Chapter 13#
Candlelight#
“It’s my birthday in the fifth month!” Zhu Anning laughed, bright and vivid. “Shixiong, you’d better have my gift ready in advance.”
“Your… birthday?” Yin Yuheng echoed, blankly.
Zhu Anning blinked. “That’s right. Shixiong mustn’t forget.”
The Guoshi Manor was perennially cold, its snow never quite melting away. Yin Yuheng felt, tonight, that it was colder than usual.
He managed a smile. “…All right.”
Zhu Anning, satisfied, turned back to his sword practice. He attempted the movement again and frowned in frustration, glancing back at Li Guanghan. “Shifu, I can’t seem to get this strike right. Something’s still off.”
Li Guanghan extended two fingers and touched Zhu Anning’s wrist. “Higher.”
Zhu Anning adjusted accordingly and tried again — still without quite finding it.
Li Guanghan watched his junior disciple, and found, unexpectedly, that he wasn’t sure how to teach this.
He had never been a man of many words, and with Zhu Anning he showed his gentlest face. But he had very little experience actually instructing someone in swordwork, and no ready answer for what Zhu Anning was struggling with.
This step is so simple. What’s there to teach?
Isn’t it obvious from watching once?
He had guided Yin Yuheng in sword practice before. He had demonstrated a technique a single time, and Yin Yuheng had replicated it immediately. After that, Li Guanghan had never paid much attention to how his eldest disciple practiced.
Faced now with Zhu Anning’s puzzled, expectant gaze, Li Guanghan felt, for the first time, somewhat at a loss.
“Shifu.” The voice came from Yin Yuheng, who had been standing quietly to the side and overlooked for some time. He stepped forward. “Allow me.”
Li Guanghan and Zhu Anning both looked at him.
“I’ve practiced this technique extensively,” Yin Yuheng said. “I’ll teach Shidi. Shifu needn’t trouble himself — please go back to your cultivation.”
Li Guanghan felt the knot in his chest ease. That works well enough, he thought. He gave Yin Yuheng a long, measured look, then nodded. “Very well.”
Zhu Anning’s gaze flickered. Beneath his composed expression, a smile of quiet satisfaction curled.
Li Guanghan made a point of meditating at the Wentian Platform every day. Tonight he had stayed away to teach Zhu Anning his sword form and fallen behind. Now that Yin Yuheng had willingly taken over, Li Guanghan handed off the task without ceremony and turned to leave.
He had always trusted his eldest disciple.
Beneath the plum tree, the two of them were left alone.
Yin Yuheng walked forward and stood at Zhu Anning’s side. As Li Guanghan had done a moment ago, he wrapped his hand gently around Zhu Anning’s wrist and guided him through the movement.
Standing this close, Zhu Anning kept his eyes directed toward the blade, but his attention drifted to the wrist held in Yin Yuheng’s grip.
“Shixiong,” Zhu Anning said, a soft laugh in his voice, “why did you send Shifu away?”
Yin Yuheng didn’t answer.
Zhu Anning wasn’t bothered. If anything, his smile grew.
You’re jealous after all, Shixiong. You wanted Shifu to yourself. That’s why you found a reason to get rid of him.
Having to watch your own teacher be taken from you — it must hurt so much.
The word feelings — of all things, it was the most devastating. No matter how exalted your status, no matter how exceptional your gifts, the bitterness of wanting something you cannot have will gnaw at you every waking moment.
But you are too gentle a person. You can’t let go of Shifu, and you can’t bring yourself to take your resentment out on me. So all that suffering has nowhere to go — except inward.
Thinking of Yin Yuheng’s pain right now, Zhu Anning felt a swirl of things: a kind of excitement, a measure of satisfaction, a sense of scores being settled — and then, tucked beneath it all, an irritating, unwanted restlessness.
Why restless? Surely I don’t feel sorry for him?
No. He would never feel anything like pity for this person. He only wanted to watch him suffer more.
Someone this gentle, someone seemingly without limits — if they could be pushed to tears, that would be even more satisfying, wouldn’t it?
Zhu Anning’s gaze darkened. He drew a slow breath and tightened his grip on the sword.
“Relax your wrist a little.” Yin Yuheng’s voice came close to his ear — gentle and warm, the same quality as the person himself, like gold or fine jade.
Zhu Anning came back to himself. Following Yin Yuheng’s guidance, he moved through the technique — and this time, something clicked. He looked genuinely astonished. “Shixiong, you’re incredible.”
A faint smile drifted across Yin Yuheng’s face. Then his gaze fell on Zhu Anning’s wrist.
Zhu Anning wore a lovely, delicate silver bracelet that made his wrist look slender and pale. But beneath it, half-hidden, was an ugly, dark red scar.
Yin Yuheng startled. “What happened there?”
Zhu Anning flinched as though stepped on, and snatched his hand back. “None of your business!”
Yin Yuheng was genuinely taken aback. “Shidi…”
Zhu Anning caught himself — his reaction had been too sharp. His expression stiffened, and he pressed his other hand over his wrist. “It’s nothing,” he said coldly. “An old injury. An accident.”
Sensing that his junior brother’s manner had turned decidedly unfriendly, Yin Yuheng didn’t understand why — but he let it go and said nothing more.
Zhu Anning stood there with a cool expression, quietly irritated. He looked at Yin Yuheng for a moment, and then, almost to himself, let his lips curve into something slow and deliberate.
“Shixiong. I’ve actually prepared a gift for you too.”
“A gift?” Yin Yuheng blinked in surprise.
“Mm.” Zhu Anning’s laugh was low and quiet. “Are you looking forward to it?”
“…I am,” Yin Yuheng said, blinking again. “And Shidi can rest assured — I’ll put a lot of thought into your birthday gift as well.”
…
Two people with entirely different intentions at heart exchanged a smile, and parted on perfectly cordial terms.
By the time Yin Yuheng left the Guoshi Manor, the moon had vanished behind the clouds. The world was dark and still, broken only by the soft rustling of wind through the treetops.
“Another night of pushing through plot points,” Yin Yuheng yawned. “More grueling than a 996 schedule. The tragedy of being a working stiff.”
From where I’m standing, you seemed to be enjoying yourself quite a lot… Xiao Bai thought.
“I feel like I just gave the performance of my life,” Yin Yuheng said, eyes bright. “Emotions perfectly calibrated, every detail on point — the world owes me an award. And Shidi plays off me so well. I barely have to say anything, and he’s already written a hundred thousand words of internal monologue on his own.”
“Li Guanghan, on the other hand, is impossible to act opposite. Half a scene and not a single expression. Boring.”
Xiao Bai: …
“Did you look into what I asked earlier?” Yin Yuheng said.
“…I did.”
Xiao Bai had been fully absorbed in watching Yin Yuheng teach Zhu Anning his sword form — the atmosphere had been so charged that even Xiao Bai had been swept up in it — when Yin Yuheng suddenly murmured, without any visible change of expression: That bracelet of Zhu Anning’s — is something off about it?
Xiao Bai had been right in the middle of feeling moved and sad, and had been jolted straight out of the moment.
“There is something off,” Xiao Bai said now. “The bracelet is a disguised spiritual artifact — it can transmit messages across great distances.”
Yin Yuheng made a thoughtful sound. He mulled it over for two seconds, then smiled. “As I suspected. Dear little Shidi didn’t find his way to the Guoshi Manor by chance. Someone has been guiding him from behind the scenes.”
“This part wasn’t in the plot,” Xiao Bai said hesitantly.
Yin Yuheng laughed. “The plot never explains anything. It only ever details how I get tormented and broken — that part’s always very thorough.”
Xiao Bai: “…”
“It’s a brainless angst novel. Narrative logic doesn’t matter; what matters is the protagonist’s suffering. If there’s no conflict, manufacture some and make it hurt — perfectly understandable, really. Ha.”
“…So who do you think is pulling the strings?”
“That,” Yin Yuheng said airily, “is something I’ll have to investigate. Right now I only want to go to sleep.”
He made his way back to the palace. From a distance, he could see the light still on inside, warm amber leaking through the window paper.
He had nearly forgotten — there was someone in the Eastern Palace.
He pushed open the door. By candlelight, Lu Yan was cleaning his sword, seated upright, spine perfectly straight. At the sound of the door, he set the blade down and turned with a smile. “You’re back.”
Yin Yuheng heard what remained unspoken: I’ve been waiting.
He paused in the doorway. “Mm,” he said quietly. “I’m back.”
His older brother had his own life. His older sister was away from the palace more often than not. Yin Yuheng had long since stopped wanting attendants hovering close by. He had grown accustomed to returning to an empty room and lighting a lamp alone.
Tonight, someone was waiting for him to come home.
The candlelight softened the lines of Lu Yan’s profile, and the warm glow settled in his eyes — watching Yin Yuheng with a quiet, steady attention. He was dressed all in black, and the golden light pooled behind him like an aureole.
Yin Yuheng’s mind drifted, unbidden, to an illustration he’d once seen in a picture book — a Golden Crow, black-feathered and wreathed in brilliant golden radiance, like a blazing sun.
He didn’t quite know what possessed him. The words came out on their own.
“Little Golden Crow.”
Lu Yan blinked. “Hm?”
“You’re the Demon Clan’s Shao Jun, aren’t you? One of only two Golden Crow divine birds in the world.” Yin Yuheng’s eyes curved with amusement. “Little golden raven.”
Jin is gold, wu means crow — Yin Yuheng felt this was an entirely reasonable interpretation.
Lu Yan stared at him. “…Where did you go tonight? Did you have something to drink?”
“No.” Yin Yuheng raised an eyebrow. “I went to see my teacher.”
“Li Guanghan?”
The name brought back the memory of that night — Li Guanghan standing at the gates, having done nothing while Yin Yuheng nearly died. Lu Yan’s opinion of the man had not improved since.
He frowned faintly, and seemed about to say something, then held back. After a moment he asked, quietly: “He matters a great deal to you?”