In Ni Su’s sleep there was a medicinal fragrance, wrapped within it a hint of spring blossoms and accumulated snow, allowing her to sleep peacefully through the entire night. When morning sunlight swept through the window, her eyelids stirred and she opened her eyes.

The room carried the aroma of rice porridge. The bubbling sound drew her to turn her face, and she saw Qingqiong’s head wrapped in a cloth, wearing a set of respectable cotton robes, slowly stirring the rice porridge in an earthen pot with measured movements.

Ni Su became much more alert at once. She sat up and looked around, but did not see that frost-white figure from last night anywhere in the room.

Hearing the rustling sound of fabric, Qingqiong turned his head and saw the young woman on the bamboo bed across from him looking all around. He called out: “Miss Ni.”

“Qingqiong, where is he?”

Ni Su’s voice was somewhat hoarse.

“He’s right here.” Qingqiong set down his spoon and brought over the woven rattan medicine basket from the table to her. Ni Su lowered her eyes and saw a ball of soft, luminous white light floating within it.

“General Xu is too weak. After he applied medicine for you last night, he became like this again,” Qingqiong said.

Applied medicine?

Ni Su stared at her own palm. After a moment, she took the medicine basket from Qingqiong’s hands, then as if suddenly aware of something, reached out to feel around by her pillow.

Qingqiong could tell what she was searching for. “Miss Ni, don’t look for it…”

Ni Su raised her head and saw Qingqiong hesitating to speak. She stopped her movements.

“General Xu said that if you kept his belongings, those people from yesterday would surely report you to the prefectural magistrate…” Qingqiong spoke slowly, trying to explain. “Among them are some who are very unreasonable and difficult to provoke.”

Such were the customs of Yongzhou. The Qin and Wei clans had long guarded the border city, and the common people they had influenced were mostly fierce types. If Ni Su collected the broken spear, it would easily invite criticism.

Intense sunlight fell on Ni Su’s profile. The swelling on her forehead had not yet subsided, making her cheeks appear even paler. She held the medicine basket without a word, then turned her face sluggishly toward the sunlight.

“Would you like to eat a sesame flatbread?”

Qingqiong’s voice fell upon her.

Ni Su looked toward him and saw that at some point he was already holding a sesame flatbread in his hands.

“Last night General Xu had me buy it for you. My father and I also benefited from his generosity,” Qingqiong continued. “The money came from exchanging General Xu’s hairpin.”

Ni Su immediately remembered that at some half-asleep, half-awake moment, she had smelled the fragrance of sesame flatbread. She couldn’t recall what she had said, but looking at the flatbread in Qingqiong’s hands, she suddenly knew.

“I want to eat it.”

Her lips moved slightly as she spoke softly.

Having caught a chill, Ni Su spent almost the entire day lying in bed. When the sky gradually darkened, Qingqiong returned to the dried well to find his father. She was alone in the room lighting all the candles, opening the lattice window by the bed. Silvery-white moonlight fell in large patches onto the bed as she watched the fine luminous dust fly out from the medicine basket at her side.

On summer nights in the border city, there were no cicada songs.

In the prolonged silence, the ball of luminous white light in the medicine basket dispersed outward, transforming into mist in the pale moonlight, then gradually condensing into a figure.

Xu Hexue’s eyelashes stirred slightly. In the pitch-black night, the moment he opened his eyes, the room was filled with bright light, illuminating his eyes clearly. He realized he was lying on a bamboo bed, and beside him, breathing was light and subtle, almost brushing against the side of his neck.

He turned his face and met a pair of eyes.

There was no excess expression on that pale, clean face, but he immediately sat up, his gaze abruptly falling on the medicine basket beside her.

She held it with one hand, and her quilt was also draped over it.

Xu Hexue averted his eyes, yet vaguely felt that his body still carried the warmth from inside her quilt.

“You…”

His brows and eyes were layered with snowy intent, his voice still cold and clear, yet wrapped within it was a thread of uncontrolled imagination.

“I was afraid you would suddenly disappear again.”

Ni Su said.

Xu Hexue heard the slight rasp in her voice. He turned to look at the wide-open lattice window and reached out to close it. The silvery-white moonlight dissipated as his calm voice fell upon her ear: “I won’t.”

“Have you finished bathing?”

When Ni Su asked this question, she saw his fingers covering the lattice window curl slightly. That face of his still showed no particularly vivid expression, yet somehow his voice lowered a notch: “Mm.”

He was uncomfortable.

Ni Su had already learned to find answers in his sparse reactions. “Before you returned to the Nether Capital, I kept you in this medicine basket and always carried you with me. At that time, did you know?”

“I didn’t know.”

When Xu Hexue became that ball of luminous white light, he had no consciousness. He didn’t know she had kept him by her side, placed him beside her at night, and even shared half her quilt with him…

He warned himself not to think further.

“I’ve never seen mountain spirits, but Qingqiong told me he can see them—some creatures in the mountains are indeed such soft balls of light, having the vague outline of animals yet not taking solid form, unable to be seen by people.”

Ni Su sat up with her quilt pulled around her. “You were also like that. When I extended my finger, you would press against my finger, and you even had a tail…”

“Ni Su.”

Xu Hexue interrupted her.

His Adam’s apple rolled. Clearly he had no heartbeat, his ears wouldn’t flush with heat, and he had no breath, yet her words could suddenly make him recall these sensations he’d had when he was still human.

Ni Su stopped speaking and only looked at him.

She stared at his eyes almost instinctively. The flickering candlelight was a clear shadow in the depths of his pupils. Whenever he lowered his eyelids slightly, the creases of his double eyelids would unfold. Her gaze swept over his high-bridged nose and his lightly colored lips.

“I ate the sesame flatbread you bought for me.”

She broke the silence again.

Hearing this, Xu Hexue looked toward her. Under the lamplight, the injury on her forehead was still red. Last night this face had been nearly covered in tears. The words she’d said to him on horseback, in the wind, kept circling in his heart.

“They don’t know the truth. If you collect my belongings, it will bring unnecessary trouble upon yourself.”

He said.

“I understand they know nothing,” Ni Su hugged her knees through the quilt. “But Xu Ziling, I really want them to know. For every additional person who knows the truth, this world’s misunderstanding of you lessens by one degree. Yet I also think—I couldn’t even keep your belongings. No one believes Qingqiong and his father, and no one will believe me either.”

She had treated that broken spear as his remains, wanting to properly collect and bury them for him, yet had no choice but to yield to reality, allowing Qingqiong and his father to return it to the ruined monument at Sangqiu.

Xu Hexue gazed silently at her profile. “I’ve been dead sixteen years, my bones scattered to dust and mud. How the world views me when they don’t understand the truth—I actually don’t care. My conduct was without shame, my heart was bright. Initially only I knew this, but now, my teacher knows, and also,” he paused, “also you.”

Night wind struck the window, again and again. The room’s candles trembled, warm light and shadow falling upon him like illuminating snow on a mountain. “Actually, having my teacher and you know—my heart is already sufficiently at peace.”

When a person dies it’s like a lamp extinguishing. He was long ago a lamp in this world that could never be relit, and a hundred years in the Nether Capital was enough for him to forget many things, let go of many things. Yet the thirty thousand heroic souls locked in the treasure pagoda remained the burden on his shoulders.

If they could not be released, he too could not release himself.

He returned never for his posthumous reputation. He only wanted the truth of that battle at Mushen Mountain, wanted those behind the truth to use blood to resolve the resentment of the thirty thousand Jing’an Army soldiers, to leave the treasure pagoda and enter the cycle of reincarnation.

For this, he would rather not ascend to the Nine Heavens, and would even accept complete annihilation of spirit and soul.

Actually his voice was still just as indifferent, but Ni Su couldn’t help the stirring in her heart. She stared blankly at this solitary soul before her. His figure was still somewhat faint, fine luminous dust floating about. He was like a beautiful illusion that drew people into sinking, so clean as to seem somewhat unreal.

“Still not sleeping?”

The night grew deeper. Xu Hexue was about to rise when she grasped his sleeve.

Ni Su drew back into her quilt without releasing him. “I spent the entire day waiting for you. While waiting for you, I already slept many times.”

“Waiting for me… for what?”

His brows and eyes remained rippleless.

“I wanted to hear you personally tell me about yourself. Now that we’ve been completely honest with each other, I know who you are, and as you wished, I only trust the you I’ve come to know along this journey. So I don’t want to hear others tell me what kind of person you used to be.”

Her eyes were clear and bright, leaving Xu Hexue unable to avoid the expectant light in them. He didn’t even withdraw his sleeve from her hand, but instead sat at the edge of the bed, somewhat farther from her.

His knees ached piercingly, but his refined, cold, pale face showed not the slightest abnormality. He casually pressed down the edge of her quilt for her and gathered the gap behind her back, his voice clear and cool:

“What do you want to know?”