yan Xiying said coldly, “is worthy to be emperor?”

“Why not worthy?” The emperor raged. “How am I inferior to Yuan Nan? Just because I was the Crown Prince, that throne should be in my hands! I have no loyal ministers, no brothers, nothing of the worst – Father Emperor deceived you, saying with his mouth that you were my most beloved son, but in reality still favored others, wanting to leave all the worst things to me!”

“We should all die!”

“I should have kept him back then!” Yue Yuan gasped for breath, staring distortedly at the approaching Prince Ning. “And him too! Years of endurance weren’t for the sake of an idle prince today!”

“Brother, how could you be any different?” Prince Ning smiled coldly. “He should be grateful that he occupied what he stole for so many years.”

“A mere thieving son, daring to covet the throne, how laughable.” The blade fell, and all grudges ended abruptly.

The revenge plotted for years finally came to an end. Small vengeance achieved, looking back at the past, I couldn’t quite recall how the path had been, my heart empty.

I wonder if Pei Yun felt the same way that night when he looked up at the fireworks by Changle Pool after achieving his small revenge.

After I finished handling the remaining matters in the capital, Yuan Lang sent me to Qishui. I knew Yuan Lang did this deliberately – that Prince Ning who accompanied me, even before ascending to the throne, still retained a bit of his former gossip and common nature. I went along with it.

Yan Xiying understood clearly: when people interact, it’s like walking face to face – some walk slowly, some walk quickly. If you walk too fast it doesn’t matter; I’m willing to take a few extra steps. I’m glad I took those extra steps.

Only then did I know how much you had suffered, how much pain you had endured, how lonely you had been. So you had always pushed me away because of deeper unspoken difficulties.

In my youth I was proud and arrogant, looking down on others, unwilling to deal with people’s invitations. My mother told me: “Mo’er, being like that, in the future, no one will want to talk to you.”

“No need.”

“But think about it, in a person’s life, whether happy or unhappy, if there’s only one person to experience it alone, it will be very bitter.”

Pei Yun had been that lonely before. But not anymore.

From now on, whether thoughts of joy, partings or meetings, love or hate, I will share them all with you.

I walked back to the study. Yue was sitting at the desk, seriously building my wooden tower. The tower stood low and clustered, the bottom piece refusing to fit properly. After several attempts, his face showed impatience.

I tugged at my lips, walked to your side, and held your hand to place that wooden block, saying: “Don’t rush, building a tower requires concentration.”

You were held in my embrace, your hair brushing my chin. After a pause, you said unhappily: “With you there, how can I concentrate?”

“Tsk, are you blaming me for distracting you?” “Indeed.”

“It’s all because of that face of yours,” I sighed.

Pei Yun turned his face around, staring at me intently. After a while, he said seriously: “That face indeed looks like an old acquaintance of yours.”

“What old acquaintance?”

“Someone who owes you quite a bit of money.”

I raised my eyebrows: “The money’s gone, but at least I got the person.”

Pei Yun pretended to be disappointed: “Well, the face is acceptable.”

“Then you’ve profited.”

You looked up at me, watched for a while, and couldn’t help but smile. Yan Xi’s aunt smiled too.

The wooden tower stood quietly on the table, once built up piece by piece, then suddenly knocked down, over and over again, back and forth, witnessing my past and present, what should be and what shouldn’t be.

The days ahead are long, and I dare not say there won’t be more confusion, but I haven’t built the tower for a long time now. You were the last piece. And the most meaningful.