Their eyes met.

Jiang Xuening was surprisingly calm.

She had never been someone with a good temper to begin with. Once her patience and resentment reached a certain critical point, and further provoked by one particularly grating remark from Xie Wei’s words just now, it was like a spark falling and igniting everything, exploding violently and driving her to do something extraordinary that she had previously wanted to do but hadn’t dared.

This was an act of revenge.

And merely an act of revenge.

Xie Wei appeared equally calm.

However, for him, such calmness was merely a facade.

Jiang Xuening’s expressionless face reflected in his eyes, instantly crumbling into dark, turbulent clouds, rising and falling in dangerous waves, churning with a heavy anger like an approaching storm.

He clearly hadn’t touched that cat, yet at this moment, a chilling sensation crawled up along the wide sleeves that had just brushed against the cat, climbed up his arm, reached his fingertips, leaving behind a horrifying tremor.

The excessive tension made his rigid fingers go numb.

Xie Wei desperately tried to dispel this feeling, and desperately tried to suppress the heavy anger surging in his chest, because his reason had always told him that anger was the most useless emotion for a person.

But the more he tried to suppress it, the more the waves churned in his heart.

He ultimately failed to restrain himself—a rare occurrence—and stared at her, saying word by word, slowly: “Ning Er, do you think my heart is too soft, that I’m too easy to talk to?”

Not the “Second Miss Jiang” he would use in public, nor the “Second Miss Ning” he used only in private, but this direct, harsh, even somewhat cold and cutting “Ning Er”!

Jiang Xuening caught a whiff of that intensely dangerous scent that couldn’t be concealed.

She was equally tense. The moment his words left his mouth, a chill shot up from the soles of her feet straight up her spine, and she almost instinctively took a step backward.

But she had forgotten that at this moment, she was standing on the steps of this side hall.

As her foot moved back, it caught on the step above.

Jiang Xuening lost her balance and was about to fall backward, but a hand reached out just then, forcefully grasping her arm. Those fingers that usually only held brush and ink were extremely slender, yet contained a fierce strength, pulling her toward him!

The distance rapidly closed.

She nearly stumbled, forced to lean toward him involuntarily.

The palm gripping her arm was like an iron vice, so forceful it caused her faint pain. When she looked up with lingering fear, she only saw Xie Wei’s neck with veins subtly bulging beneath the surface, his throat frozen still, the taut lines of his jaw, his thin lips pressed into a flat line, and…

A pair of cold, sinister eyes!

This was completely different from the demeanor Xie Wei usually displayed in public—they were virtually two different people!

Jiang Xuening’s scalp went numb.

Even in her previous life, when she had seen him holding a longbow, leading people to seal the palace gates, coldly watching as rebels slaughtered the imperial family, he had never shown such a terrifying expression!

She wanted to retreat, but was already firmly restrained by him.

She should have cried out, but couldn’t produce the slightest sound from her throat.

He looked down at her almost condescendingly, his standing form like a towering mountain, carrying a heavy, oppressive weight, and said: “You’re very clever, and very willful. Since you last entered the palace, I warned you not to make me angry.”

Jiang Xuening let out a cold laugh: “I am willful, after all, as Tutor Xie said, obstinate and unrepentant. I hadn’t realized that you, esteemed tutor, have been so tolerant of me all along.”

Xie Wei said: “Should I not discipline you?”

Jiang Xuening raised her eyes to meet his: “Respecting teachers and valuing learning means naturally that students learn what teachers teach, students are what teachers say they are. Whatever Teacher Xie suppresses me with, scolds me for, or misjudges me about—all of it is proper.”

Xie Wei gazed at her without speaking.

But Jiang Xuening felt that surge of violent energy not only hadn’t subsided, but was growing wildly in her heart, making her words increasingly sharp: “I just never expected that the dignified Imperial Tutor would actually fear cats. How truly remarkable.”

Xie Wei’s face darkened.

Yet she remained motionless and continued: “Yesterday when I saw the esteemed tutor keeping his distance from that little cat, I had this suspicion in my heart, but how could the strategically brilliant Tutor Xie fear a mere small cat? This suspicion seemed far too absurd no matter how I looked at it, to the point that I couldn’t believe it myself. I never imagined that testing it casually today would prove this absurd suspicion true. So even a perfect person has something they fear, even a sage has something they dread.”

Before today, Xie Wei had been a perfect person in everyone’s eyes, even half a sage. There were few things in the world that could make him change color. The reborn Jiang Xuening had been even more apprehensive and fearful because she knew his true nature. Yet after today, she discovered that Xie Wei, whom all the civil and military officials of the previous life had feared and dreaded, was actually afraid of something as small and pitifully soft as a cat in this world. Thus she finally understood—

There truly are no perfect people in this world.

Even sages are merely flesh and blood!

This suddenly stripped away her old fears and apprehension, allowing her to confront him with an unprecedented combative stance.

The light in Xie Wei’s eyes shifted and changed.

If he wished, at this moment when dark currents were stirring in the palace, it would be all too easy to take the opportunity to eliminate a small young lady who had entered the palace as a study companion. However, he ultimately was not someone who vented anger indiscriminately. He slowly released his grip and loosened the five fingers that had been tightly clamping her arm.

“A perfect person does have fears, a sage does have dreads. However, I am neither a perfect person nor a sage.”

His wide sleeves fell.

His fingertips still felt numb, as if in spasm.

His voice, without inflection, was deep and slow, but the gaze that fell upon her seemed to have physical weight: “Jiang Xuening, you should remember this—when some people are unwilling to touch certain things, it’s not necessarily out of fear. It may also be because they hate them, detest them to the extreme.”

Hate them, detest them to the extreme.

That weight pressed down like mountains and seas.

Jiang Xuening suddenly felt somewhat unable to breathe, and looked up at him.

Xie Wei’s face, flawless in the eyes of the world, was covered by a layer of shadow. His lowered eyelids concealed that murky, inscrutable darkness, like a divine statue standing high in a temple hall, possessing a nearly numb perfection.

She suddenly realized she had made a mistake.

But Xie Wei had already lowered his eyes and turned away, saying only flatly: “From now on, you need not come to learn the qin anymore.”