Chapter 619 - Owe Her For Life
As Wen Xian flung the sword to the ground, his hate-filled eyes burned with a furious glare. He took a few steps backwards and sprinted towards the main door. However, the moment he saw Ji Yunshu, he halted for a moment, then left without saying a single word.
Ji Yunshu had intended to look for Wen Xian, but with how he had just left, it was not appropriate for her to immediately chase after him. Thus, she remained in the courtyard.
Wen Pans.h.i.+ started out as a warrior and had grown up in the army camps, so he had always maintained an exceedingly strict att.i.tude towards observing the rules. Thus, he was rather angry when he witnessed how Wen Xian walked away rudely when he saw the Little Heir, but it wasn’t appropriate to express his anger in front of Ji Yunshu. “Little Heir, please forgive his rudeness.”
She smiled, “What are you saying, General Wen? I greatly admire Young Master Wen’s character.”
Wen Pans.h.i.+ couldn’t tell if those words were meant to be praise or censure.
Zhao Huai picked up the sword that Wen Xian had thrown onto the ground, then approached them and bowed towards Ji Yunshu. “Greetings, Little Heir.”
“I didn’t expect the head of the Gaoshan Gang from then to be someone with such a deeply buried ident.i.ty.”
“The Little Heir is only over praising me.”
“Actually, you must have known about me since you saw that jade pendant. That’s why you kept following me after I left the mountain stronghold.”
“That’s right. I even remember that I once told Little Heir that, ‘the jade represents its owner’.” [1]
“You also said that someday, someone will tell me everything. I suppose that ‘someone’ you were referring to, is General Wen?”
“That’s right.”
Interesting! There are just some things that the fates have set in motion a long time ago.
Ji Yunshu let out a long breath. “Actually, I should have thought of it long ago. The Gaoshan Village was so securely guarded with intricate secret mechanisms; how could it have been designed by merely a mountain bandit? Moreover, the design of the secret pa.s.sage inside the relay station storeroom was cut from the same mold as the mechanisms in Gaoshan Village.
“I just didn’t understand how you could have been linked to the ‘Lin Capital Case’ when you were merely a child fourteen years ago. Only now do I realise that the ‘Lin Capital Case’ wasn’t linked to you, but to your father. Someone that had been able to design such intricate and exquisite mechanisms must have been someone who used to follow the Imperial Duke.” The chain of logic was listed clearly.
Zhao Huai replied, “That’s right. My father used to be a subordinate of the Imperial Duke and specialized in designing secret pa.s.sages and mechanisms. Twenty years ago, the Imperial Duke decided to disperse and conceal his army of a hundred thousand, so my father brought a platoon of soldiers to Shanhuai County, built the Gaoshan Village, and started a business fermenting wine. However, after my father died, Zhao Qing and I had a misunderstanding which caused the entire Gaoshan Gang to be reduced to such a sorry state as a band of bandits. However, this was also why we found the Little Heir, so it was still worth it.” Truly worth the pain!
Ji Yunshu’s feelings were tied into a complicated knot. On one hand, she had to commend the Imperial Duke for having subordinates willing to live and die for him, but on the other hand, the death of the Imperial Duke implicated so many people and caused the death of so countless others. Was it really worth it? In the end, she decided not to say anything.
After she left, she got onto the carriage and headed towards the lake in the outskirts. As she had expected, Wen Xian was there. He sat on that large rock, playing his dizi.
The smooth tones of the dizi melody held a desolate beauty that tugged at one’s heartstrings. If it were in the modern world, that tune would surely hit the top of the charts.
Ji Yunshu sat within the carriage and looked at Wen Xian’s lonely silhouette through the window. He had first lost the woman he loved, then lost his best friend. That kind of pain was not something that most people would be able to understand. His current mood must be as desolate as the tune he was playing.
Ji Yunshu only got down from the carriage after the tune ended. She instructed s.h.i.+ Zijin, “Wait here for me.”
“Yes.”
Wen Xian heard a disturbance and turned his head to see Ji Yunshu walking towards the lake. The hostility and loathing that she had previously seen had faded from his eyes, replaced with a gentle melancholy. Although his face was painted with sorrow, it didn’t detract from his elegant features.
Ji Yunshu stood beside him and looked at the calm surface of the lake. “Did you come here often with Miss Ye’er?”
At the sound of Ye’er’s name, Wen Xian’s brows clenched tightly together. Ye’er remained a gaping hole in his heart that just could not be filled up. Every time her name was mentioned, it felt like a knife sc.r.a.ping across his sternum, and hurt as if his heart and lungs had been ripped open anew. That’s why he had never mentioned nor tried to think about her all these years. Even his best friend Lin Feng wouldn’t mention her in front of him. This was a landmine that no one was willing to step on.
“So the Little Heir knows about all this?”
“Maybe about half of it.”
“Why would you suddenly mention Ye’er?”
“It’s not sudden. I’m here to look for you especially because of Miss Ye’er.”
“Please speak.”
Ji Yunshu met his gaze squarely. “Although I don’t know what happened between you, or what you had experienced together, I know two things: the first is that you mutually loved and cared for each other, and the second, is that before she died, the thing that she once wanted to tell Young Master Qiao, was actually about the disaster relief funds.”
“When did you discover it?”
“That’s because the day that Ye’er died, you were also present at the scene. You knocked Young Master Qiao out because you were afraid that she would reveal the truth about the disaster relief funds. But what you didn’t expect was that she would die after you left. Although the yamen coroner accepted the Qiao family’s bribe, the finding that she had committed suicide by poison was real. You thought that her death was your fault, so you blamed yourself and was mired in regret these few years since.”
Wen Xian let out a bitter laugh. His sore spot had been precisely targeted and poked at. His clear eyes darkened as he spoke frankly, “It’s not merely self-blame and regret. I would love to kill myself and accompany her in h.e.l.l.” There had been plenty of nights where he had startled awake in the middle of the night. Every time he woke, he felt the urge to kill himself, but he had endured till the impulse pa.s.sed. He continued, “I’m not afraid of death, rather, I am afraid that when I finally pa.s.s on, I would not be able to feel pain anymore and be truly released. It’s only by continuing to endure this pain that I can constantly remind myself of what I owe her, what I will owe her for my entire lifetime.”
His eyes were rimmed with red and glittered with unshed tears, but he forced them back down. There was a type of love just like this; unafraid of pain, unafraid of living in remorse and self-reproach. It feared only that if this feeling was lost, they would never again know how wonderful it felt to love someone; that would be a hundred times more painful than death. He was willing to live a painful life rather than sink into the mercy of eternal sleep.
Ji Yunshu’s eyes had also turned red. She drew in a deep breath to regulate her own emotions. After a while, she drew out Ye’er’s jade pendant that had been sewn into the cloth doll, and presented it to Wen Xian on her upturned palm. “Miss Ye’er had always kept this jade pendant with her and protected it carefully. I believe that she had never regretted it.”
Wen Xian stared for a moment, before he accepted it with trembling hands. He then put that piece of jade together with the pendant hanging from his dizi to reform a matching whole. Finally, he couldn’t hold back his tears and they fell one by one on that dizi.
[1] For those that keep track of these things... this was back in Ch405. The original TL was different but it has now been changed now that the context is clear. <3