“Back then, after we left the Chisong Mountain Range, we stopped at a safehouse in Fuyun City, Yanyuan. You were planning to go to the Linghua Sect in Dongyu to look for your parents.”
Jiang Guan—now Wei Fu—nodded, then remembered that Yugong Zhaoye could not see clearly and added a soft, “Mm. My father ran away from home when he was young, took his late mother’s surname, used the alias Ning Jun, and joined the Linghua Sect to study martial arts. My mother’s surname is Jiang, and my childhood name was Guan-lang. That’s where ‘Jiang Guan’ came from.”
“Around the time I was three, my parents returned to Fengdu and bought this residence. They lived here for a while, then for some unknown reason entrusted me to my maternal grandfather and hurriedly left. They never came back.”
“If you didn’t even know where they were, why insist on going to the Linghua Sect?”
“Back then, Your Highness said I seemed able to make a little sound. I wanted to find my parents and ask exactly how I was injured and became mute, and whether there was any way to cure it completely.” Knowing he was in the wrong, Wei Fu softened his voice. “I used to wait at home for them, but they never came back even after many years. Grandfather said my father was an unruly wanderer and my mother was a jianghu woman of unknown background. I thought perhaps my father was afraid the family wouldn’t accept her, so they had been living elsewhere all these years. Since I finally had the opportunity to travel, I thought I might as well go to the Linghua Sect and ask for myself.”
Yugong Zhaoye gave a cold snort. “Utterly reckless.”
Playing weak worked beautifully. Aside from that judgment, no further scolding came, so Wei Fu immediately pushed his luck a little farther. “Brother Jin Han, whom Your Highness sent to escort me, accompanied me all the way to the Linghua Sect and personally saw me through the mountain gates. How did Your Highness end up thinking I was dead?”
Yugong Zhaoye sighed, apparently reluctant to revisit the subject. “You tell me first. What happened after that?”
“I met my father’s martial uncle, Elder Yu Heyun. He told me Father had left the sect more than ten years earlier and never returned. They didn’t know much about my mother’s identity either. Apparently the two of them had offended Beizhu Palace in Dongyu and were once hunted down on a large scale, but no one had heard anything about them for years.” Wei Fu scratched his head awkwardly. “Since I couldn’t find them, I planned to ask the Linghua Sect to send me back to Xiling. Unfortunately, Beizhu Palace had planted a spy within the sect. When the spy heard that an enemy’s son had voluntarily delivered himself to the door, he exposed his identity that very night, kidnapped me, and took me away to claim a reward.”
Yugong Zhaoye closed his eyes in exhaustion. “Did you dig up Tai Sui’s ancestral grave that year? How could one person possibly be that unlucky?”
Elio’s Notes: Tai Sui is a deity associated with the year and fate in Chinese folk belief. “Offending Tai Sui” proverbially means attracting terrible luck.
Wei Fu gave a guilty little smile. “I-it wasn’t that bad…”
He shook Yugong Zhaoye’s hand pleadingly, exactly as he used to when he was younger. Yugong Zhaoye wanted to scold him for acting without permission, but could not quite find the opening. He remembered how many times they had crossed paths since his arrival in Xiling, how obvious Wei Fu’s hints had been, and how Yugong Zhaoye had still failed to recognize him—had even threatened him repeatedly with a dagger. Guilt lingered, so in the end he accepted Wei Fu’s shameless coaxing and gently set aside that enormous old account. “Even then, I thought your plan to go to the Linghua Sect was unreliable. I told Jin Han not to leave immediately after delivering you there. He was to stay nearby for several days and make sure you were safe before coming back.”
Wei Fu had never realized just how deeply Yugong Zhaoye had hidden his concern. The smile fell from his face.
“I thought…” he murmured. “I thought it was only a simple escort. Didn’t you find it troublesome? I caused so much trouble.”
Whenever Yugong Zhaoye spoke of something important, his voice was always bland, almost as though someone had forgotten to add salt. “If you’re going to help someone, help them to the end. It was precisely because your luck was so bizarre that I had to think ahead and be twice as careful. And even after all that caution, didn’t something still go wrong?”
Wei Fu’s eyes and nose stung. He wanted to cry. Ever since leaving Yugong Zhaoye’s side, he had not shed tears in many years.
“Sorry…”
“Hold it in.” Yugong Zhaoye had extraordinary foresight. “You’ve grown into a whole wall of a man. No crying. What if you collapse?”
Wei Fu: “…”
Excellent. The tears immediately receded, while all the heat rushed straight to his head.
Back then they had both used false names in the mountains and known nothing of each other’s identities or histories. Yet those extraordinarily harsh circumstances had produced the purest kind of bond between them. Yugong Zhaoye had avoided bringing up that old relationship before partly because he had no idea how to acknowledge it without awkwardness—he could hardly throw his arms around Wei Fu and call him brother the moment they met—and partly because their identities and positions were different now. He had feared turning old affection into a debt used to demand repayment.
But once that paper-thin barrier was pierced, the awkwardness lasted only briefly. Their relationship immediately found its footing. The ridiculous back-and-forth between them quickly washed away the faint stiffness that had followed their reunion. Wei Fu was still the gentle, considerate Jiang Guan, and Yugong Zhaoye was still the calm, unflappable Xie Ying.
Afraid that Wei Fu would start crying endlessly, Yugong Zhaoye continued before he could ask anything else. “Jin Han waited outside the Linghua Sect for three days. When he learned you had been abducted and that the culprit might be a Beizhu Palace spy, he followed the trail all the way to Wanxu Mountain in Dongyu, assumed the identity of a minor member, and infiltrated Beizhu Palace to rescue you.”
Wei Fu stared at him. “Bihua really was the greatest assassin organization under Heaven… Brother Jin is amazing…”
Yugong Zhaoye glanced sideways at him. “He is. Rescuing you was much harder than killing Helan Zhenjia. That only took two people.”
Wei Fu: “…”
He fidgeted, squeezing Yugong Zhaoye’s palm like a child listening to a story. “And then?”
“And then there was no trace of you inside Beizhu Palace. The man who kidnapped you—and every piece of information connected to you—simply disappeared.”
Wei Fu: “Uh…”
Yugong Zhaoye asked coolly, “Young Master Wei, is there anything you would like to explain?”
“I really was kidnapped by a Beizhu Palace spy, and I really was intercepted halfway by a kindhearted person who thoughtfully sent me straight back to Xiling.” Feeling uncertain, he began fiddling nervously with whatever lay beneath his hands and almost twisted Yugong Zhaoye’s fingers into knots. “See? I told you I wasn’t completely unlucky. There are still many good people in the world…”
“A good person?” Yugong Zhaoye gave a cold laugh, showing a rare flash of unmistakable hostility. “You mean the Young Master of Beizhu Palace, Xie Youlan?”
Wei Fu froze. He had not expected Yugong Zhaoye to know even that. Reading his expression, Wei Fu immediately denied everything. “Xie Youlan is absolutely not a good person! He’s terrible. If the villains of the world were ranked, he’d come second, and only his father would dare claim first.”
Yugong Zhaoye: “…That’s how you talk about the man who saved your life?”
Wei Fu: “…”
It was precisely the classic deathtrap of a question: if both people who had saved your life fell into the water at the same time, which one would you rescue first? Wei Fu thought praising Xie Youlan would be wrong and insulting him would also be wrong, so he cunningly escaped through flattery instead. “Xie Youlan saved me back then purely because of my mother. How could he compare with Your Highness, who acted selflessly and with such heroic righteousness? But you said there was no information about me inside Beizhu Palace. How did you know Xie Youlan was the one who intercepted me?”
He had just said that his parents had offended Beizhu Palace and then immediately said Xie Youlan had rescued him because of his mother, without explaining how the two facts fit together. He was plainly avoiding the subject. Wei Fu might occasionally behave foolishly, but he was not stupid enough to tell lies that contradicted each other so obviously.
Yugong Zhaoye had only made a casual teasing remark, yet it had unexpectedly forced out a hidden clue. He quietly filed it away and answered, “Jin Han investigated everyone who suddenly left Beizhu Palace during those days. Once he eliminated the others, only Young Master Xie Youlan remained. It could only have been him.”
Wei Fu’s heart leapt into his throat. He did not even know why he was nervous, but he instinctively tightened his grip around Yugong Zhaoye’s hand. “And then?”
“He had followed every lead he could. What to do next was no longer something he felt comfortable deciding alone, so he withdrew from Beizhu Palace and found a way to send me a message,” Yugong Zhaoye said simply. “So I went to find Xie Youlan.”
There was no description of his thoughts, no weighing of gains and losses, no embellishment, joke, or reproach.
He had crossed mountains and rivers and traveled thousands of li, yet his entire decision was condensed into that one short sentence.
Wei Fu’s voice trembled. “What did Xie Youlan tell you?”
“He said your whole family were enemies of Beizhu Palace. He hadn’t managed to get your parents’ whereabouts out of you, and keeping you alive served no purpose, so he killed you.” Even now, remembering Xie Youlan’s arrogant, careless manner made Yugong Zhaoye angry. He breathed out wearily. “That bastard…”
“I had a part in that too.” Wei Fu seemed to shrink inch by inch as he confessed in shame. “Xie Youlan received information from an insider, intercepted the spy halfway, and silenced him.”
“He told me the Palace Master of Beizhu Palace, Xie Jing, bore an irreconcilable hatred toward my parents and didn’t even know they had a child. If my identity became known, I would certainly be killed. He told me never to reveal who I was to anyone, and especially never to say that he had saved me. Then he sent me back to Xiling.”
“That explains it.” Yugong Zhaoye naturally would not blame him for something like that. He considered it for a moment. “He defied his father’s orders and spared your life. Publicly declaring you dead was therefore reasonable.”
“Your Highness…” Curiosity overcame Wei Fu. He leaned closer and asked quietly, “He told you I was dead. Did you really believe him?”
Yugong Zhaoye: “…”
He pushed Wei Fu’s shoulder away. “This bed is already tiny. You’re practically lying on top of me. Move.”
Wei Fu: “You believed him.”
Yugong Zhaoye finally lost patience. “Of course I didn’t believe him immediately. If someone is alive, I want to see the person. If they’re dead, I want to see the body. Do you think everyone behaves like your family?”
Wei Fu gave a delighted little “Oh?” His smile looked as though it had been rolled in honey. “Your Highness even knows about that?”
Did the damned antidote have additional side effects that muddled the brain and loosened the tongue?
But now that they had already said this much, cutting open those old memories buried in his heart did not seem quite so difficult.
“I didn’t believe him at first. Xie Youlan showed me evidence.”
“I thought it was something you wouldn’t casually lose or give away, so I assumed he must have taken it from you by force.”
Wei Fu listened in complete confusion. “What evidence? I barely owned anything then. What could possibly prove who I was? Don’t tell me he showed Your Highness a finger and claimed it was mine.”
Yugong Zhaoye lightly slapped the back of his hand. Smack. It did not hurt, but the sound was wonderfully crisp. Yugong Zhaoye himself frequently made jokes no one found funny, yet apparently he could not tolerate Wei Fu making this kind of flippant joke.
“If he really had shown me a finger, I wouldn’t have believed him. I had never even seen what your fingers looked like.”
Wei Fu sat there like a small, aggrieved victim, rubbing the back of his hand without daring to complain. Then he heard Yugong Zhaoye say calmly, “It was a pouch containing dried gentian flowers.”
The pouch itself was ordinary, both its material and its workmanship so unremarkable that it looked newly bought from some roadside stall. Inside lay a small handful of gentian flowers, withered and faded, as though someone had carefully plucked them one by one from a dead flower crown, preserved them, carried them across a very long road, and finally tucked them into a pouch worn close against the body—trying to hold on, for as long as possible, to a bond as fleeting as a flower once severed from its branch.
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