What makes you say that?

Ji Yinshu, unhurried and calm, took out a previously folded piece of paper from her sleeve, slowly opened it, laid it flat on the desk, then rotated it one hundred eighty degrees, positioning the content on the paper directly facing Wen Lingyang.

On the paper, four lines of poetry were written cleanly and neatly.

“Sink and watch the shadow among people, endure to gain high ascension, return beside that year, one by one see old friends.”

She said, “Earlier, Advisor Wen wrote these four lines of poetry. I truly didn’t understand them, but after several subsequent events, I understood them in an instant.”

“Oh? Please explain, Young Master.” Wen Lingyang smiled faintly, withdrawing his gaze from outside the door and letting it fall on this paper before him.

“The so-called ‘sink and watch the shadow among people’ refers to your father, doesn’t it? ‘Endure to gain high ascension’ refers to yourself. ‘Return beside that year’ refers to those six people—Yun Tongyang and Li Mingzhou and the others. And ‘one by one see old friends’ refers to all of you.”

Wen Lingyang listened carefully.

Twenty characters, clean and neat!

Yet also like a life tapestry belonging only to him, from the beginning all the way to the end point of his life.

Ji Yinshu continued, “From the moment you wrote these four lines of poetry, you actually wanted to tell me that you were the murderer. Of course, it’s not just these four lines—there’s also that small brocade box you always carry with you. I imagine that the third layer you didn’t open contains ink mixed with eclipta, doesn’t it? If the crazed Li Yuan hadn’t rushed in at that time, you had already planned to reveal everything then. And there’s the tattoo on your body—if you truly wanted to evade guilt, you absolutely wouldn’t have let Prince Rong see that scar on your body. All of these things are because you deliberately wanted me to discover them.”

Wen Lingyang didn’t deny it, nor was there any change in his expression.

He raised his eyes and praised, “I had thought that aside from myself, probably no one in this world could understand these four lines of poetry. I didn’t expect that you would decipher them all, Young Master. I’ve always only heard of your intelligence and once questioned whether there could really be such a talented person in the world. But now, I cannot help but admire you, Young Master. Among all the people I’ve encountered, you are the most intelligent. If I could know you as a close friend, this life would be complete.”

Not a single false word!

Upon hearing this, Ji Yinshu smiled faintly and said, “Boya played the qin, and Ziqi was the only one who could understand his music. After Ziqi died, he smashed his beloved instrument on Ziqi’s grave. The qin has strings, but no one to listen—such desolation, only Boya himself understood. If there were ifs in this world, with Advisor Wen as Boya and myself as Ziqi, this wouldn’t be impossible.”

“With this statement from you, Young Master, even if I die, my heart will be at ease.”

He drank a mouthful of tea, extremely satisfied.

The next moment, Ji Yinshu took out another object from her sleeve and pushed it before him.

The object was a square stone with a small hole drilled in the middle. Previously, it should have been hung on something, so the area around that small hole was smoother and darker than other places.

What was even stranger was that on the stone, seven marks of varying depths had been carved. Due to years of wear, the marks had grown increasingly deep, gleaming with a luster.

Upon seeing that stone, Wen Lingyang’s heart trembled slightly, his brow furrowing.

“This was my father’s.”

His voice caught and choked as he picked up the stone, carefully rubbing the seven indented grooves on its surface.

Ji Yinshu explained, “The reason Li Mingzhou went to dig up Chang Shiliang’s grave had two purposes. First, he wanted to destroy Chang Shiliang’s corpse. The other purpose was to find this stone, because after your father died, this stone remained on Chang Shiliang’s person. He always kept it with him, and after his death, the Chang family regarded it as a burial object and placed it in the coffin together with him. Such an ordinary stone—Chang Shiliang didn’t throw it away for twenty years, and Li Mingzhou risked being caught to find this stone. This stone must be very important to them all?”

“The seven marks on this stone were carved by my father together with them, representing seven people. I had thought that after my father died, they would have thrown the stone away too.”

But—

Chang Shiliang had actually kept it all along, and Li Mingzhou had also kept this stone in his heart.

It showed that the bond of the seven brothers actually existed.

Wen Lingyang exhaled deeply, clasping the stone in his palm. The icy sensation seemed to flow continuously through the vessels in his palm.

His whole body grew cold.

Outside, the sun had already poked half its head out from over the mountains!

Light slanted in, moving from the ground to the wall woven of bamboo, creating a lazy, leisurely feeling.

After a delay!

Wen Lingyang raised his head, reached out, and removed that bamboo stalk inserted in the vase, handing it to Ji Yinshu.

“Please do me a favor, Young Master, and give this bamboo to Xinlan. That girl loves this bamboo in my room the most and often clamored for it. Now, with the person gone and the place empty, keeping it has no meaning. Better to give it to someone who loves it and will care for it well.”

His voice grew weaker and weaker!

Ji Yinshu carefully took it and nodded. “Rest assured, I will personally deliver it into Miss Zhang’s hands.”

“Thank you.”

She stood up, lightly brushed the creases from her robe, and turned to leave.

But after just two steps, her steps paused, and she asked a question with her back to Wen Lingyang.

“Do you regret it?”

She didn’t know what his expression was like—she could only sense that the person behind her smiled.

“Regret?” A smile played at the corners of Wen Lingyang’s lips. “Life is like a game of chess. Only after careful deliberation can one place a piece. And once a piece is placed, there are no regrets—that is what makes a gentleman. Though I cannot be a good person, I wish to be a gentleman.”

His voice grew weaker and weaker, softer and softer…

What a gentleman indeed!

Ji Yinshu didn’t quite dare turn back to look at Wen Lingyang at this moment. She could only sense a faint sound—the sound of a person lowering his head!

She took a deep breath and went out.

When the people from the yamen outside came in, what they found was an already ice-cold corpse.

Wen Lingyang sat upright, his head lowered, his eyelids tightly closed, yet at the corners of his lips, he still wore a smile.

In his hand, he clutched that stone!

On the screen behind him, his shadow was still imprinted, stretching longer and longer as the light moved.

At this moment, the day had completely brightened…

Outside Wen Lingyang’s residence, Zhang Xinlan stood holding that scroll that had never been opened, her hollow, reddened eyes staring straight from the main entrance toward that innermost room.

Motionless!

She stood for a long time.

In truth, like Ji Yinshu, she didn’t dare go in, didn’t dare look at Wen Lingyang.

Ji Yinshu walked before her and inserted the bamboo stalk in her hand into the scroll.

She said nothing.

Zhang Xinlan’s tears fell. Her voice choked and extremely hoarse, she asked her:

“What did he say to you?”

Ji Yinshu shook her head.

“Did he say when he would teach me to write?”

Shook her head!

“So he broke his promise, didn’t he?” Zhang Xinlan was in extreme distress, her heart cut as if by knives.

But—

Ji Yinshu never responded to her words.

She turned and left!