“Nightmare?” Shen Mo asked her.

Bai Youwei was dazed for a moment, then turned to look at the person beside her on the pillow. “…How did you know?”

Shen Mo gave a quiet laugh and brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek. “Just now, your legs kept pushing hard. You kicked me.”

Hearing this, Bai Youwei also laughed, and rubbed her legs against his beneath the blankets. “Smooth enough?”

“Settle down.” Shen Mo pressed her still, then kissed her on the forehead. “Go back to sleep. Don’t make a fuss in the middle of the night.”

Bai Youwei had no desire to sleep.

She nestled in Shen Mo’s arms with her eyes closed for a while, then opened them again. “Pass me the item Du Lai gave us.”

Shen Mo was slightly startled and looked down at her. “You want to look now?”

“Yes.” Bai Youwei said. “I’ll have to look sooner or later. Might as well do it now.”

Shen Mo didn’t know what had changed her mind. When she’d come out of the maze she had still been wavering with indecision—yet now, in the middle of the night, she had suddenly made up her mind.

He turned and sat up, turned on the light, retrieved the magic crystal fragment from his bag, and handed it to Bai Youwei.

The crystal touched her skin—a chill spread across her palm.

Bai Youwei let out a soft breath, formed the image of the person she sought in her heart, and gradually—the crystal began to show a vision.

Even braced as she was, she couldn’t help holding her breath.

A woman appeared inside the crystal fragment.

She bore a three-part resemblance to Bai Youwei. No makeup, but even so her features were clear and unworldly.

Bai Youwei and Shen Mo looked at each other and both saw surprise reflected in the other’s eyes.

“…Is that my mom?” Bai Youwei said, startled and uncertain.

Shen Mo looked carefully, then nodded. “It’s Auntie Wang. She looks even younger somehow.”

Wang Jingxian had always taken good care of herself—in her forties, she looked barely past thirty. And the vision in the crystal fragment blurred her age even further. Her face showed no trace of the years at all. Wrapped in a white fox-fur cape, she stood quietly in the snow—pure, still, and beautiful, like a spirit from a land of endless winter.

“Look at what’s behind her—what are those?” Shen Mo pointed to the background near Wang Jingxian. “That doesn’t look like a hillside.”

Bai Youwei furrowed her brow and looked carefully.

The crystal fragment was only palm-sized, making the image small, and the distant background even more indistinct.

“It looks like… buildings?” Bai Youwei wasn’t entirely certain.

At that moment, the Wang Jingxian in the image moved.

She turned and began walking in one direction. The view shifted with her.

Bai Youwei saw more—tall buildings. Covered in ice and snow, their silhouettes rose and fell at different heights. Without looking closely, they could easily be mistaken for a hillside.

Shen Mo picked up his phone from the nightstand and quickly snapped several photos of the image in the crystal.

Bai Youwei blinked.

Shen Mo said: “We don’t know how long these images will last. Let’s preserve them—they might help us figure out where your mother is now.”

Bai Youwei murmured: “But they’re all buried under snow…”

“We might not be able to work it out ourselves, but Chu Huaijin and Professor Song might have a way.” Shen Mo took a few more photos. The phone showed a low battery warning.

The phone had been unused for a long time. Tan Xiao had occasionally borrowed it to play the system’s built-in games, so Shen Mo had never specifically charged it.

Shen Mo got up to look for a charging cable.

Before he could find one, Bai Youwei said: “Never mind. The image is gone.”

She set down the crystal fragment, unable to put into words what she felt inside.

Happy?… Her mother was still alive.

Disappointed?… She was alive, yet had never come looking for her daughter.

Perhaps she was simply numb—because she had never allowed herself to hope in the first place.

They say that at the bedside of the long-suffering, even the most devoted child grows weary. For a mother at the bedside of her long-suffering child… she too must have found it very hard to bear.

Shen Mo came back to bed and flipped through the dozen or so photos he had just taken. “With these photos, it should be enough.”

…

—