Chapter 49 Exclusive Release Chapter 49 "Van de Bergerit..."
The action happened so naturally; she really didn't think too much about it.
Just thinking about eating made my steps become light and cheerful.
Elias was slightly startled by her pull. He lowered his eyes, his gaze falling on the fingers of her gripping his wrist.
The warmth seeped through the thin fabric of his shirt, and he wore a platinum watch on his wrist.
He did not break free.
He simply let her pull him out of the peeling wooden door of the restoration center and into the crisp evening wind of the Gobi Desert.
As I walked through the research institute's spacious courtyard, several passing researchers cast curious glances my way.
Sure enough, Wynne is a social butterfly wherever she goes.
She greeted them, and everyone knew her name was Yuan Ning.
"Yuan Ning, is this foreigner your boyfriend? He's really handsome." A young male researcher holding blueprints joked with a smile, his gaze sweeping over Elias with friendly curiosity.
Upon hearing this, Yuan Ning turned back and gave Elias a sly look. Elias saw the sunlight dancing on her cheeks and eyelashes.
She glanced at him, then turned away, as if deep in thought: "Hmm... I guess so."
These three words were light and airy, carrying a hint of nonchalance and almost mischievous probing.
Elias understood what was happening, and the moment Yuan Ning finished speaking, he pulled his hand away from her.
Immediately afterwards, a large, dry, warm hand gripped the back of her neck.
Caught off guard, Yuan Ning looked up and came into his line of sight.
He tilted his head slightly, his voice gentle, his face showing confusion: "Wynne, what were you talking about with them?"
He lowered his head, and the distance between them instantly shrank to the point where they could hear each other's breaths. Those eyes, which were always calm and still, now seemed to hold turbulent undercurrents beneath the frozen surface of a lake.
To outsiders, the two appeared exceptionally close, unaware of the undercurrents beneath the surface.
Yuan Ning opened her mouth, her throat feeling a little dry.
The sly smile faded from her face, replaced by a genuine look of trepidation and excitement, as if she were being targeted by a hunter.
She didn't intend to escape.
Instead, meeting his dangerous gaze, she mouthed the words very slowly and clearly:
"you guess?"
The person next to her laughed: "What do you mean by 'sort of'? Yuan Ning, it's either yes or no."
After laughing for a while, the crowd gradually passed by them until most of them had left.
Yuan Ning blinked and said, "It's time to eat. They've all finished."
He slowly straightened up, but did not let go of Yuan Ning's hand on the back of her neck. Instead, he pulled her closer to him in a more natural, almost arm-like manner.
The setting sun had sunk behind the sand dunes, leaving only a dark red ember on the horizon.
“Wynne,” he began, “you seem to enjoy the thrill of… the gray area.”
His thumb rubbed against the back of her neck.
“It’s no big deal, Elias.” She shrugged.
It was dinnertime. Everyone made way for a foreigner when they saw them in the cafeteria.
Yuan Ning held up the bowl and handed it over, and the old man scooped an extra half spoonful of meat into her bowl.
After getting the food, Yuan Ning glared at Elias and handed him the bowl.
"You're really well treated."
Elias took the bowl and raised an eyebrow: "I've had a deep understanding of this since I was a child, not just after I came to China."
He always knew his social class and was not humbled by it at all; on the contrary, his arrogance was ingrained.
Yuan Ning found a table and sat down, while Elias sat down opposite her. There was a rough porcelain bowl, a long wooden bench, and a yellowish incandescent light bulb overhead.
Yuan Ning suddenly remembered the night she asked him to take her out for pizza. Arrogant as he was, it seemed Elias was always very good at adapting to her pace.
The way he picked up his chopsticks was so elegant. He took a piece of meat, put it in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, and then looked up at Yuan Ning: "Wynne, I didn't expect you to adapt so well here."
Yuan Ning was eating heartily. After swallowing, she replied, "I've always been very adaptable, Elias. I can survive anywhere, and I can thrive anywhere."
She wore a blue cotton-padded jacket provided by the research institute, and for convenience, she braided her hair into two pigtails; otherwise, the wind and sand would quickly tangle her hair into knots.
She looks very different from before.
If it were the old her, she would never have wanted to see Elias in this state, but now that things have come to this, there is no need for her to pretend.
She needs to accept both her Eastern and Western identities.
She couldn't play the role of a socialite forever in front of Elias.
Elias watched her eat quietly.
Instead of chewing slowly and trying to maintain elegance, she ate with focused satisfaction, just like all the researchers around her, as if this simple dinner was the most natural enjoyment in the world.
“You’re right,” he suddenly said. “You can live well anywhere.”
“So,” Elias continued, “I’m curious, when you go back to New York, back to Parsons, back to the parties on Fifth Avenue and the Upper East Side, will this Wynne in the blue puffer jacket and braids disappear?”
“Of course not.” Yuan Ning put down her chopsticks. “I will play the appropriate role in any situation. After arriving in New York, I am Wynne Meng, a top student at Parsons School of Management and a rising star in the fashion world. Here, I am Meng Yuan Ning, a temporary assistant at the research institute and a student of Professor Gao Ran. Both of these are me.”
Elias leaned back slightly, his gaze lingering on her face: "But the value systems embodied by these two identities are completely different. The value of New York City lies in capital, fame, social networks, and ever-rising social status. The value here lies in protecting a thousand-year-old civilization, in enduring solitude and perseverance, and in a sense of mission that is deeply connected to the land and history, almost a simple sense of mission."
He paused, his voice lowering: "I've seen many people try to control two worlds at the same time, only to end up either completely siding with one side or suffering terribly from the tearing apart."
Yuan Ning understood.
She looked down at herself, touched the cotton-padded jacket she was wearing, and felt the rough fabric rubbing against her palm.
"To be honest, when I first saw you after getting off the bus at Dunhuang Mountain Villa, I could hardly believe it. I didn't expect you to adapt to this place so well, or rather, I thought you wouldn't blend in with them so well."
“Elijas,” she looked up, her eyes still sparkling, “so you only know a small part of me. Do you remember our conversation in Cave 158?”
He nodded.
“You said you don’t believe in Buddhism. I said I don’t either. At that moment, I understood that what made me grow was not the faith here, but a kind of strength.”
"What power?"
“After seeing through the superficial glamour, I still have the power to choose to return to it and control it.” Yuan Ning said, word by word, “In New York, I was chasing what others defined as ‘high society’—Chanel, luxury apartments, and recognition from celebrities. But now I know that was just an appearance.”
Yuan Ning raised her chin slightly to look at him: "I can see through all the bluffing social games."
"And then?" Elias asked, his voice unusually tinged with genuine interest.
“Then,” Yuan Ning’s familiar, slightly arrogant smile reappeared on her face, “I’m redefining my game in New York City. It’s fascinating to think about.”
“Wynne,” he said, “you are more interesting than I thought.”
He picked up his chopsticks, took another piece of potato, put it in his mouth, and chewed and swallowed slowly and carefully.
The cafeteria was gradually emptying out. In the distance, the clanging of dishes being cleared away by dishwashers could be heard.
“So,” Yuan Ning pressed, “Mr. Van der Berg, are you willing to make additional investments?”
He lowered his head, dabbed his mouth with a handkerchief, and casually said, "We'll see."
Zhang Qingrang was a very unromantic person, befitting his status as a science student. This is how he described the starry sky to Yuan Ning: "The best place to see the stars is not the earthen slope at the weather station, but a large rock behind the research institute, near the cliff. If you lie down on it, the sky looks like an upside-down pot that can suck people in."
Yuan Ning listened to him with a frown, having no interest in stargazing at all, but now she suddenly remembered those words.
She shifted her gaze from Elias's lowered eyelashes to the view outside the cafeteria window.
The sky had completely darkened. The night in the Gobi Desert was pure black, with only a few windows of the research institute in the distance emitting warm yellow light, like a few grains of gold scattered on a black velvet cloth.
“Zhang Qingrang said,” she suddenly began, her voice very soft, as if she had mentioned it casually, “there is a big rock behind the research institute. If you lie down on it and look at the stars, the sky looks like an upside-down pot that can suck people in.”
Elias paused in wiping his mouth.
Yuan Ning turned back to look at him, her tone as casual as if she were discussing tomorrow's weather: "Sounds a bit silly, doesn't it? But... anyway, nothing much happens tonight."
Elias put down the handkerchief and suddenly felt like laughing, laughing at her awkward invitation.
His expression rarely showed a hint of humanity, leaving Yuan Ning stunned.
"Come on, I knew you wanted to go." She stood up and pulled him up by the arm.
Elias reluctantly stood up and asked her, "Should we take the dishes away?"
“Yes, I will.” Yuan Ning nodded.
Yuan Ning released him and started to work. He was slightly taken aback, but then reached out and picked up his own bowl.
The two took the bowls and chopsticks to the recycling area and walked out of the cafeteria one after the other.
The moonlight was faint, the starlight had not yet fully appeared, and there was only a dim yellow door lamp at the entrance of the guesthouse.
"I'll go upstairs and change my clothes first. You wait for me here," she told him.
Elias visited the cave today wearing an unusually thick, dark gray parka with the collar turned up, obscuring half of his face.
Below him were thick trousers of the same color and a pair of... well, quite sturdy and slip-resistant boots. He even wore a pair of black leather gloves.
His attire still exudes a low-key sophistication befitting his status, but it is clearly prepared for extreme environments, and it was something he had planned for a long time.
"I'll go up with you."
Elias was about to follow when Yuan Ning stopped him, saying, "You'd better not go up. The environment in this guesthouse is terrible."
Her words carried a hint of unconscious defensiveness, or rather, a subconscious attempt to cover it up.
She didn't want him to see that simple room with cement floors, whitewashed walls, and an iron bunk bed, nor did she want him to smell the perpetual coal smoke and dampness that filled the hallway.
She lived there, and that was her due. On her first day here, she could have paid to stay at the Dunhuang Mountain Villa or had the research institute provide her with an off-road vehicle, but she didn't. She didn't know why.
Elias stopped and looked at her. In the dim light of the porch lamp, his eyes were calm and unwavering.
“Wynne,” he said, his voice low but with an undeniable calm, “I went to the public restroom at the restoration center this morning. There was no hot water, the lock was broken, and there was ‘Save Water’ written in chalk on the wall. I don’t understand Chinese, so Li Hang translated it for me, but I think that saving water is the best virtue in this place.”
He paused, his gaze sweeping over the small building, which looked even more dilapidated in the night: "So, I want to see the house you live in here. Every little thing here has immense value."
Yuan Ning was speechless, choked by his words.
"...Whatever." She finally gave up resisting, turned around, and pushed open the creaking apartment door.
She ran up to the second floor; her room was at the far east end.
The key was inserted into the rusty lock and turned with difficulty twice before the door opened.
She didn't turn on the light, but by the faint moonlight from the window, she could see the simple outline of the room: a metal bunk bed, a wooden table with peeling paint, a chair, and her suitcase piled in the corner.
Elias followed her in, his footsteps very light.
He stood at the doorway, not stepping in immediately, his gaze slowly sweeping across the small, simple space in the darkness, a world apart from any of her previous residences.
With her back to him, Yuan Ning quickly took off the blue cotton-padded jacket she had worn for almost a month and which was already somewhat worn and shiny. She then picked up a thicker military green overcoat, also from the research institute's warehouse, from the chair next to the bed and put it on.
She untied the braids she had made for easier work, ran her fingers through her long hair a few times, and tucked it behind her ears.
"You need to wear this to stay warm at night. It's called a military overcoat, a specialty of China. I only learned that after I arrived."
"I'm all better." She turned around, her voice a little hoarse. "Let's go."
Elias didn't move. His gaze shifted from her to the wooden table by the window.
On the table sat an enamel mug; an open notebook filled with her data and sketches; and a small photo frame.
He walked over and, in the dim light, picked up the photo frame.
Yuan Ning's heart skipped a beat, but it was too late to stop it.
Elias seemed to abandon his gentlemanly demeanor and picked up her photo frame to examine it without permission.
That was a family photo taken with her family during her last trip back to China.
At that time, her home was still in Hushi. In the photo, Qiao Yiya was wearing a brightly colored sweater and holding her hand. The three of them stood on the balcony of the villa, with lush vegetation behind them. The sun was shining brightly, and they were all smiling happily.
As for the other person, her head was crossed out with a pen.
Elias gazed at the photograph quietly, his thumb gently tracing the glass surface of the frame.
“Your mother is very beautiful,” he said softly.
"Why don't you praise me?" Yuan Ning's nose tingled, and she snatched the photo frame back into her hand. Elias, his hand empty, realized his rudeness.
"I'm sorry, Wynne."
Yuan Ning turned her face away: "Let's go quickly, it'll get late."
“I was just thinking,” he said, his voice low, “that you could endure these conditions, just for that dress, for the Casanova project, or… for something else?”
She wakes up every morning in a frozen bed, and has to carefully count the little hot water left in the thermos when she washes up.
“I don’t know, Elias,” she finally said honestly, her voice filled with confusion. “Sometimes, when I’m just looking at Professor Gao’s restoration of that ‘Guiding Bodhisattva’ painting, or listening to Zhang Qingrang talk about his seemingly whimsical yet brilliant ideas, I feel that staying here isn’t so bad after all.”
The two walked towards the back of the research institute, using flashlights.
"There's something very strange here. It's far removed from all the glamour I'm familiar with and pursue. But it's also very... clean. The relationships between people are clean, and the purpose of work is clean. There aren't so many twists and turns, not so many subtexts that need to be constantly deciphered. Do you know why Zhang Qingrang was willing to share with me his research ideas that he might never be able to realize in his lifetime? It wasn't because of the donations I might bring, but because... he thought I could understand. Haha, how funny, he thought I, someone who can't even understand a single function, could understand."
She turned back to look at Elias's blurry silhouette in the darkness.
He was walking slowly forward with a flashlight in his hand. Yuan Ning was walking in front of him when she suddenly started talking and walking backward.
“This feeling of being ‘needed’ isn’t because of my last name, who my father is, who I know, or what brand of clothes I wear. It’s simply because… I am me. This feeling…” She gave a bitter smile, “I feel like I’ve never truly experienced it in New York City.”
Soon they arrived at the large rock that Zhang Qingrang had mentioned.
The surroundings were eerily quiet, yet surprisingly noisy—the sound of the wind, the rustling of unknown objects, and my own increasingly clear heartbeat and breathing.
The rock was larger than it appeared from a distance, its surface rough and cold. Yuan Ning turned off her flashlight and tried to climb up. Her boots slipped on the weathered sandstone. She used both hands and feet, somewhat clumsily making her way to the top, then turned and reached out her hand to Elias, who was still standing below.
"Want me to lend you a hand?"
Under the moonlight, Elias looked up at her outstretched hand and remained silent for two seconds. Then, he raised his hand and took hers.
The top of the rock was flatter than I had imagined, and large enough for two people to lie down side by side.
“Turn off the lights,” Yuan Ning said. “Zhang Qingrang said to turn them off completely so that your eyes can adjust for a while before the stars come out.”
Elias did as he was told, and the surroundings instantly plunged into complete darkness.
For a few seconds, Yuan Ning felt a slight pang of panic. The pure, utter darkness, carrying with it a chilling pressure and the howling of the wind, almost gave her the illusion of being swallowed up. She instinctively held her breath.
Then, just like magic.
One, two... countless faint lights, like carefully lit candle flames, quietly emerged against the deep sky. At first, they were sparse and tentative, but then they grew denser and brighter, filling the entire field of vision at a breathtaking speed.
The Milky Way, that band of light long since vanished in urban legends, now stretched across their heads, clear, dazzling, and vast, like a slowly flowing celestial river made of shattered diamonds and silver sand. The surrounding stars were densely packed, some as bright as nails, others as dim as dust, together weaving an endless, dizzying web of light.
Zhang Qingrang was absolutely right. Heaven truly resembled an inverted giant cauldron, and the inner wall of that cauldron was inlaid with the splendor and silence of the entire universe.
“My God…” Yuan Ning murmured, all words seeming pale and powerless at this moment. She involuntarily lay back, the rough rocks digging into her back, but at this moment, the discomfort was completely negligible.
Elias did not lie down. He remained seated, head tilted back, gazing silently at the starry sky.
Moonlight and starlight fell on his profile, outlining his straight nose and tightly pursed lips. His eyes reflected countless stars, their icy blue seemingly infused with some kind of liquid, flowing luster, so deep that the bottom could not be seen.
He didn't speak. Perhaps, at this moment, any words would be superfluous.
Yuan Ning remained silent.
She felt her mind freeze; those thoughts about New York, about the future, about ambition and calculation were compressed into an insignificant dot under this ancient starry sky.
She just watched, greedily, almost hungrily, as if trying to etch the scene into her very bones.
Time loses its meaning. Ten minutes may have passed, or an hour may have passed.
The wind had softened at some point, no longer cutting like a knife, but instead carrying a crisp, free spirit of the wilderness.
"Hmm?" His response was soft, his gaze still lingering on the starry sky.
"If I show you the North Star or Cassiopeia tonight, could you... increase the investment a little?" Her voice drifted in the wind, and her question seemed nonsensical.
Elias finally lowered his head and looked at her. She lay on the rock, her face turned towards the starry sky, her eyes looking at him.
“Wynne,” his voice was softer than the wind, yet unusually clear, “you don’t seem to be trying to secure investment for your own business right now.”
“What does it look like?” she asked.
Elias slowly leaned down, as if looking through her eyes at the dazzling Milky Way, and after a long while, he slowly said:
"Like a little girl... asking the heavens for a gift."
Yuan Ning suddenly felt her eyes getting hot. She blinked hard to suppress the unfamiliar soreness.
"Then..." she sniffed, trying to make her voice sound normal, "Will God grant it?"
Elias fell silent again. This time, the silence lasted even longer. So long that Yuan Ning almost thought he wouldn't answer, so long that a shooting star, trailing a silvery tail, suddenly streaked across the northeastern sky and vanished in an instant.
Then, she heard the rustling sound of fabric rubbing together. He came up to her head and leaned down.
Yuan Ning had no choice but to look up at him, only to feel his gaze heavy on her face.
“I don’t know if God will grant it,” Elias said in a low voice, “but I can.”
The moment he finished speaking, he reached out and took off his right glove.
Warm, slender fingers gently caressed her cheek.
Starlight flowed like a river behind him, and he walked against the light, like a distant and mysterious incarnation emerging from the Milky Way.
When his kiss landed, it carried the ruggedness of the Gobi night wind and the cool temperature of his lips.
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