The spider silk reveals the traces of a life born for one's country and its people, for the world...
He took the medicine bowl in one hand and the spoon in the other, still holding her in his arms. With his well-defined knuckles, he slowly stirred the medicine in the soup before bringing it to her lips.
Qin Weixi's eyelashes fluttered slightly, and her almond-shaped eyes stared intently at him: "Feed me?"
Then, tentatively, she asked, "Did you still think I was three or five years old? Now that I'm all grown up, how am I...?"
Chu Yening's shoulders suddenly trembled. He first suppressed a laugh and then burst into laughter: "What nonsense are you talking about? Open your mouth."
Qin Weixi didn't delay any longer and said in a hoarse voice, "Alright then. It'll save me the trouble of feeding myself. Fourth Brother, or you can just open your mouth and eat for me."
Chu Yening's eyes curved into a smile: "Take your medicine properly."
After swallowing a bowl of strong medicinal soup, the faint medicinal aroma lingered in the room, and a subtle, unique fragrance was faintly inhaled.
She leaned forward and sniffed: "Fourth Brother, did you burn incense?"
"No." He put the medicine bowl back in its original place, but this time his hands wrapped around her waist.
"Is there something wrong with your nose? Take a closer sniff."
Qin Weixi looked up at the cunning glint in his eyes. Her bright eyes darted around, and she suddenly remembered some past events. When she first returned to the capital, she had also fallen seriously ill.
So she asked, "The illness you had in the spring was much more serious than this one. Fourth Brother, why weren't you around then?"
Chu Yening looked at her and said, "Back then, I thought you were Xiaoxing."
"So you're not coming to visit? And back at Jingyun Temple, I told you I sprained my ankle, and you carried me there. What happened to you afterwards..."
Chu Yening suddenly moved closer, his peach blossom eyes gazing at her tenderly, their noses touching, their warm breaths swirling between them.
He whispered, "Qin Luo, do you want to?"
"Besides our little eighth sister, do you think your fourth brother would be so caring towards other girls?"
Qin Weixi suddenly smiled and said, "I hadn't thought about it."
"No," he said decisively.
Then he raised an eyebrow slightly, as if savoring the three words that had slipped out: "How could I not have thought of that?"
"Because I believe."
Chu Yening nodded with satisfaction, his eyes full of joy: "However, I also remembered something."
"That day after we returned to the capital, we sat in the pavilion at Penglai Xiaoding. Were you secretly watching me?"
Qin Weixi's mind flashed back to that rainy day, the purple clay teapot boiling with hot water, each gurgling sound seeming to pound against her heart, and that arrogant fellow like a pool of swimming geese.
She quickly covered his lips with her hand: "Who was peeking at you!"
But if she could go back to that moment, to that gloomy spring day, and see that piper sailing alone on a lonely boat, she would run to him without hesitation and tell him, "Fourth Brother, I am Qin Jiaweixi."
Chu Yening suddenly bit the edge of her palm, which was pressed against his lips, and chuckled softly: "Afraid I'd find out it was you?"
"Sometimes I really want to know what you were thinking at that time? You were probably feeling bad."
"But Qin Luo, if I had known sooner, even if I had risked my life to earn that military merit to return to the capital, even if I had only one breath left, I would have gone to see you!"
Qin Weixi had already wrapped her arms around his waist, pressed her head against his chest, and closed her eyes. But a smile still lingered on her lips as she gradually drifted into a daze.
Suddenly, I faintly heard his murmur in my ear: "Over the years, I've had Bitan investigate your murder in Jiangnan."
In a daze, she paused in her breathing, then rubbed her chin against the slightly stubbled chin that was pressed against her head.
Chu Yening seemed to sense her unease and frowned slightly.
A moment later, she said in a very soft voice, "I was just guessing."
Then he heard the girl in his arms breathing evenly, as if she had fallen asleep. He gently cupped her head and then lightly ran his fingertips across her cheek: "Okay, tell me when you want to."
Night fell, and suddenly a downpour began. Chu Yening rested one elbow on the armrest of the chair, while his other hand still held the woman in his arms. He sat with his eyes closed, seemingly falling asleep just like her.
Suddenly, thousands of armored soldiers, spears in hand, rushed toward him through the smoke-filled battlefield, then swiftly passed through his body and disappeared into the light.
Someone exclaimed, "Great General!"
Chu Yening turned around and saw a great general, clad in armor and covered in blood, kneeling on one knee in the sea of blood amidst the rumbling thunder and rain. He still gripped his spear tightly with both hands, retaining the imposing and domineering presence he had on the battlefield.
He stood frozen in place, shouting hoarsely at the mountain of corpses and sea of blood before him, "Father!"
"Father!"
Chu Yening was suddenly awakened from the smoke and fire, and Qin Weixi was also startled to stand up at that moment by the shout.
When they met again, a thin layer of sweat had quietly appeared on the forehead of the person in front of them. He stood up with her and remained silent.
Qin Weixi reached out to grasp his hands, which were clenched into fists at his sides, and found them to be ice-cold.
She clenched her fists tightly in her palms, then hugged him tightly from behind, whispering, "Chu Yening, I'm here."
The person in front of her suddenly trembled slightly, then seemed to pull away from that chaos, and then grasped her hands in return.
Upon seeing this, Qin Weixi raised his head again, relying on a scene from his memory, and gently kissed each scar through his clothes.
Those are the marks of being born for one's country and family, of being willing to die for the peace and happiness of the world.
She pressed her cheek against his broad back again and whispered, "Chu Yening, I will always be here, and I will never, ever leave you."
A deafening rumble of thunder echoed through the mountain town once more, the rain pounding against the gray tiles, each sound piercing the ears. Chu Yening turned and pulled her tightly into his arms.
As dawn broke and the rain was about to stop, a dark-skinned, scholar-like young man, dressed in a long, straight-cut robe, wearing a melon-shaped hat, and carrying a bamboo basket on his back, walked into the inn located in the village.
"Waiter, bring some tea!"
Tao Qingyun, who had just finished washing up and descended the wooden steps to the second floor to find something to eat, saw the strangely behaving scholar and her eyes sharpened. She was about to go and find Chu Yening, who was staying in a separate room.
Unexpectedly, the scholar suddenly turned his head and looked at him, chuckling and revealing a set of big white teeth on his dark, charcoal-black face.
Huh? It turns out to be that smiling tiger from the Jingning Marquis's mansion.
After not seeing each other for over a month, I traveled through the lush grass and camped out in the open to reach Yongzhou without stopping. I was exposed to the scorching sun, and now that I see him again, he is a completely different person.
Before long, the four of them, along with Mu Tong Xue Zhao and others, stopped at a secluded teahouse where traveling merchants would rest and have tea.
After learning that Jiuqu had wandered around a remote, uninhabited village in Yongzhou for several days, he finally learned about Sun Cheng from a widowed old man in the village.
Jiuqu gulped down the large teacup, then took a big bite of a sesame seed cake that was bigger than his face, before saying, "Following the partial clues that Laosong and I found in the capital, we went to Yongzhou to look for that old man. At that time, the people the Marquis sent out were confused because the old man was dying and mute, and they couldn't get a single useful word out of him."
"But I thought the old man's shrewdness was unusual! So I thought, what would a dying man be attached to? It must be a full meal or someone to see him off in his final moments. So I served the old man tea and water and provided him with three meals a day, including fish and meat. I even told him that I would see him off in his final moments before I would stop. Only then did he agree."
Chu Yening glanced at him and tapped the table with one finger: "Get to the point."
Jiuqu composed himself and said, "The old man said that Sun Cheng disappeared decades ago, and his younger brother also disappeared later. Back then, the old man took good care of the Sun brothers. One day, Sun Cheng said that he wanted to leave Yongzhou to try his luck. The old man was afraid that he had offended the government and died for no reason, so he had his younger brother take him into his home to take care of him."
"Who knew that his younger brother would leave behind some loose silver and quietly disappear within two years. The old man thought that the two Sun brothers had mysteriously disappeared, and fearing that he would also be murdered without knowing why, he pretended to be mute from then on."
Chu Yening asked, "Did the old man mention the age of the Sun brothers?"
Jiuqu chuckled: "My lord, please listen to my explanation."
“Sun Cheng was already in his early twenties when he left home, while his younger brother was born to his parents in their later years and was about ten years old when he left home.”
Upon hearing this, Qin Weixi recalled his childhood memories in Jiangnan and tried to unravel the truth behind the Qin family's murder.
She said, "Sun Cheng left home in his early twenties. Sun Cheng and Sun Shaopu, if Sun Cheng is Sun Shaopu, Sun Shaopu entered the palace at around twenty-one or twenty-two years old. From then on, he climbed step by step to the position of the emperor's favorite minister. When the Qin family case broke out, he was already forty years old. It took him several years to achieve this."
"And his younger brother, if the old man remembers correctly when he left home, was ten years old..." Qin Weixi pondered for a long time: "Chen Guiyi is now over thirty years old, and the man Gao Jian saw outside Woxue Pavilion back then was also a young man."
She looked up and asked, "Fourth Brother, how old was Chen Guiyi when he entered the palace?"
Chu Yening said, "According to the records kept in the palace, Chen Guiyi is already seventeen years old."
Qin Weixi was suddenly startled. Seventeen years old, which was exactly the twenty-sixth year of the Wantai era, the year the late emperor passed away.
Their eyes met, and they both thought of the strange blue diamond room they had seen at the Feng residence and the blank tombstone inside, and how Chen Guiyi, in a panic on the day his beloved dog was lost, went to the empty grave in the desolate forest south of the city late at night.
Qin Weixi said, "Back then, if they all thought that Grand Eunuch Sun had failed in his duties and was afraid of being punished by the emperor, and that my loyal servant from the Qin family had died of a heart attack while hanging under the eaves of that mansion..."
Several people said in unison, "So they are all paying homage to Sun Shaopu, whom everyone thought had died somewhere and whose body could not be found?"
Tao Qingyun then asked, "But which one is that traitor Sun's younger brother? At that age, Chen Guiyi is about the same age as Ma Lianren."
Qin Weixi blurted out at this moment: "Since I returned to the capital and entered the palace, every time I see that Chen Daban, he stares at me closely. Third brother, fourth brother, does he recognize me? But if he was just a menial eunuch in the inner court back then, he shouldn't know me unless he was summoned by Grandmother Zhao or entered the palace because of Afu."
Chu Yening pondered for a long time, his eyes deep: "So this is also a point I can't understand."
Xue Zhao then asked, "Did the Marquis say that Chen Guiyi is not Ma Lianren?"
Chu Yening lowered his eyes and said after a moment, "No, their brains don't seem to work together. Foolish."
After hearing this, Jiuqu glanced at him and realized that he was the one who had said those words that day.
Tao Qingyun said, "So, the person Gao Jian saw outside Woxue Pavilion ten years ago was someone he couldn't find out who was secretly watching him, so he wanted to escape by burning down the theater?"
Mu Tong, who had been listening silently, then said, "The time of the fire was only half a month after Sun Shaopu disappeared that year."
"What a 'fire'!" Qin Weixi's clear eyes suddenly flashed with a cold light. He looked at everyone: "Could it be that Sun Shaopu conspired with high-ranking officials to murder Father? But who poisoned him and made him mute?"
"What connection do Sun Shaopu, Chen Guiyi, and Ma Lianren of Woxue Pavilion have?"
“They were all eunuchs, all eunuchs…” Qin Weixi kept pondering, then suddenly a thought struck him, and he abruptly raised his head: “That side room from back then…”
Chu Yening and Tao Qingyun's eyes met suddenly. They had seen Sun Shaopu acting strangely at the New Year's banquet that year, and it was only by chance that they rescued Cui Lü from the side room where the low-ranking eunuchs lived.
"Return to the capital!" Chu Yening said.
What seemed like an inconspicuous little annex turned out to be a crucial clue they had overlooked for months.
Mu Tong replied, "But we'll have to wait a little longer."
He looked at Qin Weixi: "Pu Niang and her group are still in Jiangnan. Miss, before we left the capital, Young Master Luo informed his subordinates that if an accident occurred here and we had to return to the capital early, we should go to a jewelry shop called Cuiyu Pavilion in the town and inform the shopkeeper there. He will send someone to Jiangnan as quickly as possible to inform Young Master Chen. We will meet at the Ancient Road Pavilion on the outskirts of the capital after estimating the time."
Chu Yening raised an eyebrow slightly upon hearing this: "Young Master Chen? Which Young Master Chen?"
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The author notes: The phrase "its spirit can swallow ten thousand miles like a tiger" is a quote from Xin Qiji's poem "Yong Yu Le: Reminiscing at Beigu Pavilion in Jingkou".
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