After that, no matter how Jiang Guan pestered or acted spoiled, Xie Ying treated it like a tickle, like a tightly shut clam shell, no longer revealing even a trace of his true feelings. He changed the subject instead: “You screamed out loud last night—did you know that?”
Jiang Guan had no recollection at all and reasonably suspected that Xie Ying had been half-asleep and confused dreams with memory.
Xie Ying let out a cold snort. “What a thief crying ‘stop thief.’ Wasn’t it you who had a nightmare in the middle of the night, got scared into tears, and insisted I sleep with you?”
Jiang Guan had felt perfectly shameless while clinging to him in the middle of the night, but being exposed so plainly now made his face heat up a little. He set down the bamboo tube and, half-believing, tried to open his throat with a few “ah ah ah” sounds, producing noises that perhaps only bats could hear. Before long, he started coughing from forcing it too hard.
Xie Ying tilted his head to listen, then suddenly raised a brow. “Xiao Guan, you make sound when you cough too—it’s just quieter than most people.”
Jiang Guan immediately tried coughing again, but doing it deliberately didn’t have the same effect as when it was unconscious, and he couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed. Xie Ying lifted a hand to stop him, casually wiping his hand on Jiang Guan’s clothes at the same time. “Don’t force it—you’ll hurt your throat. When we get back, we’ll find a few good doctors. There might still be hope.”
Jiang Guan sat down right where he was, still a bit dizzy after the fever, and naturally leaned against Xie Ying’s shoulder.
Xie Ying glanced down at him, allowing the clinginess, but his tone carried a restrained caution beneath the casual chat: “Was your throat like this from birth, or were you injured later?”
He hadn’t asked before because there hadn’t been a good opening, and asking casually might have touched a sore spot. But asking now was necessary: whatever the cause, the fact that Jiang Guan could suddenly make sounds might be a sign of recovery. Even after being mute for over ten years, it didn’t mean there was no chance of healing.
Jiang Guan took his hand and slowly wrote: injured, I think.
“Either it is or it isn’t,” Xie Ying said, clearly displeased with vague answers. “What do you mean ‘I think’?”
This time Jiang Guan thought carefully and explained as concisely as possible: before age three, parents traveled far, left with relatives, too young to remember, don’t know details.
Xie Ying: “……”
Where did this Young Master even come from—such a pitiful little thing?
Xie Ying wasn’t someone who liked to speculate, but he seemed to sense something deeply hidden and hard to describe—an undercurrent of loneliness—in Jiang Guan’s writing.
A boy about his own age, at the most lively and curious stage of life—how had he so easily chosen death back in the Ten Aspects Sect?
The question circled on his tongue, then he swallowed it. Xie Ying didn’t press further, only reached out to ruffle his hair. “Survive a great disaster, and good fortune will follow. After this ordeal, there won’t be anything you can’t get past.”
Jiang Guan lightly drew a cross in his palm. Xie Ying made a puzzled sound. Jiang Guan corrected him seriously: it’s a fortuitous encounter.
Jiang Guan had been taken by the Ten Aspects Sect from Xiling to Yan Yuan and imprisoned in the Dungeon of Calamity Palace for nearly a month. Those people had used every method—soft and hard, threats and temptations—to break him. Even though he understood that “a bad life is still better than a good death,” he didn’t want to endure endless meaningless suffering for that faint, uncertain chance of survival.
If he lived, it was a “regret”; if he died, it was also a “regret”—perhaps even more so.
It wasn’t that living was bad. But being born with a disability meant that when weighed against others, his value always seemed lighter. In matters of “priority and importance,” he was always placed among the “less urgent” and “less important,” someone who could be postponed, delayed, compressed, or even abandoned—never important enough to warrant “any cost.”
Until Xie Ying descended into his life, the scale between “life” and “death” finally began to tilt the other way.
A cannibalistic altar, raging inferno, collapsing cliffs, the pitch-black underground… this stranger, who had only met him briefly, had saved him again and again from the brink of destruction, refusing to let him become a “regret.”
Only a “miracle” could describe it.
Xie Ying saw his correction but didn’t argue. He let out a low laugh and, with a trace of mischief, messed up his hair.
Life in the mountains was extremely simple. They slept early, rose late, and the only thing they needed to think about each day was what to eat. Their minds gradually grew calm, idle to the point of almost forgetting the world outside.
After about ten days, Xie Ying’s eyesight had recovered to around thirty percent. He could distinguish light and dark, colors, and rough outlines, and could barely walk on his own with the help of a stick. His wounds had scabbed over and the swelling had subsided; he could move without much difficulty.
He estimated that Helan Zhenjia’s severed head was already hanging on the gates of Bihan City. How the war between the two nations would unfold, and the fate of his homeland and countless common people—those were not things he could simply ignore by hiding in the mountains.
That night, he said to Jiang Guan, “It’s been over ten days since the incident. The Ten Aspects Sect hasn’t found the assassins, so their vigilance should have relaxed. Tomorrow we set out to find a way down the mountain. Once we reach a contact point, I’ll have someone escort you home.”
Jiang Guan was roasting fish over the fire and froze when he heard this, unable to describe what he felt.
Xie Ying’s keen nose caught a whiff of something burning. Through his hazy vision, he saw Jiang Guan sitting motionless and reminded him, “Xiao Guan, it’s burning.”
Startled, Jiang Guan jumped up on the spot, fumbling to move the thoroughly charred fish, nearly setting his clothes on fire in the process. Xie Ying couldn’t help sighing. “Why panic? Is it your tail that got burned?”
Jiang Guan lowered his head, shoulders slightly slumped, his whole figure radiating a sense of loss.
Going down the mountain was good. Going home was good. But “going down the mountain” also meant parting ways with Xie Ying. They had met by chance and would part by chance; after this, it would be difficult to spend time together like this again.
But Xie Ying had his own things to do. Jiang Guan couldn’t delay him out of selfishness. The thought of “resisting leaving because I don’t want to part” was not only sentimental, but also ungrateful.
Xie Ying beckoned him over. Jiang Guan slowly moved to sit beside him, handing over the burnt fish for him to handle, sitting close with their arms touching, quietly watching the fire flicker.
Xie Ying could more or less guess what he was thinking. To say he felt no reluctance at all would be a lie—but it wasn’t to the point of tearful, clinging farewell.
He had seen far more partings of life and death than this Young Master, and naturally took such things more lightly.
For Jiang Guan, the end of this adventure was like a close friend suddenly moving away—there would be a moment of sadness, but soon new friends would fill the gap. What seemed unforgettable now would, years later, be nothing more than a drop of morning dew in youth.
So Xie Ying, believing himself considerate, comforted him: “Once you’re home, eating hot meals and sleeping in a warm bed, you won’t miss this mountain wilderness or burnt fish anymore.”
Jiang Guan: ……
Did Xie Ying really think all he cared about was food and sleep? Then again, what was there to miss about such a dense blockhead anyway?
Furiously, Jiang Guan drew a large cross in Xie Ying’s palm and shifted three inches away to show he was drawing a line between them.
Xie Ying said, “What do you mean? Are you saying you didn’t burn the fish? And what’s with moving away—are you trying to pin it on me?”
Jiang Guan: ……
He spent the whole night with his back to that infuriating blockhead, tossing and turning in anger. Listening to the insects and wind in the mountains, he quietly made a decision.
The next morning, the two of them packed their belongings, left the cave, and followed the river downstream in search of a way out.
Jiang Guan was still sulking, pulling Xie Ying along with a cold expression. When he wrote, it never exceeded four characters—completely ineffective on Xie Ying—yet he felt his attitude was stiff and his tone forceful. He didn’t even go to bother Xie Ying during their rest breaks, instead going off on his own to fetch water and gather wild fruit.
After busying himself for a while, he returned to their resting spot carrying a few washed wild peaches. He saw Xie Ying sitting leisurely on a rock, with scattered wild grasses and flowers around him, carefully weaving something in his hands—a flower crown.
Jiang Guan’s heart suddenly started pounding. Unconsciously, he lightened his steps as he approached, as if afraid of disturbing something, and silently crouched beside Xie Ying.
He watched eagerly as Xie Ying deftly tucked the long ends of the grass into knots. Then suddenly, a light weight settled on his head, and the loose strands of hair on his forehead were gently pressed down by flowers.
Blue-purple and pale violet gentian flowers bloomed among clusters of silvery-white ferns, dotted here and there with small, fresh white blossoms. The color combination of the wreath could be called elegant—well-balanced in tone, delicately woven. It was impossible to tell it had been made by someone half-blind.
Wearing the flower crown, Jiang Guan tilted his face up to look at him, his cheeks warming. It was hard to say whether it was from embarrassment or something else. He wanted to ask why Xie Ying suddenly thought to make this, but something subtle held him back, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to ask.
Xie Ying’s slightly pale eyes looked almost golden in the sunlight, his skin as fair as jade. Though his smile was faint, it carried an unexpected softness. “This is my apology. Young Master Xiao Guan, don’t be angry with me anymore.”
Jiang Guan froze, instinctively wanting to tell him “I’m not angry,” only to realize that he really was.
But that childish sulking wasn’t truly directed at Xie Ying—it was him struggling with himself.
From the beginning, he hadn’t expected Xie Ying to take it seriously, because he knew clearly that his sulking made no sense. If Xie Ying had simply asked, “What’s wrong?” and he had answered, “Nothing,” he could have quickly smothered that weak, immature “Jiang Guan” and put back on the armor woven from “being sensible” and “knowing one’s place.”
But instead of armor, he received a flower crown.
The word “I” floated alone in Xie Ying’s palm, with no continuation for a long time. Xie Ying didn’t urge him, only said calmly, “It must look good on you. It’s a pity I can’t see clearly. If fate allows us to meet again someday, wear it again for me to see.”
He couldn’t give a more definite promise. He didn’t know where the tides of fate would carry them. But for Jiang Guan, this was enough—so long as Xie Ying didn’t intend to part ways forever, then this time, he would take the initiative. He would step forward. He would be the one to bring about this “reunion.”
Jiang Guan gently touched the purple flowers, then handed the peaches to Xie Ying, writing in his palm: “Alright. Then don’t forget me.”
He firmly remembered Xie Ying’s words, treating them as the final and most solemn vow of this strange encounter. In the long years after their separation, he waited for the day of reunion, intending to wear the same gentian flower crown for him.
One day, he suddenly realized something—Xie Ying didn’t know his identity, hadn’t seen his face, hadn’t heard his voice. And gentian flowers didn’t bloom all year. If they met again in winter, how would Xie Ying recognize him?
The caution he had shown in youth wasn’t wrong, but sometimes he regretted not being braver.
So from that day on, no matter the season—spring, summer, autumn, or winter—he always wore the same gentian fragrance blend. Even when others said he smelled like living herbal medicine, like a walking ginseng, like a rock steeped in longing—he persisted stubbornly, holding onto this secret promise known only between the two of them.
He waited until one calm autumn day. A roof tile fell and shattered with a sharp crack, like a river long frozen through winter suddenly breaking free, a single wave shattering the lingering ice of spring.
He turned around and locked eyes with an assassin who had dropped into the courtyard as agile as a black cat. The assassin skillfully shoved him into a corner, pressing a dagger to his neck, threatening him not to make a sound.
He had always hated anyone touching his neck. Yet in that moment, he felt no instinct to resist. His heart pounded wildly, and his mind went blank. His first thought was: But I can speak now.
So his gaze shifted awkwardly, landing on the other person’s shoulder. Stiff as someone who had only just learned to talk, he spoke in a dry, halting voice:
“Your hair is very beautiful.”
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