The room was so quiet that you could hear the dripping water from the eaves. He suddenly reached out, but stopped just before he touched the gauze over her eyes. "I brought the chief physician with me." His voice held an unusual urgency. "She will be cured."

"Mm." Shen Jintang nodded slightly, a polite smile curving her lips.

This aloof posture caused Shangguan Qingchen's eyes to darken. He withdrew his hand, which had been hanging in mid-air, and his wide sleeves swept across the table, bringing with them a slight chill.

Silence spread like a thick fog.

The sound of raindrops tapping on the windowpane became exceptionally clear, and Shen Jintang could feel the gaze of the person opposite her falling on her face, so intense it almost pierced through the thin veil.

"Aren't you going to ask me how I found this place?" Shangguan Qingchen suddenly spoke, her cold voice suppressing a certain emotion.

Shen Jintang wasn't curious. Since she had gone to the Shangguan family's bank to withdraw money, she naturally couldn't hide it from Shangguan Qingchen. He would come looking for her sooner or later; she just hadn't expected it to happen so quickly.

“I didn’t intend to avoid you,” Shen Jintang replied.

"Then why didn't you come to me when the Xie family had their troubles?"

This sentence is like a dull knife, slowly dissecting the dusty memories.

Shen Jintang's fingertips trembled slightly, causing tiny ripples to spread across the surface of the teacup.

She recalled that bloody night three years ago, the screams she heard while hiding among the corpses, and the despair as her fingernails dug into the soil.

"Looking for you?" She chuckled softly, her voice colder than the rain under the eaves. "And then? Will you help me get revenge?"

Shangguan Qingchen's pupils suddenly contracted.

The rain outside the window suddenly intensified, with large raindrops pounding on the bluestone slabs with a crisp, crackling sound.

“You won’t.” Shen Jintang answered herself, tracing circles along the rim of the teacup with her finger. “Weighing the pros and cons, you would only tell me to endure. To endure until the time is right, to endure until the court is stable, to endure until—” she paused, “to endure until our enemy dies of old age on his sickbed.”

"Xie Zhaoran." Shangguan Qingchen raised his voice unusually, and a trace of color appeared on his fair face.

He wanted to say how could you be so sure, and he wanted to tell you how he had spent the past three years in regret, but all the words stuck in his throat and turned into a barely audible sigh.

Shen Jintang had already turned around, her eyes, covered by a veil, gazing into the depths of the rain: "I didn't go to find you because I didn't want to make things difficult for you, and also..." Her voice lowered, "to preserve our friendship of all these years."

Shangguan Qingchen froze on the spot as if struck by lightning.

He suddenly remembered that little girl from ten years ago, who used a long spear to intimidate his clan elders and help him ascend to the position of clan head: "Shangguan Qingchen, come up!"

The sunlight was so warm that even someone as naturally cold-hearted as him couldn't help but smile.

"How can you be so sure—" He had just started to speak when the courtyard gate suddenly creaked open.

"Tangtang, I bought your favorite Poria cocos cake!"

Gu Zhixing's clear voice came with the sound of rain, but stopped abruptly the moment he stepped into the house.