Su Ziluo walled himself behind his silence.
“Tell me why? Where did you go the last two years?” She controlled herself to suppress her tears from falling.
Although Su Ziluo didn’t confirm, Ji Yunshu was certain he was Ji Pei, the Ji Pei she had been waiting for for two years.
“I’m sorry,” he suddenly uttered.
‘Sorry?’
She shook her head and smiled. “That’s it? Besides being sorry, is there nothing else you want to say?”
A long time passed before Su Ziluo faced her, his face wrought by guilt and sadness as he looked at her teary eyes. “I’m sorry, Shu’er. Apart from those words, I don’t know what else to say.”
“Finally, you are willing to call me Shu’er!” She crouched down and cried.
Then, she raised her head to look at him and placed her hands on his thighs. She couldn’t help feeling her heart ache for him.
He stretched out his hands, and very gently, his fingers stroked her face as if he was afraid his touch would break her. “My dear Shu’er, I’m sorry. These two years must have been painful for you. How can it not be the same for me?” For the first time, grief and sadness overwhelmed him.
“What happened to you? Tell me, what did you go through after being carried out of the Ji Mansion?”
When he recalled the events of two years ago, his face darkened. It took him a long while before he spoke again. “Heaven must have taken pity on me. It didn’t let me die on the battlefield or breathe my last breath under your father’s whip. Even after Ji Yuanzhi’s people threw me into that chaotic public cemetery, I was still able to crawl out of it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t careful and accidentally tumbled down the hillside and broke my legs. By coincidence, there were Qujiang people passing through there and I was rescued back to Qujiang.”
“Does that mean that you recovered all your memory at that time?”
“Yeah.”
“Then, you-”
He interrupted her. “You must have heard of the battle at Cangshui five years ago, right?”
She nodded.
“At that time, Ji Li was appointed as the commander, leading an army of 180,000. My father was ordered by the Qujiang King to intercept them. During that battle, I saw with my own eyes my father being murdered by Ji Li. At that time, I also got injured which resulted in a loss of my memories.” As he narrated, his tone became more and more fierce and hard.
Even though Ji Li had passed away, he still couldn’t free himself from the hatred. After that battle, he became the gentle and scholarly Ji Pei. At present, the Su Ziluo in front of her had become a stranger.
“Then, from the start, your aim wasn’t the two cities, but Ji Li?” she asked.
“I have two goals.”
“So, you never intended to come find me?”
Regarding that problem, Su Ziluo chose to stay silent, but his silence told her everything she wanted to know.
She took a deep breath and said, “You clearly know that I was waiting for you. Even if you had to report your hatred or needed to devote yourself to your king, it wasn’t necessary to throw me aside for so long.”
Su Ziluo smiled bitterly as he looked at his legs. “Look at me! I couldn’t come back to you like this?”
“I don’t care about that!” she bellowed.
Why would she care? She waited two years. Wasn’t it all in order to see him? Pain and distress gushed forth as if they wanted to suffocate her.
As for Su Ziluo, how could all of this not hurt him?
1.Hour of the rooster = 5-7pm