Jiang Xuening asked: “Should we keep moving forward?”

Perhaps their luck would be good and they could gamble against heaven, daring to make it out before the heavy snow sealed the mountains. Or perhaps the snow wouldn’t fall too heavily and would stop soon, not affecting their journey at all.

But Xie Wei shook his head.

After gazing ahead for a long while, he didn’t answer. He simply turned around and walked back, descending along the mountain ridge.

Jiang Xuening stood at the high point watching his retreating figure, like a solitary crane amidst the vast wilderness.

To travel against impending wind and snow was indeed far too risky.

Yet finding a place to temporarily rest wasn’t safe either.

If the wind and snow were too heavy and lasted too long, the two of them trapped in their predicament would have to consider the possibility of freezing or starving to death.

Both outcomes were possible—so why did Xie Wei choose the latter?

She recalled that Xie Wei disliked snow.

But was it merely that?

Frowning slightly and standing there for a moment, Jiang Xuening ultimately suppressed her doubts and followed him back along the original path.

By this time, the dark clouds had already spread over.

The light in the wilderness was never particularly bright to begin with. Obscured by the drifting gloom, it gradually filled with an oppressive, unsettling atmosphere.

The tree leaves remained motionless.

Yet insects and ants crawled frantically across the surface of soil and decaying leaves as if fleeing disaster.

It took them quite a while to find a cave at the foot of the mountain not far behind. The mountain rock bore traces of water erosion, and several stones lay at the cave entrance—having been blown by wind for so long that they crumbled at a touch.

Inside it was no more than two zhang deep and one zhang wide.

The height was barely over one zhang. Some places were rather low, requiring one to duck to pass through—quite rugged in several spots.

When Jiang Xuening was clearing away the rocks and dust in the cave, she discovered several tufts of grayish-black fine fur, seemingly left by wild rabbits and the like. She estimated that when wind and rain raged in the past, some small animals had also come in to take shelter.

They were essentially occupying someone else’s territory.

But that was fine too.

When she went outside to gather much dried autumn grass to spread on the ground, she thought that if those creatures came later, they would be walking right into a trap and would inevitably end up in her and Xie Wei’s stomachs, sparing them from having to search for food themselves.

The snow might stop after falling for a while, or it might continue for a long time without stopping. Whichever the case, what they feared first was cold, and second was hunger.

So after Jiang Xuening finished organizing the cave, she went everywhere collecting branches and dry kindling.

Meanwhile, Xie Wei took his bow and arrow and went into the deep mountain forest.

It wasn’t until dusk that Jiang Xuening saw him emerge from the mountain hollow across the way.

In his hands he carried a plucked wild pheasant, a skinned wild rabbit, and on the other side, a roebuck that wasn’t particularly large—all threaded on bamboo poles.

His face was coldly stern, and even his Daoist robe was stained with quite a bit of fresh blood.

Jiang Xuening’s eyelid couldn’t help but twitch. These past days they had relied heavily on Xie Wei’s excellent archery to hunt some wild game in the mountains to fill their stomachs. But he was originally someone who loved cleanliness, and knowing she couldn’t bear the sight of blood very well, after hunting wild animals he would generally process them on the spot—neither letting her see nor getting even a trace of gore on himself.

But right now…

She vaguely sensed something wasn’t right and felt deeply shocked.

Yet Xie Wei showed no excess reaction to the blood staining his body. After indifferently inserting the bamboo pole threaded with game into a rock crevice, he went out again, broke off several clusters of leafy branches, and piled them at the cave entrance—serving as a not particularly solid half-wall to block some of the wind and snow coming in from outside.

Then he sat down to make a fire.

Throughout this entire process, he didn’t say a single word.

Jiang Xuening suddenly felt an incomparable oppression.

It didn’t come from the approaching wind and snow.

It came only from this person before her eyes.

She made no sound, only finding a relatively clean spot across from him to sit down. Hugging her knees, she silently observed him.

Night quietly descended.

The sound of wind howled ceaselessly outside.

The light inside the cave became incomparably dim.

Xie Wei’s features also became blurred and unclear.

But the striking flint began to flash with light.

His calm and cold features thus flickered bright and dark—at times suddenly illuminated by the flash, at times plunging into darkness after the flash extinguished, as if caught in an endless tug-of-war. Not until those sparks fell onto the dried grass bundle and orange-red flames slowly burned up did the surrounding darkness gradually disperse, illuminating his entire front, leaving only the wavering shadow on the jagged, uneven mountain wall behind him.

For some unknown reason, at the moment the fire finally rose, Jiang Xuening quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

Xie Wei looked toward her.

But she avoided this direct gaze, instead looking toward the cave entrance, then softly exclaiming: “It’s snowing!”

It was finally snowing after all.

The deep night’s gloomy sky was like a dark curtain, torn open by wind’s sharp claws into a huge gash, with thousands upon thousands of snowflakes tumbling down, blown by the wind and drifting like goose down.

Some even landed on the branches piled at the cave entrance.

Judging by this momentum, it probably wouldn’t take an hour to blanket the entire mountain in silver-white.

Jiang Xuening watched for a while. Though her heart was truly heavy, she deliberately forced herself to smile lightly: “It seems we’re trapped here and temporarily can’t get out.”

She thought Xie Wei should also turn to look at the snow at this moment.

However, when she turned her head back, Xie Wei’s gaze still rested on her, deep, quiet, and silent, just like a petal of snow blown into the cave by wind from outside.

He didn’t look outside even once. Only after watching until that forced bit of smile at the corners of Jiang Xuening’s lips gradually stiffened and disappeared did he finally lower his eyelids again and add kindling to the fire.

Xie Wei’s fingers that played the qin were very beautiful.

When breaking a few branches, it seemed to take no effort at all, then he tossed them into the fire. Some insufficiently dry leaves were licked by the flames, curling up and producing small crackling sounds.

The mountain cave suddenly became extremely quiet.

Jiang Xuening kept the fire with him, sitting opposite each other, neither speaking again to break the silence.

Leaping flames burned in the depths of their pupils.

At this moment, there was unexpectedly a kind of tender ordinariness.

In this place isolated from the mundane world, all language lost its meaning. She and Xie Wei seemed to have developed a kind of tacit understanding—neither having anything to chat about nor wanting to chat about anything.

Occasionally she also added a few sticks of firewood to the fire.

But her thoughts seemed to suddenly fly far away, with all her distant and near, glorious and painful memories coming one after another.

Jiang Xuening buried her face in the crook of her arm, watching the burning flames. In the end, she felt the fatigue from her earlier busyness surge up, gradually producing some drowsiness.

She didn’t know when she closed her eyes.

In her confused consciousness, she seemed to hear someone’s suppressed coughing.

When she opened her eyes again, she discovered she was actually lying on the pile of soft grass laid out earlier, with a blood-stained Daoist robe draped over her shoulders. Meanwhile, Xie Wei was missing an outer robe. He still sat facing the fire, holding half a slender branch between his fingers, only staring motionlessly at the flames.

Jiang Xuening thought she was probably still too kindhearted after all.

Otherwise, how could she feel her nose slightly sting?

Opening her mouth to say something, but looking at Xie Wei’s profile illuminated by firelight, in the end she didn’t speak. She only sat up, folded the robe, and returned it to him, saying: “Thank you. Won’t you sleep for a while?”

Only then did Xie Wei turn to look at her. He took the outer robe but didn’t put it back on.

His fingertips touched some residual warmth on the soft fabric.

For that moment, he very much wanted to ask: Jiang Xuening, do you believe there are devils wandering in this world? In deserted cities, in empty, silent snowy nights.

—He didn’t dare sleep.