Fifteen years ago in the battle at Mushen Mountain, Du Sancai was the military officer responsible for transporting grain and provisions.

But Xu Hexue and his Jing’an Army fought bloody battles for three days in barbarian territory, yet not only did they fail to receive the other three routes of reinforcements, they also never received Du Sancai.

Fifteen years later, the blood of thirty thousand Jing’an Army souls had long since run dry, yet Du Sancai had risen steadily through the ranks to become a fifth-rank official.

Most of the candles in the room had been extinguished. Xu Hexue sat alone in a patch of deep shadow, his vision extremely blurred, the hand supporting himself against the bed post showing prominent veins.

“Xu Ziling.”

Ni Su stood outside the door holding a basin of willow leaf water.

Xu Hexue instinctively lifted his gaze toward the direction her voice came from, but could see nothing clearly. In life, these eyes had been slashed by the barbarians’ golden blades, and now they seemed to be soaked through with blood. He wasn’t certain what he looked like at this moment, but it certainly wasn’t presentable.

“Would it be easier for you if I don’t come in?”

Ni Su set down the basin and turned to sit against the doorframe. Outside the covered corridor, misty rain merged and blended. She tilted her head back. “Do you know—there are actually many things I want to ask you, but I always feel that if I ask, I’ll be hurting you.”

In the dim room, Xu Hexue’s eyelids were soaked with blood. His lashes trembled once and blood droplets fell. After a long silence, he said hoarsely, “I’m sorry, Ni Su.”

She was the one who had summoned him back to this mortal world.

He should be honest with her.

But how could he tell her? Tell her that his name was actually Xu Hexue, tell her that he was the traitorous general who had died fifteen years ago in the border city of Yongzhou while serving his sentence?

At least for now, he didn’t know how to speak of it.

“What is there to be sorry about?”

Ni Su hugged her knees and looked back at the door. “If you have difficulties you cannot speak of, I understand. But I still want to ask you one thing—if you don’t want to answer, then don’t.”

Through the door, Xu Hexue lifted his head toward the dim source of light.

“You know Du Sancai, and you have a grudge against him, don’t you?”

The girl’s voice came from outside the door.

Xu Hexue lowered his eyes. After a long while: “Yes.”

“Then he really is a menace.”

Ni Su turned her face to look at the steam rising from the basin of water. “Since that’s the case, then the two of us can each settle our grievances.”

Xu Hexue said nothing in the room.

The vengeance he sought was far more than just one Du Sancai.

He had returned to the mortal world not to seek old friends, but to find the true culprit who had caused his thirty thousand Jing’an Army soldiers to bear the heavy crime of treason.

Outside the covered corridor, autumn rain continued to pour.

Xu Hexue listened from inside the room, while Ni Su watched from outside the door.

“Ni Su, I want to go look at Du Sancai’s home.”

He suddenly said.

Only Du Sancai’s adoptive father and his wife remained in the Du residence now. The Du mansion was surely surrounded so tightly that not even water could leak through—it would be absolutely impossible for Ni Su to enter.

But she still nodded. “Alright.”

“Will you let me come in then?”

Actually, everything here belonged to her—this clean room was hers, the furnishings inside were hers, the stacked books, the spread paper and ink, each item was something she had carefully selected.

But she had none of the awareness of being the owner. She waited outside the door, insisting on hearing him say the word “yes” before she would push the door open.

The willow leaf water was still warm, just right for washing his face.

Rain rustled down. Xu Hexue sat on the edge of the bed, one hand supporting himself against the bed post, his blood-stained lashes trembling restlessly, until she gently covered his eyes with a warm cloth.

“This time it’s your own matter, and I don’t think I can stop you. But I can’t accompany you inside this trip—I can only wait outside. I’ll try to stay as close to you as possible, and I’ll also buy more incense and candles to wait for you.” Ni Su wiped his thin eyelids, watching water droplets fall from his damp lashes down his cheeks. His compliance carried a kind of stiffness that was hard to ignore. “But Xu Ziling, if you can avoid the pain, please be kinder to yourself.”

Hearing this, Xu Hexue opened his eyes.

He hadn’t realized she was so close. Her jet-black hair coiled up, her pale cheeks, her eyes reflecting layers upon layers of candlelight, coalescing into stars.

“Did you hear what I said?” When Ni Su received no response from him, she helped him wipe his face while asking.

“I heard.”

“Why do your lashes keep moving?”

Ni Su couldn’t help but tease his thick, long lashes.

Xu Hexue’s fingers gripping the bed post suddenly tightened with force. He averted his eyes, but couldn’t prevent her fingers from pressing against his eyelids to tease him.

“Are you ticklish?”

Ni Su’s eyes curved into a smile.

Xu Hexue had forgotten whether he was ticklish in life, but faced with her deliberate teasing, he appeared quite flustered. He turned his face away trying to dodge but couldn’t. The daylight spreading in from the doorway intertwined with the candle shadows, and her smiling face was impossible for him to ignore.

Without realizing it, he pulled at the corner of his lips—an involuntary action, a curve forming in imitation of the smile at the edges of her lips. He grasped her hand, though carefully avoiding direct contact with her skin. Through her sleeve, he said, “Yes.”

“Then you’d better be careful from now on.” Ni Su made a show of teasing his lashes again. Seeing him dodge backward slightly, she laughed. “If you make me angry, this is what I’ll do to you.”

She said “from now on.”

Xu Hexue didn’t know how much of a future he still had. He couldn’t ignore the longing in his heart, but the more he longed, the more ashamed he felt.

The sky gradually darkened.

In the Du mansion, clouds of gloom gathered. Accountant Qin had grown tired of listening to his daughter-in-law’s wailing and paced back and forth in the room. “Cry, cry, cry! My own son is dead and all you know how to do is cry. That useless adopted son is missing, not dead—you’re crying too soon!”

“He must have run away, leaving just you and me here. That wretched man—I treated him so well for nothing…” Du Cong’s wife, He Shi, had nearly soaked through the handkerchief she held.

“The matter was done by him. The Emperor is benevolent and will surely not implicate you and me.”

“How can you be so certain?” He Shi sobbed and hiccupped. “Could it be—could it be he’s really not coming back?”

“If he comes back he’s dead! Only a fool would come back!”

Accountant Qin snorted coldly. “I don’t know how he conducted his social affairs outside, but the silver he sent out over the years was so much. The bribes from subordinates, the graft he took himself—over all these years there’s been so much he probably can’t count it all himself. But how long did that silver stay in his hands? Didn’t he just send it all out? But look—now that he’s in trouble, is there anyone pulling him up?”

Having said this, Accountant Qin looked at He Shi. “That night, did he really not mention anything to you? Didn’t return to the room all night?”

“No, he’d been sleeping in the study for many nights in a row.” He Shi sobbed as she spoke. “I thought he had found someone outside…”

As she spoke, a blast of cold night wind swept past the window, inexplicably sending a chill down both their spines.

Accountant Qin lifted his head to glance out the window. For some reason, a strange feeling arose in his heart. After pondering for a moment, he said to He Shi, “No, I still need to go search the study again.”

“Search for what? If he really left any note, wouldn’t the Yinye Bureau people have already taken it that very night?” He Shi choked out.

“What does it matter whether he left a note or not?”

Accountant Qin frowned. “What’s important is at this critical juncture—aside from the winter examination case, matters of him receiving silver from others and sending silver to others must be hidden if they can be hidden. If any important personages are implicated, surely when they stomp their feet, you and I will have to be buried along with Du Cong!”

The night rain pattered down, and the lantern flames flickered fuzzily.

Ni Su sat under the oilcloth canopy of the tea stall, listening to the crackling sound of rain. She wrapped the incense and candles in her basket with oil paper, then lifted her head, suddenly meeting the eyes of the young man in dark robes through the curtain of rain.

The young man carried no umbrella. His handsome features were washed clean by the rain. He unfastened the blade from his waist, walked into the oilcloth shelter, and with a sweep of his robe hem, sat down across from Ni Su.

“Officer Zhou.”

Ni Su poured him a bowl of hot tea.

“What are you doing here?”

Zhou Ting glanced at the steaming tea bowl on the table.

“Just taking a look.”

“Just taking a look?”

Ni Su held her tea bowl and met his gaze. “What else could I do? Does Officer Zhou think I have the ability to enter the Du mansion?”

This tea stall was very close to the Du mansion and very far from South Sophora Street. Her appearance here naturally couldn’t be just for tea.

But as she said, with the Du mansion now surrounded by people, she couldn’t enter, so what could she risk doing?

Zhou Ting didn’t think there was anything wrong with her answer, but he still felt a trace of doubt in his heart. His gaze moved to the basket beside her hand.

“Did Officer Zhou come here specifically to find me?” Ni Su asked.

“No.”

Zhou Ting came back to himself and said, “I just sealed a wine shop nearby and am about to take people back to the Yinye Bureau for detailed interrogation.”

He drank a mouthful of tea and stood up. “Miss Ni, even if Du Cong has disappeared, there are still other leads to pursue in finding the murderer of your brother. Please remember my advice—after drinking this bowl of tea, return home early.”

“Thank you, Officer Zhou.”

Ni Su stood and bowed.

“It’s my duty, Miss Ni need not do this.” Zhou Ting refastened his blade, nodded to her, then walked into the curtain of rain.

Through the rain curtain, Ni Su saw Chao Yisong in the distance. Their group was escorting several people eastward. She unconsciously took a few steps forward to watch more closely.

Returning to the table, she drank her bowl of tea very slowly. The stall owner reminded her somewhat apologetically, “Miss, I need to close up.”

Ni Su had no choice but to open her umbrella and leave the tea stall with her basket.

The night mist was damp. She stood under a low eave, leaning against the wall waiting quietly. She stared at the lantern hanging from the eave for a long time until the flames were finally extinguished by the rain.

She crouched down and, fearing the rain would dampen the incense and candles, held the basket in her arms, counting the raindrops falling one by one from the eave tiles.

She didn’t know how long had passed.

In her lowered field of vision, warm yellow lamplight drew near.

Ni Su suddenly looked up.

The young man’s snow-white garments were soaked through with rain and blood. The diluted blood drops followed the line of his wrist bones down. He possessed a pair of translucent eyes reflecting the lantern light.

The lantern in his hand was one she had lit with her own hands.

Zhou Ting had left, but the Yinye Bureau personal guards following Ni Su were still there. Ni Su couldn’t speak with him, but looking up at his face in this moment, somehow her nose tingled.

She stood up and walked forward in silence, but shifted the umbrella to secretly bring him under its shelter.

The rain sounded crisp and clear.

Ni Su looked ahead without looking at him. Her voice was very soft, soft enough to drown in this night rain. “Does it hurt?”

“No.”

Xu Hexue walked shoulder to shoulder with her. In this moment when she couldn’t look at him, he seemed somewhat unrestrained, gazing at her profile.

Ni Su lowered her eyes, looking at the water droplets accumulating on the oil paper in her basket:

“Liar.”