"My dear sister?" Jiang Songyi suddenly chuckled, the jade bracelet on her wrist jingling against the stone table. The sound startled the birds under the eaves and also scared away the tears in her eyes. "Brother, you are joking. How can I be worthy of you?"
"Song Yi!" Jiang Jinzhao suddenly lifted his robe and knelt. The rustling sound of brocade startled the entire room into silence. Veins throbbed in his forehead, and every word he spoke seemed to come from the bottom of his heart: "Brother, you are wrong."
Yu Huanshen's folding fan clattered to the ground. Li Tingzhen, clutching the sachet, took a half step back, only to see Jiang Songyi's fingertips digging deeply into her palm. In a past life, she had risked her life to protect him from the rebels' swords, only to be met with Jiang Yuyao's retort, "Sister, why are you so hypocritical?"
Dusk stained the window screens. Jiang Songyi stared at her brother's drooping neck. There should have been an arrow scar there—a scar she'd blocked for him in a past life. Now it was as smooth as new, but it made her throat smell bloody.
"Brother, please get up." She turned to help Li Tingzhen. "Mr. Li, would you like to appreciate the newly acquired 'Lanting Calligraphy' with me?"
Jiang Yihuan suddenly leaped up, slamming his fist on the stone table. "Jiang Songyi! Is that you?" He stopped talking mid-sentence. When the girl turned around, the teardrop mole at the corner of her eye, reflecting the setting sun, overlapped with her mother's dying face.
"Third brother!" Jiang Jinzhao shouted, his palm bleeding from the ring. He suddenly remembered the day Songyi was turned away, the drizzle soaking the jasmine sachet in her arms. Now, all the students in the academy wore wormwood scented belts, but only he and Yihuan still wore Jiang Yuyao's crooked embroidered lotus flowers.
Li Tingzhen suddenly took a half step forward, separating the Jiang brothers with his body. "County Lady, the Xiangfei bamboos have been newly transplanted to the back hill of Bailu Academy." His voice trembled, but he held the Linglong Collection upright. "Would you like to write a poem for them?"
As dusk drifted over the eaves, Jiang Jinzhao's gaze fixed on the white jade hairpin in his sister's hair. It was a relic left by their mother before her death, a gift he had personally placed on Jiang Yuyao's temples in his past life. The tassel at the end of the hairpin swayed as Jiang Songyi turned, shattering the forced calm in his eyes.
"Not good." The girl's clear voice startled the remaining snowflakes from the branches. The jade bracelet on her wrist clashed against the stone table, leaving a thin crack, just like the arm bone she had broken when she blocked an arrow in her previous life.
Jiang Yihuan gripped the hilt with his five fingers, the black iron wristband rustling against the leather. He suddenly remembered the wristband Jiang Songyi had thrown to him during the training ground competition three days ago, still hidden at the bottom of the box—a dark red bloodstain hidden among the silver cloud patterns. It turned out to be the one she had embroidered by cutting her finger that day.
"Brother will wait." Jiang Jinzhao raised his hand to brush the fallen petals off his sister's shoulder, but froze as his hand touched her suddenly tensed back. The jade ring left a crescent-shaped blood mark on his palm, and he vaguely remembered that in the mountains of his past life, he had used these same hands to tear off the hem of the clothes she had clutched when she begged for help.
[A cheapskate?] Jiang Songyi sneered inwardly, her fingertips digging into the skin of her palm. A sudden gust of wind rang a bronze bell in the corridor, startling the silver needle hidden in her sleeve—a needle she had prepared to protect the Fifth Princess, Xinyi Mingyao, tipped with a deadly poison that would inflict a fatal blow.
Jiang Yihuan's Adam's apple rolled, his palm leaving wet marks on the hilt. His elder brother, usually as gentle as jade, now looked like a stone statue eroded by wind and rain. He suddenly remembered last winter's hunting, when Jiang Yuyao stumbled and fell from her horse. His elder brother had also been like this, his face pale, as he wrapped his adopted sister's trembling body in a fox fur coat.
"Third Young Master, you don't believe me?" Su Sheng suddenly came up to him, and the tassel of the sachet on his waist swept across Jiang Yihan's sword. "If you ask me, if the county lady really blocked the arrow for you back then." He deliberately lengthened his tone, and his fingertips brushed across his intact right arm.
"Enough!" Jiang Jinzhao suddenly shouted, startling the birds perched under the eaves. The Buddhist beads on his wrist snapped with a sound, and the sound of the sandalwood beads rolling onto the blue bricks overlapped with the sound of the arrow piercing the air when Jiang Songyi fell from his horse in his previous life.
Jiang Songyi leaned over and picked up a Buddhist bead. Moonlight streamed across her fingertips, illuminating the mantra for the afterlife engraved on the bead—the same rune that had sealed her soul in her previous life. Suddenly, she chuckled, "Brother, have you been chanting this mantra for ten years to help the deceased soul attain salvation?"
Jiang Yihuan's pupils shrank. He clearly saw an old arrow scar on his brother's wrist, but he didn't remember his brother ever being wounded by an arrow. The hideous scar snaked like a centipede, as if someone had shot an arrow through him from behind.
"Songyi." Jiang Jinzhao suddenly unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a hideous knife wound on his chest. "This scar was caused by you blocking it for me when you were seven years old." His voice was as cold as autumn rain. "In this life and the past, I owe you everything."
The entire courtyard was silent. Yu Huanshen's teacup clanged to the ground, leaving a brown stain on the blue bricks in the shape of an arrow. Li Tingzhen clenched his fists tightly around the "Linglong Collection," and a fragment of paper fluttered between the pages—it was the unfinished blood letter from Jiang Songyi's previous life.
Jiang Yihuan suddenly drew his sword and slashed at the stone table. Sparks flew as he spotted the pale pink scar on Jiang Songyi's left arm—the same spot where his elder brother's heart was wounded. A warrior would know that a penetrating wound like this must have been caused by shielding someone from an arrow.
"Third brother!" Jiang Jinzhao held the blade with his bare hands, blood dripping down his wrist bones, "Don't hurt Songyi."
Jiang Songyi had already turned her back. The white jade hairpin in her hair suddenly broke, and her long black hair cascaded down like a waterfall. It had been like this in her previous life. When Jiang Yuyao cried and cried for a hairpin, her eldest brother had personally plucked away her last hairpin.
"Compensation?" She crushed the Buddhist beads in her palm, and the smell of sandalwood mixed with blood filled the air. "I want you to wear this blood-stained rosary every day, and dream every night that I am pierced by thousands of arrows -" Before she finished speaking, the taste of rust suddenly surged into her throat.
Jiang Jinzhao suddenly chuckled. He picked up the blood-stained Buddhist beads and strung them back together again, one by one. "Good." The new wound on his wrist overlapped with the old scar, resembling the chains that had sealed Jiang Songyi's soul in his previous life.
The night watchman's drum beat deep into the dusk. Jiang Yihuan stared blankly at the mess on the ground, suddenly realizing that his eldest brother's kneeling posture was identical to his father's when he apologized. And Jiang Songyi's straight back was like his mother's, clutching the jasmine sachet before her death, refusing to close her eyes.
Li Tingzhen quietly unfolded the bloodstained scrap of paper. In the moonlight, he finally saw it clearly. Written in small, hairpin-shaped calligraphy, it read: "May my brother be well. This is Song Yi's final writing."
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