At that moment, Shen Xiling hadn’t yet realized what he was going to say next, so she relaxed her guard and answered truthfully: “The General is upright in character and has always treated me kindly.”

“He is indeed a gentleman,” Qi Ying said lightly, then suddenly raised his eyes to look at her, his gaze carrying some deeper meaning. “However, his kindness toward you probably isn’t solely due to his character.”

Shen Xiling was stunned and truly thought for a while before understanding his implication: he was saying… that Gu Juhan had other feelings for her?

Actually, Shen Xiling couldn’t be certain whether Gu Juhan liked her. Before the Buddha Bathing Festival, they had indeed had a conversation once, and she could vaguely sense something different then, somewhat ambiguous.

But with Qi Ying saying this now, Shen Xiling instinctively felt she couldn’t follow his line of thought, so she quickly shook her head and said: “Young Master is overthinking. The General is only taking care of me as entrusted, nothing more.”

Upon hearing this, Qi Ying smiled noncommittally but didn’t argue with her further.

He lowered his eyelids and picked up another piece of Chinese toon with his chopsticks, suddenly asking: “What about you?”

Shen Xiling didn’t understand his meaning and asked: “What?”

He put down his chopsticks and looked at her again. This time his expression became somewhat distant as he said: “He protected you for five years just as I did. Don’t you feel anything different toward him?”

These words…

Upon hearing this, Shen Xiling immediately frowned tightly. Her heart felt stabbed, and her speech quickened considerably as she said somewhat urgently: “What does Young Master mean by this? Do you suspect I have an affair with the General?”

Qi Ying looked at her across the short table. Though he sat inside the room, he still seemed surrounded by mountain mist, making it difficult for Shen Xiling to see clearly.

“Wenwen,” he sighed, “how do you know your feelings for me aren’t mere obsession?”

His gaze revealed boundless coldness, even more severe than the mountain chill.

“When you came of age, I once told you that life is long and encounters become increasingly complicated. Nine out of ten things go against one’s wishes. When facing troubles, you should remember not to look back,” he said lightly. When mentioning the past, he seemed both passionate and passionless, and at this point his voice grew even lower, becoming increasingly distant. “In the past, you and I indeed had deep feelings and were both reluctant to part, but that is already irretrievable history. Why must you insist on clinging to it?”

He looked at her as if he no longer loved her: “Do you truly find it so impossible to let me go? Or have you deceived yourself?”

His words fell into her ears one by one. Though she could understand each word clearly, when strung together they seemed like hieroglyphs.

Her gaze began to waver as she looked at him with some disbelief, asking: “…Young Master is saying that my feelings for you are false?”

He didn’t answer yes or no, but said even crueler words to her.

“Ten years ago I saved you, then kept you by my side for five years,” he said. “You were young then, perhaps still unable to distinguish between romantic love and other emotions. Or perhaps if someone else had saved you then, you would have fallen in love with them instead.”

His voice grew lighter and lighter, but the meaning grew heavier and heavier.

“What if it had been Gu Wenruo who saved you five years ago?” He looked into her eyes. “If he and I had switched places, would you still have fallen in love with me?”

Shen Xiling truly hadn’t expected that having already experienced so much heartbreak in her life, she could still feel such crushing pain at this moment.

She had indeed thought that after five years, their feelings might have faded, or perhaps he had fallen in love with someone else and no longer loved her. But she hadn’t thought… that he would doubt her feelings for him.

She could live for him, die for him, do anything for him, even become a different person for him. Yet he simply categorized her persistence through these long years as mere “obsession,” even thinking she could have loved someone else.

He was negating everything between them.

Negating her ten years, even her entire life.

After yesterday’s events, Shen Xiling had truly thought she wouldn’t shed tears anymore, but unexpectedly at that moment tears still fell involuntarily from her eyes. Having cried for so long yesterday, her tears had actually dried up. Her eye sockets were still painfully dry, and when tears flowed out, her head ached as if pierced by needles.

Yet she barely felt it, only staring at him unblinkingly, trying to detect some insincerity on his face, but ultimately failing.

“Do you truly think this way?” she asked him. “Or are you just trying to drive me away?”

Her tears fell on her clothing and quickly disappeared.

“If it’s to drive me away, could you use a different method?” Her eyelashes trembled slightly. “This method is somewhat… I can’t bear it.”

Qi Ying’s hands clenched beneath the table, also trembling slightly like hers, but he concealed it. His face appeared calm and unruffled, exactly as usual.

He remained silent.

Shen Xiling lowered her head slightly and poked at the bowl of egg custard with her chopsticks.

Its heat had dissipated, but the color remained beautiful and appealing. Yet he had only tasted it once at the very beginning and hadn’t touched it since.

Just like their relationship…

She still maintained it with great care, but he felt it had changed and was unwilling even to touch it anymore.

Shen Xiling closed her eyes and tried to calm her breathing, then summoned courage to look at him again, saying: “When we parted in Langya, you once said that stones don’t shift, and you promised you would always remember me.”

“Have you gone back on your word?”

“Or… were you just lying to me?”

“But why did you come to Shangjing? When we parted, you promised to come see me in five years. Now you’ve truly come. Great Liang has so many officials—why was it precisely you who came to escort the princess for the marriage alliance? Is this coincidence?”

“Why did you go to Yilou to see me that day? Why did you send me egg custard?”

“If you say I’m obsessed, then what about you?”

“If you say I couldn’t distinguish romantic feelings back then, then what about you?”

She questioned him sentence by sentence with considerable intensity, but it wasn’t really interrogation—she just wanted to seek an answer from him.

This time he finally stopped being silent.

He looked at her without avoidance and answered: “I came to Shangjing for state affairs, not to see you. That day at Yilou I indeed had thoughts of wanting to see you, but from behind the screen I saw you getting along harmoniously with Gu Wenruo, and I realized I was wrong.”

“You can walk into a new life. You’ve already done very well. If I hadn’t come, things between you two would have continued, just like us five years ago.”

“Not everything in this world will have results. I am not your result—Wenwen, go. Stop being stubbornly obsessed.”

When Shen Xiling heard the four words “stubbornly obsessed,” only bleakness remained in her heart.

Perhaps she truly was stubbornly obsessed, still unable to emerge from that heavy snow in Jiankang ten years ago after all these years. During the Buddha Bathing Festival when she ran into the fire to find him, Gu Juhan had chased in to rescue her and called her stubborn too, which was remarkably similar to this “stubbornly obsessed.”

She really wanted to explain to Qi Ying that she wasn’t someone who didn’t understand letting go. If someone wanted to take her wealth, even if it was something she had painstakingly built, she wouldn’t hesitate—let it go, it was no big deal.

She just couldn’t bear to let him go.

Though he had already doubted and even negated their ten years of feelings, Shen Xiling herself was very certain—she loved him. Even if she could start over a thousand or ten thousand times, she would still fall in love with him. This was the karma between them, their momentary arising and passing away.

But he probably no longer wanted to hear these old words.

Shen Xiling put down her chopsticks and glanced once more at that bowl of egg custard, then looked at Qi Ying again.

At that moment she seemed to have many, many things she wanted to say. Several times she seemed about to speak, but in the end said nothing.

After repeating this several times, she finally seemed to grow weary and ultimately left without saying a word, rising and walking out the door.

The door closed gently, allowing only a bit of mountain mist to drift in before quickly dissipating.

She was as if she had never come, leaving no trace.

Qi Ying could finally release his hands that had been clenched white beneath the table. He let out a long breath as if he had exhausted his last bit of strength.

He waited patiently, wanting to know if she would return. Until noon, until sunset, until dark—she never came back.

She had finally left completely. Perhaps she was already beside another man now.

This was good.

Qi Ying began coughing while feeling familiar pain slowly crawling up his limbs and bones.

That was a sign his addiction was about to strike.

He struggled against such pain, his fingers even trembling slightly. With such unsteady hands, he picked up the spoon again and began eating the egg custard she had made by hand, now completely cold.

Actually, she didn’t know that as a youth he didn’t particularly like eating egg custard, especially the flavor she originally made with added milk, which had a sweet taste—and he didn’t like sweet foods.

But later, somehow he gradually came to like it. Thinking carefully, if she had initially brought him not egg custard but some other dish, he would have liked that too—he just liked her.

Now he still liked her, liked the egg custard she made. Even though the egg custard’s taste had somewhat changed, even though she was somewhat different from childhood, none of this affected his devotion to her—he even loved her more deeply, with the remaining tenderness and softness in his heart.

He finished that bowl of egg custard, and she still hadn’t returned.

So be it.

He called for Qing Zhu to come in. Qing Zhu had been waiting fearfully outside the door all day and was overjoyed to finally hear his master call him in.

But as soon as he entered, he heard his master ask him to pour wine.

This was a euphemistic way of speaking—what his master actually wanted was… Five Stone Powder.

Was he being tormented by addiction again?

Qing Zhu knelt beside Qi Ying, wanting to beg him not to touch that thing anymore, but then he saw the veins on his master’s hands bulging out, his breathing heavy with intense pain.

Qing Zhu was terrified and could no longer bear to see him like this, so he steeled himself and ran out to “pour wine” for him, returning shortly—warm wine mixed with that deadly Five Stone Powder, like sweet spring water, yet also like poison.

Qi Ying struggled to reach out and take that bowl of wine. When he drank it, more self-loathing surged in his heart, along with… faint relief.

Five Stone Powder was indeed a filthy thing, but he had to admit that over these five years it had also saved his life.

His life was a bottomless quagmire. Day and night he lived in suffocating conditions, sometimes even forgetting why he was still persisting. But Five Stone Powder could bring him brief pleasure. After consuming it, he would often have fantasies where she would return to his side, gazing at him with those tender eyes of years past, nestling beside him and acting coquettish. That feeling was so real it could make him briefly forget his pain and loneliness.

He was defeated by these false consolations, even indulging in them in corners no one knew about.

Those false meetings.

Those false intimacies.

And at this moment, beautiful hallucinations finally appeared before his eyes again.

She had returned.

She hadn’t left—she had come back to his side after he had said so many heartless things to her.

She seemed to have discovered his depravity, so she looked both sad and angry. She was crying too, making him feel both guilty and heartbroken.

He embraced her and kissed her uncontrollably. The heat from the drug made his entire body burn, and he could no longer control himself.

Or perhaps he no longer wanted to control himself.

Even if it was false.

Even if it was madness.

Even if it was only for tonight.

…Could you stay with me?

Author’s Note:

Tomorrow at 18:30, you understand what I mean!