Descending from Yan Mountain, Xie Tao fell ill that very night.
She caught a cold and had a fever, her mind muddled.
She went to the pharmacy to buy some medicine and then wrapped herself in a blanket on the bed, dozing off into a fitful sleep, her hair soaked with sweat.
She woke up in the middle of the night.
Staring blankly with her eyes open, the surroundings were dim.
When she came back during the day, she had taken the medicine and laid down, forgetting to draw the curtains.
At this moment, various colors of light shadows flickered past outside the glass window, like the neon lights scattered between the high-rise buildings nearby, reflecting in front of her window, like the luster of colored glaze.
Lying in bed, she could even see the fine snowflakes drifting among the light and shadows.
Xie Tao suddenly remembered the mysterious light screen that appeared before her eyes in the stone pavilion on Yan Mountain that morning.
Within the light screen was his face.
He rarely called her “Tao Tao” so affectionately, and every time she heard him call her that, she couldn’t help but feel her heartbeat quicken.
The heart in her chest felt like a suddenly disobedient child, willfully revealing all its emotions, never pretending on her behalf.
In this world, no one can truly get used to loneliness.
So, after Xie Tao fell for him, she instinctively wanted to draw closer.
It was the greed forged by the emotion of “liking,” an extravagant hope unavoidable to all.
She wanted to see him.
This desire had never been so urgent.
But between them, it was not just a simple separation by distance.
They were separated by two different timespaces.
Such a vast distance was something Xie Tao could never hope to cross with her own feet, no matter how hard she tried.
But what could she do?
Tears streamed down from the corners of her eyes, Xie Tao sniffled, her vision blurred by tears as she looked at the glass window, no longer able to see the light reflections on the window clearly, nor the fluttering snowflakes outside.
Rubbing her eyes, Xie Tao turned on the light, then reached under her pillow to grab her phone, her gaze flickering when she saw the portrait she had set as her wallpaper.
Opening WeChat, her finger hesitated over the “video call” option for a long time, but she pressed it anyway.
Wei Yun was lying on the bed, and as soon as he heard the sound of the astrolabe turning, he immediately opened his eyes.
Picking up the copper pendant beside the pillow, he saw a pale face on the light screen.
He frowned, “What’s wrong with you?”
“I caught a cold…”
Xie Tao’s voice was soft and weak.
Wei Yun, knowing that the cold she mentioned meant typhoid, said, “Have you taken any medicine?”
“Um… I have,” Xie Tao replied, coughing once.
“When did you take it?” Wei Yun asked.
“Just, in the afternoon.”
Xie Tao wrapped the blanket tighter around herself, obediently answering each question he asked.
“If it doesn’t get better, you should go to…”
Wei Yun paused for a moment, remembering the place where she would seek medical consultation, “go to the hospital, remember that?”
“I remember…”
Xie Tao’s voice was soft and fluffy.
“Wrap yourself in the blanket well, be careful.”
After saying this, he couldn’t help but give her many more cautious instructions.
In all these years, when had Wei Yun ever shown such concern and worry for someone?
Never.
Apart from her, it seemed as if there was no one else in this world worthy of his gentle and detailed attention.
And at this moment, seeing the girl whose lips had barely any color, even though he had instructed her with such care, he still felt uneasy in his heart.
He could never stand before her.
Between them, there were always two completely different timespaces.
It was unclear whether the night was too deep, or if the snow they had watched together during the day had fallen into their hearts, cold and chilling, enveloping them in an inextricable melancholy, as if they had been through boiling water.
They faced each other but began to fall silent again.
It was like having a candy in the mouth; after the sweet taste, there came a subtle bitterness that could directly penetrate the heart.
“Do you have anyone else in your family?” Wei Yun finally spoke up.
He was always worried about her being alone.
Wei Yun had indeed noticed before that she hardly ever mentioned her family, and if she didn’t bring it up, he wouldn’t ask.
Perhaps, it was a matter of the heart she herself did not wish to touch upon.
So, Wei Yun had never asked.
But now, seeing her sick, lying alone on the bed wrapped in a blanket with no one to take care of her, he asked.
Xie Tao’s expression stiffened for a moment.
A moment later, Wei Yun saw her suddenly shake her head.
He heard her say, “…It’s just me.”
It seemed like she was speaking to him, yet also murmuring to herself.
The care from her mother when she was sick seems like a distant memory now.
Back then, she had not yet left Qizhen.
Just that sentence alone plunged them into another long silence.
Perhaps the deep of night was most suitable for delving into the long-concealed, seldom-shared secrets of one’s heart, or maybe it was his slightly worried eyes that touched her heart more deeply.
She began to speak intermittently about her past.
About her father who left on the long cobblestone paths of her childhood and never returned, about her mother who loved her deeply, endured hardships for her, supported her education, held her dear, yet later hit and scolded her, forced her into doing many unwilling tasks, and pressured her to integrate into a completely unfamiliar family.
About the years she spent with the Zheng family.
About the year after she left the Zheng family and stayed in Qizhen.
Her voice was soft, warm, and gentle.
Perhaps, after so many years, there were still many things she couldn’t let go of, so her emotions were stirred now, bringing tears to her eyes and even making her voice tremble.
Wei Yun might have guessed her various backgrounds early on but didn’t expect it to be like this.
In this world, she still has a living mother.
But her mother didn’t fulfill her duties when she was most vulnerable, even hurting and abusing her.
Since the day of the Wei family’s downfall, Wei Yun has been adrift in the world for many years; he is no longer a kind man.
But it seems that in the unconscious flow of fleeting moments, he had given the last bit of softness in his heart to her.
So now, hearing about her past, he couldn’t help but feel heartache for her.
He knows too well how difficult it is for a person to live in this world, especially since she is just a girl.
She appears to be a girl of utmost fragility.
Yet, she has repeatedly made Wei Yun see her in a new light.
Breaking away from a blood relative, especially when that person is her mother, is ultimately a particularly difficult choice.
After all, the person who deeply hurt her also loved her sincerely.
Such a love-hate entanglement of kinship is perhaps the most complicated matter in the world.
Wei Yun, in fact, feels it deeply too.
Like his relationship with his former father, Wei Changning, he hated Wei Changning for making him endure, for making him humble, for expecting him to live a life as inconsequential as dust, to live aimlessly like duckweed, for arrogantly arranging everything for him and not allowing any rebellion.
He also hated Wei Changning for claiming to love his mother yet, shortly after her death, following the advice of the master of the third house and marrying that merchant’s daughter.
The overt and covert mistreatment by the merchant’s daughter was also deliberately ignored by his cowardly father.
Simply because he couldn’t offend the master of the house, nor could he offend his new wife, who came from the third house and was the purse strings.
But on the day the Wei family was annihilated, it was ultimately his father who crossed out his name from the family register and risked his life to send him out of Ying Capital.
To this day, no one knows that among the Wei family, which was wiped out, there was a survivor.
How could he possibly make clear the matters between him and his father?
Her situation at the beginning was different from his, but her decision to postpone her studies at such a young age and leave her mother was especially brave.
Ice freezes three feet deep, not in one day; once she chose to leave, it was too difficult to forgive.
And women in this world always have it tough.
For her, it seemed that the misfortunes the world heaped upon her became the force that drove her to keep moving forward.
Even though she had to go out every day to earn money, even though her life was so strained, she refused to accept his gifts of gold and silver.
Like a section of green bamboo, her slender waist was always straight.
She was a girl with great dignity.
And he, too, wished to protect her dignity.
“I used to think being alone wasn’t so bad.”
Xie Tao suddenly said.
“But after meeting you, I feel it’s hard to be alone…”
Under the warm yellow light, she looked at the screen of her phone at the young lord sitting with his dark, thick hair scattered, leaning against the bedpost, wrapped in a blanket, and asked softly, “What should we do if we have to live like this for the rest of our lives?”
“I can’t touch you, and you can’t touch me… There’s always such a long, long distance between us.”
Her voice became ethereal.
“Even so… is that okay with you?”
Wei Yun moved his throat, his voice suddenly a bit hoarse:
“Even so,”
He paused, his tone carrying a measure of solemnity, “I will still accompany you in this way.”
Wei Yun had almost never said such things.
But tonight, faced with her dim eyes, he blurted it out.
It was impulsive, but not just a spur-of-the-moment feeling.
Yes.
It should be like this.
In this world, wasn’t she the only one who could move his heart?
So, in this life, if not guarding her, whom else could he guard?
Hearing him speak like this, Xie Tao’s ears were still filled with his cool, clear voice, yet it made her heart start to race uncontrollably.
It was like the gentle waves of the river in spring, spreading ripples in layers, pulling along one water trace after another, repeatedly.
She curved her lips into a smile, yet tears formed in the corners of her eyes again.
“That would be good…”
Her voice was still choked with emotion.
It was an answer that thrilled her heart, yet it still made her feel uneasy.
Until,
She heard him say,
“But I will also look for a way to cross the barriers of time and space.”
He spoke these words with particular seriousness.
Since the copper pendant could cut through time and space to let them meet, and since those mysterious light screens could also cut through time and space to let him see the blurry images of another world, there must be a special method to connect two different timespaces.
Wei Yun looked at the girl on the light screen and asked, “Tao Tao, do you believe me?”
Xie Tao gently replied:
“I believe, yes,”
She repeated, “I believe in you.”
Xie Tao didn’t know when she had fallen asleep, nor did she know how long the young lord on the other side of the phone screen had quietly watched her.
As if he had sat through the night, Wei Yun finally called out, “Wei Jing.”
Wei Jing immediately responded, “My lord.”
Wei Yun held the copper pendant, now back to normal, tightly in his hand.
His expression turned solemn.
“Find Sheng Yueqi, order him to come to Yingdu.”
The plan now was to quickly set a trap to capture that mysterious woman. Since the woman possessed unique abilities, capturing her would undoubtedly require the help of this foreign young man.
Only then, could there be a possibility of unraveling all the truths.
