When the hornet swarm struck, Pei Zhao reacted at once.

He tilted his head and listened for only one moment before immediately understanding.

“Hornets — a large swarm.” He reached out and seized Lingbo: “Run — fast. The sound is coming from that direction.”

Lingbo assumed he was going to run with her. But instead, he wrapped an arm around her waist and simply lifted her off the ground. She had no idea where he got such strength — he looked tall and slender, but was actually more powerful than a horse, and ran at full speed even carrying her. For one moment she wondered if it was real, because Pei Zhao was not above a joke. Then, glancing over his shoulder, she saw the sight behind them and turned pale with shock.

“Run! Pei Zhao, it’s really hornets — a whole swarm of them!” She was so frightened that she immediately clutched Pei Zhao’s neck. The second daughter of the Ye family, if nothing else, had a supreme instinct for self-preservation.

But even as she feared for herself, she worried about her companions: “What do we do? They’re all by that stream — not a single place to take shelter. What about Qinglan? Yanyan is with Shen Biwei at least, but Shen Biwei is certain to be reckless…”

Before she had finished speaking, she felt a light nip on her arm.

“You’re still thinking about them at a time like this? I’m about to run myself to death — have a little mercy, Miss Ye.” Pei Zhao could still laugh even now.

Ye Lingbo was tempted to scold him, but one glance at the hornets surging toward them like a fog sent all the words from her mind.

But even through her fear, a thought flashed through her mind: in this sort of weather, how could there be this many hornets emerging? Surely there must be some reason for it.

—

The hornet swarm had originated from within the peach blossom grove, but in fact Lingbo had already passed the point of the outbreak. Shen Biwei and the others were at the outer edges. The ones truly at the center were Cui Jingyu and Ye Qinglan.

Not without reason did Shen Biwei feel easy about Qinglan — whatever one might say of Cui Jingyu, he was, at any given moment, the most reliable of men.

The instant the hornets surged out, he reacted immediately and stepped in front of Qinglan.

This wave of hornets came in overwhelming force — blotting out the sky — every one of them the size of a thumb joint, black-and-gold striped. Anyone who had ever hunted knew there were only two things in the forest to truly fear: venomous snakes, and hornets. Everything else — tigers, wolves, and the like — only looked fearsome. A strong bow and sharp arrows could handle them. With enough people, even a wolf pack became prey.

Only hornets were truly dangerous. Hornets were nothing like honeybees. Ordinary honeybees gathered nectar to live; hornets were carnivores. A honeybee dies after it stings, and its venom is mild. But the venom of a hornet is extremely severe. Hornet nests are built in the ground, and horses frequently stamp on them — horses had been stung to death by hornets. If a horse couldn’t withstand it, how could a person? Four or five stings was already gravely dangerous. If a large nest was disturbed, the victim often ended up swollen beyond recognition, dead in the forest.

Hornets were also ferocious and frenzied. Once provoked, the entire swarm surged out, stinging everything in sight. They chased with the wind — the faster you ran, the more fiercely they pursued — and wouldn’t let up until a person went down.

Cui Jingyu, who had been the finest of the young nobility in the capital, naturally understood all of this.

At a moment between life and death, he had only time to sweep his eyes across his surroundings. He spotted the mountain stream below the bank, and seized Qinglan’s hand.

“Jump.” Qinglan heard only that one word from him, and her body lurched — and then he had pulled her with him, and they plunged into the water.

He told Qinglan to jump — meaning he would jump first, so that he entered the water first, and if the stream was too shallow or there were rocks at the bottom, he would take the impact, not she.

Fortunately, the mountain stream was deep enough. Once he plunged in, he found no bottom within reach, and so turned himself in the water and barely caught Qinglan as she dropped down after him.

She didn’t know how to swim — he knew that. So once he surfaced, he treaded water and wrapped his arms around her, keeping her from sinking. She had always been of unusually firm and enduring nature. Remarkably, she managed to suppress the urge to struggle — she simply held her breath, staring at him with frightened eyes through the water.

It was something he had once taught her: if you ever fall into water, don’t struggle, don’t breathe. The more you struggle, the deeper you sink; the more you breathe, the more you choke. He would be able to get her back to the surface — don’t be afraid.

Overhead, the hornets were still humming their terrible sound. Even through the surface of the water, that sound carried a sense of dread — a fear unrelated to judgment, the innate human terror at the proximity of death. Qinglan looked up and saw, indistinctly through the water’s surface, what seemed to be the swarm still circling above.

She couldn’t swim, and couldn’t see clearly anything underwater. The water of a February stream — no matter how it had flowed from a warm spring — was bone-piercingly cold. Overhead the swarm still hovered. By any measure this was a desperate situation beyond imagining, and yet perhaps because of the hand she held, she found a strange and unexpected peace.

Cui Jingyu looked at her quietly underwater.

So many years, and he had not looked at her this closely. Still the face he remembered. In his days in the northern frontier, he had dreamed of it countless times — he remembered her hair, soft as mist; remembered the luminous jade-like quality of her skin; remembered the way she lowered her eyes; remembered the small mole on her earlobe…

And now she was still in the water, holding his hand — the scene felt like a dream.

She couldn’t swim, so she could only hold her breath for so long. And the swarm still hovered overhead.

Why had Han Yueqi kept pressing him about what had happened back then? Why had Ye Lingbo been so certain he would always take her sister’s side? And Yanyan, A’Cuo — they all seemed to know the secret. The secret that Cui Jingyu himself refused to acknowledge.

Han Yueqi had tried to tempt him with the future — hoping he would let go of the past. But the past was exactly what he couldn’t let go of. They had no future left. The decision she had made, she would never undo. All they had ever possessed was that one past, four years ago.

She didn’t want a future for them. And so he had no choice but to pretend he didn’t want one either.

All those imaginings of a future he had once entertained — what kind of home they would build, taking her to see the sea, to see mountains and rivers, to show her the great rivers and landscapes she had never had the chance to see, taking her to ride horses, earning her a court title, protecting her family, spending each day and night with her, waking together in the morning…

All of it was gone. And so he told himself he didn’t want any of it either.

But when all was said and done — when every story had grown quiet — there was only one thing he wanted.

He wanted her to live.

Qinglan had never particularly thought about her own death — she still intended to be a sister for many more years, to look after Lingbo and Yanyan. But accidents always caught one off guard. The water of February was cold enough to cut through bone. Soaking in it, suffocating, she was in agony — yet her heart held a strange stillness.

One often had no choice in this life. But death, at least, might permit a small measure of freedom.

If she were to die here — here, at his side — it was the best version of death she could have chosen for herself. Better than dying many, many years from now, when he had already built a family, when he had already fallen in love with someone else.

At least this way, she would still have kept that promise.

Qinglan had that kind of unyielding spirit — she held her breath tight, feeling the suffocation grow in her chest moment by moment, the darkness creeping in at the edges of her vision, everything blurring.

Until something brushed her lips, and she opened her eyes wide in astonishment.

In the clear, cold stream water, Cui Jingyu’s face was close before her — still the spirited brows and eyes she had known four years ago, though now with a scar across the narrow cheekbone.

It was only when her teeth were gently parted that Qinglan understood what was happening.

Cui Jingyu, who had once been the finest swimmer — who could hold his breath underwater for nearly half a quarter-hour — surfaced, and dove again, bearing the pain of the stings, and breathed air into her.