The “me” in the mirror stared at Xie Zhuo blankly for a long time, then widened her eyes, pursed her lips, and her cheeks puffed out in anger. “I” jumped up and poked Xie Zhuo in the eye.

Xie Zhuo, lost in thought, seemed somewhat dazed, and under this haphazard attack, he didn’t even dodge, directly getting poked in the eye. The pain made him cover his eye and lower his head.

“I” erupted at Xie Zhuo: “Who’s ugly! Who’s ugly? Who taught you to speak to a lady like that?”

Watching myself in the mirror jump up and pummel Xie Zhuo with fists, my heart filled with worry, and I kept silently chanting, stop hitting him, stop hitting him, he’s extremely fierce, his cultivation is a thousand times stronger than yours, if you keep hitting him you’ll die, if you die I’ll die too, we’ll both be gone…

“I” threw a few punches, cursed a bit, then stopped: “Xie Xuanqing, now that your injury is better, why are you saying such annoying things? Did the injury in your leg spread to your brain?” With that, “I” reached out to touch Xie Zhuo’s forehead. “Let me check. I’ve taken good care of your leg, now I need to fix your brain too…”

In the mirror, my past self cupped Xie Zhuo’s face in her hands, making as if to press her forehead against his.

Watching “my” actions, I froze.

In my memory, apart from “fighting” with Xie Zhuo, it had been many years since I’d had such physical contact with him.

The initial love had been worn dull by five hundred years of trivialities, and I had long lost any desire to embrace Xie Zhuo.

Xie Zhuo was also visibly stunned.

He allowed his face to be cradled by “me,” and after a brief pause, he abruptly stepped back.

He stood upright, maintaining his distance.

“I” looked at him with confusion, finally showing a serious expression: “Xie Xuanqing, what’s wrong with you? Everything was fine just now. What are you doing? This isn’t how you give someone a surprise.”

Xie Zhuo stared at “me” silently, then slightly turned his head.

In the mirror, I saw that the direction Xie Zhuo turned—he was looking toward me!

To avoid being discovered by my past self, I immediately lowered the mirror I had raised. As I held the mirror against my chest, I heard Xie Zhuo’s deep voice calmly uttering a sentence:

“I don’t like you.”

Following what I had just taught him, he was supposed to say this.

But when these words were spoken, my heart stirred with a different meaning.

Xie Zhuo’s words weren’t directed at me, yet they seemed to be for me. But from a certain perspective, these words were meant for me.

The emotions I felt upon hearing these words were as complex as the context in which Xie Zhuo spoke them.

There was no sound from “me” outside.

After a long pause, she finally said: “I… I don’t like you either! You’re too annoying today. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. I’m leaving.”

Outside came the sound of my footsteps leaving, gradually fading away, and even I believed that “I” had left like that.

I was just about to stand up from the window when I heard the “pitter-patter” of footsteps hurriedly running back.

I crouched down by the window again, curiosity getting the better of me, and risked extending the mirror out again.

The mirror reflected the outside.

“My” figure approached from a distance, running back breathlessly to stand in front of Xie Zhuo.

Xie Zhuo silently looked at “me”…

“I” quickly said to Xie Zhuo, “What I just said wasn’t true. I’ve already fallen for you. If you don’t like me, you don’t need to deliberately say it, because… it would make me sad.”

Xie Zhuo’s eyes flickered slightly.

“I” took Xie Zhuo’s hand and placed the bamboo basket in his hands: “I think you must be in a bad mood today, which is why you’re talking like this. I’ll give you all these freshly dug bamboo shoots. They’re delicious with chili peppers, quite different from those older bamboo pieces I gave you before. I hope eating these will improve your mood!”

“I” continued in one breath, “Now that you’re feeling better and have a small house, you can cook for yourself. It’s not that I don’t want to help you, but I’m hurt by what you said earlier, and I need to go back and regroup.

I hope that when I come to see you tomorrow, you won’t ask me what kind of thing I am, and you’ll say I’m not ugly, and ideally even say you like me.” After saying this, “I” briskly waved, “I’m off…”

Xie Zhuo was stunned, and so was I.

But I reacted faster than Xie Zhuo.

I grabbed the bronze mirror in my hand and threw it in the direction of the departing “me.”

The bronze mirror hit my past self directly on the head. By the time Xie Zhuo came to his senses, “I” had already fallen to the ground with a “thud.”

I quickly hid inside the house and called out loudly: “Quickly, carry me away. Arrange me in a pose that will make me think I just had a dream. Otherwise, there will be no explanation for what happened today when tomorrow comes.”

Xie Zhuo was silent outside for a moment, and then I heard a gust of wind.

When my body gradually began to feel lighter, I knew that Xie Zhuo had already taken my past self out of the courtyard.

I poked my head out of the window, saw the quiet little courtyard, and the new barrier Xie Zhuo had set up outside the courtyard. I breathed a sigh of relief and began to reproach Xie Zhuo: “That was too careless. Why didn’t you set up a barrier earlier? What if my past self had walked straight toward our house and come face to face with me? Wouldn’t I have been finished?”

I muttered for a while, but noticed that Xie Zhuo was still holding the snow bamboo shoots that “I” had left behind.

He didn’t speak for a long time, just looking at that basket of bamboo shoots, seemingly pondering something. Finally, he looked up at me: “You used to love eating these.”

“Yes…”

“Why did you stop eating them later?”

“Snow bamboo shoots without chili? What’s the point of eating them?”

Xie Zhuo was silent again for a long time, seemingly thinking about the direct cause of our divorce.

I climbed out of the window, looked at the snow bamboo shoots in Xie Zhuo’s hands—all tender tips—and after many years of not tasting this delicacy, I was already starting to salivate at the thought of that fresh, spicy, crisp flavor. I swallowed and then turned to look in the direction where Xie Zhuo had taken “me” away.

I believed that, given my temperament back then, after waking up, if “I” couldn’t find this small courtyard in the snow bamboo forest again, “I” would consider everything that had just happened to be a dream.

“I” might even go complaining to the Xie Xuanqing of this time, lamenting the loss of a basket of excellent bamboo shoots.

“I miscalculated, too. I didn’t expect that a young girl like me back then, after being spoken to so harshly by you, still wouldn’t give up and would even give you such good bamboo shoots.”

I murmured, “It seems I, really, really liked you back then.”

“Later, why did you stop liking me?” Xie Zhuo turned to look at me.

I fell silent. After a brief moment of blankness in my mind, countless scenes from these five hundred years flashed by—small disappointments, great despair, various trivial matters of life, and moments I no longer wished to recall. And these moments could not be condensed into words.

From initial deep love to the current absence of love, it was these moments that had built a bridge, allowing me to cross from one side to the other.

No relationship ends suddenly.

There are always too many details, impossible to explain to outsiders, that under the arrangement of fate and time, slip into the cracks of a relationship, eventually causing this thread to completely break.

I paused for a long while, then glanced at the sky and said softly, “Because I prefer spicy food more.”

Apart from this reason, at this moment, I could not articulate any other reason.

“This step failed, let’s discuss what to do next,” I called to Xie Zhuo. “The sooner we cut the marriage ties, the sooner we can go back.”

I turned and returned to the house with feigned nonchalance, not looking at Xie Zhuo’s slightly lowered eyes and his subtly silent emotions.