Yang Lun tried to find words to explain.
But Yang Wan gave him a helpless smile.
“If you won’t save me, then don’t.”
She couldn’t help but complain, “Why curse your sister to death?” After saying this, she even wanted to tell him that his sister had probably really died.
Li Shan, seizing the moment while Yang Lun was speechless, hurriedly came forward to help Yang Wan up. “Oh my… I should get a cloak for Third Miss. Look how frozen her hands are. If Consort Ning learns that Third Miss suffered such mistreatment here, we truly wouldn’t be able to face heaven.”
Yang Lun noticed Yang Wan constantly pressing her neck, finally realizing she was covered in various scrapes and bruises.
“How did this happen?” he asked, grabbing her arm.
Yang Wan recalled when she first woke up, she had been lying in a pile of hay. Above was a moderately high earthen slope, with crops showing signs of being crushed. This “Yang Wan” must have slipped and fallen from the top of the slope.
“Fell down the slope and got injured.”
She answered truthfully, forcefully pulling her hand back and tugging her sleeve to cover the scrapes. “Sorry, I hurt my neck. If I’d fallen a bit harder, I might have died.”
Yang Lun flinched at this sensitive point, his expression startled. “How can you talk like that!”
Yang Wan remained silent.
The man before her was “Yang Wan’s” brother, but not her brother.
Her real brother was a 21st-century IT mogul who, though constantly trying to set her up with balding men, had shared thirty years of a love-hate relationship with her. She could say anything to her brother.
Yang Lun was just pages of career records and political achievements in historical materials, completely lacking human warmth to Yang Wan.
Yang Wan didn’t know how to face him. After all, the original siblings must have had their bond. It wouldn’t be right for her to arbitrarily sever that relationship just because she had inexplicably transmitted here.
So she could only fall silent like Deng Ying had earlier.
Pulling her clothes tighter, she quietly pressed where he had grabbed her painfully, when unexpectedly she choked on the snowy air, her shoulders shaking as she coughed.
Yang Lun was already feeling regretful about speaking too harshly in his anger earlier, and now hearing that she had fallen from the mountain and injured her neck, he truly felt some remorse.
He had always been Yang Wan’s protector.
Though there were several sisters in the family, Yang Wan had always been his favorite. This sister had always been well-behaved – as a child, she never quarreled with the other sisters, quietly playing with him and seeing him off to the family school, sometimes waiting outside with cakes their mother had made. After growing up, she still listened to Yang Lun. When Old Master Yang initially wanted to betroth her to Zhang Luo, she was reluctant, but after one conversation with Yang Lun, she agreed.
This time she had been missing from Linggu Temple for half a month, and even their mother had lost hope. Only Yang Lun kept searching around Linggu Temple, determined to find her alive or dead. Yet now that he had found her, she seemed like a different person.
Still, being alive was already a great fortune.
Yang Lun forced himself to soften his tone, “Come here, take the cloak.”
Yang Wan looked up at him once but stood still.
Yang Lun had no choice but to remove his cloak and wrap it around her himself.
“Come back with me.”
“Wait.”
She dared to resist. Yang Lun’s forehead veins bulged as he suppressed his anger and lowered his voice, “Mother has nearly cried her eyes out waiting for you at home. What more do you need to do?”
Yang Wan turned to look at the torture chamber. “I want to say one thing to him.”
Yang Lun twisted her arm and dragged her back. “Absolutely not!”
Yang Wan stumbled behind him, desperately trying to break free.
“Just one thing, then I’ll go with you.”
Yang Lun nearly crushed her wrist.
“No!”
“Wasn’t he your best friend?”
Yang Lun’s feet stopped, and he was suddenly struck dumb.
Unlike others who kicked someone when they were down since Deng Yi’s entire family had been executed, Yang Lun hadn’t dared to seriously consider Deng Ying’s situation – partly to avoid suspicion, partly from personal shame. He understood in his heart that Deng Ying was innocent and his punishment too cruel, but all he could do was slip Li Shan some silver without daring to explain why.
Having to rely on eunuchs to guess at friendship’s obligations – Yang Lun felt he was no better than those who had abandoned Deng Ying.
Now, standing in the snow separated from Deng Ying’s family, being suddenly questioned by Yang Wan like this, he felt ashamed and angry.
“I won’t go in. I’ll just speak to him through the window, alright?”
Yang Lun remained silent.
Yang Wan took this as agreement. Taking advantage of his daze, she forcefully broke free, wrapped in the cloak as she ran to the wall of the torture chamber, standing on tiptoe at the window by Deng Ying’s couch.
“Deng Ying.”
She called into the window.
Deng Ying looked up; only Yang Wan’s faint shadow was visible on the window paper.
“Just now what Yang Lun… my brother said outside, did you hear it?”
Deng Ying had heard most of it, but still told Yang Wan, “No.”
Yang Wan stood even higher on her toes, “I don’t know what else to say, but remember what I told you – it’s the court that should be ashamed before you. You haven’t wronged anyone.”
“Alright.”