Therefore, she locked all the used items in the cabinet and, together with Yin Zheng, left the place. Perhaps years later, soone would co to this spot, or perhaps the wildly grown weeds would completely engulf this house, and everything from the past seven years would vanish atop Luoi Peak.
She hadn’t expected that many years later, when she revisited the old place, she would be with a person she hadn’t imagined.
"Creak——"
The door was pushed open, and Pei Yunng walked in from outside.
In his hands, he was holding a bunch of dried plum branches, evidently specially picked to have not been soaked by the wind and snow. Lu Tong bent down to drag out the stove from under the table that hadn’t been used for a long ti, but Pei Yunng took her hand: "Let do it."
He stuffed the neatly chopped plum branches into the stove and lit them with a fire starter.
Lu Tong had been sowhat worried that the fire wouldn’t start, but Pei Yunng’s actions were deft, as if he was used to working outdoors. In no ti, the ’crackle and pop’ of the fire could be heard.
The window was half-open, and occasionally snowflakes drifted into the room from outside. The dim yellow light added a warm tint to the small house amidst the blizzard.
Lu Tong watched him.
He sat in front of the stove, attentively whittling the remainder of the plum branches so that they’d fit neatly into the stove.
The dim light cast a layer upon the young man’s exquisite and beautiful face, as if sheathing a Silver Knife, with no sharpness visible, only magnificence and gentleness.
Without raising his head and focusing on the task in his hands, as if he knew she was watching, he said: "What are you staring at for?"
Lu Tong was startled and looked away.
He chuckled without stopping his movents: "Is there sothing you want to ask?"
Lu Tong was silent for a mont before finally speaking: "After I left, how were Yin Zheng and the others?"
It had been so ti since she left Shengjing.
The exchange of letters on her journey was unpredictable, and now that all the postal services in Su Nan were suspended, how was Renxin dical Hall faring?
"They’re fine," Pei Yunng replied.
Lu Tong lowered her gaze, receiving the answer she most wanted to hear.
The room was quiet. Pei Yunng’s whittling paused briefly before he suddenly spoke: "Lu Tong."
He said, "Even though you sent a morial entrusting your affairs, weren’t you worried that I’d refuse your request?"
Lu Tong’s decision to go to Su Nan had been very abrupt.
Yet the letter she wrote entrusting him with the care of the Benevolent Heart dical Hall was unusually detailed.
So detailed that every aspect was accounted for, making one feel irritation even now reflecting on it.
"I am not worried," Lu Tong said. "I believe that even if I hadn’t asked you, if Benevolent Heart dical Hall was in trouble, you would have taken care of them."
Pei Yunng was montarily stunned.
Lu Tong’s voice continued: "After all, you were a honored guest at the dical hall’s anniversary celebration. That makes you one of their dear friends."
Inside the stove, the ’crackle and snap’ of the fire grew louder in the silent snowy night, and a wisp of smoke rose from the stove, quickly whisked away by the north wind blowing through the window.
The young man chuckled softly upon hearing her words and looked at her: "Lu Tong, you’re very sure of , aren’t you?"
Lu Tong’s fingers curled slightly, and she remained silent.
She really was sure of him.
It was strange. When she first arrived in Shengjing, she was wary of the person before her, guarded, and even occasionally wished to eliminate him as she saw him as an adversary, standing on the opposite shore, never to co together.
But sohow, now it seed she understood him very well. She could confidently leave everything behind to him, convinced that he would keep his promise.
From her descent from Luoi Peak to her arrival in Shengjing, and then her return to the Peak, along the way, favors had been repaid, and enmity had been incurred, everything dealt with cleanly and neatly. Yet with the person before her, just like the debt note on the wall of that broken temple from years ago, back and forth, murky and confusing, leaving an indescribable sense of unresolved resentnt.
Unsettled.
The fire inside the stove blazed fiercely, warming the room. Pei Yunng stood up, took the red clay kettle that Lu Tong had just retrieved from the cabinet, cleaned it outside, and fetched snow to boil.
In the cold night, tea was served as if it were wine, the bamboo stove’s soup boiled as the fire began to redden. Lu Tong suddenly felt sowhat grateful that she had preserved the items in this house rather than burning them all clean.
He sat in front of the stove to boil water, and on the table were two red clay tea cups. Influenced by his calmness, Lu Tong asked: "What happened inside the Palace afterward?"
The ssenger from ngtai Station had only a few brief sentences, but Imperial City had already been turned upside down. The things were lightly described, but Lu Tong knew the events of that day must have been perilous.
"Didn’t you know all about it?" Pei Yunng lifted the lid of the kettle as the snow piled inside rapidly lted away when the fla licked it.
The first ti he saw Lu Tong, she too was boiling a pot of snow water, which she then called "Wax Snow."
Six years had already passed in a flash.
Lu Tong looked at him: "Are your people all right?"
Pei Yunng didn’t speak, and when he lowered his head, his eyelashes drooped.
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