Elio’s Notes: At the time FD recovered this chapter, the JJWXC entry was locked and its original internal title was not visible. We reconstructed the chapter from the officially purchased Kobo edition, using the surviving end of Chapter 48 and beginning of Chapter 50 to confirm the exact boundaries. Because the Kobo edition does not preserve the original internal heading, FD leaves Chapter 49 untitled rather than inventing one.
“Can you put me down now?” Li Congjia turned slightly to look at him, helplessness in his eyes and entirely unable to do anything about the situation.
Looking around, all he could see was forest sunk into the inscrutable darkness of night. Only the tea stall at the foot of the mountain remained open, a dim yellow paper lantern lit outside it, swaying uselessly whenever the wind passed.
The proprietor and his assistant probably knew there would be no more customers at this hour and had long since retired to the thatched hut to rest. Not a human sound could be heard anywhere.
A pair of arms held his waist firmly. Zhao Kuangyin deliberately refused to release him. In the blink of an eye, the horse charged onto the gradual incline of the mountain road. Li Congjia had only just managed to turn his face sideways when, completely unprepared for Zhao Kuangyin to remain mounted even at the foot of the steps, the horse lifted its hooves. His body swayed, and instinctively he grabbed Zhao Kuangyin’s arm.
The slope grew steeper, and riding farther upward would obviously become difficult. Li Congjia looked at him again. He said nothing, but his meaning could not have been clearer.
The man behind him surveyed their surroundings and still remembered the night he had waited here alone, when the apricot blossoms had seemed red as blood.
“I’m going up to the terrace now. What you do is your own choice.” Zhao Kuangyin swung down from the horse, loosened the reins, and left Li Congjia alone on its back. “It is not too late to ride back now. If, before dawn tomorrow, you still insist upon not seeing me on the terrace, then from this moment onward, everything will be exactly as you said.”
“We will be even.”
Even. Two clean, decisive words that struck the ground with weight. Li Congjia himself had spoken them before, yet hearing Zhao Kuangyin say them now somehow gave them an entirely different taste.
Zhao Kuangyin turned and climbed the narrow stone path one step at a time, never looking back to see him. Li Congjia’s heart had always been something only Li Congjia himself could command.
It was only a matter of turning around and choosing. There should have been nothing difficult about it. Yet Li Congjia thought to himself that the hand gripping the reins had begun to sting. Though these were days of oppressive summer heat, the thing in his hand suddenly seemed colder than Qingu had been that day.
He watched the figure emerge from the trees and slowly climb higher, receding farther and farther away. Remembering those words about living as one pleased, Li Congjia tightened his grip around the red-sandalwood bracelet on his wrist, grief almost unbearable. How many people in this world said that the Li bloodline consisted entirely of people who indulged themselves in passion, pleasure, music, and song? How many pairs of eyes waited behind him to laugh? They mocked him for being born within the deep palace and raised among women, asking when such a person could ever understand the bitterness of ordinary life.
Li Congjia had long ago resigned himself to fate. Why, then, had Zhao Kuangyin come back? Why did he fall completely apart every single time he stood before this man? As though he were merely a fool who had painted peace over everything and convinced himself it was real.
“Zhao Kuangyin.”
At last he spoke, his voice low and distant.
It was a weary voice, almost the same tone in which he had once asked Zhao Kuangyin whether he had ever tasted the flavor of peach blossoms.
“Do you still remember what I did to you the first time we met?” The tall figure beneath the moon abruptly stopped. Zhao Kuangyin turned to look at him.
“You wanted to kill me.” Li Congjia gazed at him, his steps slow and light as he approached, yet carrying an inexplicable stubbornness.
When Li Congjia came within a single step of him, Zhao Kuangyin suddenly reached out. Just as he had that first day, he caught Li Congjia by the throat beneath the moonlight. Yet within those double pupils, a trace of amusement suddenly flickered. There was still no fear.
“Today, I still very much want to…” He secretly tightened his grip. Seeing Li Congjia’s brows draw together in his palm, Zhao Kuangyin bent down and kissed him, the words blurred between their lips. “Kill you.”
…If killing you meant I could keep you forever.
“Then why did you save me that day?” Li Congjia suddenly reached out and seized his robe, making no attempt to retreat or evade him.
“If I tell you to live, then you cannot die. Do you believe me?” Zhao Kuangyin whispered beside his ear. His fingers gradually loosened and wound instead through Li Congjia’s long hair. “If Zhao Kuangyin wants to keep something, he will keep it.”
“I believe you.” His double pupils narrowed slightly, and his smile deepened.
Zhao Kuangyin turned and pulled him onward up the terrace, his broad hand tightly enclosing Li Congjia’s fingertips. His low voice melted into the night wind. “Even in summer, you’re still this cold…”
Li Congjia followed him and replied faintly, “I have been this way since childhood. Even beneath a quilt, I was never warm in my sleep.”
He still remembered that when he was young, his bedding had to be warmed every night before he could sleep peacefully. His wet nurse would quietly tell others that the Sixth Prince had surely been born with a naturally cold constitution.
Long ago, people had understood that someone like him had no need to deliberately cultivate any manner or bearing. Everything about him seemed innate, sunk into his bones and blood. The elegance distilled from a lifetime of night rain made the world praise his astonishing brilliance and beauty, never realizing that the brilliance came before the beauty.
At this moment, neither spoke. Zhao Kuangyin felt only the close, intricate entanglement within his palm, intoxicating enough to consume flesh and bone.
They walked on for a while, and gradually the curtain of night lowered around them.
On Phoenix Mountain, torchlight still burned fiercely, casting their overlapping shadows.
“To think that Zhao Kuangyin can actually say things like that…” Li Congjia bent down and gathered his sleeves. With one fingertip he traced the old sword marks carved into the ground. His long hair brushed the earth, yet he ignored it, and amusement was plainly visible upon his face.
Zhao Kuangyin could hardly avoid becoming irritated. Words he had carved in utter desperation were now being mocked to his face. He dropped onto a low stone beside him. “Do you know that I waited here alone for an entire night?”
After a moment of silence, Li Congjia said quietly, “I came across these sword marks afterward.”
He looked around. Phoenix Terrace remained encircled by torchlight, while the distant scenery shifted indistinctly in the darkness. For a moment he became dazed. The air seemed still capable of carrying the bloody smell of that night, yet now he could no longer remember what had passed through his own mind at that instant.
Zhao Kuangyin had never imagined that Li Congjia had returned here.
In truth, the words cut into the stone did not resemble Zhao Kuangyin’s usual manner at all. They existed only because utter despair had driven him to them that night. Looking at them now, even he found himself somewhat foolish.
“What difference does looking at them make…” His voice became unnatural without his realizing it, and he deliberately refused to look toward the person beside him.
“What do you think?” Hearing the attempt at concealment in Zhao Kuangyin’s voice only made Li Congjia more interested. He deliberately propped up his chin with almost childish insolence and leaned closer to look at him. “The Grand Tutor truly possesses excellent skill. Your sword entered the stone three cun deep.”
In the firelight, those double pupils remained as dark and beguiling as ever. The remark made Zhao Kuangyin relax despite himself. The wooden bracelet on Li Congjia’s wrist shifted with the movement, sliding downward because it was slightly too large and revealing the extraordinary elegance of his wrist bones.
Li Congjia had merely intended to tease him. Instead, in the next instant Zhao Kuangyin pulled him directly into his arms. “Then I suppose I will have to compensate you.”
“Let go!” Li Congjia struggled, immediately regretting that he had forgotten the likely consequences.
Afraid that Li Congjia might strike the stone platform behind him, Zhao Kuangyin did not truly use force. Li Congjia took advantage of this to struggle free, straightening his clothes and attempting to rise.
“You owe me one night.” Zhao Kuangyin abruptly followed him down and pinned him there, pressing that frost-pale wrist beneath the moonlight.
Seeing the blue-green-clad man’s face filled with shock, his former tranquil composure completely gone, Zhao Kuangyin unexpectedly felt calm. He had simply wanted, deliberately, to see why this man could never remain within anyone’s control.
“Let go!” Li Congjia heard the words as a slight against himself, and anger flashed through his eyes.
Zhao Kuangyin had known he would become angry. He gave him no chance to speak further, bending down to seal his lips instead. His fingers followed the long hair beside Li Congjia’s face downward until his hand came to rest firmly at his waist. He pulled loose the complicated layers of his outer robes, one layer after another releasing the enticing fragrance of red sandalwood.
The sensation of Zhao Kuangyin’s kiss lingered and would not leave. After a long sigh, Li Congjia finally stopped exhausting himself in resistance and slowly closed his eyes. Let tomorrow bring whatever wind and rain it would. Tonight, let him simply be drunk. Ever since meeting Zhao Kuangyin, all that remained between heaven and earth seemed to be the exhilaration of standing upon the edge of danger. If Zhao Kuangyin meant to sink, then what reason was there not to sink beside him?
A truly mad thought flashed through his mind. Li Congjia reached out and pulled Zhao Kuangyin’s robe toward himself.
Zhao Kuangyin’s tongue followed the line of his neck. One drop after another traced out the entirety of that peerless elegance until Li Congjia’s thoughts dissolved into confusion. Amid disordered breathing, sandalwood fragrance drifted everywhere. He bit hard upon his lower lip and shook his head.
“No one will come…” Zhao Kuangyin murmured. His thumb brushed downward, teasing apart Li Congjia’s lips until he was forced to relax them.
The man behind him kissed through his hair with a strangely gentle persistence. Li Congjia remained tightly curled in on himself. Fine beads of sweat appeared along his shoulder blades. The man behind him was almost losing control, yet the weakness exposed throughout Li Congjia’s body was so rare that it bordered on astonishing.
His slender fingers struggled helplessly among the layered gauze beneath him. Suddenly he turned to look at Zhao Kuangyin without the slightest calculation in it. His eyes were entirely lost. His long hair lay scattered across his back like spilled ink. Zhao Kuangyin could only think that he looked almost dangerously enchanting and drew nearer, reverently blowing the strands away from his back.
A thread of icy breath touched his skin, and that pale figure immediately trembled beyond restraint, a soft sound escaping him.
Li Congjia knew fear as well. He feared many things. He feared that those he cared about would one day be unable to see him again. He remained outwardly light as wind and pale as clouds only because, whenever he was afraid, there had never been anyone capable of saving him. Looking across three thousand li of mountains and rivers, not one person could give him shelter. He therefore had no choice but to learn to endure everything himself.
More than that, perhaps one day he truly would have to attempt becoming sovereign over ten thousand people. Upon the halls of state, what was imprisoned there was nothing less than the divinity people made of the human heart. To whom had he given his own heart? And who would ever think of it?
“Why make yourself suffer?” Zhao Kuangyin soothed him slowly. When the fabric brushed against the body beneath it, Zhao Kuangyin finally felt him begin to settle, the warmth of his body no longer capable of hiding itself.
Li Congjia clutched Zhao Kuangyin’s arm with desperate force. The pain became unbearable and drew a quiet moan from him, immediately pushing both men beyond what they could calmly endure.
“…It is full of you. It is all you…” For a moment Li Congjia could no longer control himself. There was nowhere left to hide. Moisture gathered involuntarily at the corners of his eyes, and suddenly he clung with all his strength, refusing to release him. “Take it. Take everything. What little remains of me is a blessing to squander. What are trade between north and south, the sun and moon over Jiangnan? None of it can compare with one turn of your hand overturning clouds and rain.”
So those wild lines left by people of earlier ages had all been born from hearts with their own bodhi.
The phoenixes are gone, the terrace empty, while the river flows on. The apricot blossoms had bloomed and fallen. Never again could that inferno of the heart, fierce enough to destroy heaven and earth, be seen. Even the river seemed stunned into silence.
Elio’s Notes: “The phoenixes are gone, the terrace empty, while the river flows on” again echoes Li Bai’s Tang poem Climbing Phoenix Terrace in Jinling (《登金陵凤凰台》), which the novel has already made into a recurring motif for their meetings and separations.
As Zhao Kuangyin kissed across his skin, his fingers suddenly encountered something. It was a scar running across Li Congjia’s abdomen. Pain shot through Zhao Kuangyin’s heart. “Congjia… don’t move… let me see this wound… Who hurt you?”
Li Congjia wept without answering. Wrapped in the soft folds of his clothes, he possessed only enough strength to shake his head. He still refused to tell Zhao Kuangyin. There was no point. A betrayal was a betrayal, whatever its original intent. There was no longer any need to argue over it.
“Never let… anyone else… see your tears…” Zhao Kuangyin wiped them away, his tongue still lingering over the scar. Feeling Li Congjia trembling violently throughout his body only made him still more unwilling to let the matter go. “Tell me!”
He wore the skin of a flourishing age around himself, yet this softness was almost never seen. Zhao Kuangyin held tightly to it and refused to let go.
…Li Congjia truly could not explain why. Things enormous enough to crush heaven itself could weigh upon his heart, yet he could still smile faintly, snap off a branch, and open his mouth to speak words of astonishing beauty. Even he did not understand why, every time Zhao Kuangyin caused him pain, it could so easily shatter everything else.
“This scar is still here.” Zhao Kuangyin raised his fingertips and lightly touched the old wound upon Li Congjia’s arm that he himself had once left there. Something stirred within him, and he murmured, “Who else… hurt you?”
His fingers moved from Li Congjia’s arm and abruptly reached the savage sword wound across his own chest.
Zhao Kuangyin was a man who lived through war, and the wound on his chest was still plainly visible. In his corner of Jiangnan, Li Congjia had heard reports of the northern court’s great victories. He simply had never known Zhao Kuangyin had paid such a price for them.
Zhao Kuangyin froze.
At times like this, Li Congjia still was not happy. He became clear-headed far too easily.
Sorrow inside those double pupils seemed deep enough to drown a human heart. Li Congjia smiled desolately, and the smile was devastatingly beautiful. “Zhao Kuangyin, from the beginning each of us has carried his own burden. Who can truly save the other?”
Zhao Kuangyin loathed this feeling of utter helplessness. To prove that the slender blue-green soul in his grasp was truly something he could touch, he nearly went mad. Li Congjia’s tears came faster beneath his pressure, every drop seeming to burn away the three thousand splendors of Qinhuai’s painted boats before sinking into the dust and falling upon those sword marks.
If he wished it, Zhao Kuangyin felt he could almost overturn the entire vast river.
Yet beside his ear Li Congjia said very softly, “Kill me…”
Zhao Kuangyin truly put his hand around his neck and slowly began to exert pressure.
“Kill me.” Li Congjia did not struggle at all, almost as though he intended to break within Zhao Kuangyin’s hands. He continued smiling.
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid…” His chest rose and fell violently. He could barely speak, yet still he smiled as though flowers were blooming.
Zhao Kuangyin’s gaze abruptly tightened. He suddenly flung his hand away and turned Li Congjia around, pressing him directly against the stone wall. The force was enough to make Li Congjia cough softly. The stone was damp and cold against him. He tried to recoil but had nowhere to go. The man behind him forced his face upward toward the whole spread of heaven. Far in the distance, the lights of Qinhuai at night were faintly visible. Firelight reflected within his double pupils, and a thousand phantom images shimmered in that darkness like colored glass.
The moon sinks, smoke thickens, pure radiance shatters. What a pity the man is not drunk.
“You’re afraid?” Seeing that Li Congjia was finally ashamed, Zhao Kuangyin refused to let him turn away. “You are afraid of everything except death. That is precisely why, Li Congjia, one day your own heart will drive you into a dead end until even the right to die is no longer yours!”
Through hazy moonlight, pale clouds come and go. Who laments that colored clouds scatter so easily?
Elio’s Notes: The first half echoes the famous line “朦胧淡月云来去” from Die Lian Hua: Spring’s End (《蝶恋花·春暮》), a lyric transmitted under several attributions and later reworked by He Zhu. The novel deliberately folds that familiar poetic image into the scene rather than quoting an entire poem.
Li Congjia still smiled at him, his profile filled with sorrowful compassion. It was impossible to tell whether he pitied the man before him or the distant, fragile note of pipes somewhere below.
When he opened his eyes again, the sky was faintly bright.
Li Congjia wrapped himself in his outer robe and began to cough. Zhao Kuangyin reached over and tightened the sash around his waist. The moment he touched Li Congjia’s fingertips, he found them even colder than before, and his brows drew slightly together.
“It’s nothing. The night grew late and the dew was heavy. I merely caught a chill.” Li Congjia withdrew his hand and spoke calmly.
“You get chilled that easily…” Zhao Kuangyin sighed.
“It will be daylight soon…” Li Congjia had never in his life slept beneath open sky. With the mountain already cool and the morning wind unceasing, he could not help curling deeper into his blue-green robes and shivering. He had never slept warmly to begin with. Compared with ordinary people, he was even more vulnerable to cold.
Zhao Kuangyin took off his own dark official robe and draped it over him.
“Do not agree to this matter.” Li Congjia accepted it without refusing, then suddenly spoke.
“What matter?” Zhao Kuangyin asked in a low voice, momentarily failing to understand.
“The matter of trade.” His double pupils regarded Zhao Kuangyin with deep concentration. Li Congjia spoke softly, earning a sigh from him. “Why are you always unlike ordinary people? If this succeeds, it will be an enormous achievement for you.”
“I simply do not want to become Crown Prince.” His eyes narrowed slightly. Reaching out, he touched the damp traces of water upon the stone beside him. In that instant, indolence and wantonness moved faintly across his lips, and one sentence seemed to hover somewhere in the air without knowing where it belonged.
“Would you like to see the lands of the north?” It was not a question. Zhao Kuangyin’s gaze suddenly became deep and decisive. “Come with me.”
Li Congjia abruptly turned toward him. The detachment within those double pupils was unmistakable, yet the sight startled Zhao Kuangyin. “Even if I could abandon Jiangnan, could you abandon the realm?”
The man before him raised a hand. A fingertip still carrying a bead of dew suddenly touched the space between Zhao Kuangyin’s brows. It was like enlightenment poured straight through the crown of his head, piercing directly into his heart.
With one sentence, he severed the ending of every story. This demon that gnawed at heart and bone destroyed every forced consolation of the night.
Li Congjia brushed off his hands and rose, pulling the robe tightly around himself. He walked out ahead of Zhao Kuangyin. Halfway away, he looked back, saw that Zhao Kuangyin had not moved, and stopped.
“Go back.” The same faint smile curved his lips, elegant and composed. His tone sounded almost as though he were the one gently admonishing Zhao Kuangyin.
After a hundred battles, iron armor lies shattered upon the sands. At that moment, Zhao Kuangyin truly wanted, just once, to surrender to impulse.
Elio’s Notes: “After a hundred battles, iron armor lies shattered upon the sands” quotes the opening of Li Bai’s Tang poem Song of the Army, No. 2 (《从军行二首·其二》), a poem about a battle-hardened commander surrounded yet still fighting his way out.
If only, back then, he could truly have made up his mind to cast everything aside without restraint. From then onward they might have seen every green mountain north and south of the river, built a cottage and lived there, ridden their horses across ten thousand li of rivers and mountains amid cassia blossoms of autumn, fished beside lakes while he watched Li Congjia’s brilliance, listened to the peerless music beneath his fingertips. Where the heart had chosen to rest, worldly rites and laws could be discarded like dirt. Such a life would have been far better than a cage built from white bones.
Elio’s Notes: “Where feeling is concentrated” (情之所钟) evokes the celebrated line from A New Account of the Tales of the World (《世说新语·伤逝》): “It is precisely people like us in whom feeling is concentrated.” Here the novel turns that classical defense of profound attachment into Zhao Kuangyin’s fantasy of casting aside worldly law.
Elio’s Notes: “Cassia blossoms of autumn” (三秋桂子) recalls Liu Yong’s Northern Song lyric Watching the Tide: The Splendor of the Southeast (《望海潮·东南形胜》), famous for its image of “cassia blossoms in autumn and lotus flowers stretching for ten li.” Liu Yong lived after the period of this scene, making the phrase another deliberate authorial anachronism.
But that day, Li Congjia had clearly seen into his heart. That was why he had been the first to take a step outward, leaving Phoenix Terrace behind. After that, who could know what evening or what dawn might come?
The sky grew brighter. Birdsong could be heard among the flowering ravines. A new day had begun.
“Li Hongji left something for you.” Zhao Kuangyin spoke while watching Li Congjia’s back.
“It is with you?” Li Congjia stopped abruptly and turned his double pupils back toward him.
“Yes…” Zhao Kuangyin continued down the stone steps without stopping. Passing Li Congjia, he did not look at him. “Meet me tonight at Shengding House. Li Congjia, I will return it to you.”
“All right.” Li Congjia smiled faintly. Only the distance of one crossing step lay between them, yet the scent of red sandalwood remained exactly as it always had been.
They rode forward, entered Flower Market Street, and returned to the lanes of the marketplace. Immortals and demons alike had to return to their proper places. How could one not see that floating life was little more than a dream? All worries returned, and their paths divided once more.
Li Congjia returned the official robe to him and dismounted alone.
Zhao Kuangyin wanted to say something. Seeing Li Congjia shake his head, he swallowed the words instead. At last he sighed and lightly touched Li Congjia’s cold cheek. “Are you still cold?”
Li Congjia made no sound. In this world, each person ultimately had to bear his own warmth and cold.
From here, one would go east and one west. Li Congjia would return to Ehuang’s side. Zhao Kuangyin would return to the post station and once again listen to the complaints of his subordinate officials. Their roads had always been different. Why insist upon walking the same one?
Zhao Kuangyin pulled the reins and turned his horse. Its hooves struck lightly against the road. Then suddenly he called out to him again. Li Congjia, who had already walked several steps away, turned back in surprise.
The daylight was thin. The street was emptier still. Only the two of them remained.
“If you dare break another promise, I will burn Jinling to the ground.” Zhao Kuangyin laughed, but the words came out almost viciously. Concern lay plainly beneath them. He simply feared that Li Congjia would disappear again.
“All right.” Li Congjia answered him, raising his eyes to look around at the street. A trace of amusement appeared. “I would rather like to see how you intend to burn Jinling.”
For one instant Zhao Kuangyin again wanted to seize him and carry him far away. Helpless, he could only force the thought down. “Li Congjia… perhaps… should I tell you now?”
His voice abruptly lowered. The horse had already turned toward the blue-green figure, almost ready to retrace the tracks of the previous night.
“All right, all right, all right. I won’t.” Li Congjia saw his expression change and immediately waved his hand.
Hearing the promise from horseback, Zhao Kuangyin finally relaxed.
Not far away stood the high pavilion of Shengding House. Li Congjia happened to see it, and something suddenly stirred within him. “If we could return to that day, Zhao Kuangyin, would you still jump down to save me?”
“No.” Zhao Kuangyin looked directly into his double pupils, his answer utterly certain.
Li Congjia nodded approvingly, then turned away with the same faint smile he always wore, not the slightest trace of sorrow or joy visible upon his face.