Chapter Eighty-Nine: Two Women

Ye Qiannran was suddenly seized by a wave of dizziness. In a daze, she looked at the faces before her, familiar and unfamiliar all at once, and feared them all so deeply. Everything that had happened here had begun because of her, yet she felt it had nothing to do with her at all. She had never meant to disturb anyone else’s life, so why would fate not spare her, why must it force her into the lives of others?

Raising a hand to rub her forehead, she stumbled outside. Wei Zhuang caught her wrist at once and dragged her away. She did not resist, only followed in a daze.

Zhuge Liuyun watched them leave helplessly, closing his eyes. He did not even have the right to reach out his hand.

Wei Zhuang did not let go until they had gone all the way down the winding mountain path. Then he flung her hand away, as though impatient beyond endurance. Ye Qiannran suddenly found it absurd and laughed aloud.

“If you hate me that much, why pretend you do not care? If you hate me, then take revenge on me. Why destroy another person’s life? I am the one who owes you an apology, not him.”

A cold smile touched Wei Zhuang’s lips. “Revenge on you would not be enough to satisfy the hatred in my heart. Your pain is not pain enough. But if you see others suffer, you will suffer too. That is the kind of pain I mean. He is your weakness, so why should I not use him? Besides, what do you think I spent so much effort finding him for, lurking at his side for? I knew you would meet one day. I wanted to be ready before that happened. I want you to regret ever leaving me, regret ever finding him.”

Ye Qiannran’s smile turned colder. “I should have known long ago that you were not the kind of man who would give up easily. But even if you see him suffer, even if you see me suffer, what exactly do you gain?”

Wei Zhuang arched his handsome brows and smiled. “Perhaps I gain nothing at all. But I am pleased. I told you, if one day you betrayed me, I would kill you. Now I have changed my mind. I will keep you, and torment you slowly. The grief I suffered when I lost my child and when I was abandoned—I will repay that in full, doubled, upon both of you.”

In the distance the mountains rose in layers, the cool wind whistling through the ravines. Now and then a hawk plunged down from the heights. Ye Qiannran and he stood on the mountain path, and from afar they seemed no more than two ink marks. Under the vastness of nature, human beings were so small, yet human hatred was so immense. Love faded with the passing of time, but hatred only grew more constrained and fierce within it.

Ye Qiannran had always disliked hatred. To hate another was too exhausting; hatred burned and wounded, like placing oneself upon a furnace to be scorched. One took in a certain heat only to burn someone else with it. Win or lose, it was suffering all the same. That was why she never allowed herself to hate anyone. If she had hated at all, it was only the person she had once been. So if Wei Zhuang hated her, it must have been painful for him as well.

At that thought, an endless pity rose suddenly within her—for him, and for herself. She looked at the distant mountains and sighed. Her voice was faint and faraway. “If hating me can make you happy, then hate me. If hating me only makes you suffer, then do not hate me. Otherwise you will only be giving me a second chance to hurt you.”

Wei Zhuang looked at her coldly. “Do you know what I fear most now? What I fear most is that you will suddenly be kind to me. Every time you have been kind to me, it has had a purpose. The first time you were kind to me, you took my child’s life. The second time, you chose to betray me. And now you are so concerned for me—are you trying to make me spare Zhuge Liuyun? I will not be fooled again, Qiannran. I will never be deceived by you again.”

He called her name, and it still sounded beautiful. No one had ever been able to say her name so beautifully. Even now it was beautiful, yet in that single “Qiannran” there was only endless hatred and weariness, no trace left of the tenderness of old.

Ye Qiannran suddenly recalled the first time she saw him in the Ye family garden five years ago. He had slowly emerged from behind a peach blossom tree. It had seemed to be a fine day, just like today, with high skies and wide-open clouds. She lifted her head to look at him. Counting the years, he was already past thirty now, yet he remained tall and straight, like a jade tree standing in the open fields. But this man seemed forever unchanged, and yet always changing. She had never understood what he thought.

“Back then, I left without saying a word. That was my fault. You may retaliate however you wish, only do not disturb him again. There is no connection between him and me anymore.”

The smile at the corner of Wei Zhuang’s mouth grew colder. “No connection with him? Then you would betray me? No connection with him? Then why did you come all this way to find me? No connection? Then why does he hurt, and you hurt as well? Everything you did to me was because of him, so I want him to suffer, because his suffering is your suffering.”

Ye Qiannran looked into his dark, profound eyes. Within them, it seemed as though a blazing fire was burning, yet at the same time they were calm beyond calm. For three years he had clung to hating her. What was it he hated? What could he not let go of? If she had been the one hurt in the past, would she have been able to hate so stubbornly too?

She frowned slightly and smiled. “I did not deceive you. From the moment I chose to marry you, I never again thought there would be any result between him and me. Leaving you was not because of him either. The real problem between us was never him. If you think he caused everything we have come to today, then you are wrong.”

Wei Zhuang tilted his head to look at her, as though thinking for a long while. Then he pulled her into his arms. His body pressed tightly against hers in an intimate and suffocating embrace. “Then tell me what it is. What is the problem between you and me, exactly, that made you lose the child and abandon me?”

“Does it matter? Does this question still matter to either of us?” Ye Qiannran’s gaze fell straight into his eyes.

Wei Zhuang looked at her. Their eyes met. Her eyes were still beautiful, still able to make his heart fall instantly silent. So close to her, looking into her eyes, the sweet old dreams of three years ago surged suddenly back into his mind. He shoved her away violently and looked elsewhere. “You are right. It does not matter. Nothing matters anymore. No matter what you say, I will not let either of you go.”

Then he fled as though escaping.

Ye Qiannran watched his receding figure and let out a long breath of relief. Her right hand pressed to her chest; her heart was pounding violently. Three years had passed, and merely touching him still made her pulse race. Was she shameless? She was the one who had left him. What was the point of acting so sentimental now?

Lowering her head, she laughed at herself and turned down the mountain path.

After taking only a few steps, she suddenly remembered that her bundle still had not been recovered, and in any case, this was hardly an appropriate time to go back.

Better to return to the inn first, Ye Qiannran thought.

She looked up at the sunset. The mountains were encircled on all sides, and among the shrubs and forests there was only a dense green, no other color to be seen. Birds circled overhead as they returned to their nests, and the mountain wind came sweeping through with a chill. Ye Qiannran quickened her pace.

When Wei Zhuang returned to the small courtyard on the mountain, Yanzi was standing beneath the apricot blossom tree in a daze. Seeing him come back through the sunset, she smiled. “You’re back?”

“Yes.” After a pause, he asked, “Why are you standing here alone?”

Yanzi looked at him without speaking. Wei Zhuang smiled with indulgent affection and brushed the loose hair from her brow. “What are you thinking about?”

Yanzi took his hand from her forehead. “I used to wonder what it would look like when Sir truly liked someone. Only today, after seeing that young lady, did I understand. Sir really does like her, doesn’t he?”

Wei Zhuang’s body stiffened.

Yanzi gazed at him, her voice clear and cool. “I never understood why Sir kept staring at me in a daze. I never understood why, when Sir looked at me, it always felt as though he were looking at someone else. Only now do I know—it was because my eyes resembled hers. Sir mistook me for her.”

Wei Zhuang looked toward the distance, where the fading sun made the far mountains seem wreathed in mist. He said, “I do not like her anymore.”

Yanzi looked at the apricot tree before her. “Because Sir feels she betrayed you. Because Sir cannot allow himself to like her again. But cannot like her and do not like her are two different things. I have always thought Sir was not the sort to be ruled by emotion, until today I realized that it is simply because no one can make Sir lose his reason. But that Miss Ye is an exception. Sir hates her because he cannot let her go.”

Wei Zhuang frowned and said nothing for a long while.

Yanzi reached out and plucked an apricot blossom, then offered it to Wei Zhuang. He carefully tucked it into her hair. The pale blossom only made her skin look even whiter.

Yanzi took his hand. “I am leaving. I am going to leave Sir.”

Wei Zhuang looked at her without revealing anything.

Yanzi lowered her head and smiled. “Yanzi knows her place. Sir’s heart is not with me, so I will not cling shamelessly. Though I am only an ordinary woman, I do not want to be anyone else’s substitute.”

A faint smile appeared on Wei Zhuang’s face, though it carried a trace of self-mockery. “Where do you plan to go?”

Yanzi let go of his hand and smiled, speaking almost like a sigh. “I do not know either. Perhaps back to my hometown in Jinling. Or perhaps I’ll go out and see the world like Miss Ye. I only hope to meet someone like Sir, someone who will treasure me in his heart, and no longer let me be anyone’s substitute.”

Wei Zhuang smiled faintly, but the smile held a little self-mockery. “Then I hope you never meet another me. I am not a good man.”

Yanzi looped her arms around his neck and rose on tiptoe to leave a soft kiss on his profile. “Only, if he could treat me as Sir treats Miss Ye, then I would be more than content.”

With her bundle on her back, Yanzi walked away slowly into the sunset. Watching her figure grow smaller and smaller, Wei Zhuang’s brow furrowed tightly. People came and went beside him, yet he alone remained standing there.

His heart hurt again.

The people around him were so good, so understanding, and yet he could not devote himself to any of them. Why were all his feelings bound up in that faithless person?

Why could he not even control himself?

What was so good about that woman? She used him, wavered between hearts, destroyed their child with her own hands, and betrayed him. Why must he still be tormented by her like this? Why, the more he tried to forget her, the less he could? He was truly beneath himself. She only had to appear, lift a finger, and he would involuntarily fall in.

He was truly pathetic. Today he had only held her once, looked into those eyes of hers, and his heart had begun to race uncontrollably. He was utterly useless. He had meant to exact revenge on her, yet the one being threatened was still himself.

He closed his eyes and leaned against the wooden door, his heart aching beyond endurance.