Ji Shuhan shook his head in an exasperated frustration. “So you bore that hatred for this long.”
“Yes, I did, I remembered all the cruel treatment you have subjected me to.” Ji Yunshu no longer felt the need to hide it. Her brows suddenly took on an air of sharpened knives as she confronted him, “Do you remember when you whipped Ji Pei thirty times? Do you remember the words he said as he laid in a pool of his own blood?”
Ji Shuhan froze at the mention of the question; everyone else followed. This name was a taboo for two years: no one had ever mentioned it, and no one was ever to be allowed to do so. “Shut up! I forbid you to talk about it!” Ji Shuhan bellowed.
Each word came out of Ji Yunshu’s mouth slowly. “He said, ‘close are the bonds; thin is the blood. Today you are my father; tomorrow you shalt be my slave.’”
“Quiet!” This time it was Old Madame Ji. “He is dead, you hear me? Dead!” She smashed the desk energetically.
‘Dead? Yes… I saw Ji Pei die with my very eyes, I saw his body carried out of the Ji Mansion. Dead with not a single corner of his body left intact; whipped to death by thirty lashes.’
Ji Yunshu’s lips quirked into a bitter smile. “He’s not dead. He mustn’t have died. I searched that hill upside down and still, I couldn’t find his body. He told me that he would come back after two years.” She sounded irrevocably certain of herself, enough so to make everyone wonder at the reason.
Ji Yunshu resumed her expression of coldness, turned around and left the Ji Mansion without turning back even once. She plodded into the thin rain with an unusual determination. She took the front gate, just as she did when she entered the mansion. Jing Rong caught up to her before she could realize it and extended an umbrella over her head in silence. He simply walked by her, not asking any questions, despite his interest being piqued by this new Ji Pei.
Ji Yunshu headed for the Memorial Hall, and she arrived just when Fu Bo finished putting Luan’er’s corpse into an old, tattered coffin. He mumbled something about burying her in a place with a nice Fengshui. Ji Yunshu eyes were slowly losing their focus as she stared at the object, and she uttered words of thanks and nodded her head. She removed her hairpin and placed it into the coffin. “Luan’er, please rest in peace. May you live happier and better in your next lifetime.”
The coffin was sealed, and Ji Yunshu bid farewell to Luan’er by burning a stick of incense. She stood under the roof of the entrance to the Memorial Hall with her head raised, looking at the dripping of rainwater as it ran down the eaves, just like sand in an hourglass. Jing Rong kept her company; he looked at her slowly unclenching brows and felt the same relief for the worry which preoccupied his heart. He dared not disturb her. Ji Yunshu was as tranquil as a painting and cleaner than the rainwater who had yet to touch the ground. For a moment, Jing Rong earnestly wished that he had not been born in the royal family. He longed for a simpler existence amongst common people, one devoid of the calculations and schemings for the sake of the throne. What joy would it be, to share every sunrise and admire each sunset with the one he loved!
After a long time, Ji Yunshu finally shifted her eyes from the corner of the roof to somewhere in the raining distance. She narrated, with a dispirited voice, “He’s called Ji Pei. He’s an orphan my second brother brought back from the battlefield.”