After that, no matter how Jiang Guan pestered him or acted spoiled, Xie Ying treated it as nothing more than a tickle. Like a clam clamping its shell tightly shut, he refused to reveal another shred of what he was really thinking and simply changed the subject. “You actually screamed out loud last night. Did you know that?”
Jiang Guan had no recollection of this whatsoever and had every reason to suspect that Xie Ying had been half asleep and mixed up his dreams with reality.
Xie Ying gave a cold snort. “Talk about the thief crying ‘Stop thief.’ Weren’t you the one who had a nightmare in the middle of the night, scared yourself into tears, and insisted that I sleep with you?”
Jiang Guan had felt perfectly shameless clinging to him in the middle of the night, but now that Xie Ying had exposed him so bluntly, his face grew faintly hot. He set down the bamboo tube and, half believing him, tried a few tentative ah, ah sounds. The noises he produced were probably audible only to bats, and before long he started coughing from forcing his throat too hard.
Xie Ying tilted his head to listen, then suddenly raised a brow. “Xiao Guan, there’s sound when you cough too. It’s just quieter than most people.”
Jiang Guan immediately tried coughing again, but deliberately forcing it was nothing like an unconscious reaction, and disappointment inevitably crept in. Xie Ying raised a hand to stop him, then casually wiped that hand on Jiang Guan’s clothes. “Don’t force it. You’ll hurt your throat. Once we get back, we’ll find some good physicians. There may still be hope.”
Jiang Guan sat down where he was. Still a little dizzy from the fever, he naturally leaned against Xie Ying’s shoulder.
Xie Ying glanced down and allowed him to cling, though beneath his casual tone was a trace of careful restraint. “Were you born like this, or was your throat injured later?”
He had never asked before because there had been no suitable opportunity. Bringing it up casually might have touched a sore spot. But now he had to ask. Whatever the cause, the fact that Jiang Guan had suddenly managed to make a sound might mean his condition was improving. Being mute for more than ten years did not necessarily mean there was no hope of recovery.
Jiang Guan took his hand and slowly wrote: Injured, I think.
“Either it was or it wasn’t.” Xie Ying disliked vague answers like this. “What do you mean, ‘I think’?”
This time Jiang Guan thought carefully before explaining as concisely as possible: I was not yet three. My parents left on a long journey and entrusted me to relatives. I was too young to remember. I don’t know the details.
Xie Ying: “…”
Where exactly had this Young Master come from? Why was he such a pitiful little thing?
Xie Ying was not given to wild speculation, yet he seemed to sense something deeply buried and difficult to describe in Jiang Guan’s writing—a trace of loneliness.
A boy around his own age, at the stage of life when one ought to be most lively, playful, and curious about everything in the world—how had he so easily decided to die while imprisoned by the Ten Aspects Sect?
The question circled the root of his tongue, then was swallowed back down. Xie Ying did not press him. He merely ruffled Jiang Guan’s hair. “Survive a great disaster and good fortune follows. After making it through something like this, there won’t be any hurdle you can’t cross.”
A small cross was drawn lightly in his palm. Xie Ying made a puzzled sound, and Jiang Guan corrected him seriously: It was a fortuitous encounter.
The Ten Aspects Sect had taken Jiang Guan from Xiling to Yanyuan and imprisoned him in the dungeon beneath the Palace of Dispelling Calamities for nearly a month. They had tried everything to break him—soft persuasion and harsh punishment, threats and temptation alike. Although reason told him that even a miserable life was better than a good death, he had not wanted to endure endless meaningless suffering for the sake of one faint, uncertain chance of survival.
If he lived, he was a “regret.” If he died, he was also a “regret”—perhaps death would merely make the regret weigh a little heavier.
It was not that living was undesirable. But being born with a disability meant that whenever people weighed one person against another, his weight always seemed lighter. In any calculation of what was urgent and important, he was forever placed among the “less urgent” and “less important”—someone who could be put aside, delayed, compressed, or even abandoned, never important enough for anyone to pay “any price.”
Until Xie Ying dropped into his life.
Only then did the balance between life and death finally begin to tilt in the opposite direction.
A man-eating altar, a raging inferno, collapsing cliffs, the blackness beneath the mountain… This stranger who had barely known him had pulled him back from destruction again and again, simply refusing to allow him to become another “regret.”
Only one word could describe it.
A miracle.
Xie Ying saw his correction but did not argue. He merely gave a quiet laugh and mischievously mussed his hair.
Life in the mountains was extraordinarily simple. They slept early, rose late, and the only problem they had to consider each day was what they were going to eat. Their minds gradually grew peaceful, idling away the days until they almost forgot the world beyond the mountains.
About ten days passed. Xie Ying’s sight recovered to perhaps thirty percent. He could distinguish brightness and shadow, colors, and rough outlines, and with a walking stick could just about move around by himself. His wounds had scabbed over and the swelling had subsided, leaving him able to move without much difficulty.
He estimated that Helan Zhenjia’s severed head was probably hanging from the gates of Bihan City by now. How the war between the two countries would develop, and what fate awaited his homeland and its countless common people—those were things he could not truly throw out of his mind simply by hiding in the mountains.
That night, he said to Jiang Guan, “It’s been more than ten days since the incident. The Ten Aspects Sect hasn’t found the assassins, so their guard should have relaxed somewhat. We’ll set out tomorrow and look for a way down the mountain. Once we reach one of our safehouses, I’ll have someone escort you home.”
Jiang Guan was roasting a fish over the fire. At those words, he froze, unable to describe what he felt. Xie Ying’s keen nose caught the smell of scorching flesh. Through his hazy vision, he saw Jiang Guan sitting motionless and reminded him, “Xiao Guan, it’s burning.”
Jolted out of his daze, Jiang Guan sprang upright and hurriedly moved the thoroughly charred fish aside, almost setting fire to his own clothes in the process. Xie Ying could not help sighing. “Why are you panicking? Is it your tail that got burned?”
Jiang Guan lowered his head. His shoulders drooped slightly, and his entire figure radiated dejection.
Going down the mountain was a good thing. Going home was a good thing too. But going down the mountain also meant separating from Xie Ying. They had met by chance and would part by chance. Afterward, it would be difficult ever to spend their days together like this again.
Yet Xie Ying had his own affairs to attend to. Jiang Guan could not selfishly delay him. The thought of resisting their departure simply because he could not bear to part was not only sentimental but terribly ungrateful.
Xie Ying beckoned him over. Jiang Guan slowly moved across and sat beside him, handed over the burnt fish for Xie Ying to salvage, and sat with his arm touching Xie Ying’s while quietly watching the fire dance.
Xie Ying could guess most of what he was thinking. To say he felt no reluctance at all would have been a lie, but certainly not enough for some tearful, clinging farewell.
He had witnessed far more separations of life and death than this Young Master had, and naturally regarded such things more lightly.
For Jiang Guan, the end of this adventure was probably like a close friend suddenly moving away. There would naturally be sadness for a while, but soon new friends would fill the empty place. The bond that seemed impossible to let go of now might, years later, prove no more than a drop of morning dew from his green youth.
So Xie Ying, believing himself extremely considerate, comforted him. “Once you’re home eating hot meals and sleeping in a warm bed again, you won’t miss this wilderness or these burned fish anymore.”
Jiang Guan: “…”
Did Xie Ying seriously think the only things on his mind were eating and sleeping? Then again, what was there to miss about such an inconsiderate blockhead anyway?
Furious, Jiang Guan drew an enormous X in Xie Ying’s palm and shifted three cun away, clearly establishing a boundary between them.
Xie Ying said, “What does that mean? You’re claiming you didn’t burn the fish? And why did you move away? Are you trying to blame it on me?”
Jiang Guan: “…”
He spent the entire night with his back turned toward that infuriating blockhead, tossing and turning in anger. Listening to the mountain wind and the insects outside, he quietly made a decision.
The next morning, the two packed their belongings, left the cave, and followed the river downstream in search of a way out.
Jiang Guan was still sulking. He held Xie Ying’s hand with a cold expression, and whenever he wrote anything, it never exceeded four characters. This had absolutely no effect on Xie Ying, though Jiang Guan himself felt that his attitude was very stiff and his tone extremely forceful. During their rest breaks, he did not even bother Xie Ying, instead going off by himself to fetch water and gather wild fruit.
After busying himself for a while, he returned carrying several washed wild peaches and found Xie Ying sitting leisurely on a rock. Wild grasses and flowers lay scattered around him, and his hands were carefully weaving something.
A flower crown.
Jiang Guan’s heart suddenly began to pound.
Without realizing it, he softened his footsteps as he approached, almost afraid he might disturb something, then silently crouched beside Xie Ying.
He watched eagerly as Xie Ying deftly tucked the long ends of the grass into the knots. Then something light settled on Jiang Guan’s head, and the loose hair at his forehead was gently pressed down beneath flowers.
Blue-purple and pale violet gentians bloomed among clusters of silvery-white fern, with small fresh white flowers scattered between them. The colors of the wreath could genuinely be called elegant, beautifully balanced and delicately woven. No one would ever have guessed it had been made by someone half blind.
Wearing the flower crown, Jiang Guan tilted his face toward him. His cheeks gradually warmed, though he could not have said whether it was embarrassment or something else. He wanted to ask why Xie Ying had suddenly thought of making it, but some subtle feeling held him back.
Xie Ying’s pale eyes looked almost golden in the sunlight, his skin fair as jade. His smile was faint, yet unexpectedly gentle. “My apology,” he said. “Young Master Xiao Guan, don’t be angry with me anymore.”
Jiang Guan froze. His first instinct was to say, I’m not angry. Then he realized that he actually was.
Yet that childish sulking was not really directed at Xie Ying. He was fighting with himself.
From the beginning, he had never expected Xie Ying to take it seriously because he knew perfectly well that his anger made no sense. If Xie Ying had simply asked, What’s wrong? and Jiang Guan had answered, Nothing, he could have quickly strangled that weak, immature Jiang Guan and put the armor woven from “being sensible” and “knowing his place” back around himself.
Instead of armor, he received a flower crown.
A solitary I appeared in Xie Ying’s palm and remained there for a long time without anything following it. Xie Ying did not urge him. He merely said calmly, “It must look good on you. It’s a pity I can’t see clearly. If fate lets us meet again someday, wear one again and let me see it then.”
He could not give a firmer promise. He did not know where the tides of the world would carry either of them. But for Jiang Guan, that was enough. As long as Xie Ying did not mean for them to part forever, then next time Jiang Guan would take the initiative. He would step forward. He would personally make their “reunion” happen.
Jiang Guan gently touched the purple flowers, then handed Xie Ying a peach and wrote in his palm: Alright. Then don’t forget me.
He remembered those words with absolute seriousness and treated them as the final, most solemn promise of their strange adventure. During the long years after their separation, he waited for the day they would meet again, intending to wear another gentian flower crown for Xie Ying to see.
Then one day, he suddenly realized something. Xie Ying did not know his identity. He had never seen Jiang Guan’s face. He had never heard his voice. And gentians did not bloom throughout the year. What if they met again in winter? How was Xie Ying supposed to recognize him?
The caution he had shown in youth was not wrong, but sometimes Jiang Guan regretted that he had not been braver.
So from then on, spring or summer, autumn or winter, he always wore the same gentian incense blend. Even when others said he smelled like medicinal herbs cultivated into a spirit, like a walking ginseng, like a lovesick waiting-stone thoroughly steeped in fragrance, he stubbornly persisted, guarding the secret promise known only to the two of them.
Until one peaceful autumn day, a roof tile fell with a sharp crack, shattering like a river frozen all winter suddenly surging back to life, one wave smashing through the lingering ice of spring.
He turned and met the eyes of an assassin who had dropped into his courtyard with the light, nimble grace of a black cat. The assassin expertly shoved him into a corner, pressed a dagger against his neck, and threatened him not to make a sound.
Jiang Guan had always hated anyone touching his neck, yet at that moment he felt no instinct to resist. His heart hammered violently and his mind went blank, leaving only one thought drifting to the surface: But I can speak now.
His gaze fled awkwardly and landed upon the other man’s shoulder. Stiff as though he had only just learned how to talk, he said dryly, “Your hair is very beautiful.”
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