Lu Yan followed the waiter up the stairs. The waiter stood aside at the door, pushed it open, and gestured for them to enter. The creak of the door hinges was exceptionally clear in the quiet corridor, sounding like the bones of this old building stretching. Jiang Ci buried her head against Lu Yan's shoulder, her silver-white hair draping down and brushing lightly against his cheek, tickling him. He tilted his head slightly but did not pull away.
Stepping inside, it was noticeably warmer than outdoors. It wasn't the dry heat of a charcoal brazier, but a mild, gentle warmth rising from beneath their feet, like stepping on sun-warmed stones. Lu Yan wondered if they had some kind of underfloor heating here. But did this place even have underfloor heating? He didn't know. He only knew that back in the Formation Sect, when the harshest winter arrived, they would activate the warming formations. The Formation Sect was located at the northernmost edge of the continent; once the weather turned cold, trying to save on spirit stones would literally kill people. No matter how stingy the old man was, he didn't dare pinch pennies on this.
Every year, just after the tenth month, the warming formations would be activated. Outside the Great Wall, the world was a frozen wasteland with howling winds that could crack stones. But inside, it was like spring in full bloom, even warmer than the summer. Back then, his senior brothers and sisters in the sect—those who studied herbs or enjoyed growing spiritual plants—would always pick fresh spiritual fruits and bring them to the old man's room. Plump, bright red spiritual dates, golden-yellow spiritual apricots, and other fruits whose names he couldn't recall. Each one was full and round, exuding a sweet, crisp fragrance.
The old man would always refuse with a straight face, waving his hand and saying, “Those on the path of cultivation should not indulge in the desires of the mouth.” But the senior disciples would just turn around and leave, secretly stuffing the sweetest fruits into Lu Yan's hands before they went. Back then, he was incredibly greedy and never rejected anything edible; if it fell into his hands, it was bound to end up in his mouth. He didn't dare to eat them out in the open for fear of the old man's nagging, so he would hide under his blanket every night to secretly munch on them. Once finished, he would wrap the pits in paper and stuff them under his bed boards.
He thought he had fooled the old man. In reality, every time Lu Yan was away, the old man would dig out those sloppily hidden fruits, wash them clean—even scrubbing the dirt off the stems—and then put them back exactly where they were. At the time, Lu Yan found it strange that the fruits remained spotless and dust-free even after sitting there for several days. Unable to figure it out, he simply stopped thinking about it. If he hadn't later noticed that his favorite spiritual apricots would occasionally go missing one or two at a time, he really would have believed he had gotten away with it.
Lu Yan sniffled, his voice carrying a slight nasal tone. His eyes felt a bit damp, but he blinked hard, and nothing came out. He had never eaten those fruits again. It wasn't that he couldn't get them, but that he no longer dared to eat them.
“What's wrong?” Jiang Ci spoke right by his ear, her breath making him shudder slightly.
He snapped out of his memories like a drowning man grabbing a handful of grass on the shore. Straining to adapt to the darkness before him, he cleared his throat and laughed it off. “So, how is it? Not bad, right?”
He tried to quickly move on to the next topic. Perhaps out of a sense of male pride, or perhaps to protect the last shred of his dignity, he had never spoken to Jiang Ci about his past. That was his most fragile wound, one that only he could touch, one that he could only lick in solitude.
Jiang Ci saw him withdraw from that indefinable state—reminiscence, sadness, longing, she couldn't quite put her finger on it, but it was a very profound state of mind. It felt as if a person were standing on a distant mountaintop, looking in another direction; you knew what they were looking at, but you couldn't see it yourself. Since he didn't say anything, she didn't ask.
This man carried a very heavy past. He was unwilling to speak of it; if he wanted to, he would have done so long ago. He buried his past deep in his heart, shifting the topic again and again to cover up the emotions that slipped out. Just like a moment ago, he had almost let it slip, only to force it back down.
Jiang Ci suddenly felt a twinge of pity for him. It wasn't the kind of pity where she looked down on him, but rather a feeling of sorrow that a person carrying such a heavy burden had to hastily cover up even the slightest leak, as if they had done something wrong. She wanted to tell him: “You can tell me. I've already told you about my past. You can trust me; I won't tell anyone.” She had even repeated these words silently in her heart.
But when the words reached her lips, they rolled around in her throat twice before ultimately turning into: “It's very nice.”
She swallowed the rest. It wasn't because she didn't want to say it, but because she felt the timing wasn't right. He wasn't ready yet. And wasn't she the same? She had only given him a brief outline of her past, without uttering a single word about the parts that truly hurt.
Jiang Ci raised her head, her glass-like eyes quickly sweeping across the room. The entire room had a warm, woody tone, with wall panels smoked to a deep brownish-yellow by time, and every floorboard creaked slightly when stepped on. A grayish-white bed rested against the wall, draped with curtains made of red silk that had a soft, aged sheen, showing years of use. Next to it was an eight-immortals table with two Taishi chairs. They looked oily and bright, their armrests polished to a smooth gleam by countless hands, indicating good quality. On the table sat a white porcelain vase holding an unknown flowering branch dotted with tiny, dense, fiery red blossoms. It looked quite festive, adding a touch of life to the old room.
“This should be quite nice,” Jiang Ci thought. It looked very livable.
Except... only one bed? She looked at the bed, which wasn't particularly large, and bit her lip. The bed was big enough for two people to squeeze in and sleep. But she and him... it wasn't appropriate. It wasn't that she hadn't thought about it, but rather that she felt she shouldn't think that way. He had spent money and effort to save her life; she couldn't go and take over his sleeping space too. Maybe she should sleep on the floor. Since the floor was made of thick wooden planks, it wouldn't be too cold anyway.
Resting on Lu Yan's back, her mind swirled with messy thoughts—one moment wondering if the blanket was thick enough, the next wondering if he would find the floor too hard. Lu Yan couldn't see anything; he only heard her say, “It's very nice.”
As long as it was nice. They would likely have to stay here for a while. Since they hadn't found a house yet and the inn's room rate was ticking away day by day, he had to budget carefully.
“Where is the bed?”
“To your right.”
Lu Yan set Jiang Ci down. She stumbled slightly when her feet touched the floor, steadying herself by grabbing the edge of the bed. He groped his way to a chair and sat down. The seat was hard and uncomfortable, but he barely had the strength to stand back up. To be honest, he was reaching his limit; he really should have let Jiang Ci walk on her own. His lower back was incredibly sore—not a sharp pain, but a dull, aching throb, like a ball of wet cotton stuffed into his lower back that couldn't be rubbed away.
Pretending nothing was wrong, he gently rotated his waist. The soreness in his muscles seemed to dissolve into the joints of his bones. While it felt relieving, a soft grunt involuntarily escaped his lips. The bones in his lower back popped twice, like a rusty hinge finally being forced open. He let out a long breath, leaned back against the chair, and tilted his face toward the ceiling—even though he couldn't see a thing.
“Ah... I really overexerted myself this time.”
Jiang Ci wasn't heavy. At one hundred and seventy centimeters with a slender frame, she probably weighed less than a hundred pounds. But a person was a living thing whose center of gravity shifted. When you carried her on your back, you had to adjust with every slight movement she made. How could anyone's lower back take that for so long? Besides, he was a formation cultivator who only refined elixirs on the side; his physical constitution was average at best. The foundation he had built during the Body Tempering stage couldn't be relied upon either, as he had returned all of it to the old man years ago. Fine, the truth was that he was just physically weak. But he would absolutely never admit it—a man could never say he couldn't do it. After thinking for a long time, he added a silent amendment in his heart: “It's just a bad back, not weakness. A bad back and weakness are two completely different things.”
Jiang Ci sat on the bed. It was soft and fluffy, far more comfortable than the hard wooden bed covered in straw at Lu Yan's place on the mountain. It was a proper cotton mattress that left a depression when pressed. The blanket was freshly washed and smelled of clean soapberries, so spotless that she felt guilty lying on it. After sitting for a moment, she stood up, picked up the bedding, and began laying it out on the floor. The floor was made of thick wooden planks, which would be a bit cold in winter, but it should be fine once padded with the mattress. She squatted down to smooth out the mattress, pulling all the corners neat and tidy.
Once she finished her busywork, she looked over at Lu Yan, who was still spacing out by the table.
“Um... you should sleep on the bed. I'll sleep on the floor. Could I borrow the blanket? If not, I can just use a rug to sleep on.”
Lu Yan was still calculating how many days their spirit crystals would last. Subtracting the expenses for food and lodging, they could last at most half a month. Add in the cost of buying and changing medicine, plus other miscellaneous expenses, and he estimated they would run out in two weeks. The collection of formation plates at the Abandoned Guest Hall wasn't moving that fast. Du Qi had a pile of stock on hand; it wasn't that he didn't want to collect them, but rather that he couldn't finish repairing them once they were brought in. The extra money he had received last time was a lump-sum payment for work accumulated over nearly half a year, plus the portion Hong Jiu had lent him, which had long since vanished. He was currently fretting over how to make money quickly—he couldn't very well rely on Hong Jiu's charity every day.
He blinked, startled by Jiang Ci's sudden question. He hadn't planned on staying here in the first place. Just because Jiang Ci couldn't stay in a brothel didn't mean he couldn't. Staying at the Abandoned Guest Hall didn't cost any spirit crystals, and he could even get free meals. Although the food wasn't great, at least it was free. Besides, Hong Jiu still had half a jar of wine left, and there were some uncleared pastries on Du Qi's table. Crashing there for the night would also make it easier to pick up work the next day.
He blurted out, “You sleep on the bed. I'll sleep outside.”
Rate on N.U.
