Books were pressed underneath. He casually opened one and discovered several folded sheets of rice paper tucked inside.
Unfolding them, his gaze shook.
It was actually his name – Xie Chao’en.
She had been secretly practicing his original name, written more properly than her other characters, carefully hidden in the book.
He suddenly remembered she had once joked about learning to write his name to curse him.
Those memories became vivid again. He could clearly remember the sunset that day falling on her face, illuminating even the fine hair on her skin until it glowed.
Her eyes held brilliant golden sunlight that could burn his eyes even in memory.
Thinking of the suffering she was enduring, his heart was wrenched, and the wound that was healing began to hurt again, more painful than when she had personally stabbed it into his body.
As she wished, he was cursed.
Admit it – he loved her.
Loved her tenacity, loved her softness, loved her untamed primitive nature, loved everything about her that pierced him. Love was unreasonable, overwhelming in its force.
He was the person in this world least suited to possess love, yet he had fallen in love with someone. He had always thought this insignificant bit of love was under his control. He had been too arrogant.
His footsteps carried him through Snow-Gazing Retreat’s pavilions and towers, finally bringing him to stand before the Buddhist hall on the back mountain.
Tightly closed vermillion doors, airtight guards.
Xie Queshan stood for a long time, his feet seemingly filled with lead, unable to move away.
He very much wanted to ask his sovereign father what he should do.
He was a blade prepared for the emperor, forged through countless temperings, meant to be unsheathed at the most valuable moment – certainly not now.
But from the moment Pang Yu died, a crack had appeared in his body. Now that crack was like a roaring abyss, almost ready to swallow him whole.
Why couldn’t he protect a single person he wanted to protect? What exactly had he established when he swore to “establish hearts for heaven and earth, establish lives for the people”?
Whether to save one person or save the world had never been an isolated contradictory problem – its answer changed moment by moment with circumstances.
He knew that great ship of the dynasty had already sacrificed many people. From an overlooking perspective, one more wouldn’t matter, but human limitations meant he could only rise and fall with the masses, occasionally rising above others but unable to be forever correct, forever wise.
Some foolishness was also precious about being human.
Flesh and blood, love and hate, emotions waxing and waning – this was life’s spark of fire. Perhaps his decision was wrong, but he didn’t regret it.
He always tried every means within his power to save those he could save. If at this moment he allowed her to die, he could never become the person who saved the world from the very beginning.
What Zhang Yuehui had grasped was precisely Xie Queshan’s nature. This was a gamble destined to be lost from the start.
The sky gradually deepened, and the spring breeze blowing over became cold and sharp again. Night was falling.
Xie Queshan slowly knelt before the vermillion doors and solemnly kowtowed three times.
He was a sinner – at this moment he was about to abandon his sovereign. But please let his sovereign forgive him – he was ultimately just a mortal after all.
From the day he surrendered in Youdu Prefecture, he no longer belonged to himself. But tonight, let him be selfish and base once, let him be the willful Xie Chao’en once more.
…
In Huachao Pavilion, the net carefully designed for Xie Queshan had been laid.
The good show was about to begin. Wanyan Jun was already waiting in the elegant room. Since Zhang Yuehui had personally requested him to set the ambush, this matter must be significant – he had to make this trip. Naturally, he was also curious about which major Torch Bureau figure would come today, so he could see what kind of people were causing trouble in Li Du Mansion.
In the dungeon, Zhang Yuehui had just finished checking the mechanisms and was preparing to go up when his gaze suddenly caught a corner of emerald green on a table outside, wrapped in a clean handkerchief, along with women’s pouches, sachets, and several banknotes, carelessly piled in the corner.
The guard noticed his gaze and explained: “Master, these are things searched from the Qin woman’s body.”
Finally, Zhang Yuehui had a certain strange perception. His gaze couldn’t move away from that touch of emerald green, because in that jade, there was faintly a crack.
He lifted that handkerchief to reveal several broken pieces of a jade bracelet underneath.
That crack he had personally chosen, the distance he thought he had created – from the very beginning it was destined that they would miss each other.
Zhang Yuehui’s whole body was as if struck by lightning, frozen in place.
He was a kite flying higher and higher, but there was always a faint string pulling at him, not wanting to let him leave the mortal world. That string tugged at his flesh, cutting him all over with wounds, and finally at this moment, made him crash heavily to the ground.