Ziqing’s sudden leap startled Xiong Xiaobao and Jue Mingzi awake from their daze, but it left Jun Beiyue laughing heartily instead.
“Look at you, so easily rattled! What a coward!”
Indeed, her courage could otherwise move mountains, but when it came to this particular matter, she truly was a coward.
“What’s going on! Tell me!” Ziqing was truly about to lose her temper.
“Come see for yourself!” Jun Beiyue simply wouldn’t say.
“Xiong Xiaobao, what did you see?” Ziqing turned to ask her son instead.
But the moment she asked, Xiong Xiaobao actually started crying. “Mommy, it’s too hard! It’s too hard!” Not asking would have been better—now, having asked, Ziqing only grew more agitated.
The doting amusement in Jun Beiyue’s eyes deepened further—this was the first time he’d seen this woman so utterly unable to keep her composure, hardly seeming like a woman with a son of her own, more like a little girl.
At last, Jun Beiyue stopped teasing her and beckoned her over. “Come here. I haven’t looked at it myself yet either—something this important, let me look at it together with you.”
This object—its weight was truly immense.
If Han Ziqing hadn’t been an orphan of the lost island, if it hadn’t been for the aphrodisiac incense back then, Jun Beiyue might never have so much as glanced her way.
He wouldn’t have clashed directly with his father, would have married the legitimate daughter of the Prime Minister’s household, left her behind in the Prince Yao residence, and set off alone for the border, spending his whole life fighting wars for Da Zhou. The battlefield would have been his entire world.
If it weren’t for her bloodline as an orphan of the lost island, if Ziqing had simply been an ordinary concubine-born daughter of a prime minister’s household, she had no idea where she’d be right now, what she’d be doing, or whether she’d even be thinking about a world a thousand years in the future.
The secret in her hand carried such weight—not only because it was the secret of the lost island, but because, to both of them, this secret represented everything they had worked toward together, hand in hand, all these years.
Jun Beiyue’s deep, gentle eyes were filled with a tenderness so thick it seemed it could never be unraveled, and it was enough, all at once, to settle the uncharacteristically flustered Ziqing.
That Jun Beiyue would take the time to look at it together with her—it was so rare of him—and that was exactly why he could stay so composed.
Ziqing walked over, and Jun Beiyue pulled her into his arms, settling her onto his lap.
“Silly girl… now that it’s finally in our hands, what’s the rush?” he said with a smile, taking her hand and, together, slowly opening the letter.
His warmth, his scent, his tenderness enveloped her completely, and in this moment, Ziqing truly felt no fear at all.
Even if the letter held bad news, she found she was no longer afraid.
Even the secret itself no longer seemed to matter so much—what mattered was that she had found a man like this, one who could remain calm and composed even facing matters of the greatest consequence, who could gently soothe away her anxiety with such unhurried ease.
With a husband like this, even if she faced a hundred more secrets of a hundred more lost islands, she would dare to go searching for every one of them.
The letter finally, slowly opened, and a line of characters came into view before Ziqing and Jun Beiyue’s eyes.
Just fourteen characters, such a short line—understandable at a single glance.
“Lishang will carry you home, to a place without sorrow.”
Even though the line was so short, both Ziqing and Jun Beiyue understood it at a glance. Still, they read through it character by character, counting it out again and again.
Fourteen characters, no mistake!
Lishang will carry you home, to a place without sorrow!
That single sentence—what did it mean?
“So we need to play the Lishang all the way through?” Ziqing murmured to herself.
“Which means, even knowing the meaning of these fourteen notes, it does us no good—we absolutely must find all the missing notes,” Jun Beiyue said flatly.
Taken literally, in order to find the lost island, they had to start from the Lishang itself, and had to play the piece to completion.
“The complete Lishang…” Jue Mingzi murmured as well.
Playing the complete Lishang required not only the full score but two zithers—the Blood Zither and the Nameless Zither—and, even more importantly, a musician skilled in every technique needed to master both instruments.
In this entire world, apart from Ziqing, there was only one other person—Xuanyuan Lige!
Whether judging by the score of the Lishang or by the tonal qualities of the two instruments, the Lishang was clearly a duet, requiring the combination of both yin and yang tones played together!
“Xuanyuan Lige matters a great deal!” Jue Mingzi murmured under his breath, his voice so quiet that no one else heard it.
But whether it was Jun Beiyue or Ziqing, both of them understood this matter clearly in their hearts—Baili Weisheng had said long ago that the two zithers needed to be played together.
Was that precisely why Jue Mingzi and Xiong Xiaobao had reacted the way they had?
A duet—regardless of what Xuanyuan Lige himself might think—seemed, to Ziqing, utterly impossible!
For a moment, everyone’s eyes turned to Ziqing.
Yet Ziqing said not another word, silently burning the letter, saying only, “It’s getting late. Everyone should rest early. Tomorrow we begin another hard battle.” For now, they’d set the rest aside, not think too much about it—first find the last missing note, then consider this matter?
Ziqing said this calmly, yet found herself dazed as well, unable to stop herself from sinking into thought.
A duet… a duet!
The room fell silent, the air seeming to freeze along with Ziqing’s stillness.
“That’s right, no matter what, we still need to find that last missing note. Tomorrow morning we head up to the heavenly lake—everyone should get some rest,” Jue Mingzi said, breaking the silence, exchanging a look with Xiong Xiaobao. Xiong Xiaobao immediately pulled Baili Xiaosheng along and left with Jue Mingzi.
In the room, only Ziqing and Jun Beiyue remained, husband and wife.
Ziqing truly was dazed, much like Xiong Xiaobao and Jue Mingzi had been moments before—that kind of daze wasn’t really deep thought at all, but rather a total blank in her mind.
Baili Weisheng had said the duet was necessary, only she had never seriously considered what that would actually involve.
Now—how were they to make it happen?
Beg Xuanyuan Lige, or force him?
Even using the zither as a weapon against him was something she didn’t want to do—let alone play a duet with him!
Thinking of Qianqian, thinking of the despicable, filthy methods he had used against her, she felt nothing but disgust!
That was a line, a man’s very last, bottommost line!
Could he still even be called a man?
Jun Beiyue held her the whole time, saying nothing for a long while, his deep, restrained eyes giving nothing away.
The two of them sat in silence together for a full two hours before Ziqing finally, slowly, came back to herself. Without a word, she simply turned and wrapped her arms around Jun Beiyue.
“Beiyue, tell me what to do. Please?” she said flatly, utterly drained. Jun Beiyue gently stroked her head, his voice soft and soothing. “Be good… don’t think about it so much for now. Once we find the last missing note, I’ll tell you. All right?”
Ziqing said nothing, only holding him tighter, nodding.
That night, Jun Beiyue simply held Ziqing like that until she cried herself to sleep from exhaustion. He himself did not sleep at all, staying awake until dawn, his deep eyes restrained and silent.
That night, Jue Mingzi, Xiong Xiaobao, and Baili Xiaosheng, too, tossed and turned, unable to sleep at all.
Xiong Xiaobao, unable to sleep, climbed up onto the roof to find Baili Xiaosheng. He knew that a duet wasn’t something that could happen just because two people were willing—performing a duet was an enormously complicated matter, especially for a piece as fiendishly difficult as the Lishang.