Chapter 11

Yun Miao was angry about Xie Zhiyuan’s sudden departure.

He had left quietly without touching the bowl of medicine on the table, leaving no note or explanation. Not even a word of farewell.

… It was as if he had never existed.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she became.

First, he had been the one to come to her room, injured.

Second, he had been the one to ask her to buy medicine for him.

Third, he had collapsed on her, unconscious, and slept on her bed the entire night.

He had started everything, but he left first.

Although he had bandaged his own wound and endured the pain from the poison himself, in some sense, she had saved his life.

She had run around all night for him, stayed up late, skipped class, and hadn’t even finished her homework. She had stayed awake while he had a high fever, waiting on him for a long time…

And yet! He had left without a word!

Not even a simple thank-you!

Yun Miao was so angry that she considered severing ties with Xie Zhiyuan.

This frustration lingered until the next morning when she was heading to school.

However, as she came down the stairs, clutching her books, she decided to give Xie Zhiyuan a chance.

They would meet at Chongwen Academy. If he explained himself within the day, she would reluctantly continue being friends with him.

It was probably because her thoughts were so jumbled that she didn’t realize until she was in the carriage on the way to Chongwen Academy that…

Her classmate, Luo Li, wasn’t there.

How strange.

Normally, Luo Li would always be waiting for her at the gate of Yun Mansion at this hour.

Perhaps she was late today?

Yun Miao thought about it as the carriage slowly approached the academy’s gate.

She got out, holding her books, dressed in a neat blue scholar’s robe, with the collar of her robe perfectly arranged. The hem of her white-trimmed skirt fluttered in the breeze, looking like a butterfly resting on snow.

When she reached the courtyard, Yun Miao blinked.

It was unexpectedly empty at Chongwen Academy, with not even the servant sweeping the courtyard in sight.

A gust of wind rustled the trees, and the locust leaves rustled, casting dappled shadows on the bluestone ground.

From deep inside the academy came faint sounds of lectures, mixed with the chirping of birds and the rustling of pine and bamboo leaves.

Yun Miao froze for a moment, then hurriedly ran toward the lecture hall.

She was late, very late!

These past few days had been so busy that she had just remembered that today was the day a great scholar from Jiangnan was coming to lecture.

This scholar was knowledgeable and of high rank, and it was rare for him to come to Chang’an to lecture. Even the usually sickly crown prince himself had come to greet him at the academy.

The reason the courtyard was empty was that even the small servant sweeping, the old woman making the fire, and the young boy at the gate had gone to the lecture hall to listen.

If her teacher found out she missed the lecture, Yun Miao would likely be punished to copy books for a whole month.

She rushed down the front corridor, desperately running toward the lecture hall, but she was blocked by a crowd of people.

The crowd was a jumbled mass, with people packed together, shoulder to shoulder, blocking the way completely.

Yun Miao tried to tiptoe behind them, searching for a way to get to the lecture hall.

Just then, the people ahead suddenly stepped back, and she was knocked off balance.

“Ah!” Her forehead hit painfully, and her feet slipped, causing her to fall backward.

Her books fell to the ground with a loud crash, and Yun Miao was about to fall to the ground, but the expected pain didn’t come.

A hand reached out from behind and steadied her.

Dazed, Yun Miao looked up and saw two long, dark lashes hanging low, like shadows in the cold moonlight.

The person behind her placed a hand on her shoulder to help her steady herself, then bent down to gather the scattered books, stacking them neatly and placing them back in her arms.

“Xie Zhiyuan?” Yun Miao recognized the youth in front of her from the faint scent of grass and wood.

Xie Zhiyuan did not answer.

He turned and walked in another direction.

Yun Miao hesitated for a moment, then quickly followed behind him.

Ahead was a winding, secluded path that seemed to lead to the lecture hall. The entire path was empty, likely because very few people knew about this hidden side route.

Xie Zhiyuan led the way, and Yun Miao followed closely behind, running a little to keep up.

The wind blew fallen flowers above them, and the space between them was silent. Xie Zhiyuan seemed to have no intention of speaking, and Yun Miao didn’t know how to start a conversation.

She looked up at his back.

Today was the day of the lecture, and the boy in front of her was dressed neatly in a blue scholar’s robe, his hair tied up high and held with a dark, smooth hairpin. His hair was arranged meticulously, giving him the appearance of a well-behaved, polite student.

The sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting specks of light on his white robe, like stars falling from the sky.

His appearance gave off a special scholarly aura, like a young noble studying in an afternoon classroom, gentle and quiet, approachable and warm.

It felt as if she could reach out and hold him in her hands.

But the varying light and shadows cut through the space between them.

A beam of light fell from above, dividing the space into one half bright and the other half dark. She walked in the sunlight, following his shadow, but he stayed in the shadow, not turning back.

“Xie Zhiyuan?” Yun Miao called again.

Still no answer. It seemed that Xie Zhiyuan had no intention of acknowledging her.

He led her to the door of the lecture hall, slightly turned, and whispered a few words to his imperial siblings. Then he walked to a desk by the window, sitting down to read a scroll.

From start to finish, he never looked at Yun Miao.

Yun Miao stood in the doorway for a moment, feeling dazed, before quickly finding a seat for herself, opening her book, picking up a brush, and raising her head to listen to the lecture.

In the clear sound of reading aloud, Yun Miao used the opportunity of holding her pen to gather her wide sleeves. She glanced at the young man by the window through the crowd.

Xie Zhiyuan always preferred to sit in the back row by the window, in the quiet corner where no one paid attention, keeping a low profile and staying alone.

Under the accumulated sunlight, the young man in white slightly lowered his head, holding a writing brush, seemingly focused on listening.

But only Yun Miao noticed that his gaze was clearly distracted, looking out the window, his fingers casually moving the brush across the paper. This boy must be idly daydreaming.

As though sensing her gaze, he slightly turned his head and gave a brief, indifferent glance.

For a moment, Yun Miao thought she would see the familiar sly smile at the corner of his lips.

But it seemed he only glanced at the crowd casually, and his gaze returned quietly.

It was as if he hadn’t seen her at all.

Yun Miao blinked lightly.

In just one night, she felt this young man had suddenly become distant.

But she didn’t understand why.

…And so, she became even angrier.

He had been sleeping in her room yesterday, and today he pretended not to know her!

That damn Xie Zhiyuan! He still owed her a proper goodbye!

Was he going to turn his back on her after owing her a favor?!

Fuming, Yun Miao angrily drew a little figure in red on the page, then jabbed at it a few times to express her strong dissatisfaction.

If he didn’t offer an explanation after this lesson, she would never speak to him again.

Tick-tock, time passed between the pages of the book.

The sunlight moved inch by inch from the window to the west side, falling from the skylight above, gradually shifting to the windows on the other side. Through the carved bamboo windows, countless beams of light of varying lengths filtered through.

The long two-hour lecture finally ended.

The Crown Prince, accompanied by four scholars from the Hanlin Academy, entered the inner room, followed by the eldest princess and the great scholar who had been lecturing, while the students in the lecture hall rose and filed out.

Yun Miao fell a step behind as she walked out. Xie Zhiyuan walked with the crowd.

As she turned around, he passed by her in the crowd, brushing past her.

A faint breeze lifted her sleeves, and she stood in the crowd, holding her books as flowing light and shadows swept past her side.

In that brief moment of their paths crossing, it seemed like nothing had happened.

But Yun Miao froze for a moment.

Her fingers flipped through the pages of her book, and she found a corner of a letter tucked among the pages.

It read: “Don’t go out recently.”

There was no signature, and the handwriting was messy and hurried, as if it had been quickly scrawled.

When she looked up again, the young man’s figure had already disappeared into the crowd.

---

Meanwhile, more than a hundred miles away from the Chongwen Academy, in Pingkang Fang.

The sound of rustling robes and the clinking of metal echoed.

— Luo Li opened her eyes.

It was still pitch dark in front of her. Her eyes were covered with a cloth, and she couldn’t see anything.

She tried to move her limbs, only to find her wrists and ankles bound with thick hemp ropes. Her body was tightly tied to something, swaying with the bumps of the carriage.

After a while, she recalled what had happened.

She had boarded the carriage as usual, intending to visit her friend Yun Miao at the Yun residence to go to school together. But halfway through, she encountered the young man she had met a few days ago near the Chongwen Academy.

When she got out of the carriage to chat with him, everything went black, and she ended up in this carriage.

So… she had been kidnapped?

Luo Li’s heart was pounding in her chest, her mind racing as she listened carefully to the sounds around her.

The carriage rumbled along, and there seemed to be no one around, just piles of cargo and straw. It seemed that after being knocked unconscious, she was shoved into a cargo compartment, though she had no idea where she was being taken.

Luo Li groped around on the wooden planks under her feet and felt a gap between them. The gap was wide, and beneath it was a cobblestone road, with the wheels of the carriage rolling over it.

Straining her stiff fingers, Luo Li managed to pry off an emerald bead from her wrist chain, slipping it into the gap between the wooden boards.

The emerald bead rolled down, traveled a short distance, and stopped.

“Please, someone find it…” Luo Li silently prayed in her heart, “Someone, please save me…”

The carriage turned a corner, jolting violently, and her head hit the wooden wall again, knocking her unconscious once more.

The two large men driving the carriage didn’t notice any movement from the cargo compartment. They continued talking loudly and casually.

“This business is definitely worth it. Didn’t take much effort to kidnap her.”

One of the men cracked his whip forcefully, the sound booming.

“Seven hundred taels for this deal, and it was so easy.”

The other man, with a loud voice, replied, “I got the order at the West Market Drum Tower tavern. At first, no one wanted to take it, so it fell to me.”

“No one wanted it? It’s still a big profit!”

His companion was surprised.

“It was a nameless middleman, someone no one had heard of, so no one wanted to take it.”

The driver recalled, “Wearing a hooded robe, you couldn’t see their face, but they seemed quite young—probably a boy.”

“The middlemen in this business are getting younger and younger these days,” his companion sighed.

“A nameless middleman like this, their bounties aren’t even worth taking seriously.”

The driver laughed coldly, “I’ve already pocketed half the deposit. If this girl turns out to be valuable, I can resell her and make a second profit. That’s much more than the seven hundred taels.”

“Good idea!” His companion clapped and laughed. Then, casually asked, “What’s the middleman’s name in the underworld?”

The driver thought for a moment, then slowly answered.

“Seems like… ‘The White-Haired Old Man.’”