"What are you playing late at night?"

"I'm seeing Tzuyu off."

Zhao Rong choked on his wine.

"Wen Ruo, as soon as you stop playing the piano, will five hundred swordsmen jump out of the water outside the pavilion in the middle of the lake and rush in to chop me into a pulp?"

Lin Wenruo was startled, looked up, and smiled. The sound of the piano continued in the pavilion in the middle of the lake, and the night outside the pavilion was as dark as ink. "Tzuyu is joking."

"The rain has stopped. Isn't Tzuyu going to leave in the morning?"

"That's why you disturb people's sleep in the middle of the night."

Lin Wenruo looked at the manor sleeping in the moonlight outside the pavilion and sighed. "How could Qing Chi's piano music disturb my dreams? In the end, weren't you the only one who came to find me, Ziyu?"

"Of all the common people in this garden, only Tzuyu understands me."

Zhao Rong looked serious. "I got up to relieve myself at night, but I couldn't hold it in because of your piano playing."

“…”

Lin Wenruo opened her mouth, but in the end she didn't ask him if he had come out yet. She said unhappily, "Then why are you still drinking?"

Such a noble and elegant thing was made vulgar by this guy in front of me.

Zhao Rong blinked, and seeing that he had successfully defeated Lin Wenruo, he instantly felt less melancholy. He glanced at the extra guqin in the pavilion, walked over, and sat down to play the instrument.

Although the guqin is the first of the four arts of Confucian scholars, Zhao Rong was not proficient in it. He only knew some basic notation, fingering and playing methods. This was mainly because he had no interest in it in the past and felt it was useless in governing the country, so he did not study it seriously.

"It seems that Wen Ruo was waiting for me because he knew I would get up in the middle of the night to relieve myself."

Zhao Rong stroked the cracks on the zither, which showed its age. The wood was simple and heavy, black in color, with a faint green hue. His fingertips felt cool when they touched it. He flicked it lightly, and it made a clear and crisp sound like jade colliding, like the sound of nature, with a sense of coolness and immortality. Zhao Rong's eyes lit up, and he sighed, "What a good zither."

Lin Wenruo looked helpless. "Can Tzuyu stop talking about this mundane thing?"

"Who said it was a vulgar thing?" Zhao Rong saw that the guqin was so wonderful that even he, who had only just begun to learn about guqin music, could sense its extraordinaryness and could not help but love it. After hearing what Lin Wenruo said, he casually added, "When it comes to relieving oneself, all heroes in the world must bow down to them, and all chaste women in the world must undress. I don't think it's vulgar at all."

Lin Wenruo smiled and shook his head, then lowered his head to continue playing the piano, but after a while he had no choice but to stop and look at the person who was "making trouble" on the side.

"Tzuyu, can you please stop torturing me... can you please stop playing? I was wrong. I shouldn't have taken out the Mingyu."

Zhao Rong's "crazy piano technique" suddenly stopped. He shrugged his shoulders, picked up the wine pot again, leaned back casually, leaned against the railing, rested his right hand holding the pot outside the pavilion, and looked into the night sky in the distance.

From this point, you can enjoy the majestic mountain scenery in the distance. The outline of the mountains is clearly distinguished from the gray sky. In the unknown mountains, the mist is hazy, and occasionally a few star-like points of light light up, as if the immortals' pearls have fallen into the world.

Among the mountains, there was a tall mountain that looked quite familiar. Upon closer inspection, it was square in shape. The side facing Zhao Rong was pitch black at the moment, and above it, there was a bright moon hanging. Zhao Rong suddenly realized that it was the cliff carving. If it were daytime, he would be able to see the four words "quiet and inaction" in the pavilion. He also wondered if there would be an old man in ancient clothes muttering to himself under the cliff at this time.

Zhao Rong raised his right hand, his long sleeves slid down, the wine jug fell over, and sorrow went into his throat.

"Wen Ruo."

"Here I am."

Zhao Rong poured a sip of wine. "I have a friend who encountered a very confusing thing... He had a childhood sweetheart, the kind that they were innocent with, who had been secretly in love with him since they were young, but he didn't know about it and even misunderstood that childhood sweetheart."

Zhao Rong paused, and seeing Lin Wenruo sitting there listening quietly, he continued:

"Afterwards, my friend did something very hurtful, causing his childhood sweetheart to leave in despair. But soon after, he came to his senses and cleared up the misunderstanding. He also discovered that... he actually cared about her. However, she had gone to a very far place. Even if I traveled thousands of miles to find her, she might not forgive my friend because... the hurt seemed a little too deep."

"Wen Ruo, what should he do?"

After finishing his words in one breath, Zhao Rong took another sip of wine and looked quietly at the person who was listening in the pavilion.

There was a brief silence in the pavilion in the middle of the lake.

Lin Wenruo nodded, took out a luminous cup from the side, and gestured to Zhao Rong. The latter threw the wine pot to him. Lin Wenruo took it, filled the cup, and threw it back.

Lin Wenruo took a sip, looked at Zhao Rong's expectant eyes, and said slowly:

"Is this friend you are talking about you yourself?"

Zhao Rong: “…”

The young scholar holding the wine jug shook his head quickly.

Lin Wenruo shook the luminous wine glass. "You don't have to hide it. There's no one else here."

Zhao Rong sighed and said frankly: "Well, I can't hide it from you. In fact, the friend I'm talking about is..."

"Su Xiaoxiao!"

He said seriously, "It's the one who was traveling with me. You've met her. We have a very good relationship. She has always treated me as a gentle, considerate, handsome and intimate big brother. She rushes to confide in me about everything, and I'm embarrassed to refuse. You know, this is my shortcoming. So, I want to ask for her, what should I do about this matter?"

Lin Wenruo looked suspicious, and glanced at the pair of black and white jade cards on the waist of the man in front of him. Then his expression calmed down and he said slowly: "Oh, this is easy to handle."

Zhao Rong looked expectant.

Lin Wenruo curled her lips. "Don't go looking for her. Why do you have to humble yourself and look at her face? Wait for her to trample your dignity on the ground?"

Zhao Rong's face darkened when he heard this, and he lowered his eyes and looked at his feet. He didn't even bother to pay attention to the personal pronoun "you" in Lin Wenruo's words.

Lin Wenruo saw Zhao Rong's expression and raised his eyebrows. He continued to counsel: "Since things have come to this, don't try to save the relationship. At least this will definitely keep your dignity. After all, it was you who rejected her and didn't want her. You are the superior party. You can always stand high in the future and let her look up at you. She will feel humble and heartbroken when she thinks of this matter in the future. Between the two of you, you are the proud winner."

Zhao Rong's brows furrowed deeper and deeper, his lips were tightly pursed, and his eyes looked straight at the ground, as if he could see through the lake water at the bottom of the pavilion.

Lin Wenruo stared at the silent young scholar in front of him, smiled, and persuaded him. "Ziyu, we men, especially scholars of our generation, cannot lose our hearts, even in the relationship between men and women. Although this is a misunderstanding between the two sides, you may feel very regretful now, but time will wear away everything, and you will only feel a little regret when you think of her in the future."

At this point, Lin Wenruo paused, a flash of firework flashed in his eyes, but it was extinguished in an instant. Lin Wenruo immediately came back to his senses, sighed slightly, and said earnestly:

"Zi Yu, there are tens of millions of women in this world. How can you be so entangled for one? If you are not ruthless, won't it be even more troublesome to meet other women in the future? Like me now, I have more than a dozen concubines. Well, I forgot how many there are. Who cares? If I devote my heart and soul to each of them like you do now, wouldn't I be exhausted to death? How can I help the crumbling building of Zhongnan Kingdom?"

"As scholars, we should focus on the important things. We can have romantic affairs, but we can't put the priorities in the wrong place!"

"So, Tzuyu, what are you thinking? Be a little tougher, okay?"

The moonlight is like water.

Quietly wading on the lake, the pavilion roof, the pillars, the fence, the guqin, the stone slabs and the profile of a Confucian scholar.

His face was slightly thinner, and in the silver light of the bright moon, it looked like a silent marble statue.

The eye that was not hidden in the darkness was dim and unclear.

Her tightly pursed red lips were as black as distant mountains.

A pair of eyes were staring at him intently.

Two jade plates in distinct black and white were hanging quietly around his waist, just a few feet away, yet motionless, facing each other in the air.

And there seemed to be a vague beauty in the distance who was slowly waiting for his answer.

A lacquered wine jug carved with black patterns was hovering outside the railing, held by a hand covered in bruises from repeated training.

The combination of the cold black paint and the slightly warm skin scared away a large amount of blood.

Five slender fingers with pale fingertips.

Next second.

Open your hands and stop clenching them.

The wine jug fell and the lake water exploded.

The retreating blood slowly returned.

"Okay," he said.

His brows relaxed slightly, and although he was still a little hesitant, he already had the answer.

He let out a breath.

Looking up, there is a rain of starlight.