The light and dark pebbles were neatly inlaid into a yin-yang taiji koi brocade pattern. The sole of Shang Rong’s embroidered shoe rubbed absentmindedly against one of the fish’s eyes, while one hand lightly pressed the edge of her mask, making it adhere more tightly.

“Miss, after supper you needn’t tidy the bowls and chopsticks. This servant will come early tomorrow morning to cook; I’ll clean everything up then.”

The woman set a full platter of delicacies from mountains and seas on the table, smiling brightly at her.

“Many thanks.”

Shang Rong nodded to her and spoke softly.

“This servant will take her leave first.”

The woman lowered her head and made a respectful curtsey, called over her husband who was sweating profusely from busyness, wiped the sweat at his temples as she spoke to him, and together they headed out of the courtyard.

The rising steam from the dishes smelled wonderfully fragrant. Shang Rong could hardly wait to stretch her chopsticks toward the sweet-and-sour fish with its rich, glossy sauce—yet suddenly stopped.

She turned her head to look at the door on the wooden steps. Through the gauze window, the lamplight glowed orange. After a moment, she still set her chopsticks down, instead lifting a bowl of hot tea and waiting quietly.

—“Creak.”

Hearing the sound of the door opening, Shang Rong instinctively raised her head and looked toward the side room. Mengshi, who had bathed carefully and changed clothes, now had his hair neatly arranged as well, and was turning back to close the door.

The lantern beneath the eaves swayed back and forth. He turned around and met Shang Rong’s gaze.

The teacup fell and shattered on the ground with a crisp sound. Shang Rong sprang to her feet, not minding the stool knocked over behind her, and ran straight toward the wooden steps.

The door at the top of the steps opened. The youth who had just bathed stepped out—she crashed into his embrace without warning.

The back of her hand brushed a strand of his damp, not-yet-dried black hair. Shang Rong raised her head in fluster to look at him.

Even though she wore a mask at this moment, he could still glimpse something unusual about her. “What’s wrong?”

Shang Rong turned back again to look at Mengshi standing in the courtyard. His freshly washed brows and eyes made her feel inexplicably strange. She tightly clutched Zhezhu’s sleeve, unwilling to let go.

“Not hungry?”

Zhezhu glanced at Mengshi, gripped her wrist, and led her step by step down the stairs. He pressed her shoulders and seated her at the table, then righted the fallen stool himself and, flicking his robe hem, sat down.

“What’s wrong with Miss?”

Mengshi took his seat with a puzzled expression.

He had clearly noticed that the instant she saw him turn around, the expression on her face had been very off.

Shang Rong did not hear a word he said. Distracted, she lowered her eyes and stared fixedly at some point.

The carved lotus lanterns were like stars linked and spread out. Zhezhu turned his face slightly to glance at her. No matter when, she always sat so upright. The slender, fair neck revealed at her collar formed a stark contrast with the mask on her face.

“Daozhang Mengshi.”

Zhezhu picked up his chopsticks and lifted a piece of sweet-and-sour fish, slowly coating it twice in the thick sauce before placing it into the small bowl before Shang Rong. “We are now, after all, people in the same boat.”

Shang Rong saw the fish in the bowl and raised her head to stare at the youth’s profile.

“Young Master Zhezhu, rest assured. If not for you, how could I, Mengshi, have had the chance to eat such a meal today?” Mengshi lifted the bowl of hot tea. Though Zhezhu had not spoken plainly, he already understood. “I also know what should not be seen, what should not be asked, what should not be said.”

Zhezhu sipped the hot tea. “I trust Daozhang. After all, you still have vengeance yet unavenged. Now that you’ve gained freedom, you surely do not wish to die easily at my hands.”

Mengshi paused at his words. A fleeting trace of surprise flashed through his eyes, and inwardly he sighed at how meticulous this youth was.

He then set down the teacup. Under the lamplight, his handsome and refined face was clearly revealed. “Young Master has the means to save me, and naturally also the means to kill me. As Young Master said, I have already personally slain the three from the Sun family who harmed my daughter, yet I have still not found the trace of that human trafficker.”

The silent Shang Rong, hearing him mention this matter, raised her eyes and saw his hand resting on the table slowly clench into a fist. Her gaze moved upward and she clearly saw the redness in his eyes.

“If not for that trafficker, how would my daughter have been bought by the Sun family to be made into Mu Ni?” His voice seemed forced out through clenched teeth. “My daughter… she was only six. Just because the old master of the Sun family died from taking elixirs, she—who served as Mu Ni—had to be poisoned. Even her corpse had to be burned to ashes and placed into a golden urn, treated like an object, thrown into that old man’s coffin to accompany him in burial…”

Shang Rong watched as his hand slowly dropped beneath the table. The corner of the table blocked her view, but she knew he must be touching the cloth pouch he never parted with.

“The Sun family deserves death. That trafficker deserves death too.” Mengshi closed his eyes, then opened them again, his expression sharp and cold. “To the ends of the earth, as long as I live, I will make him die.”

The courtyard was silent. As if waking from a dream, he suddenly lifted his head to meet Shang Rong’s gaze. Seeing her lower her head again at once, he swiftly gathered his emotions, lifted his teacup and took a sip, a smile returning to his face. “It’s truly improper to let my matters disturb the two of you. I won’t speak of it further.”

Mengshi ate as if a whirlwind sweeping clouds. More importantly, he was not the least bit reserved—one chopstick here, another there. Shang Rong watched as his chopsticks were about to reach for the last piece of honey-glazed roasted meat. She hesitated whether to snatch it, but the person beside her had already taken her chopsticks and picked up that piece of roasted meat.

Mengshi’s chopsticks paused midway. Watching the youth drop the roasted meat into Shang Rong’s bowl, he gave an embarrassed smile. “My apologies, it’s truly been a long time since I’ve eaten meat.”

Zhezhu said nothing. Shang Rong lowered her head and ate in silence. Ever since seeing Mengshi freshly washed and clean, she had not spoken a single word to him.

Now when Mengshi asked her name, she pressed her lips together, not wanting to answer at all.

Mengshi was already thirty-one, but his features were extremely upright and handsome, brows sweeping into his temples, his eyes bright with spirit. The beard he kept was neither long nor short. Even without a Daoist robe, he still carried a certain immortal-like bearing.

Such an appearance should not have been one that inspired disgust or fear, yet Shang Rong simply did not wish to speak with him. Zhezhu quietly took in her strangeness, but lazily said to Mengshi, “She is still young and does not yet have a formal name.”

Whether she truly had none or only pretended not to, Mengshi did not probe further. Just then he suddenly heard a sound from the forest outside the courtyard. He turned his head to look, then extended two fingers toward the swaying shadows of branches beyond the bamboo fence, shifting under moonlight and lamplight. With a bright laugh he said, “If the young lady also has no courtesy name, then I think the two characters ‘Susu’ suit you particularly well.”

Susu.

Shang Rong and Zhezhu almost lifted their heads at the same time. The winter night wind brushed through the deep green bamboo grove, stirring waves upon waves of rustling sound.

There was no need for Mengshi to write the strokes—they had already heard the sound of those two characters.

Shang Rong, in truth, rather liked it.

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

There were only two sleeping chambers. Mengshi stayed in the narrower, damper side room. Fortunately, in the main house, the master of the household had brought in another bed and hung a sky-blue curtain and a long fine gauze screen between them, barely dividing the main room into two sides.

The weariness in her body made Shang Rong fall into deep sleep the moment her head touched the pillow.

Outside the window, the night was at its darkest. The instant Zhezhu was startled awake by a faint sound, he grasped the soft sword by his pillow with perfect accuracy before even opening his eyes.

Still drowsy, he sat up and listened more clearly.

On the table, a single lamp burned like a bean, its light dim.

Zhezhu got out of bed. The thin flexible blade lifted the curtain aside. He went around the screen and walked silently to the other side. In the dim lamplight, he saw the girl on the bed, her face covered in wet tear tracks.

In Shang Rong’s dream, thunder roared, wrapped with cold rain that crackled down. In a pool of blood shrouded with steaming mist, she used all her strength trying to pull a young woman out.

Shang Rong kept crying, kept calling the woman’s name—but the woman’s eyes were hollow, without the slightest response.

“Mingyue, do you know your fault?”

The vermilion carved window was blown open by the wind. The storm poured in mercilessly. The long gauze curtains whipped wildly. She raised tearful eyes and dimly saw a shadow behind the curtain.

His footsteps drew nearer. Tears that blurred her vision fell from her eyes.

The face she saw clearly… was Mengshi’s.

Shang Rong almost screamed as she jolted awake, tears filling her eyes. She did not even see clearly the youth standing nearby, and ran barefoot from the bed.

Like a gust of wind she rushed past. Zhezhu lifted his eyes, staring at the curtain rippling faintly from the movement of her robes—but immediately the door flew open, and the night wind that rushed in sent the blue gauze curtain billowing wildly.

Shang Rong collapsed into the snow outside the courtyard. Her feet were wrapped in snow, icy and painfully cold, yet she trembled all over, gasping desperately for breath. The cold wind entered her mouth and nose, and the stimulation made her cough violently.

With palms full of ice and snow pressed to her face, she tried to use that extreme cold to prove to herself that she was awake.

Someone stepped through the snow and stopped beside her.

She curled in on herself, staring at the shadow on the ground for a moment before slowly lifting her head.

The youth’s robes were thin. He lowered his lashes and looked at her—at her jet-black hair dusted with snow, at her pale face, and at her eyes reddened from crying.

“Shang Rong.”

His voice was clear and cool as he calmly stated, “You are in Shuqing, not Yujing.”

“I know.”

After a long while, Shang Rong finally found her voice. The bamboo grove rustled softly. She looked up at him like this, and could not help but choke with sobs again:

“Zhezhu.”

“The moment I saw you, I knew.”