Jiang Xuening felt that Xie Wei indeed seemed quite off.

She had originally only spoken in jest, but after receiving his response, it seemed to add several degrees of heavy shadow. However, thinking it over again, there actually wasn’t anything wrong with it.

After all, he was speaking the truth.

Back then when she was brought back to the capital from the estate, Xie Wei had traveled with her. The difference was she was only returning home, while Xie Wei was concealing his identity, planning to quietly enter the capital to help Shen Lang seize the position of heir.

Naturally, no one would go to great lengths to kill her.

That time, the assassination and trouble on the road was obviously aimed at Xie Wei.

Two years ago, she had stumbled into the matter of Xie Wei setting up a trap to eliminate the Celestial Teachings. On the road from Tongzhou back to the capital, their group had similarly encountered assassination.

Of course, those death warriors were not coming for Jiang Xuening either.

They were all coming for that “Young Master Dingfei” whom heaven had pitied and who had fortuitously survived.

As for this time, thinking it over from all angles, she felt she hadn’t offended anyone. If she had been traveling to the border alone, it shouldn’t have attracted anyone’s attention.

The problem lay precisely in traveling the same route as Xie Wei.

Thinking of this, her brows furrowed tighter. She couldn’t help but say: “Do you know who wants to kill you?”

Xie Wei held his bow, carried his arrows, and continued walking forward: “Too many people want to kill me.”

Jiang Xuening said helplessly: “Then what about this time? Daoqin said the Celestial Teachings people—”

No, that wasn’t right.

Daoqin hadn’t said it like that.

At this point in her words, a tightly strung chord in her mind suddenly trembled, making her whole person shiver with it, as if she had been thrown into ice water, suddenly awakening sharply.

In that earlier critical moment, what Daoqin had said wasn’t “the Celestial Teachings absolutely cannot have such formidable archers,” but rather “within the Teachings there absolutely cannot be such formidable archers”!

The Celestial Teachings, within the Teachings.

A difference of one word, yet the deep meaning contained within had a difference of ten thousand miles!

What kind of person would say “within the Teachings” rather than “the Celestial Teachings”?

Jiang Xuening’s eyelid jumped. She looked toward Xie Wei walking ahead of her.

But Xie Wei seemed completely unaware of how much shock was hidden beneath her abruptly halted words, or perhaps he simply didn’t care. He only said: “Those petty martial world rats, hiding and concealing themselves, can’t nurture such elite forces. No matter how you calculate it, this cannot be separated from connections with the court. Who it is doesn’t matter. When the time comes, just kill them all clean, and there won’t be any fish that slip through the net.”

“…”

Jiang Xuening couldn’t speak.

Xie Wei smiled ahead: “I thought you had some understanding of my true face.”

Understanding was one thing, but vaguely knowing and hearing with her own ears were not the same feeling.

Jiang Xuening didn’t want to understand him more deeply.

The more she knew, the deeper the danger. In the previous life, she had already been drawn too deeply into the conflicts. In this life, after rescuing the princess, she sought nothing else.

She looked toward the surrounding dense forest but could see no road at all. Several degrees of anxiety arose in her heart. At the same time, she imperceptibly changed the subject: “Are we not going back?”

Xie Wei said: “There’s no one in the carriage. They’ll discover it sooner or later. With a slight calculation, they’ll know when we fled and will certainly lay down a net across heaven and earth on the previous road. Going back would be walking into a trap.”

Jiang Xuening frowned: “Then where are we headed?”

Xie Wei said: “Jinan Prefecture.”

Jiang Xuening’s brows furrowed even deeper, inevitably doubting: “Does Teacher know the way?”

Xie Wei snapped off a tree branch blocking the path ahead, quite frank: “North of Tai’an is Jinan. We only need to cross this stretch of wilderness. The most dangerous place is the safest place. Knowing there’s a tiger on the mountain, we deliberately head toward tiger mountain.”

Jiang Xuening was completely speechless.

Knowing there’s a tiger on the mountain, deliberately heading toward tiger mountain?

Heaven knows if one might carelessly end up in the tiger’s belly!

Traveling through the mountains in late autumn was absolutely not an easy matter. Moreover, looking around in all directions, the forest was densely distributed, sinister winds howled, and the mountain terrain was rugged and treacherous. After walking for not very long, it left people panting and utterly exhausted.

Xie Wei, with his long arms and legs, blazed the trail ahead.

Jiang Xuening at first still exchanged a few words with him, but later had neither the mood nor the energy. In barely two quarter-hours, a layer of sweat had already appeared on her forehead. She could only focus on walking with her head down, stepping in the footprints Xie Wei left ahead, laboriously moving forward step by step.

In the deep night wilderness, all was silent.

Withered branches and rotted leaves spread a thick layer in the forest. In shallow places, one could sink down half a foot; in deep places, it could bury half a person’s leg.

The sounds of their progress were infinitely amplified in the emptiness.

Sometimes it even made one suspect those weren’t sounds they themselves were making, but that something else was following behind.

This feeling was extraordinarily familiar.

Jiang Xuening thought she had forgotten it long ago, but when the same circumstances and similar situation returned, those unbearable, trivial memories of the past all emerged from some corner that had long been covered by darkness.

Like reefs exposed after the tide receded.

Although they had already changed their original shape under the erosion of flowing water and accumulation of sand and dust, even shifting from their original positions, they were still there, always there, never disappeared.

Only at times like this—when there were no worldly distractions between heaven and earth, when one’s entire person was shrouded by terrifying nature—could a person truly realize their own insignificance and genuinely face their deeply scarred innermost heart.

Xie Wei hadn’t heard her speak for quite a while now.

He could only hear the sounds of uneven steps behind him, sometimes closer, sometimes farther.

And that gradually obvious panting.

Yet from start to finish, he never heard her make any request to “slow down” or “wait a moment.”

She only strove with all her might to keep up with his pace.

Xie Wei suddenly felt like he had returned to that time back then.

He turned back to look at her.

Jiang Xuening had fallen behind. Her originally exquisite clothing had been torn somewhat by surrounding branches and thorns during the walk, showing a somewhat bedraggled appearance. Her coiled black hair also hung down messily in several strands. She had picked up a wooden stick to use as a walking stick, but after all, she wasn’t as tall as him, nor did she have a particularly robust physique. She walked with extreme difficulty, completely gritting her teeth and relying on an unyielding proud spirit in her bones to support herself.

Like a blade of wild grass on the plains.

Silent, tenacious.

That expression easily overlapped with that desolate yet self-respecting young girl from back then.

Compared to six years ago, she had only grown taller and matured somewhat.

Actually, there was no real change.

Yet Xie Wei suddenly thought: She should have been a flower in the garden, not grass on the plains.

When she walked close, overhead was a patch of tall tree shadows blocking the already sparse starlight in the bleak cold night. Jiang Xuening inevitably couldn’t see clearly under her feet. Not paying attention, she knocked against a tree root extending from a nearby tree and protruding above the ground, immediately stumbling.

Xie Wei reached out to support her.

Two palms clasped together.

Everything seemed just as it had been in the past.

Only back then, she would press her lips tightly, furrow her brows, and would rather fall to the ground than brush away his hand with a sweep. Now, the grown young lady only looked up at him, and after a silent moment, said to him: “Thank you.”

It seemed unchanged, yet something had quietly shifted.

The rest of the journey that followed was inexplicably even quieter.

The two people each harbored their own thoughts, neither speaking.

When they walked too quickly at times, Xie Wei would stop to wait. Jiang Xuening also didn’t blindly show off her strength. When there were slopes or ravines she couldn’t cross herself, she would also grasp the hand Xie Wei extended, trying as much as possible not to slow down their progress.

Xie Wei said they must cross this mountain range before the snow fell.

Jiang Xuening thus recalled what Daoqin had said earlier—that they must reach the border before the snow fell.

When Daoqin said it, she hadn’t thought deeply about it.

But when nearly identical words came from Xie Wei’s mouth, she developed a not very optimistic conjecture.

Yet Xie Wei offered no explanation. Up ahead, another branch extended across, blocking their path. He reached out his hand and had just broken the branch when he heard a rustling movement. Something hissed.

Almost simultaneously, a sharp stabbing pain came from his right index finger near the palm.

His pupils suddenly constricted.

Something had bitten him, but in the darkness he didn’t make a sound. He only used his other hand to take the sharp broken end of that snapped branch and forcefully stabbed it into that thing’s cold, soft body. There was a faint “tss” of a crushing sound.

Jiang Xuening, walking behind, didn’t see anything at all. She only asked: “Teacher, what’s wrong?”

Xie Wei, afraid of frightening her, threw that thing far away.

He only said: “Nothing.”

The two continued forward for nearly two more hours. After all, they were only flesh and blood mortals—eventually they would grow tired.

Fortunately, they finally climbed over this mountain.

Jiang Xuening followed Xie Wei out of the forest and saw the deep valley between two mountains, with a clear stream meandering down from the distance. The east had already brightened with the pale light of dawn. Faint morning light fell through the tree shadows, and thin mist floated like gauze. In the eyes of people who had traveled arduously all this way, it seemed to transform into a fairyland beyond the mortal world.

She was overjoyed and immediately ran down, crouched by the stream, scooped up a handful of water, and poured it on her face stained with dirt, sighing comfortably.

Only then did she think of Xie Wei.

Turning back, she called: “Teacher, let’s rest here—Teacher?”

Xie Wei hadn’t followed.

When Jiang Xuening turned her head, she only saw him leaning against an exposed rock on the mountain slope, eyes closed. Hearing her voice, he didn’t open his eyes to look.

After waiting a moment, he still sat there motionless.

Jiang Xuening walked back again, climbed the slope, and called once more: “Teacher?”

Xie Wei’s eyelids rested lightly closed.

The newly risen light of dawn fell on his face, actually showing a kind of sickly pallor.

Jiang Xuening almost thought he had fallen asleep. She reached out wanting to touch his shoulder, but suddenly saw that on his right index finger resting on his knee, there were conspicuously two deep red blood holes!

In this instant, Jiang Xuening felt a bone-piercing chill.

Cold stream water slid down from her face.

She quietly gazed at this calm face before her, actually giving rise to several degrees of near-panicked sorrow. After pausing a moment, she finally reacted, almost trembling as she grasped Xie Wei’s palm and took his index finger knuckle into her mouth, sucking forcefully.

A fishy, salty taste immediately surged from the blood holes.

She held a small mouthful and spat it to the side.

Yet her heart felt inexplicably panicked.

Xie Wei’s eyelashes moved. He calmly opened his eyes, looking at her, yet said with complete absence of emotional fluctuation: “Are you still so afraid of dead people?”

Jiang Xuening was suddenly stunned.

Her lips were slightly cool, but the tip of her tongue carried warmth. At this moment, lifting her head, she only met that pair of profound, clear pupils. He wasn’t poisoned by snake venom at all, nor had he fainted at all!

“You!”

In that instant, she was like the one who had been bitten by the snake. She immediately threw away his hand, retreated to the side, and looked at him with vigilance and anger.

Xie Wei slowly withdrew his hand.

His finger still retained a trace of warmth.

His gaze fell on Jiang Xuening and didn’t move away. He opened his mouth to take the wound back in, and after the tip of his tongue tasted a trace of blood, he slowly said: “Didn’t that traveling doctor back then, that charlatan, teach you to distinguish? It’s not poisonous.”

He was mocking her foolish act of cutting her wrist to feed blood back then!

Jiang Xuening’s chest heaved. She was too angry to speak.

But Xie Wei’s gaze made her feel even more like she was being watched by a venomous snake. Even his voice had a tremor-inducing cold flatness: “I am your teacher. Though I abstain from carnal desires and devote myself to Buddhist and Daoist learning, I am by no means a sage or virtuous person. In these desolate mountains and wild ridges, people are like wild beasts. If you still want to marry a good person and don’t wish to be silenced by me afterward, I advise you—stay far away from me.”

Jiang Xuening wasn’t a fool. Just hearing the four words “carnal desires” made her eyelid jump.

However, when pushed to extremes, people easily rebel.

When fear reaches its peak, it becomes anger.

Having fallen to such circumstances, that man surnamed Xie still didn’t have half a human word in his mouth. That energy all over his body—no matter how you looked at it—seemed like the character for “contrarian.” She didn’t know which of her nerves had twisted against which rebellious bone. She sneered coldly: “Is that so? Teacher Xie cultivates himself and is quite abstinent. You don’t know how to do other things, but being duplicitous is truly impressive. Don’t worry—who knows who’ll sleep with whom, who’ll suffer the loss!”