The calmer it was, the more soul-stirring.

The clamorous cicada cries hid among the tree shadows, yet this only accentuated the heart-palpitating silence of this moment.

Jiang Xuening seemed unable to hear anything. Even the nearby cicadas outside the door and window seemed as far away as the horizon. Only her own heartbeat, faster and faster, and that pulse transmitted through the palm tightly gripping her wrist—so clear, so chilling!

The Wall Reading Hall was different from the qin-making hall.

While the qin-making hall usually had servants attending, the Wall Reading Hall was a place no one dared easily approach. At this moment, aside from the two of them at the doorway, there was no one else.

In the past, Jiang Xuening had wondered how Xie Wei viewed her.

Disgust, dislike?

…

No matter what, she had never imagined this moment today. It was something she wouldn’t think about, didn’t dare think about, and had excluded as a possibility from the very beginning!

But Xie Wei had shattered all of this.

In her previous life, she was truly not some inexperienced young girl ignorant of the human heart.

If not for Xie Wei being such a special person, she might not have remained unaware until today.

Jiang Xuening desperately clenched her fingers to barely maintain control of herself.

That palm tightly gripping her wrist showed no sign of loosening.

Xie Wei acted as if he had done nothing out of line, still wearing that transcendent indifference, lowering his eyelids to look at her. “Is there something bad about staying in the capital?”

She was trembling.

But Xie Wei seemed not to notice, his voice faint as he said, “Your family no longer dares easily provoke you. Outside, Xiao Dingfei accompanies you in mischief. Even that sister you usually found disagreeable has married out. In the future when Yan Lin returns to court and comes back to the capital, he’ll surely be glad to see you. The Princess went to the Tartars for a marriage alliance—for news and messages, the court is fastest. Being in the capital, you can know firsthand. Even if you can’t stand life at home, one day I’ll propose that the Imperial Academy establish women’s studies. Leaving home to study would be the same, and no one could criticize. Why must you leave?”

Not a single word of threat or coercion.

Even as he spoke these words, between his brows and eyes was still that mountain-high fog-thick vastness, utterly without private interest, as if thinking entirely for her.

Yet it was like a meticulous net!

With every word Xie Ju’an spoke, Jiang Xuening felt this net tightening around her by one degree! Little by little squeezing the space where she stood, the air she breathed, making it difficult to struggle, nearly suffocating!

She desperately tried to maintain calm, not daring to anger him. “Sir overestimates this student. This student has always acted willfully in the past. Without your assistance, I fear I would have already caused great disaster.”

Xie Wei said, “Then what’s wrong with continuing to act willfully?”

Jiang Xuening tried to pull her hand back, but that hand gripping hers didn’t budge an inch.

Xie Wei looked at her, recounting with extreme calmness, “You are the legitimate daughter of the Vice Minister of Revenue, companion reader to the Grand Princess, sister-in-law to Prince Linzi, playmate to Yan Lin, patron to Xiao Dingfei, my student—what are you afraid of?”

Each of his sentences struck her sensitive nerves. When the four words “my student” emerged, that tightly strung thread in Jiang Xuening’s mind finally snapped with a “twang”!

Among everyone in this world—

Xie Wei alone was someone she absolutely dared not get involved with!

At this moment she was like prey forced into a dead end, facing a beast approaching step by step. She had to raise every sharp spine on her body, tense every corner of her being, only then could she muster that little bit of courage to open her slightly reddened eyes wide and say to him, “Let me go.”

She no longer called him “sir.”

That thread of malevolence in Xie Wei’s eyes finally floated up quietly. Yet his voice was even softer than before. “Zhang Zhe is still here, isn’t he? Why do you want to leave the capital?”

In the past when this name was mentioned, Jiang Xuening’s heart might have surged with some ineffable sweetness. However, after speaking openly the day before yesterday, this name could only bring her irreparable regret and the piercing pain of something visible but unreachable!

Xie Wei had stepped on her sore spot.

She began to struggle forcefully, glaring at him, gritting her teeth and saying shrilly, “What does it have to do with him! What a bad person I am, what terrible character I have—doesn’t sir already know perfectly well? A country girl can never enter refined halls! The capital was never where I should stay. Every day here is like lying in a frying pan, not one day of peace, never one day of freedom! Why can’t I leave?”

Every day like lying in a frying pan, not one day of peace, never one day of freedom.

Xie Wei’s lashes lowered as he gazed at her.

Yet he found her cornered beast’s struggling posture quite laughable, even disappointing. In his smooth tone was a kind of cold sharpness. “Only cowards think this way. Ning’er, you’re not a child anymore. Stop making a fuss.”

Jiang Xuening reached out to pry at his hand.

He didn’t move at all. He only felt she was so hysterical, avoiding him as one avoids snakes and scorpions, viewing him as a terrible flood or fierce beast. Yet he didn’t know what about himself made her so afraid…

In that moment, a wave of sorrow surged up.

He finally lowered his voice, saying softly, “Ning’er, stay.”

Tears surged to Jiang Xuening’s eyes. “Let go of me!”

Xie Wei acted as if he hadn’t heard. “The Princess went for the marriage alliance. I didn’t accomplish what I promised you. I still need to repay your kindness, owe you a life.”

Unable to break free from him, Jiang Xuening choked out, “I don’t want you to repay it. I don’t care!”

Xie Wei recalled long, long ago—that little girl who clearly despised him, seeing him sick and confused, cried day after day. Staying by his side, afraid he would die beside her, sharing space with a dead man. Wanting to go out to gather medicine, yet afraid of the mountain demons in the wilderness, the wolves traveling at night.

That day was the Great Snow solar term.

Deep in the mountains it grew even colder, the high places covered in white snow.

That little girl had cried herself out after crying all night.

When he groggily woke up, she was nowhere to be seen in the early morning.

Not until midday did he see a white figure walk into the cave from outside. She was covered in cold air, her head and shoulders covered in snow, her lips blue-purple. She had gathered herbs from who knows where, hands shaking as she tried to strike the fire stone. But the tree branches in this weather were all soaked through. She couldn’t light them, yet she didn’t cry. She simply bit the medicinal herbs into pieces bit by bit, placing them in a corner of a broken bowl picked up from who knows what grave.

His blade was stuck in a crack between rocks.

She spent a long time pulling it out, shaking as she made a cut on her own wrist. That bright red blood flowed out drop by drop, meandering as it fell into that corner of the broken ceramic bowl, mixing with the deep green herbs to become a heavy inky purple.

Then she brought the bowl close to his lips.

The young girl’s pale face had not a trace of blood color. With a crying tone, she coaxed him, “A very skilled doctor came to the estate once and used this remedy to save a dead man. If you drink the medicine you’ll get better…”

How could a dead man be brought back to life?

Most likely it was a charlatan.

To this day he found it hard to distinguish whether that was really his dream or not.

Only that extremely bitter taste of medicinal herbs mixed with the rusty, fishy-bitter taste of fresh blood would surge up from the depths of memory from time to time.

Later his fever broke and he seemed to recover.

But that little girl became confused.

When he went out to scout the way, to find food, she would always pull at his sleeve. Her consciousness hazy, yet in her delirium she would complain, “I knew it, once you’re better you’ll leave on your own…”

Unable to help it, his heart softened. He carried her on his back, walking one deep step, one shallow step.

But she still thought he wasn’t a good person, that he would abandon her and leave.

So he could only tear off a narrow strip from his already dirty robes. One end he tied to her wrist, the other he bound to his own wrist, then told her, “Now I’m tied together with you. Neither of us can leave first. I’m here.”

Only then did her delirious muttering slowly stop.

Looking back, Xie Wei realized that was truly the most crazed, most foolish time in his twenty-some years.

In some mysterious way, there seemed to be such a belief—

Believing that in such a desperate situation, one could still seek out a thread of hope. No qin or books, no blade or sword, no Heavenly Doctrine, no court, no background, no revenge either. Only the vast heaven and earth, two people wanting to survive.

But Jiang Xuening said she didn’t want him to repay it. She didn’t care.

Hidden in the coldness was disgust—how similar to those few times they had encountered each other in the capital later on?

Xie Wei suddenly felt a wrenching pain in his chest.

This pain came so swiftly and so strangely that before he could distinguish it, a wave of dizziness and confusion arose. He only said, “It doesn’t matter if you don’t want it. The capital has everything…”

Jiang Xuening had been pushed to the edge of collapse. As if becoming vicious, she shouted at him, “It has everything except freedom!”

Xie Wei said, “Why can’t you understand?”

Jiang Xuening said, “Let go!”

Xie Wei said to her word by word, “There’s no such thing as true freedom in this world. Even if you flee to the ends of the earth, as long as there are attachments in your heart, you’ll forever be trapped in a cage! Ultimately, you’ll have no choice but to come back…”

Perhaps all truths in the world are too cruel, wrapped in layer upon layer of sharp thorns. Not only can they not enter people’s ears, they’ll instead prick the listener into raising defenses all over their body, protecting themselves tightly inside.

That fear not only didn’t diminish but surged even more.

Jiang Xuening didn’t know whether she feared Xie Wei as a person more, or feared his words more. Finally unable to bear it any longer, unable to pry open the palm restraining her, she buried her head and bit down deeply.

Intense pain came from the back of his hand, almost penetrating to the bone marrow. Yet Xie Wei still refused to let go. Looking at her, his voice even faintly revealed a trace of pleading, almost obsessively saying, “Jiang Xuening, don’t leave.”

But at the extreme of pain, his fingers spasmed.

Jiang Xuening finally broke free from him. Her chest heaving, eyes glaring in anger, she retreated backward. As if refuting him, yet also as if telling herself, “Nonsense! It’s all nonsense!”

She had no time to collect any of her emotions, much less willing to think deeply about it.

She fled like that.

Fled far away.

That very night she boarded the carriage the residence had prepared long ago, taking her luggage, left the capital. Over mountains and waters, the road stretched on—three thousand li to Shu in one journey.

Xie Wei’s hands were empty. Blood flowed from the back of his hand down near the tiger’s mouth position, a heart-piercing profusion.

In the end he stood inside the doorway, not chasing out a single step.

That not-very-high threshold seemed like an immense gulf, tearing him apart from the outside world. No one could cross it—others couldn’t come in, and he couldn’t go out.

When Lu Xian arrived at the Wall Reading Hall, dusk had already fallen.

Jian Shu stood outside not daring to enter.

He looked in through that doorway and saw only darkness inside. That qin Jiang Xuening had taken from Youhuang Pavilion earlier lay on the floor, one bridge broken, the snapped qin string curled like a strand of black hair. And Xie Wei stood before that wall in the shadows, not having moved for a long time, withered like a piece of rotten wood. On the window sill rested a small branch of green apricot. The deep red light of the setting sun’s afterglow penetrated from behind the verdant leaves. The not-yet-ripened fruit nestled at the branch’s edge—who knows who had picked it.

Jiang Xuening must have been here.

Seeing this scene, even Lu Xian didn’t dare step inside.

But Xie Wei slowly turned his head. Seeing them, as if nothing had happened, his face showing no abnormality, he said, “You’ve come at just the right time, in time for the meeting. Let’s go together.”

But Lu Xian saw his hand.

Xie Wei walked past that broken qin toward the direction of the qin-making hall, only thinking everyone must have waited a long time.

Lu Xian and Jian Shu still stood in place.

Jian Shu was utterly bewildered, not understanding. “Why not forcibly keep her?”

Lu Xian turned back to look at that broken qin.

After a long silence, rarely without a smile, he slowly said, “Xie Ju’an is not that kind of person.”