Chapter 283: Reunion
Chapter 283: Reunion
Hearing Zheng Zhuxi’s voice, Ding Songyan snapped out of it, shot to his feet, and hurried over in pleasant surprise.
He had meant to ask, "Senior Sister, how did you get here?" But when he saw Zheng Zhuxi’s face, bare of powder and rouge yet fresh and lovely, and her chin, sharper and more delicate than ever, the words that reached his lips came out differently, low and gentle.
"Senior Sister, you’ve gotten thinner."
Zheng Zhuxi was stunned for a moment, and for an instant, her mind went adrift.
Her eyes inexplicably began to sting. The junior brother reflected in them still looked just as upright and open as before, with no obvious change, but a trace of pallor lingered on his face, as if he were just recovering from an injury. Hidden in his surprised delight was a concern he could not conceal, along with some worry.
It really has been a while... Zheng Zhuxi thought, studying Ding Songyan’s face intently.
Ding Songyan held back his emotions and watched the thousand unspoken words in his senior sister’s starry eyes.
Only when Li Baima gave a light cough did Ding Songyan turn aside, and he introduced with a smile, "This is my senior sister, Zheng Zhuxi."
Then he turned to Zheng Zhuxi.
"This is Young Hero Li Baima of the Fire-Wielding School. He has always looked out for me."
It was only at this moment that he remembered to use the Candle-Star Pupils, Celestial Heart, and other methods to confirm if she was really his senior sister.
The answer was affirmatory.
"Greetings, Miss Zheng." Li Baima hurriedly bowed, not daring to look straight at her.
Zheng Zhuxi returned the greeting with easy grace.
"Thank you, Young Hero Li, for looking after my junior brother all this time."
"No, no, no. It’s Brother Ding who’s always giving me pointers on swordsmanship, if anything." Li Baima didn’t dare take the credit.
After the pleasantries, Ding Songyan led Zheng Zhuxi toward his room.
Li Baima watched the two of them walk away side by side, and everything around him suddenly felt rather surreal.
So that’s the Prince’s cousin, the Miss Zheng of the Zheng Clan of Changhua?
She’s even more beautiful than the rumors say, no less stunning than Miss Zhang or Young Master Jiang. She could easily make the Peerless Beauties of the Jianghu list...
No wonder Brother Ding is so taken with her...
How come Brother Ding is surrounded by such beauties? Well, except for Twelfth Madam...
He’s even spent time with Unsullied Azure Lotus Ji Hanyi... "You get used to it once you’ve seen enough" is even truer than I thought. He really wasn’t kidding...
In the west wing room, while Zheng Zhuxi looked around, Ding Songyan took a stack of papers from the desk and set them on the square table like a kid showing off a prize.
"This is the Journey to the West I mentioned in my letter. I’ve already written quite a lot of Chapters."
Zheng Zhuxi sat down and casually flipped through the first few pages.
It had been so long since they’d seen each other, and with other feelings stirring inside her, she felt a little self-conscious.
Ding Songyan sat down at the side of the table and looked at Zheng Zhuxi.
"Senior Sister, why did you suddenly come?"
Zheng Zhuxi collected herself and said, a little embarrassed but perfectly frank, "I asked Father earlier to lend you the Scripture of Utmost Sincerity. After thinking it over for a while, he agreed.
"He meant to come to the Flame Capital himself, but I-I volunteered to deliver the manual."
The young woman’s cheeks flushed a faint pink before she knew it.
As she spoke, she took a book out of the inner pocket of her pale white short jacket.
Senior Sister is so nice to me... Ding Songyan took it without opening it right away. Seeing that she still felt a bit awkward around him, he deliberately said, "I can never repay you for such great kindness, Senior Sister. All I can do is..."
He paused. Zheng Zhuxi immediately thought of all the lines from storybooks and operas, and for a moment she didn’t know whether she should wait for the rest or how she ought to react.
"All I can do is slave away for you like a workhorse in this life, and repay you again in the next." Ding Songyan grinned.
Zheng Zhuxi froze.
Soon she realized she’d been teased, and she instinctively shot Ding Songyan a glare, both annoyed and amused.
Why does it feel like my junior brother has turned naughty?
That glare dissolved much of the strangeness that time and distance had brought, and Ding Songyan took the opportunity to ask, "Did you get my two letters, Senior Sister? Which ones did you receive?"
Zheng Zhuxi nodded gently.
"I got both. One was forwarded by the Liheng Bank, before Father decided to let you read the Scripture of Utmost Sincerity. The other was delivered by the Hongxin Trading Company, the day before I set out..."
As she spoke, Zheng Zhuxi trailed off and closed her mouth. Her eyes dropped to the square table and moved to the storybook pages, but she didn’t dare look at Ding Songyan.
She read the letter forwarded by the Liheng Bank, and she even delivered the Scripture of Utmost Sincerity to the Flame Capital in person? A clear smile appeared on Ding Songyan’s face, and he lowered his voice.
"Senior Sister, I asked Fifth Xie to forward it because I was afraid the letter would fall into Demoness Ji’s hands and cause you trouble. But I’m not sure the one you received is the one I sent. Demoness Ji also has Manifesting the Way and its Virtue, and she’s good at calligraphy. She might have imitated my handwriting, written one herself, and swapped out the original.
"Tell me the key parts of that letter, and I’ll confirm whether it’s genuine."
Zheng Zhuxi almost blurted out the passages that had left the deepest impression on her, but when her gaze swept over the smile at the corner of Ding Songyan’s mouth, she suddenly caught on. Pursing her lips, she huffed.
"You’re trying to trick me into saying those embarrassing things, aren’t you?
"Only you and I could understand all the details in that letter. If Demoness Ji forged it, there’s only one explanation: the Junior Brother Ding I’ve known all this time was actually Demoness Ji in disguise."
She keenly sensed a subtle change in her junior brother’s attitude toward her, though she couldn’t tell where exactly it lay. She didn’t dislike it.
"Or maybe Demoness Ji stole those memories of mine." Ding Songyan quit while he was ahead, and looked down at the Scripture of Utmost Sincerity. "This manual arrived at just the right time. I’ve been worrying about how to evade Demoness Ji in the future. But I don’t plan to burn through my lifespan to master it quickly. I intend to break it down and fold it into my own Chaos techniques."
"Constantly burning lifespan to master arts could leave latent problems," Zheng Zhuxi agreed.
Her attention had been drawn to practical matters, and the awkwardness between her and her junior brother had vanished without her noticing.
"A high-level powerhouse warned me about that," Ding Songyan said thoughtfully. "Besides, a martial art like this ’self-warning against bloodshed’ has to be a permanent part of me. I can’t wait until I think of it to derive it on the spot, or I’d miss a lot of those sudden hunches."
Speaking of warnings, Ding Songyan glanced at Zheng Zhuxi and asked casually, "Senior Sister, have you called on Prince Kang?"
Zheng Zhuxi nodded.
"This is his residence, and we’re close relatives. It would be terribly rude if, on arriving, I came looking for you instead of paying my respects to the host first.
"I chatted with him and his wife in the inner residence for a while before I asked where you lived. Eunuch Zhang led me to the area nearby.
"In a bit, let’s go together to pay our respects to Master Granduncle Wang."
She didn’t say she was looking for me when she arrived, so the guard at the gate won’t badmouth me behind my back... Ding Songyan felt a wave of relief.
A thought struck him, and he put away the Scripture of Utmost Sincerity and said to Zheng Zhuxi with a smile, "Senior Sister, let me take you somewhere."
"Where?" Zheng Zhuxi was a little confused.
Ding Songyan stood up and said with a beaming smile, "You’ll see when we get there."
Puzzled and curious, Zheng Zhuxi walked out of the side courtyard with Ding Songyan and headed out of the estate, chatting casually along the way.
When they passed through the side gate, the few guards stationed there stared, some dumbstruck and some startled and suspicious, their eyes darting back and forth between Ding Songyan and Zheng Zhuxi. They forgot to say hello.
Which jianghu beauty is this one?
Where did that Ding Songyan rascal con her from?
How does he get such good luck with women?
Once they were out of the estate, Zheng Zhuxi glanced back casually and asked, puzzled, "Why were those guards looking at us so strangely?"
Ding Songyan coughed lightly and said with a self-deprecating laugh, "They probably think you’re way out of my league."
Zheng Zhuxi suddenly understood. She opened her mouth but had no idea how to respond.
After a moment, she said softly, "Junior Brother, you shouldn’t put yourself down."
Ding Songyan was taken aback, and the smile on his face gradually softened.
......
On a nearby watchtower.
With a bow slung across his back, Yi Qianyue was keeping watch over the area around Prince Kang’s residence with three other colleagues, each responsible for one direction.
He took in everyone coming and going, near and far.
Suddenly, his eyes lit up, and his gaze landed on a young woman in a pale white short jacket and a plain pleated skirt.
"What a beauty..." he sighed sincerely.
Hers was a radiant, graceful beauty, with skin like ice and jade, on par with Zhang Yingbo and Jiang Lanting, whom Yi Qianyue had seen from the watchtower in recent days.
Yi Qianyue’s gaze swept to her side, wanting to see who had the good fortune to walk with such a stunning beauty.
Huh... He blinked hard, suspecting he had seen wrong.
Isn’t that Ding Songyan from Prince Kang’s residence?
He was walking with Jiang Lanting not long ago, and now he’s strolling side by side with another beauty like this?
Isn’t he supposed to be a couple with Shopkeeper Luo of the Cheap Wine Shop? He goes there every day like it’s his home, sometimes stays until late at night, and sometimes even sleeps over!
So he’s found someone new?
No, that can’t be. How could a woman like that fall for a playboy like him? She probably hasn’t heard the gossip about him yet...
Maybe they’re just friends?
While keeping an eye out for movement elsewhere from the corner of his eye, Yi Qianyue focused on tracking Ding Songyan and the stunning young woman.
He saw Ding Songyan lead the sword-wielding girl through several streets, turn into Tiger Tail Alley, and stop at the side door of the Cheap Wine Shop’s back courtyard.
"What..." Yi Qianyue’s mouth fell slightly open. He couldn’t make sense of the scene.
This doesn’t look like he’s going to confront her...
What on earth is Ding Songyan up to?
He can do that?
......
The Cheap Wine Shop, at the side door of the back courtyard.
Ding Songyan looked at the puzzled Zheng Zhuxi, leaned close to her ear, and said quietly, "Senior Sister, Twelfth Madam Luo is actually a Supreme Master."
Zheng Zhuxi’s double pupils suddenly widened, and she turned to her junior brother in considerable shock.
She only knew that Twelfth Madam Luo had ties to the Ditai, and that she cultivated the Name and Reality Chapters of the Nine Canons, with unfathomable cultivation. She hadn’t expected her junior brother to have already confirmed that the woman was a Heaven-Man.
"I’ll explain the details in a bit." Ding Songyan stepped forward and knocked on the door three times.
"Come in," Twelfth Madam Luo’s voice called from inside.
Ding Songyan pushed open the unlatched side door and led Zheng Zhuxi, who was holding back her curiosity, across the courtyard and into the main room.
Twelfth Madam Luo sat cross-legged on the floor mat, with a Go board on the tea table, set with a few black and white pieces.
She stood up and looked at Zheng Zhuxi with a smile, saying to Ding Songyan, "This is your senior sister, Miss Zheng?"
"Twelfth Madam, this is my senior sister, Zheng Zhuxi," Ding Songyan introduced, taking the cue. "Senior Sister, this is the owner of this place, the shopkeeper of the Cheap Wine Shop, Twelfth Madam Luo."
Zheng Zhuxi hastily bowed to Twelfth Madam Luo, who wore her hair in a drooping-horse bun.
"Shopkeeper Luo, thank you for looking after my junior brother all this time."
"He does have a real knack for causing trouble," Twelfth Madam Luo said, offering a fair assessment.