Chapter 42 Life's Journey

After leaving the teahouse, the night wind was raging in the alley, with the feeling that a storm was coming.

Lin Songyao walked beside Nan Jiu and asked, "Does your uncle have any opinions about me?"

"You're overthinking it." The alley was deserted at night, and the footsteps on the stone bricks made a heavy sound.

"I think I'm overthinking it. It was our first meeting, what could possibly be causing any conflict?"

Lin Songyao turned his head, his gaze falling on Nan Jiu's drooping brows. "His last name is Song, not Nan. Judging from his age, he doesn't look like your grandfather's biological son."

Nan Jiu met his inquiring gaze: "What do you want to say?" Her calm eyes were impenetrable.

Lin Songyao smiled. "He has a manly build and is not bad looking. When you went back to your grandfather's house and lived under the same roof with him, didn't you have any thoughts about him?"

As we walked out of the alley, the night wind grew stronger. Nan Jiu's face, facing the backlight, was lost in the dim night. His voice was cold, "Are you done yet?"

Nan Jiu was never one to show her emotions around Lin Songyao. Most of the time, she kept her emotions hidden, hidden from others. He had witnessed her countless setbacks and setbacks, expecting her to lose her composure, to collapse, but each time, she managed to face every storm with a calm demeanor. This was almost the first time Lin Songyao had seen such clear emotion on Nan Jiu's face. Yet, these emotions, shrouded in a hard shell, still betrayed no deeper meaning.

Lin Songyao didn't intend to pry further, but as his eyes swept across the street corner, a sinister thought suddenly struck him. He stopped, blocking Nanjiu's path. The usual warmth in his eyes faded, leaving only a dark, hazy glint. Without warning, he grabbed Nanjiu's waist, pulled her close, and kissed her without hesitation.

Everything happened so suddenly that Nan Jiu shook himself out of shock and asked him, "Why are you going crazy in the street?"

Lin Songyao's triumphant smile gradually overflowed from his eyes, cold and playful.

Nanjiu's heart skipped a beat and he turned his head sharply.

Under the crooked tree, a familiar figure was turning and walking into the alley. It was Song Ting.

His last glance before turning around wasn't filled with anger or surprise, but rather with an abyss drained of all warmth, a dry well completely extinguished. His figure was swallowed up by the endless alley, as if the entire world had closed its door behind him.

Nanjiu's ears were buzzing, and his heart was being clenched and crushed by an invisible force.

Lin Songyao's smile grew more and more unbridled. He stepped in front of Nanjiu, abruptly blocking her line of sight. "So this is the secret you've been keeping secret? You really amaze me. You're even able to get together with your own uncle."

Nan Jiu raised his head, his eyes fixed on Lin Songyao's face like a knife.

Lin Songyao's forehead tensed. "You say I'm a playboy, but what about you? How old were you when you climbed into his bed? Nineteen? Twenty? Isn't that playful? It's incest, to put it bluntly."

Nanjiu clenched his teeth, his lips stretched into an extremely cold straight line, and his hands clenched tighter and tighter at his sides.

"Oh, by the way, it's not incest, right? After all, you are not related by blood..." Lin Songyao did not hide the sarcasm on his face.

"You shouldn't touch my family." Nanjiu's voice was chilling.

Lin Songyao's mouth curled slightly, and he reached out to hold Nanjiu's neck and pulled her in front of him: "You can still call him family just because you slept with him? Do you want me to go back and ask him if he treats you as family?"

There was a fierce look in Nan Jiu's eyes, and he swung a fist towards Lin Songyao with a "bang".

Lin Songyao loosened his grip on her and took a step back in disbelief: "You fought with me...for that man?"

Nan Jiu didn't say another word, turned around and left.

Lin Songyao grabbed her arm, his face suddenly darkening: "Find out who you are."

"What is my status?" Nan Jiu met the anger in his eyes and pressed him, "You should know your place. Why did you marry me? Do you really need me to tell you? Aren't you just thinking that if you're caught cheating on me one day, I won't argue with you like other women do? I might even help you close the door."

Nan Jiu shook his hand off, grabbed Lin Songyao's collar, and warned him word by word: "If you want me to do this, the premise is that you also have to know your position. I tell you, Lin Songyao, this is my bottom line. In order to verify your suspicion, you set your sights on him. Since you have touched him, I will not let you off easily."

She pushed him away and strode away.

......

After parting ways with Lin Songyao, Nan Jiu walked two blocks before finally stopping in front of the convenience store. The last time she'd been back, she and Nan Qiaoyu had spent some time enjoying the night breeze here. Returning here again, gazing at the sky above Maoer Lane, it felt like a vast black net, pressing down on her chest like a massive, overwhelming force.

Nanjiu pushed open the glass door and took a can of beer from the freezer. When he was paying the bill, he glanced at the counter.

After leaving the convenience store, Nanjiu leaned against a street-side window, holding the can of beer. The cold and spicy liquid slid down his throat, into his body, and then gnawed at his internal organs.

Song Ting's gaze at that moment was like a hammer, hitting her hard. Even his back as he left gave her enough room to react.

They could have ended the meeting in a decent manner, but before leaving, she had to stab him accurately and cruelly.

Nan Jiu raised his head and gulped down beer after beer. The alcohol rushed through his body, burning away all his dignity.

She stood up, grabbed the beer can, threw it into a passing trash can, and walked deeper into Hat Lane.

......

Silence enveloped the teahouse at night. Old Man Nan had already gone to bed. Without turning on the lights, Song Ting walked straight upstairs, opened the attic door, and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the shadow cast by the skylight.

On that turbulent night many years ago, she was desperate for warmth, like a lost child. He felt distressed, blamed himself, and love blossomed. He was bewitched by her, crossed the line, and became obsessed with her scent.

She and he were different people. He lived in dark alleys, while she shone brightly on the stage. He was attracted by her radiance, brightness, and fearlessness.

But all this also destined her to fly to a wider world.

It wasn't that he needed her, it was just that no one had ever made him feel this way before. She had given him a taste of the thrill of treading on the edge. She had torn apart his routines, giving him the primal urge to break all restraints. Since his parents' death, his life had sunk into a quagmire, but Old Man Nan had given him a chance to breathe again. And Nan Jiu was the only one who had made him realize that life could be more than just breathing.

She had drawn the line from the start: she didn't want him to take responsibility, only to enjoy the fleeting warmth. From that step, he had already accepted her rules. Theirs was just a game between adults, a game of mutual consent, and he had let it go, wanting to possess her. While supporting her search for meaning in life, he also secretly wanted to keep her trapped in this small space.

Until she finally decided to say goodbye to the past and pursue the life she wanted, their game came to an end.

He could calmly watch her bring a man back, calmly sit at the same table with the man to eat, and calmly leave.

However, when he saw her being held in the arms of that man, that calmness became distorted and unbearable.

Song Ting stood up, walked downstairs, and pushed open the bathroom door. The air was filled with dampness, and the water hit his back with a dull thud. He braced his hands on the cold tile wall, his shoulders hunched in a heavy arc, trying to wash away this dark side that shouldn't exist.

The footsteps lingered at the bathroom door, so soft that they were almost inaudible, but they still did not escape Song Ting's ears. He turned off the water, pulled the towel around his lower body, opened the bathroom door, and those eyes that could devour a person's soul appeared in front of the door.

He froze briefly, frozen, his body silently sending out danger signals. Before danger arrived, he closed the door with his backhand.

Nanjiu squeezed through the door and threw herself into his arms. She had thrown the black leather jacket downstairs, and a thin vest was almost revealing her curves.

He pulled her away and pushed her out. She grabbed the bathroom door tightly and slammed it shut.

The damp and sultry air enveloped the enclosed space. Song Ting's muscles were as stiff as iron, and his eyes were extremely cold. "Why did you come back?"

Nanjiu didn't answer. She couldn't offer any compensation. All explanations for what had just happened were futile. Only at this moment, desperately pressing closer, was her body's lingering instinct, leading her back to the chest she once knew so well.

Song Ting noticed that she had been drinking and stopped her from approaching: "If you want to go crazy, go find your fiancé."

He grabbed her shoulders and forced her over.

Nan Jiu didn't know where he got the strength from, but he grabbed his strong arms, twisted around again, and wrapped himself around his waist savagely.

Song Ting was annoyed by her reckless behavior. He pulled her away mercilessly and threw her against the wall.

"You must alarm your grandfather, don't you?"

Nanjiu's back ached from the collision, and her vest was soaked through with moisture. She tore it off and threw it into the pool, her eyes blazing with fire. "My grandfather has poor hearing, unless you insist on disturbing him."

Her eyes were woven with complex, unspeakable emotions, and every inch of her skin burned at his sanity in the dim light. Her black underwear outlined her plump, dangerous curves, like a bottomless abyss. She approached again, wrapping around him like a poisonous vine.

Song Ting grabbed hold of her body, and the moment his palm touched hers, the touch felt like a prairie fire blazing through his veins. He locked his collapsing mind and forcefully pulled her away.

Nanjiu suddenly raised her hand and pulled the towel from his waist. Before he could react, she slipped out of his palm like a swimming fish and squatted down.

The warm lips and tongue swallowed up all his sense of proportion, rationality, defense and rules, and shattered them in the humid air.

He was stunned for a moment, stumbling back a step, his back pressed against the cool tile wall. The sensation of cold and heat clashing simultaneously surged through his heart, and a suppressed gasp escaped his throat. His fingers instinctively darted into her thick hair, but upon contact, they suddenly tightened into a fist, hanging in mid-air, unable to move forward or backward.

The thought he'd promised the old man to hold onto crumbled beneath this madness. Song Ting tilted his head back, tears trickling down his tense jawline. The ceiling light faded into a hazy halo before his eyes. His rationality was uprooted, drifting with the current, leaving only the most primal abyss of desire, howling and degenerating in the darkness, uncaring for the dawn.

She is a poison that penetrates the intestines, but she is also an illusion of salvation.

The water flowed back on. Nanjiu stripped off her damp pants and fished something out of her pocket. She tilted her head back, a small box between her lips. The scene was alluring, deadly, and filled with the call of the wild.

The air was filled with her unique scent, and she stood there, beckoning him. He was drawn by a force that bordered on damnation, stepping beneath the current and reaching for the small box. His fingertips touched her warm lips, and he pulled her into his arms, sucking hard on them, a kiss that erased everything he had just witnessed with a destructive force.

The water curtain was like a cage, shrouded in lingering mist. Two hearts resonated wildly within the chaotic and suffocating encirclement.

He lifted her up and dropped her onto the sink. She hadn't known when she'd grown her hair long again, but it was no longer the smooth, straight locks of the past. Instead, it was a head of unbridled, black waves. Unfettered, the strands tangled freely around her smooth neck and shoulders, winding into the alluring shadow just below her collarbone.

She became a stranger again, but she always put him into chaos again and again.

Song Ting threw her wet clothes into the dryer, wrapped her in a bath towel and carried her back to the attic.

After closing the attic door, Nanjiu threw away the bath towel.

The dryer in the stairwell spun rhythmically, scorching and shaking the clothes. In the attic, Nanjiu's vision was also shaking. She stared at the skylight above her head. The starry sky seemed just as it had been in her childhood, the only difference being that she had never seen it through such a shaky perspective. It was so enchanting, dragging one step by step into a drowning swamp.

The bed made a violent noise. He lifted her from the bed and pressed her onto the desk. His surging emotions threatened to burst through his bones, and each blow was fierce.

He hated this feeling of being out of control. What was this? She was getting married, and one moment he'd been acting like an elder, examining the man she would spend her life with. Then, like a drowning man grasping at driftwood, he'd clutched someone else's bride-to-be tightly in his arms, completely trampling over all propriety and boundaries.

Rules have collapsed, reason has been lost, and all that remains is a chaotic and endless cycle of demands.

His figure completely enveloped her, his voice trembling with the edge of collapse: "Why did you come back?"

Her gaze pierced the small skylight high above, searching for the last breath of air. A soft whisper escaped her lips: "I don't want you to... feel bad."

The sudden impact transformed the starry sky outside the skylight into a phantom. The light in her eyes faded, leaving only a stretch of her snow-white neck bathed in moonlight. Her pulse rose and fell with her breathing, a fragile life force coursing through her veins, now beating only for him.

He lowered his head and bit her blood vessel, the tip of his teeth pressing against her skin. At that moment, his teeth almost pierced through her and sucked her blood dry. In the end, he used kiss marks to launch the most primitive and fierce counterattack to the man he had only met once.

Nan Jiu didn't stop him. The moonlight flowed around her neck. She tilted her head back, exposing her most vulnerable part.

The dryer had long since stopped, the remaining heat in the drum had dissipated, and the last bit of warmth had been stripped away.

On that large bed, he embraced her, and no one spoke. The air in the room underwent a sudden change, the previous heat rising rapidly, and then cooling down drastically in an irreversible moment.

When Grandpa Nan brought him back, he was just a teenager. Grandpa Nan raised him, nurtured him, introduced him to tea cultivation at Nangan Mountain, and provided him with the initial capital to contract a tea plantation. Every step of his life was inseparable from Grandpa Nan's nurturing. Yet, he acted like an ungrateful person, harboring inappropriate feelings for Grandpa Nan's granddaughter. At an age when Nan Jiu's mind was still immature and he hadn't even figured out what he wanted, he crossed a line he should never have crossed.

He had countless chances to hold on to his bottom line, and rejected her so many times, both openly and covertly. But in the end, he still succumbed to the dirty greed in his heart.

What would outsiders think? They would only say that he was an ungrateful person who built a large industry by sucking up Mr. Nan's resources, but secretly dared to touch Mr. Nan's granddaughter.

Every time she came back to stay for a short time, it was natural, as she was Old Nan's closest blood relative. But in the eyes of others, the blame was all his. He had ill intentions, and some even questioned whether he had been involved in her affairs when she was younger.

Old Master Nan asked him to give up the idea, not only for Nan Jiu's sake, but also for his own good.

He knew, he had always been aware of Old Man Nan's intentions. Besides, what old man wouldn't want his children and grandchildren to have successful careers and live a glamorous life? She was already fully grown; he couldn't clip her wings and keep her in a cage.

So, he promised Mr. Nan to give up the idea.

She rushed back, and he could have thrown her out, but his body's instincts overcame his will. He didn't want to admit it, but he had to admit that he enjoyed the chaos of this shattered peace, actively and shamefully enjoying the feeling of loss of control she brought him.

While feeling guilty about the promise, he was able to ask for whatever he wanted from her under the roof of the Nan family.

She disregarded boundaries and rules and acted recklessly. Wasn't he an accomplice?

In this fierce fight, he tore up the agreement with the old man with his own hands.

Song Ting pulled his arm back, turned his back, and stopped looking at her. It wasn't out of disgust, but fear. Fear that she would see the obsession in his eyes, which he could no longer conceal, and despise herself for who she was.

After a long silence, he said to her, "Let's not meet again."

Nan Jiu looked at the world outside the skylight, and his body seemed to be sucked into a black hole by the night sky outside the window.

She turned around and looked at his back. The deep, narrow valley below his neck sank straight down. She crossed her arms around his waist, buried her face in the concave track, and gently hugged him from behind.

He didn't turn around again, nor did he respond.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was so soft it almost broke.

This is an apology that's been long overdue. For a reckless act in the midsummer of my twenties, for thinking I was mature enough that year.

After more than ten minutes, the arm around his waist quietly loosened.

The mattress beside him slowly rebounded, as if... she had never been there.