She leaned against the headboard, hair loose, face pale. Seeing him arrive, she forced out a smile.

“Sit.”

He sat, pulling red flower oil from his robes. “This is best for back injuries.”

She indicated he should place it on the bedside table. “Chengfeng, you who play the qin—do you hope someone will understand the meaning within your music?”

“Hope for it!”

“Has it come?”

“True friends are hard to find. How could it be so easy?”

He smiled bitterly. “You only count as half. You understand me but don’t understand the qin. You fall asleep upon hearing it, exactly like that Fox Zhao.”

She curved her lips slightly. After a long while, she said softly, “In that regard, we’re quite alike.”

He froze, not knowing what to say.

Hearing this, Yan Sanhe had to interrupt. “Dong Chengfeng, did Shen Duruo truly say these words to the former Crown Prince?”

Dong Chengfeng’s face wore an ambiguous smile. “What do you think?”

“Probably not.”

“Why not?”

“If she had, she wouldn’t have asked whether anyone understood your qin music.”

Yan Sanhe: “On the surface she was asking about you, but actually she was asking about herself. Those few sentences from the former Crown Prince reached her heart—she was exactly that kind of person.”

Dong Chengfeng nodded.

This girl guessed correctly. Shen Duruo had never said those sentences to Fox Zhao.

Yan Sanhe looked back at him with some sympathy. “I think… this should have been when Shen Duruo’s heart began to stir.”

“You’re the clever one!”

“I’m not clever. I just understand Shen Duruo’s nature thoroughly.”

Yan Sanhe: “She was too intelligent—so intelligent that looking across the realm, not one person could match her brilliance. She couldn’t even find anyone to talk to. For twenty years she could only come and go alone.

She befriended you only because you both treated people sincerely, didn’t scheme against others. That was your commonality, but it doesn’t mean you were the same type of people.

But you wouldn’t understand what price she paid as a noble family daughter—not marrying, not bearing children, becoming a female physician. You never lived in a noble family, so you only thought her special. But Zhao Rongyu knew.”

Yan Sanhe sighed.

“Zhao Rongyu was born in the imperial family, raised in the imperial family. He knew how to write the word ‘propriety,’ knew the ultimate path for noble women, understood even more how difficult, how extremely difficult it was to walk a different road.

Even more fatal—Zhao Rongyu was over twenty years older than her. Perhaps he wasn’t as clever as her, but the years had left their deposit on him.

Like wine, it must reach that vintage to become mellow, to have character. But all this comes from accumulated experience, from unspeakable hardships.

Such a Zhao Rongyu, to the supremely intelligent, solitary Shen Duruo, was a beam of light, even more a fatal attraction.

If only Zhao Rongyu had been a few years younger, with less experience, the attraction wouldn’t have been so fatal. But unfortunately…”

Yan Sanhe sighed lightly. “As you said, not coming too early, not coming too late—they just met like that.”

She didn’t even need to think deeply to know how incredibly unbelievable it must have been for Shen Duruo after hearing those words Zhao Rongyu spoke.

Even describing it as being struck by lightning seemed too light.

Add to that, though Zhao Rongyu had passed the age of forty, he abstained from oral pleasures and female charms, maintained himself extremely well—his every gesture held mature masculine charm, gentle and faint, utterly attractive.

The sympathy in Yan Sanhe’s eyes grew increasingly rich.

“Dong Chengfeng, the thing you regret most in this life isn’t failing to confess your feelings to her earlier, but truly not being born into a good birth.

You and her, like you and Zhao Rongyu, are separated by heaven and earth. You’re people from two different worlds, destined never to come together.

Even if you did come together, you could only walk to her side, never into her heart.”

Deathly silence.

Suffocating silence.

Even Xue Zhao driving the carriage ahead noticed, deliberately stopping the carriage and lifting the curtain to look inside.

Dong Chengfeng’s eyes reddened. “Yan Sanhe, you certainly understand them.”

Yan Sanhe clearly felt the wildness on Dong Chengfeng’s body dissipate, replaced by a trace of desolation.

Like an old wild horse that could no longer gallop across that vast grassland, only reminiscing about past events.

Unfortunately, the past was cruel.

Half a month after Shen Duruo’s back injury, her words suddenly decreased. When they sat face to face, she often spaced out.

Asking what was wrong, she’d shake her head and never say.

This appearance of weighing heavy matters on her mind drew all of Dong Chengfeng’s attention to Shen Duruo.

Whenever she entered the Crown Prince’s palace, he’d shamelessly follow beside her, secretly observing.

Through this observation, he utterly despaired.

When people discussed Fox Zhao, she’d prick up her ears to listen;

After Fox Zhao returned to the palace, her gaze would occasionally drift toward Fox Zhao’s study;

Once when Fox Zhao’s chest ached, Shen Duruo didn’t use medicine but asked him to play a piece called “Purple Bamboo Tune,” paired with very diluted Qimen black tea, to treat Fox Zhao’s ailment.

As the piece played, she was clearly drowsy. Her hand hidden at her side kept pinching her thigh. Her intermittent gaze all rested on the person reclining on the couch.

When the piece ended, Fox Zhao’s tightly furrowed brow relaxed, light snoring emerging from his nose.

When leaving, she turned to look once more, then lowered her head. Her lips pressed together, the corners of her mouth lifting high.

“That smile carried some girlish shyness on her face—the appearance of a maiden’s spring awakening. So I knew the person her heart stirred for was him.”

Liking someone, like a cough, cannot be hidden.

No matter how well Shen Duruo disguised it, to Dong Chengfeng it was full of flaws everywhere.

“Yan Sanhe, can you imagine? I was like a voyeur, judging through her expressions and gazes how deep her feelings for Fox Zhao ran.

A bit deeper, my heart grew more bitter; a bit lighter, my heart felt a bit more joyful, my sleep at night improved slightly.

Gradually, I understood a truth.

People come to this world to experience tribulations of emotion. Fox Zhao was Shen Duruo’s tribulation. And Shen Duruo was mine.”

Dong Chengfeng sighed lowly. “I came to the Crown Prince’s palace over a year before her. When three years were complete, I left. Altogether, we spent two years together. Two years, costing half a lifetime—I truly couldn’t escape this tribulation!”

Yan Sanhe’s heart jumped. “You came to Prince Han’s side because of Shen Duruo?”

“Otherwise?”

Dong Chengfeng snorted. “For Fox Zhao? Not quite to that extent.”

He was actually for Shen Duruo;

The piece “High Mountains, Flowing Water” he played was directed at Shen Duruo.

As Yan Sanhe’s thoughts raced, her gaze at Dong Chengfeng deepened several degrees: Then why did he play “High Mountains, Flowing Water” for me?

Dong Chengfeng didn’t give her time to think, continuing:

“Do you know what Fox Zhao did before I left the Crown Prince’s palace?”

—