Chapter 43 Chapter 43 Return to him.

Lin Zhen lowered his head and straightened his disheveled coat, his anger still lingering as he continued, "Don't do that outside in the future—"

"Too close to me."

"You are not allowed to enter or leave this room with me, and you must not let anyone know that you are staying here overnight!"

"Get out of here now!"

Lin Zhen couldn't contain her anger and started to scold him like a machine gun. Her anger finally subsided a little. After she calmed down and regained her rationality, she realized that he was no longer the Lin Chu who allowed her to scold him.

Now he is the knife and she is just the fish.

Lin Zhen withdrew his gaze and slowly lowered his eyelids, but unexpectedly heard the man's response.

"Okay," the man's voice trembled with excitement, his Adam's apple rolling, "I'll do it."

Lin Zhen was so angry that he used all his strength in those two slaps. However, Ji Sui's face, which was covered with deep fingerprints, showed no sign of anger. In fact, his originally dull black pupils seemed to be lit up by the light that shone in, and they sparkled brightly. He looked at Lin Zhen with a burning gaze.

The blood in every part of my body was boiling and surging.

This is not the Lin Zhen who lowered his head and lowered his eyes in Qizhou, nor is this the Lin Zhen who was humble and submissive in front of him.

It was the lively Lin Zhen in his memory.

His Lin Zhen crossed the sea of ​​fire and returned to his side.

The early morning sunlight was gentle and warm. Ji Sui stood on the stone steps at the door, looking at the rising sun with a smile, letting it shine directly on his face.

Lin Zhen frowned and stood there in a daze. Ji Sui's reaction was naturally beyond her expectations. After all, he had never been so obedient when he was Lin Chu.

*

After Lin Zhen was carried away by Ji Bai, the attendants surrounding them retreated.

Lin Yue slowly pushed Hongye's hand away and whispered, "Go and rest. I want to be alone for a while."

"But the girl asked me to—"

"She is your master, so I am not your master?"

Hongye stopped talking and lowered her head.

Lin Yue looked ashamed and said, "Sister Hongye, that's not what I meant. I just want to be alone for a while."

Hongye didn't know about Lin Yue's experience with Ji Bai. She just thought that she was sad for her father. She had just made such a big fuss and thought that no one would come here for a while, so she agreed and left.

Lin Yue sat on a stone pier in the rockery. The warm sunlight was blocked by the rugged mountain. She lowered her eyes and sat in the cold place where the sunlight could not reach. The cold wind blew past her from behind.

The light footsteps were very obvious in the quiet courtyard. Lin Yue raised the corners of her lips slightly and raised her head almost instantly.

A thin and frail figure came into her sight.

The curve of the corners of his lips gradually faded, Lin Yue withdrew his gaze, and lowered his head dejectedly.

Wrapped in warmth, she lowered her eyes to glance at the cloak draped over her shoulders, then frowned at Bai Ce.

The latter seemed to sense her gaze and said, "Yue'er, this is new. I've never worn it before."

Lin Yue glanced at his thin coat and felt even more angry. She didn't need pity, let alone the pity of a weak person.

She lifted her cloak in disgust and let it fall to the ground.

Lin Yue felt an inexplicable rage in her heart. Although it wasn't caused by Bai Ce, she still said to him, "Do you think I will forgive you or even be grateful to you for doing these things?"

"It just annoys me more."

Bai Ce remained silent, his hands curled up slightly at his sides, looking a little at a loss.

Lin Yue continued, "How did you know I was in Qizhou, and how did you follow me there?"

Lin Yue's question was originally just to vent her frustration, not really wanting to hear his answer, but Bai Ce spoke seriously, "General Ji's wedding in the capital is known to everyone in the city. Not long after the wedding, he and his concubine went to Yizhou to support the Marquis of Yong'an. You don't need to go out of your way to find out this information."

"I've had exceptionally keen hearing since I was young. Bring enough money and ask plenty of questions, and your journey will be smooth."

What Bai Ce said was not an exaggeration. He did have excellent hearing. Wherever there were people, he could always find a way to get where he wanted to go and accomplish what he wanted to accomplish.

Only the section after arriving in Yizhou was omitted.

Ji Sui went to Qizhou secretly, and Bai Ce naturally had no idea about it, so he was extremely anxious. Once a person is anxious, he will lose his composure, and thus he was targeted by thieves. They forcibly robbed him of all his money and abandoned him in the wilderness. There was only the sound of the whistling cold wind. He once thought that he would never have the chance to see Lin Yue again in this life.

But just as he was born with keen hearing, God seemed to always treat him well. Not only did he survive by chance, but he also ended up in Qizhou by accident, where he met Lin Yue again.

That was why he appeared in front of her in such a miserable state.

Bai Ce's words were too nonchalant, so they failed to stir up any ripples or move Lin Yue's heart. She had admired this man in the past, and lamented that he was blind but could not only take care of himself, but was also proficient in pharmacology and was a famous doctor in the town.

But now he used these extraordinary abilities to harass her, lingering around her like a ghost, as if he wanted to remind her of the unbearable things she wanted to forget, which was enough to make her extremely annoyed.

She laughed out of anger and sarcastically said, "She treats you like a piece of her heart, yet she's willing to let you go to Yizhou alone?"

The person who was talking so eloquently just now fell silent at this moment.

Just as Lin Yue was about to end this boring conversation and stand up to leave, Bai Ce suddenly whispered, "My mother is gone too."

After Bai Ce's treatment, Ji Sui's condition got better and better, so he was treated as a guest of honor, and his clothing and other expenses were better than Lin Yue's.

At this moment, he was no longer the ragged and shabby man he was when Lin Yue first saw him.

He was wearing a neatly dressed suit of dusk mountain purple. Even though Lin Yue didn't recall it carefully, she remembered that in the small town, even if he wore coarse linen clothes, they were always clean and tidy, and there was a faint herbal fragrance.

The dark leather belt around his waist was inlaid with a shiny jade buckle, and the white silk covering his eyes floated gently in the wind.

As he spoke, he turned his head slightly and happened to be facing the place where Lin Yue had just burned paper money for her father, as if he was looking at that place.

Bai Ce's answer surprised her so much that she couldn't help but murmur, "She..."

"The weather was bad that day, but she ignored the advice and insisted on going to the mountains to collect herbs, which led to the accident."

Bai Ce continued to speak calmly, but Lin Yue could no longer remain indifferent. Although the old woman was hateful and abominable, she was his biological mother who raised him blindly all by herself.

But she couldn't find any words to comfort him, so she just said, "Now, apart from you and me, no one knows what happened in the past."

"I will forget it, and you should forget it too."

After saying that, she passed by Bai Ce and left.

*

Not long after Ji Sui left, Lin Zhen came out of the room after changing clothes.

But the house was so big that she didn't know where to go.

She wandered around aimlessly, and every inch of the atmosphere here felt both familiar and unfamiliar to her.

It seemed that everything was filled with memories of the past, but the people who gave her those memories were no longer there.

When he saw the familiar closed door, Lin Zhen realized that he had walked into the study without knowing when.

When I opened the door, a stuffy smell hit my nose.

Lin Zhen raised her eyes and scanned the place where she had spent the longest time since she was a child.

Other people's study rooms are always filled with various rare antiques and jades, but my father has always been frugal, and there are rarely such things here. Therefore, even after a confiscation, there was no major change, except that the few calligraphy works originally on the top of the shelf disappeared.

Her gaze moved inch by inch, finally landing on a folding screen painted with the four gentlemen of plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum.

There are two desks behind the screen, which originally belonged to Lin Zhen and his sister Lin Yue.

After Lin Yue came of age, her father no longer forced her to go to the study. Not long after it was vacant, Lin Chu moved into the house, and he was the one who used the desk from then on.

The shiny fingertips slowly drew a mark on the thin dust, and Lin Zhen sat in front of his own desk.

Her father was busy with government affairs, so most of the time she stayed here alone, reading and practicing calligraphy.

Lin Zhen picked up a book beside him and flipped through a few pages casually.

When he was about to put it back in its place, he caught a glimpse of a booklet that had fallen on the corner of the table.

She had read almost all the books in her father's study, but this inconspicuous volume looked unfamiliar to her.

She flipped through the book carelessly. The cover was unremarkable, and the contents inside were even more sloppy, crooked, and even unsightly.

But Lin Zhen burst into tears.

It turned out that this was her practice writing when she first started learning calligraphy. It had been so long ago that she had forgotten that she had been so stupid before.

The pen in her hand seemed to have its own ideas. It never listened to her and could not write the words she wanted to write. It just danced around on the paper.

She was so angry that she crumpled up the words that were tangled like dead vines and threw them on the ground.

It was her father who picked them up and placed them in front of her, saying to her one by one: "This one is okay, this one is good, this one is better."

"Zhen'er is smart and hardworking. One day he will be able to write characters that satisfy him. But before that, these are just the foundation. You must take one step at a time to get where you want to go."

She never knew when her father had sealed them into a book and kept them so well.

Tears as big as beans spread across the paper.

Two drops, three drops...

Lin Zhen realized that she had not remembered her father so deeply for a long time. She didn't dare to think about it. It seemed that as long as she didn't think about it, her father would always be the upright and kind person in her memory.

Despite her best efforts to control herself, she still couldn't help but admit that some memories and emotions could never be erased.

She missed him so much.

Lin Zhen didn't dare to look at it anymore. He suddenly closed the booklet, put it in place carefully, and wanted to put it back to its original place.

Suddenly, a yellowed page of paper fell out and floated to the ground.

Lin Zhen bent down to pick it up. He was startled at first, and then hurriedly put the booklet aside. With his hands trembling slightly, he held the paper and read it carefully.

After a while, Lin Zhen burst into tears. She wanted to cry out loud, but only the beads that had broken off the string rolled down silently.

——My son Lin Zhen knows that his father is about to pass away. This decision is made after careful consideration. Please do not be too sad.

Your father feels deeply ashamed of himself for entrusting his young sister to you. I hope that you two sisters can support each other in the future.

Now that my father is gone, I am afraid that there will be no one to supervise and advise me, but I hope that my son will remember that a gentleman in the world should restrain himself with strict rules, reflect on himself from time to time, and not overstep the boundaries or act recklessly.

Pride breeds complacency, and complacency leads to harm. I hope you will face both good and bad situations with humility. In this world, good and evil intertwine, beauty and ugliness alike. My children should possess the wisdom to discern right from wrong, choose the good, and remain steadfast in upholding the righteous path within.