“It will defy heaven! You can’t do it!” the abbot shook his head and said. His expression was no longer calm.

“What if I insist?” Wen Xichi insisted on getting an exact answer from the abbot.

“Blood will flow like a river, and our dynasty will…” the abbot said with a pale face. Suddenly, he rubbed his forehead and then looked up at Wen Xichi. “Benefactor Wen, stop thinking about it, please! It’s impossible!”

“No! It is possible somehow, right?” Wen Xichi asked eagerly.

“No, no! It’s impossible… it’s impossible!” the abbot repeated as if he didn’t hear Wen Xichi.

It was strangely quiet in the Zen room. Wen Xichi sat down slowly and asked in a low voice, “Is there anyone who can make it happen?”

The abbot calmed himself down and shook his head again. “No one knows! At least no one in our country has ever made it!”

His words were very vague. He seemed to be hiding something.

As an old friend of the abbot’s, Wen Xichi could tell from the abbot’s attitude that he wouldn’t get any more information from the latter.

“Master, can you tell me how long I will live?” Wen Xichi asked casually as he tidied up the chessboard with a softened expression as if he had never lost his composure.

But the abbot showed a serious face. A few years ago, he had read Wen Xichi’s fate and found that he was destined to die early. Therefore, he pitied Wen Xichi even more. He felt it a pity that such a talented man as Wen Xichi would live such a difficult life.

But Wen Xichi himself was very optimistic about his life. After he knew that, he hadn’t asked about it and spent his life as usual. Since then, the abbot and Wen Xichi became friends.

“Write a character!” the abbot pointed at the desk by the window and said. He had been looking forward to telling Wen Xichi’s fortune again, but he never mentioned his idea in front of Wen Xichi, who cared less about it. It couldn’t be forced, though it was about someone’s fate.

It was best to obey heaven! A person like the abbot of Huaguang Temple particularly agreed with that!

Wen Xichi took the initiative to ask for fortune-telling this time, which was obeying heaven! The desk by the window with writing brushes, ink sticks, paper, and inkstones on it was where the abbot practiced calligraphy.

Wen Xichi put down the chessman in his hand and walked to the window. He thought for a while, and then an angrily smiling face came into his head. He couldn’t help writing the character “Ru” on the paper!

It was the “Ru” in the name Shao Wanru. After finishing it, Wen Xichi was shocked. He threw the brush away and frowned tightly, very dissatisfied with the character he wrote. “I am about to ask for my fortune! Why do I think of Shao Wanru?” Moreover, Shao Wanru was Princess Chen now. It would get her into big trouble if others knew that a man wrote her name!

The abbot came over to the desk. After he saw the character “Ru” written by Wen Xichi and the latter’s expression, he suddenly smiled, put his palms together and said, “Great!”

“Great? What do you mean, Master?” Wen Xichi raised his eyebrows.

“You can get rid of the fate of dying early!” the abbot said with a smile. What an unexpected outcome! But it was also reasonable! The first time the abbot told Wen Xichi’s fortune, the former had found a slim chance of survival, which, however, was too faint to be believed as true. Now, it showed up in full bloom and presented Wen Xichi’s vibrant future.

“The game is changed with a chess piece moved! Benefactor Wen, the character ‘Ru’ contains the character ‘Female’, which means the person who will help you in the future is a woman. There are also two characters of ‘Mouth’ in it, which says that you and that lady will meet and talk with each other one day. Such a fate will save your life. However, it also symbolizes that you cannot have a loving relationship with her!” the abbot said.

“Master, why are you so sure?” Wen Xichi was not convinced.

“You have been very distressed since you came here today, Benefactor Wen. If you are not upset about your unlucky fate, you must be puzzled by love. It is hard to tell your fortune about love… but indeed it has something to do with the chance of your survival!” the abbot said meaningfully.

“If I say I missed it by accident, what can I do?” Wen Xichi didn’t intend to give up.

“If you missed it, you miss it forever. It doesn’t matter whether you did so by accident or on purpose. The truth is the missing is doomed!” the abbot said.

A monk came in hurriedly and said, “Master, Prince Cheng asks to meet you!”

“Prince Cheng is here?” The abbot was surprised. “The noble who I rarely met in the past come to see me one after another these days!”

Prince Cheng had an instinctive taste for Buddhism. He was eager to become a monk and had no intention of getting married. So he was still unmarried now. But Huaguang Temple was not to blame for that. Prince Cheng preferred a quieter place, so he lived in Yuyun Temple. He rarely paid a visit to Huaguang Temple. But he had come here several times during these days.

Every time he came over, he always asked to meet the abbot. Of course, he wouldn’t blame the abbot if the latter was too busy to meet him.

Nevertheless, the abbot couldn’t refuse to meet him all the time as he had come many times.

“Don’t mind me, Master. I am leaving after staying here for a while!” Wen Xichi said with a smile, “Since Prince Cheng asks for you, he must have something to tell you!”

The abbot nodded. He had refused Prince Cheng several times before, so he couldn’t do that again at this time. Despite the fact that Prince Cheng was not a powerful man, he was a member of the royal family, the younger brother of the Emperor!

The abbot put his palms together and bowed to Wen Xichi with a smile. Then he left.

Wen Xichi sat in front of the chessboard and stared at the messy chessmen with a frown.

He kept thinking about what the abbot said just now.

There was a person in his heart now. Shao Wanru! Shao Wanru was his destined Helpful Person. He was sure that Shao Wanru had saved him.

If it hadn’t been for Shao Wanru’s hint, Wen Xichi wouldn’t have investigated his second brother or suspected his cousin sister. “The two of them should be the ones who will take my life! If this is true, Cousin Sister and Second Brother are really vicious. It seems that I have to keep an eye on them.

“As for the impossible loving relationship between her and me,” Wen Xichi thought with a trace of coldness flashing in his eyes, “I don’t understand. Why can’t we have a relationship if we are destined to meet?

“She is the one who saves my life; then we should be together!” As he thought so, the scene in his dream started to become clearer. He remembered the happiness Shao Wanru showed when she first met him. He was surprised at that time that he even felt familiar with it. But now he began to understand why.

“It seemed that she knew me at that time, because she was inexplicably affectionate towards me…

“But later she became distant and cold as if I was totally a stranger. Maybe that’s why the abbot said it was impossible for us to fall in love with each other.” Wen Xichi believed that Shao Wanru had wanted to get close to him at the beginning. “When did she start to keep a distance away from me?”

His hands holding against the chessboard started to tremble slightly as a supposition came into shape in his mind. “Shao Wanru might know about the last life…”

Wen Xichi had never cared much about the cause and effect of Buddhism in the past. But he chose to read freely. So he would sometimes read idle books, from which he learned some strange stories.

It said that a person could get a second chance to live after he or she died. But in the new life, they were no longer who they used to be but became other people in another place. But they carried the memories of the previous life. So they knew some people and could predict what would happen next in their second life. However, they had never walked out of the place before.

There were many such rumors recorded in some miscellaneous notes. Wen Xichi used to regard them as fictional stories, but now he felt very stunned. “If… if it is true, it means that Shao Wanru and I used to have a previous life, where we were a couple, doesn’t it?

“So, Shao Wanru might know what happened to me in her last life! Or… or…” Wen Xichi suddenly stood up with a pale face and his forehead was covered with sweats. He stepped back and almost fell to the ground. The conclusion was too shocking for him…

He was unwilling to believe it was true, but he had to admit that was the most possible answer.

The sound Wen Xichi made got the young monk’s attention. The monk came in and asked with his palms together respectfully, “What’s wrong, Benefactor Wen?”

“I… I’m fine. Has Master come back yet?” Wen Xichi’s face was as pale as snow. He tried hard to suppress the shocking thought in his mind.

“No, he hasn’t. I heard that Prince Cheng was about to talk about Scriptures with the abbot today. I’m afraid that it will cost a long time. Prince Cheng spends a long time talking about his ideas on Scriptures!” the young monk explained to Wen Xichi orderly. The monk looked very young and naive, but he was quite steady.

“Okay. Then I have to leave now. Please say goodbye to Master for me when he comes back!” Wen Xichi said.

“I will, Benefactor Wen!” the young monk replied. Then Wen Xichi left with staggering steps. The monk was confused and thought with his head tilted, ” Benefactor Wen is a calm and steady man. What happened to him today? The chessboard in the room was overturned. Was he thinking of something terrible?”

Marquis Xing’s Mansion had a conflict with Rui’an Great Elder Princess because of Fifth Miss Shao again! Everyone in the capital knew about it! At first, it might be not a big deal. But the trivial mistakes made in the past were strung together with the new conflict and at last it became more and more serious.

Some censors had started to impeach Marquis Xing’s Mansion, saying that Shao Jing was mean to his niece, and Old Madam, as an elder, didn’t properly treat her juniors. Old Madam had never raised Fifth Miss Shao, but she often threatened her granddaughter with her filial piety to ask for help. It was too much!

The censor didn’t accuse them without evidence, which was said to be provided by an old maid of Marquis Xing’s Mansion. According to the old maid, Old Madam of Marquis Xing’s Mansion deliberately tortured Fifth Miss Shao. Before Fifth Miss Shao married out, Old Madam used to force her to observe mourning for her parents in the Yuhui Nunnery and later even ordered a servant to murder her in secret. Now Fifth Miss Shao was Princess Chen, so Old Madam started to ask her for help. But Old Madam even intended to put on Princess Chen all the blame for Commandery Prince Qing’s marriage. That was why Rui’an Great Elder Princess was infuriated!