To Shen Qingwu, Zhang Xingjian was like a hot potato in her hands.

He kept murmuring against her, leaning into her, crying out softly in pain. Shen Qingwu had no idea where it hurt, or how badly. All she knew was that his behavior left her body rigid, her hands fumbling uselessly.

Yang Su seemed to have heard Shen Qingwu’s silent plea.

A cough sounded through the drizzle.

The fine rain slanted down. Shen Qingwu looked up and saw Yang Su standing awkwardly by the wall, near a patch of climbing ivy, holding a bit of dried rations, glancing up at the sky and then at her.

Steeling herself, Shen Qingwu shoved Zhang Xingjian off her shoulder at once.

With someone else present, Zhang Xingjian, as expected, stopped clinging. He silently withdrew, sitting loosely against the wall, his face soaked with rain, looking even more delicate for it.

And yet his bearing remained proper and refined.

As Shen Qingwu stood and walked toward Yang Su, she turned back to ask Zhang Xingjian: “Won’t you eat something?”

Zhang Xingjian said gently: “Thank you, but I’m afraid I can’t manage it. General Shen needn’t concern herself with me.”

Shen Qingwu thought, men really do contradict themselves.

A moment ago he’d been begging her to look after him in her arms, and now he was saying she needn’t bother. And yet he wouldn’t even touch the rations… did thunder really affect him this much?

Just as this thought crossed her mind, another muffled peal of thunder rolled across the horizon.

As a sharp flash of lightning cut across the sky, Shen Qingwu caught, from the corner of her eye, Zhang Xingjian turning his face away from the flash, brows furrowed, his whole body going rigid for a moment, hands clenching into fists involuntarily.

Shen Qingwu felt an odd unease.

She said: “We still have ground to cover. Eat something.”

She left the rations behind with careless indifference, then pulled Yang Su away with her—

Once they were out of Zhang Xingjian’s sight, Yang Su finally asked the question he’d been holding in the whole way: “What are you two doing? A’Wu, don’t tell me you’re thinking of going back to him?”

Yang Su didn’t know the exact details of what had happened between Shen Qingwu and Zhang Xingjian, but the first time he’d accompanied her to Dongjing, he’d already noticed how much she cared, deep down, about Zhang Xingjian.

Shen Qingwu insisted that was just “unresolved resentment.”

But was it really that?

Shen Qingwu said distractedly: “He wasn’t feeling well. I was comforting him a little.”

Yang Su said, pained: “Does comforting someone require holding onto him without letting go? If I held you like that, wouldn’t you find it strange?”

As he spoke, he spread his arms as if to embrace Shen Qingwu, meaning to demonstrate just how strange it had looked.

Shen Qingwu quickly dodged to the side and kicked him.

But that small motion made her stumble, and she had to catch herself against a nearby tree.

Yang Su moved closer to look at her. “See, you’re injured too. If you have the energy for this, spend some of it worrying about yourself.”

Shen Qingwu ignored him.

She steadied herself for a moment, then straightened up, finding her strength again.

She surprised him by asking: “What do you do if someone’s afraid of thunder?”

Yang Su said: “Who’s afraid of thunder? You?”

He looked utterly baffled.

He’d known Shen Qingwu for years now, and she feared neither heaven nor earth—there was no way she could be afraid of thunder. Which meant… Yang Su couldn’t help thinking of the person on the other side of the low wall…

Shen Qingwu neither confirmed nor denied it.

Yang Su was thoroughly shocked.

Yang Su said: “Are Dongjing’s noble young men really that delicate? I come from a prominent family too—a side branch, but I never lacked for anything growing up—and I never developed some rich man’s ailment like this… A’Wu, is he lying to you?”

Yang Su continued, deadly serious: “Zhang San Lang has always kept his emotions well hidden, always pleasant to everyone, three parts smile on meeting anyone. For someone like that to claim he’s afraid of thunder—do you actually believe it? Isn’t he just spinning you a tale?”

Shen Qingwu had been strung along by Zhang Xingjian too many times.

She started to doubt it too.

Shen Qingwu said: “Why would he lie to me about that?”

Yang Su said: “…Maybe there’s some purpose we just haven’t figured out yet?”

Shen Qingwu thought this was possible.

So she fell into thought.

But she soon dismissed the idea.

Shen Qingwu said: “The body’s instinctive reactions can’t lie.”

The fear in Zhang Xingjian’s eyes, the trembling of his body, the paleness of his face… he was someone who liked to hide his emotions behind a smile, but in the smile in his eyes just now, there had clearly been fear.

Shen Qingwu wouldn’t have misread that.

Shen Qingwu pressed Yang Su: “What do we do? Think of something, quickly.”

Yang Su thought to himself, what does this have to do with me.

But he had always been Shen Qingwu’s resident strategist.

He crouched beside her under a tree, thinking it through with her: “If it were a small child afraid of thunder, you’d just soothe them. Haven’t you seen those kids who’re scared of thunder burying themselves in their mother’s arms? The mother holds the child, comforts them a bit, and the child falls asleep and stops crying.”

Shen Qingwu said: “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen that.”

Yang Su froze, remembering that she’d never known her own mother.

Yang Su fell silent.

After a long moment he said: “Anyway, that’s the general idea. Work it out yourself.”

Shen Qingwu said: “Then you go comfort him.”

Yang Su: “…”

Yang Su pointed at himself: “Me?!”

Shen Qingwu said: “Men and women shouldn’t touch casually—I don’t want to talk to him more than I have to. The two of you are both men, you should have more in common. I think you’re pretty good with words, go persuade him a little.”

Yang Su said, at a loss for words: “Is he even asking for me?”

Shen Qingwu said: “Would you dare disobey your commanding officer?”

When Zhang Xingjian came around the wall, he found Yang Su and Shen Qingwu crouched there again, backs to him, murmuring to each other.

Rainwater wound into little streams, flowing past their feet.

Rain struck fresh branches, spring mountains lush and green, a lovely, well-matched pair of young man and woman.

They shared common ground, shared common ambitions, shared common tasks. They spent day after day together, year after year together, each intimately familiar with the other’s habits. They had endless things to talk about in the barracks, and kept talking even outside it…

The Yang family seemed to be from the Hongnong region.

Yang Su’s branch of the family seemed to follow the military path—he’d joined the army as a boy and remained a soldier still. A daughter-in-law who was highly skilled in martial arts and shared the family’s military calling didn’t seem like something the Yang family would necessarily reject.

Zhang Xingjian had heard the Yang family doted on this son of theirs.

Zhang Xingjian watched quietly for a long while, already beginning to wonder whether the Yang family could accept Shen Qingwu never bearing an heir… Under Shen Qingwu’s pressure, Yang Su reluctantly forced himself to go greet him:

“San Lang, are you alright?”

Zhang Xingjian looked over.

His dark eyes seemed steeped in water.

Yang Su pointed up at the muffled thunder overhead.

Zhang Xingjian looked toward Shen Qingwu, his gaze dim—she’d told even this to Yang Su?

Did she truly… not care about him at all anymore?

There was clearly nothing much to Zhang Xingjian’s glance, and yet Shen Qingwu felt, somehow, as if she’d wronged him. Her mind was blank with confusion, though her face stayed calm. She watched Yang Su force out words of comfort for a long while, while Zhang Xingjian remained silent throughout.

Only after a long moment did Zhang Xingjian say to Yang Su: “I’m fine. Nothing to worry about. It won’t hold up our journey.”

Turning away, Zhang Xingjian left the rations Shen Qingwu had given him for the cats and dogs gathering by the base of the wall.

If she hadn’t given it sincerely, then he needn’t accept it—

Shen Qingwu thought the rain today was simply too heavy.

The mountain paths were too difficult to walk.

But what she couldn’t bear most was that oppressive atmosphere hanging over them.

It hadn’t been like this before.

Before, it had always been Shen Qingwu and Yang Su chatting and laughing up ahead, with Zhang Xingjian following silently behind. But now, with Shen Qingwu having assigned Yang Su to look after Zhang Xingjian, she watched covertly and thought this “looking after” was really quite pitiful.

She’d have done a better job herself.

Yang Su couldn’t tell in the slightest what was wrong with Zhang Xingjian.

Yang Su rambled on about nothing in particular, chatting about scenery and local customs, and Zhang Xingjian responded mildly with a word or two here and there.

Shen Qingwu grew anxious watching them: was there something wrong with Yang Su? Couldn’t he see that Zhang Xingjian wasn’t well, and yet he kept making him talk the whole way?

By evening, they finally spotted an inn at the end of the road. Shen Qingwu headed straight for it without hesitation, telling Yang Su: “We’re stopping here tonight.”

Yang Su said: “Is that wise? If pursuers are anywhere nearby, all those lit lanterns will make us far too conspicuous.”

Shen Qingwu pushed the door open and went in, asking the innkeeper for two rooms.

Yang Su tried hard to make sense of Shen Qingwu’s reasoning.

He pulled her aside and asked quietly: “Has your injury gotten worse? Do you need to rest?”

Shen Qingwu’s wound had indeed tormented her all day. But she’d endured far worse suffering before; this small injury didn’t concern her much. To her, unless she couldn’t get out of bed, an injury barely counted as one.

Except with Yang Su asking her this way…

Shen Qingwu said: “Come here, I need to talk to you.”

She pulled Yang Su away, while Zhang Xingjian, standing at the inn counter, spoke up softly: “Second Miss Shen, two rooms—how shall we arrange the sleeping?”

Shen Qingwu said: “One for you, one for me and Yang Su.”

Yang Su thought Shen Qingwu’s arrangement was perfectly reasonable.

Yang Su said: “Aren’t you not feeling well? Get a good rest. General Shen and I are thick-skinned, we can sleep just about anywhere.”

Zhang Xingjian said: “Second Miss Shen is a woman. I imagine she’s not quite as thick-skinned as Master Yang.”

Shen Qingwu pressed her lips together and looked at Zhang Xingjian.

Zhang Xingjian didn’t look at her.

Zhang Xingjian pulled a single pearl from the jade pendant at his chest and left it on the counter: “If it’s no trouble, please prepare one more room.”—

Shen Qingwu dragged Yang Su off to the inn’s stables.

Yang Su looked at Shen Qingwu’s clearly distracted face: “What’s wrong?”

Shen Qingwu, coming back to herself from the whole business over the room arrangement, glared at Yang Su: “I told you to look after Zhang Yuelu, and this is how you did it? Couldn’t you see how much he was suffering, how he kept trembling? And yet you kept dragging him into conversation, never letting him stop… what were you thinking?”

Yang Su said: “I was trying to distract him.”

Shen Qingwu was momentarily stunned.

Yang Su said: “Besides, where did you even see him suffering? He never once furrowed his brow, and his face wasn’t nearly as pale as you’re claiming. I even kept count, specially—every time the thunder cracked overhead, at most he stopped talking. He never had any other reaction at all.

“I think you’ve been fooled.”

Shen Qingwu said angrily: “Can’t you see he was forcing himself to bear it?!”

Yang Su said: “I couldn’t see anything. All I saw was you making trouble out of nothing.”

Shen Qingwu was furious.

In her anger, she started coughing again, a coppery, sweet taste rising in her throat, blood nearly coming up with it.

Only then did Yang Su back down.

Yang Su admitted he was wrong: “…A’Wu, I don’t think a man needs special care. As far as I’m concerned, your injury is far more serious than his little bout of self-pity. You want me to look after him—how am I supposed to do that?

“Am I supposed to hold him and comfort him the way you did earlier? Isn’t that a little much? Even if I don’t mind it, do you think he’d let me touch him? I think you’re just dazzled by Zhang San Lang’s pretty face, so charmed you’ve forgotten he’s not exactly a harmless sort.

“You’ve been fooled by him, plain and simple.

“Since when is a man afraid of thunder? He’s toying with you like you’re a fool, and you’re falling for it, soft-hearted as you are.”

Shen Qingwu said coldly: “Get lost.”

She thought to herself, I’ll figure this out on my own.

Shen Qingwu simply, inexplicably, believed Zhang Xingjian truly was afraid of thunder—it was an instinct she couldn’t explain to Yang Su. She trusted her instincts—

Deep in the night, the only inn in this stretch of wild mountains had little business. Not long after dark, the innkeeper and his boy had lit only a single lamp before going to bed themselves.

The rain was still falling.

Heaven and earth lay cold and silent, thunder rumbling faintly in the distance.

Shen Qingwu paced back and forth outside Zhang Xingjian’s inn room door.

She paced for about half an hour, telling herself: I’m just going to check on him. If he collapses sick, won’t I be the one who has to take care of him anyway?

Shen Qingwu didn’t knock. She pushed the door open and walked straight in.

The room was pitch black, no candle lit.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and, narrowing slightly, she found herself locking eyes with Zhang Xingjian, sitting against the wall on the bed.

He’d been watching this direction the entire time.

The black-haired, pale-skinned young man sat wrapped in his blanket on the bed, damp strands of hair clinging to his cheek, his eyes dark and cool. He looked thin and frail, yet in every flash of lightning that split the cold night, Shen Qingwu could see that same elegant, striking beauty of his.

Shen Qingwu stared at him.

Shen Qingwu said: “What are you looking at? Not sleeping?”

Zhang Xingjian smiled. “Watching to see if anyone comes in to keep me company. Guarding against anyone who might insist on coming to sleep with me.”

Shen Qingwu said: “What do you mean?”

Zhang Xingjian closed his eyes, murmured with a laugh: “Afraid you’d force Yang Su to come sleep with me. I don’t think I could bear that.”

Shen Qingwu fell silent.

So he knew that this afternoon’s arrangement had been her doing.

Shen Qingwu looked at the sweat beading at his temples, his flushed, damp lips, the pale stretch of his long neck showing above the blanket. She could picture exactly how he was sitting—upright, elegant, no matter how much pain he was in, never allowing himself to show a single unseemly posture.

The word “cultivation” was carved into Zhang Xingjian’s bones.

No matter the circumstance, he had to remain composed, detached, elegant.

Detestable Zhang Xingjian.

Shen Qingwu leaned against the wooden door: “Since you don’t need company to sleep, it seems I’m unnecessary here. I’ll take my leave, then.”

Zhang Xingjian gazed at her without speaking.

Shen Qingwu fixed her eyes on him: “Zhang Yuelu!”

Zhang Xingjian’s eyes curved and he said: “Fine.”

—Leave if you want to leave.

It made no difference to him.

A sudden restlessness rose in Shen Qingwu’s chest, irritation, at his attitude of indifference the entire way—as if nothing mattered to him, as if he cared about none of it.

If he didn’t care, then why did he keep putting on such a pitiful act?—

In the darkness, Zhang Xingjian closed his eyes, enduring another wave of pain in his head and the ache spreading from his heart.

He truly was, as he’d said, exceptionally good at enduring.

If he let you see it, you’d know he was suffering. If he chose not to, you’d only ever see him as a man of excellent composure, elegant and refined, flawless as jade.

Toward Shen Qingwu, Zhang Xingjian genuinely had no further schemes in mind.

He didn’t know how to face her, so—let her do as she pleased.

Whatever she wanted, let her have it.

The thunder was tormenting his entire body with pain now; when it grew severe enough, he had no room left to think of anything else.

Eyes closed, enduring the pain, Zhang Xingjian failed to notice a presence approaching the bed, failed to notice someone climbing onto it.

Only when the rustling sound of someone undressing reached him did he startle back to awareness.

Zhang Xingjian said: “My parasol tree…”

Shen Qingwu lifted his blanket; her damp inner robe, cold with moisture, made Zhang Xingjian flinch. Without a word, she slipped under the covers in the darkness and wrapped her arms around him.

As he bowed his head, his hand accidentally brushed against her waist.

Zhang Xingjian withdrew his hand: “Sorry.”

Given how things stood between them now, even the lightest touch from him would probably disgust her.

She still said nothing.

Zhang Xingjian asked: “…why did you take off your outer robe?”

Shen Qingwu said coldly: “You’re already unwell, and my clothes have too much dirt on them—I was worried about accidentally offending you and making you sicker still. If you collapse now, how are Yang Su and I supposed to get out of the Central Plains in one piece?

“This is what you said yourself—you said if you don’t give your consent, we won’t be able to leave the Central Plains safely and get back to Yizhou.”

Zhang Xingjian said softly: “You remember my threat that clearly. Every kind word I’ve ever said to you, you dismiss as nothing, never believe it—is that right?”

Shen Qingwu said: “Are you in pain or not? If not, I’ll leave.”

As she made to leave, he reached out and wrapped his arm around her waist, not caring if it might make her hate him even more.

He held her waist, bent his back, and buried his face in the curve of her neck.

Thunder rumbled in that same instant, and Shen Qingwu heard, close to her ear, a warm, trembling voice, hoarse and soft as a feather: “I’m scared, my parasol tree.”

He hid his emotions from the outside world, but here, now, he made no effort to hide his terror.

He was covered in cold sweat, the scent of it masking his usual cool, clear fragrance. His body was rigid, arms wrapped around her waist, his whole frame twisted into an unnatural position, as if trying to fold himself into her.

It was a genuinely strange sight—Shen Qingwu was certainly tall, but not tall enough to fully shelter him.

It was almost comical—that Zhang Xingjian could end up like this.

All of Shen Qingwu’s earlier irritation and restlessness dissolved, oddly pleased by the man in the covers beside her, and her mood lifted—she almost felt like laughing.

She felt a little happy.

He really was afraid of thunder. He hadn’t been lying to her.

But… there was nothing she could do to help him.

In the midst of a wave of pain, Zhang Xingjian felt his ears being covered.

He looked up, his long lashes brushing across her face.

Shen Qingwu sat upright against the wall, her hands cupped over his ears, blocking out the thunder for him.

Clumsy and cold as she was, she looked at him and said: “Don’t be afraid.”

She sat there, unmoving, steady as a mountain: “I’m here.”

—No one can hurt you.

Zhang Xingjian lowered his eyes.

For a moment, the pain he felt seemed to genuinely ease.

A complicated, tender feeling welled up in his heart: he really did love her.

He truly loved this… parasol tree of his, who, no matter how angry she got, would never simply leave him to suffer alone—

By dawn, Zhang Xingjian was woken by the chirping of birds outside his window.

The sky had cleared.

He lay in a daze for a moment: he’d actually fallen asleep last night, without being tormented through a sleepless night.

Since developing this affliction of the heart, this was the first time he’d managed to fall asleep during a thunderstorm… Zhang Xingjian tried to sit up and realized someone was pressed against his chest.

He lowered his head slowly.

He pulled the blanket down slightly and saw Shen Qingwu, leaning against his chest, eyes closed in deep sleep.

Asleep, her hair loose about her, her face delicate, her brows and the tip of her nose carrying a soft, slightly rounded quality that offset her usual sharpness. Asleep, Shen Qingwu had lost that overwhelming, forceful presence she normally carried—she held him as she slept, her face pressed against his chest…

She had spent the whole night listening to his heartbeat.

She, too, had become someone who needed a man’s company for a night.

Zhang Xingjian looked down at her, studying her: he had no idea how they’d fallen asleep like this last night, no idea how the two of them, who had been sitting against the wall, had ended up tangled together on the bed.

A Shen Qingwu who was safe, unguarded, who wasn’t avoiding him… was something to be treasured beyond measure.

Treasured so much… that it stirred something restless in Zhang Xingjian.

An opportunity this good… there was no telling whether it would come again.

The arm she’d been pressing down slowly moved, easing away the numbness. Bit by bit, he leaned in, curving his arm back, wrapping it around her waist, his other arm covering her shoulder.

He successfully drew her into his embrace, and, carrying her, slowly rolled them over, bringing her toward the inner side of the bed.

He had shared a bed with her on many nights before.

He knew exactly how to hold Shen Qingwu without waking her—this martial arts prodigy whose senses were so keenly attuned to the slightest change in her surroundings.

His hair fell across her face; Shen Qingwu found herself pressed beneath him, lying flat on the bed boards. She still hadn’t woken, still had her arms around his waist, and Zhang Xingjian, hovering above her now, lowered his head to study her carefully.

Only once he was certain she showed no sign of waking did he move on to his next step.

Bit by bit, Zhang Xingjian eased open the collar of her robe, reaching, little by little, inside—

Yang Su had said she was badly wounded, but Zhang Xingjian didn’t know exactly where.

The uncertainty of it was driving him half mad.

The jealousy of it was driving him half mad too.

Why should Yang Su know something he himself didn’t?

Zhang Xingjian wanted to see, wanted to understand for himself…

And so he began working her inner robe loose, pulling it down bit by bit. His warm palm slipped in from her waist, stroking upward, pressing gently, tracing inch by inch…—

Shen Qingwu woke.

To be touched all over like this and feel nothing at all would practically make her a paralytic.

Shen Qingwu woke to find herself in the strangest of situations—

Zhang Xingjian was kneeling above her, pressed close against her, working the collar of her robe open.

The air against her chest was cold.

Her shoulder lay bare, her neck exposed to a chill. The bit of flesh below her neck, rising and falling with her breath, was touched by his warm breath, prickling gradually into gooseflesh…

Shen Qingwu’s expression turned utterly cold.

She’d never expected to see a day like this.

Zhang Xingjian’s lips were almost brushing against the small rise of her chest when she suddenly reached out and clapped a hand over his face, shoving him backward.

One push from her palm sent him reeling, keeping his head from dipping any lower.

Zhang Xingjian froze.

His dark eyes met Shen Qingwu’s.

Zhang Xingjian blinked.

Only then did he register just how compromising the two of them looked right now—

She lay on the bed boards with her robe in disarray, her long hair fallen across one shoulder and her neck. The blood-stained white cloth strips beneath her clothes didn’t hide much—after all, her whole upper garment had nearly been pulled off entirely.

She was so striking like this, lean and strong, all sinew and power.

Her curves, sweeping and sinuous, like mountains and rivers laid bare beneath the moon, clean and cool.

Sunlight streamed in from outside, unobstructed by any curtain, falling across the snow-white skin of her shoulder.

Truly, unbearably beautiful…

Zhang Xingjian turned his face away, his throat working.

Zhang Xingjian said in a low voice: “Misunderstanding.”

Shen Qingwu let out a cold laugh.

Outside, the weather was fine, and voices from the floor below the inn drifted up through the window in fragments.

Spring warmth, flower scents, the smell of cooking, laughter—the world’s ordinary bustle, alive and thriving.

Within the small guest room, on the narrow bed, Zhang Xingjian bowed his head, forcing his gaze to stay fixed on her face.

Hovering above her, his lashes carried a fine, dewy sheen, his flushed, moist lips parting and closing. His manner was earnest: “It really was a misunderstanding.”

Shen Qingwu said: “Then tell me what it means that the part of your body currently pressed against mine just twitched, while you were talking.”

Shen Qingwu, expressionless: “Explain.”