“Lu Yan.” Jiang Ci suppressed the shock in her heart, silently repeating the name in her mind. He was Lu Yan! The genius formation master from ten years ago. She had heard stories about him—with only a Nascent Soul Realm cultivation, and without setting up a formation in advance, he had stubbornly pierced right through a killing formation and trapping formation jointly deployed by three Soul Transformation elders, over twenty Nascent Soul experts, and hundreds of Golden Core cultivators. Not broken, but pierced through. Like using a hammer to forcefully smash a hole through an iron plate. In the end, he had vanished without a trace under the relentless, day-and-night pursuit of the Central Continent Alliance.
How could he be Lu Yan? His cultivation didn't match at all. The person in front of her was only at the second level of Qi Condensation, blind, dirt-poor, living in a dilapidated wooden shack, and unable to even cook a bowl of porridge without burning it. Yet, when all these conditions were combined—a blind man, an evil cult, the Northern Border, framed with false charges—it seemed only that name, which had once shone so brightly that no one could look directly at it before crashing hard into the mortal dust, fit the description.
Seeing her silence, Lu Yan figured she had probably guessed his identity. He hadn't originally intended to reveal it, but he had lost his tongue for a moment. Those bastards in the Central Continent still used the same old tricks to ruin people—framing them, pinning false charges on them, and hounding them to death. Besides, hadn't Little Jiang already mentioned she was driven out of the Central Continent? What was said was said. It wasn't like the sky was going to fall.
Jiang Ci swallowed hard and slowly turned around. She faced him, staring at the dangerous figure who had been described as utterly heinous, a plague upon all living things. The air suddenly felt a bit chilly, and she couldn't help but wrap the blanket tighter around herself. Pulling it up to her chin, she exposed only half of her face, her eyes fixed on him.
But as she watched him, he didn't seem that scary after all. He had saved her, and he hadn't done a single bad thing to her while she was severely injured. He cooked porridge for her, applied medicine, bought her chestnuts, and got her Scar-Removal Ointment. His hands had trembled when he bandaged her, but his movements were incredibly gentle, as if he were afraid of hurting her. When he asked her, “Have you eaten?” and she said “No,” he had frowned and gone to warm up the porridge. He was clearly... clearly a very good person. She didn't know if the accusations on the wanted poster were true or false, but she knew this person had never harmed her.
Lu Yan estimated the time; dawn was probably about to break. Since he couldn't sleep anyway, they might as well chat a bit more. He felt around for the candles again, finding two long ones and one short one. He held the short one next to the long ones to compare—it seemed a bit unlucky. He pulled out another long one to replace the short one, but somehow it was still two long and one short. It still seemed a bit unlucky. He scratched his head and decided to just light four. To hell with three candles, he just wanted to make the room brighter.
He lit them one by one. The candle flames flickered to life, and the room instantly grew much brighter. Jiang Ci watched him strike the matches and lean in to light the candles, his movements a bit clumsy. Wasn't he blind? He was doing all of this entirely by memory and touch.
Since his cultivation had advanced by two levels last time, Lu Yan's eyes could now roughly sense light. He could vaguely feel four rings of warm yellow halos on the table, like four fuzzy flowers floating in the darkness. He couldn't see anything else. It was progress, but not much. He smiled slightly, a very faint smile, as if telling himself, “Not bad.” He could faintly see a future where his eyes were healthy again.
Watching him smile foolishly at the candlelight, Jiang Ci suddenly felt an indescribable emotion welling up in her heart. That gentle—or perhaps tender—demeanor of his seemed to merge with the warm yellow glow of the candlelight, enveloping her. For some reason, she felt in her heart that he wasn't faking it. Even though she had just experienced a betrayal that could stamp her into the mud for the rest of her life—a betrayal so deep that it would be deeply engraved in anyone's bones—she still felt that there must be kind people in this world.
Looking at his smiling face under the candlelight, she couldn't help but speak. “Why? Why did they frame you with those charges?” She wanted to know. She didn't think a kind person should bear such guilt. Even though she had been betrayed by her “kin,” abandoned by her sect, and stared at like merchandise by everyone, she still wanted to believe that good people weren't just pretending.
Lu Yan's face returned to a calm expression. He clenched his hand into a fist, then relaxed it, tracing the smooth corner of the table. The corner had been polished bright by his touch, the wood grain worn smooth long ago. He didn't answer Jiang Ci's question, but instead threw the question back to her.
“Then what about you? What were you convicted of?”
Now it was Jiang Ci's turn to be silent. What was it really for? Was it because someone had targeted her for her utility value, or because she had stumbled upon a dirty transaction? Or was it because she had eliminated the dirty hands the higher-ups used to harvest calamity seeds in the Northern Border? She didn't even know where to begin. She only felt that those charges were a tangled mess, wound together with no end in sight. In the end, she shook her head, sat up in bed, leaned against the headboard, and said to Lu Yan, “I don't know.”
Her voice wasn't loud, carrying a hint of hoarseness. “I don't know”—it wasn't that she didn't want to say, but she truly didn't know where to start. Every event was linked to another, and every person was connected to someone else. She couldn't explain it clearly because there was simply too much.
Hearing her sit up, Lu Yan knew she was probably interested in continuing the conversation. He stretched, leaned back against the chair, and propped his legs up on the table, tilting the chair so it balanced only on its back legs, rocking slightly. The wooden chair creaked loudly, sounding as if it might fall apart, but he didn't care. So what if he fell? If he fell to his death, it would at least save him from the misery of living.
“Since you don't know where to start, let's start from the beginning.” He chose the direction least likely to go wrong, letting her sort it out from the start. “The beginning” wasn't starting from the charges, but from when she was still very young. From before she knew why she was targeted, from the first time she realized she was different from others. From when she still believed the world was fair.
Rate on N.U.
