At the Manor Gate
The prow shifted slightly, and the boat glided toward the narrow berth by the water.
From far out on the lake, Biyue Manor had looked like no more than a stretch of white walls and dark tiles behind the embankment—orderly, quiet, almost like a shadow lifted layer by layer by wind and water. Only now, as the boat drew near, did the finer details hidden inside that outward order begin to show themselves. The long dyke before the manor had been built with great solidity, its stone joints neat and close, without so much as a blade of wild grass thrusting through. The landing pier was laid out in two tiers, the outer for large boats, the inner for light craft, with a sweep of open water left between them so vessels could turn and yield without confusion. Several old willows drooped by the shore, and beneath them stood two weathered stone lamp bases. They were not ostentatious things, yet one glance was enough to tell they had not been set there for display. This was the look of a household tended over many years, watched over and kept in order.
A breeze brushed the water and spread a thin sheen of light across its surface. At the same moment, a tall banner before the manor gate unfurled softly at one corner. Its moon emblem shimmered in the reflected water—exactly the same device engraved on the jade token in Fang Yingjie's arms.
Wang Yan stood by the rail, watching the white walls and tree-shadow draw ever closer. All the nameless unease that had been sitting in her chest since the journey began seemed, without her noticing, to ease by half a measure. Until now, the three words Biyue Manor had felt to her like one of those places spoken of in the martial world with a touch of distance and unreality—famous, yes, but not wholly solid. Only now, seeing it with her own eyes, did she understand that it was real. It stood there steadily on the shore of Poyang Lake: dyke, water, trees, manor—and even the people who had come to receive the boat moved without hurry or confusion.
Fang Yingjie, too, had been watching the shore.
But what unsettled him ran deeper than Wang Yan's feeling. She was looking at the manor. He was looking at the people.
Servants had already come down to the landing. There were not many of them, yet each had their place with perfect clarity: two stepped forward to take the mooring lines, two more to lay the boarding plank. Behind them stood an older matron, and before the boat had even fully stopped, she had already shifted a cloak over her arm, as though ready to drape it over Madam Wen or one of the guests if the lakeside wind proved too sharp. Behind her waited two maids with trays in their hands. They were not carrying tea, but two clean hand towels and a slender-necked flask—likely prepared so those coming ashore could wash their hands and take the chill of the wind off themselves.
It was such a small thing, and yet it gave rise to a feeling in him—subtle, but impossible to ignore.
The people here did things by rule.
When the large boat nudged the bank, it gave only the faintest tremor before settling firm.
Only then did Madam Wen step out from the rear. She was still dressed plainly today, wearing nothing more than a blue-green outer robe, her hair smoothly dressed, with no unnecessary jewels at her temples. Yet the moment she came to stand at the prow, the entire group on shore seemed to lower both voice and movement by half a degree, becoming quieter, steadier, more composed. There was nothing showy in her bearing as mistress of the place. She only cast one glance ahead and asked softly,
"Is everything prepared?"
The matron stepped forward half a pace and answered in a low voice, "Everything is in order. Hot water, fresh clothes, medicine, and food have all been sent over. The two little waterside courtyards on the western side have been readied. They are close by, and quiet as well."
Madam Wen nodded. Only then did she turn and look at the two children behind her.
"Go in and rest first."
Her tone was no different from what it had been aboard the boat—still unhurried, still even, as though she were speaking of the simplest thing in the world. Yet for that very reason, it made one feel all the more strongly that she had truly settled them within her own household, rather than merely allowing them to remain there for the moment.
The boarding plank was set in place, and the servants came forward to help them ashore. Fang Yingjie had meant to say he could manage on his own, but the moment his right foot came down on the plank, that familiar, blunt throb ran through the bones of his foot and warned him otherwise. In the end he did not insist. He only braced himself on the side of the boat and descended slowly. Wang Yan was a little quicker than he was. Once she had stepped down, she turned back on instinct to glance at him. Only after seeing him follow steadily did she turn away again.
The stone of the embankment beneath their feet was far firmer than the boat deck, and far more real.
Fang Yingjie lowered his eyes to look at it, and an odd feeling rose in him without warning. Ever since the collapse at Eaglebeak Ridge, he had felt as though he had walked nowhere steady at all—over hollows in rock, stream gullies, ruined halls, old boats, chaotic landings, narrow skiffs... Until this very moment, with his feet on a stretch of level stone laid clean and true, it finally seemed as though something had, for the first time, caught him out of that life of slipping, losing, falling.
The manor gate itself was not extravagant. It was only a single gatehouse of white wall and black tiles, with the three characters Biyue Manor written across the plaque in a hand both dignified and gentle, without any aggressive flourish. Beyond the gate was not some grand household courtyard spreading open at a glance, but a front court first enclosed by flowers and trees. Corridors wound around stone paths, rocks and ponds lay in careful balance, and only farther in did the layered roofs and inner buildings begin to show through. By the time the wind had come off the lake and reached this place, it had already been sifted once through leaves and eaves. The broad openness outside was gone, leaving behind only a coolness that was gentle, fine, and steady.
The matron led the two of them westward. She did not speak much along the way. Only when they passed through a moon gate did she say quietly, "Young Master, miss—please stay in the west courtyard for the next few days. It is not far from Madam's residence, and it will be easier to see to your needs."
Wang Yan had been thinking all along that she was only a fisherman's daughter. Where had she ever lived in a place like this? She had imagined that once she truly stepped inside, she would not know where to put either hands or feet. And yet as they went on, though refinement could be seen everywhere, nothing about it pressed down on her. The lamps hanging beneath the corridor were only ordinary wind lanterns. The flowers and trees had not been chosen merely for rarity or cost—there was bamboo, osmanthus, plantain, and even two shallow trays of herbs set in the corner of a wall to dry, spread with sliced tangerine peel and leaves she could not name. It was as if the manor, large though it was, had not been arranged for strangers to admire. People truly lived here. They passed their long days and short days here.
Their rooms were indeed close at hand, separated by only a stretch of corridor.
Everything inside had already been prepared. There was hot water. There were fresh clothes. The bedding had all been changed. On the table, besides tea and small cakes, there was even the medicine Fang Yingjie was meant to drink, along with a little dish of sugar pastry cut into delicate pieces. Wang Yan had only let her eyes rest on it for an instant before quickly looking away again, yet the small warmth that rose in her heart could not be quite suppressed.
When the matron finally withdrew, leaving behind only, "If anything is inconvenient, just call," and the door closed softly after her, the room fell quiet.
Outside the window was the wind off Poyang Lake. Inside was the stillness of a room that felt safe.
Wang Yan stood in the middle of it, looking around for a long moment before letting out, in a low breath, the air she had been holding as though afraid to disturb anything.
"...This place is really big."
Fang Yingjie stood by the door, one hand still resting on his wooden staff. Hearing that, he found he did not quite know how to answer. He only gave a quiet little sound in reply.
"Mmm."
It was a very soft sound. But in that quiet room, it felt as though everything they had carried with them from the mouth of Taihu Lake—the mud, the spilled wine, the pressure of debt, the fear—had for the moment been shut outside the door.
That day, they had finally arrived at Biyue Manor.
Morning at the Lake Manor
At dawn the next morning, Fang Yingjie woke to a thread of birdsong so faint it almost seemed imagined.
The sound was not nearby. It came through window paper and beneath the eaves, thinned even further by the wind off the lake until it was no more than a delicate trace. When he opened his eyes, he lay for a moment in a haze of confusion, unable at first to remember where he was. Then his gaze fell upon the clean pale-green curtain hanging beside the bed, and he caught the faint scent of medicine and wood lingering in the room. Only then did memory slowly return: he was no longer on that moored boat outside the mouth of Taihu Lake.
The sky beyond the window had only just begun to whiten. The light over the lake had not yet fully opened, only seeped in through the paper in a thin wash of pale blue and white, softening everything in the room.
He pushed himself upright and sat for a while on the edge of the bed before, following the method Old Daoist Xuan had taught him, slowly guiding the breath in his chest downward.
For some time now, he had hardly dared slacken even for a single day. At first it had only been to keep the tightness in his chest and the cough that rose so easily from dragging him down. But after practicing long enough, even he had begun to feel the difference. In the beginning, when he tried to sink the breath, it would strike here and there inside his chest and beneath his ribs, like river water knocking against broken stones—unable to turn smoothly, impossible to hold down. Now, though there was still resistance, it was steadier than before. Once it descended, it no longer scattered at once. With effort, he could even keep it gathered for a brief moment low in his abdomen, at his energy center.
By the time he finished that round of breathing, a fine sheen of sweat had risen at his temples. Yet the floating oppression that so often lingered between chest and ribs had genuinely eased by half.
There were already faint voices and footsteps outside.
Before long, the matron knocked lightly from beyond the curtain, her tone as steady as ever.
"Young Master, are you awake? The hot water is ready. Madam says that if you are feeling well enough today, you may go and sit in the front court after breakfast. There is no need to stay shut up indoors all the time."
Wang Yan was awake as well.
In truth, she had not slept deeply the night before. She had only been too tired; her body had fallen asleep first, while half her mind still seemed left behind at the mouth of Taihu Lake. When she woke in the morning, she turned at once to look out the window, as though still expecting to find that sheet of water where, through lake mist, one might catch the scattered glow of harbor lamps. But she looked and looked and saw only a broader, quieter morning, and the white flash of a bird skimming far along the lakeshore.
In that instant, she remembered again what she had known all along on the journey and yet had refused, until now, to truly admit:
They were very far from Taihu.
The matron brought hot water, fresh face cloths, a wooden comb for her hair, and a change of clean clothes. The cloth was not elaborate, the colors were soft, but they were exactly right for a girl of her age—neither making her seem awkward nor dressing her up too boldly. Wang Yan had never paid much attention to such things in the fishing village. Yet now that someone had prepared them for her so carefully and placed them right before her, she could not help feeling a little constrained. She only murmured a quiet, "Thank you."
The matron smiled, saying little.
"If there is anything you're not used to, just say so in time. Madam gave her instructions. This is not some dock outside. You needn't grit your teeth through everything here."
Something stirred in Wang Yan at those words.
What she had feared most these past few days was making one careless mistake and looking like some wild girl from a poor place—forgetting her manners, making a fool of herself, bringing shame to the Wang family as well. But the matron did not look at her with the air of a grand household condescending to some lesser creature. She treated her as though she truly were only a child who had come a long way and been badly frightened, and deserved to be looked after.
Wang Yan had almost wanted to say, I'm not forcing myself. The words came as far as her lips and stopped there. In the end, she only gave a low reply.
When the two of them stepped outside, the morning had brightened.
The west courtyard opened onto a corridor. Beyond it lay a stand of bamboo shadow, and farther still, through the gaps in the trees, one could glimpse a corner of the lake. Its waters were not like the kind often seen by Taihu—scattered and wide. This was a width with something calmer and longer in it, as though it did not hurry to push anything forward, yet had never once truly stopped moving.
Hot congee had already been set out by a small table in the front court.
The porridge held shreds of fish so fine they were almost threads, along with tender green leaves. Beside it were two little flat cakes, fresh from the griddle and still warm, their edges thin and crisp, carrying the faint fragrance of grain. Fang Yingjie's place also held a bowl of medicine. Its color was not dark, and it did not smell especially bitter. Instead, there was something warm and grassy about it.
Madam Wen was already seated at the table.
Morning light slanted in from beyond the corridor. Falling across her, it seemed to soften even the hem of her sleeve. When she saw them, she first looked over Fang Yingjie's face, then Wang Yan's, and smiled faintly.
"Did you sleep well?"
Wang Yan nodded, though her voice came lower than usual.
"Yes."
Fang Yingjie answered as well.
Madam Wen asked no further questions. She only had them sit and told them to eat first, to finish both the porridge and the medicine. She did not hurry to mention the road ahead, nor did she bring up Taihu Lake. Now and then she asked whether the medicine was too bitter, or told the matron to move the cakes a little closer to Wang Yan. It was all handled with such perfect measure that one had the sense she knew very well there were still things in both their hearts, and had no intention of pressing upon them at once.
Only when they had both eaten a little and some color had returned to their faces did she speak again, calm and unhurried.
"If you don't feel stifled today, I'll have someone take you for a walk nearby."
Wang Yan lifted her eyes.
"Inside the manor?"
"Only around the front of the manor and the western garden," Madam Wen said. "You've just arrived. It would be good for you to learn the way a little—to get the feel of the ground and the water here. Lakeside country looks flat enough, but the landings, branching channels, shoals, and hidden bends all have their own differences. If you go wandering on your own, I would be the one unable to rest easy."
It sounded perfectly natural.
Wang Yan had grown up by the water. She knew that places by lake and inlet could look peaceful enough from the surface, and yet when trouble came, it often came within no more than a single step. So she nodded. Fang Yingjie had no objection either. He had never been reckless by nature, and with his injuries as they were, there was nothing for him to insist upon.
Yet for some reason, when Madam Wen said, I would be the one unable to rest easy, something gave the faintest stir in his chest.
As though, after a very long time, someone had at last spoken of looking after him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The feeling was very slight. In the next instant, he pressed it down himself.
And yet it had already been born.
Reading the Water by the Dike
After the meal, the one who took them out was still the same old servant woman from the day before.
Her surname was Yao, and everyone in the manor called her Mama Yao. She did not walk quickly, and she did not speak much, yet she always seemed to know exactly when a word should be said, and when silence was better. First she showed the two of them the covered walkway and the moon gate outside the small western courtyard, then led them through the front court and slowly toward the lakeside dike before the manor.
As they went, more and more of Biyue Manor revealed itself.
It was not the sort of wealthy estate built to flaunt itself, crowded and overworked in every corner for the sake of display. It felt, rather, like a place laid out by someone who truly understood how to bring comfort and dignity into balance. The corridors were never oppressive, the courtyards never barren. There were flowers and trees in abundance, but never in disorder. Beyond the winding stone paths were open places by the water, and quiet corners beneath bamboo shadows and carved flower windows where one might sit for a long while in peace. The wind lanterns beneath the eaves, the flowerpots set beside the pillars, the old stone seats pressed into service by the side gates—all of it carried that settled air that only comes from years of use and years of care.
They passed through a moon gate, and the breath of the lake drew nearer.
Ahead stretched a long dike by the water. The wind came across Poyang Lake, cool and moist, and with it came a spaciousness wholly unlike Taihu Lake. The winds of Taihu were more tangled, always mixed with fish smell, wine fumes, damp wood, and the lingering smoke-and-noise scent of human life. The wind here felt as though it had been washed clean, leaving only water, grass, stone, and light.
When Wang Yan reached the dike, she said nothing at first. She only drew in a quiet breath. After a moment, she murmured,
"This isn't the wind of Taihu."
Mama Yao heard her and smiled.
"You know water quickly, miss."
Wang Yan pressed her lips together. She was not sure whether to answer with a simple yes or say more. By Taihu Lake she had always been quick-eyed and quick-tongued, but in this unfamiliar place she found herself holding back at every turn. Yet Mama Yao's remark did not sound like flattery. It was merely an ordinary acknowledgment—you can tell the difference. Somehow that eased her, and she answered softly,
"The wind at Taihu is looser."
"The wind here... runs longer."
Mama Yao nodded.
"You're right, miss. Poyang Lake is vast, and its waters are different as well. Once you've lived here a while, you'll hear it more clearly still."
The three of them walked slowly along the dike.
In the distance, fishing boats skimmed along the edge of the shoals, and white birds rose and settled there. In the shallows beyond the bank stood a row of old wooden stakes, perhaps left from mooring boats in years past, perhaps kept for marking channels and reading the water. Farther away still, between water and sky, faint blue shadows of mountains pressed low against the horizon—not truly near, yet not insubstantial either, as if somewhere in the distance someone sat in silence, watching the lake slowly take on the shape it wore before them now.
Fang Yingjie walked more slowly than the others the whole way.
Mama Yao noticed, of course, and without a word she slowed her own steps as well, never once urging him on. He himself felt a little embarrassed. It always seemed to him a poor and undignified thing, having others accommodate him so carefully. Yet the injury in his right foot was still there, and so was the old hurt beneath his ribs. If he insisted on hurrying out of sheer stubbornness, all he would do was make others pay closer attention to him. Once he thought that through, he could only swallow that useless pride and follow quietly behind.
Halfway along, Mama Yao lifted a hand and pointed toward a line of water farther east.
"There are several shallow inlets over there. The water has receded for now, so they look level enough, but if you step in, the depth changes without warning. If the two of you go walking about the manor on your own in the days ahead, don't wander that way. And near the dike behind the western garden, there are many ornamental rocks and thick clusters of trees and flowers. It looks interesting enough, but there are many branching corridors there too. Without someone to guide you, it's easy to lose your bearings the first time."
She said it all quite evenly. It did not sound like a warning so much as a simple concern that two newly arrived children, curious about everything, might get themselves into trouble.
Wang Yan had never been the sort to make trouble on purpose, so she nodded at once.
"I'll remember."
Fang Yingjie gave his own quiet assent.
Mama Yao looked at them, and there seemed to be a little more warmth in her eyes.
One of them might be bright, the other rather wooden, but at heart they were both children who could still listen when spoken to. That alone set them apart from the mischievous sort who nodded with their mouths while their thoughts had already flown ten thousand miles away. When she had first been told to guide them, she had worried that the two children whom Madam Wen had taken in out of kindness might be awkward, stiff, and difficult to get close to. But now, the more she watched them, the more she felt that if she truly looked after them as though they were her own juniors, it would not be such a hard thing at all.
After one round along the dike, she took them to learn the paths closer to the rear of the manor.
Though it was called the western garden, it was far larger than the sort of garden most people would imagine. There were not only flowers and trees within, but small paths winding among the stones, a cool pavilion half-hidden behind bamboo shadows, a curved corridor flanked by water, and even a small grassy slope set apart in one corner. At the edge of the slope were several white rabbits. Their pointed ears twitched as they nibbled at tender leaves in the grass. The moment they noticed people approaching, they sprang away behind the flowers in a blur, and the sight made Wang Yan's eyes brighten at once.
"There are rabbits here too?"
Mama Yao smiled.
"Madam says the manor is always full of water and wind. It ought to have a few living creatures as well, or else after a while it would feel too still."
For some reason, Wang Yan nearly laughed aloud at that. The corner of her mouth lifted before she hastily suppressed it. All the way south, before arriving at this great manor, she had feared that once she entered such a place she would have to keep herself stiff and guarded at every turn, hardly daring even to speak casually. Yet after truly coming to live here, she kept finding these small moments that made her feel that for all its size, this was not a cold place.
Fang Yingjie, too, glanced at the rabbits.
He had grown up on Mount Hua. Mountain paths, stone steps, pine wind, drifting cloud-shadows—those he had seen all his life, and wild rabbits in the back slopes were nothing new to him. But those mountain rabbits had mostly been dusty gray, wary to the extreme, gone in a flash at the first hint of movement. Creatures like these, snow-white and clean, ears twitching lightly, hopping like little scraps of cloud—those he had rarely seen.
For some reason, the sight of them bounding across the grass brought back a memory before anything else: Xi Qian standing to one side, laughing at him when he had chased rabbits through the mountain brush as a child.
The thought was feather-light. It passed in an instant.
He did not speak it aloud. He merely withdrew his gaze and went on walking.
That day they learned the paths, saw the lake, and saw the manor.
On the way back, Wang Yan walked ahead, while Fang Yingjie still followed at his slower pace. When they reached a turning in the corridor, she suddenly looked back at him and said, as though annoyed by his dawdling,
"At this rate, the rabbits will be back in their burrows before you get there."
The words had barely left her mouth before she stopped short.
It was as if only then she remembered that his foot had not yet healed, and that the remark had come out too carelessly. But Fang Yingjie did not seem to mind. He only answered softly,
"I wouldn't have been able to catch up with them anyway."
Wang Yan stared for a moment, then could not help laughing. It was a light laugh, but it was the first real laugh she had let out since leaving the shores of Taihu, and with it, some of the brightness returned to her eyes at last.
Walking beside them, Mama Yao saw the scene and simply turned her gaze away, as though she had noticed nothing at all.
Some laughter was better left unremarked.
Tidings Like Spring
Two more days passed, and life in the manor began to feel more and more like life again.
The medicine was still taken on schedule, the meals still came on schedule, and the wounds still mended as they would. Every morning at dawn and every evening before nightfall, Fang Yingjie refused to neglect his round of breathing exercises. At first he had done so only for fear that his old injuries might flare up again, but before long he began to feel the benefit for himself. He still could not be called strong by any measure, yet by day he already had far more spirit than before. He no longer coughed in relentless fits, nor did the nights leave him breathless so easily. His right foot still would not allow running or jumping, but in ordinary walking, or climbing the corridors and steps, he was gradually relying less and less on the wooden cane to bear most of his weight.
Wang Yan noticed it too.
One afternoon, the two of them were sitting beneath the corridor watching the white rabbits fight over blades of grass when she suddenly said,
"You don't look the way you did a few days ago—like if you stood too long, the wind might just blow you apart."
Fang Yingjie was holding out a small leaf of greens to one of the rabbits. At her words, he paused, then said under his breath,
"...It wasn't that bad."
"It was," Wang Yan said seriously. "When you started coughing before, I was afraid you'd cough yourself in two."
It was a blunt thing to say. Most people would have felt awkward hearing it. But she said it so naturally, as though she were merely stating something obvious.
Heat crept faintly into Fang Yingjie's ears. In the end he said nothing more, only lowered his head and extended the leaf another little distance.
A rabbit darted forward and snatched it away, its white ears twitching.
And so the days passed, little by little, in such quiet details—not lively perhaps, but no longer dull.
Yet what settled the hearts of the two children more than anything else was news.
The news did not come every day, nor did it arrive with any grand announcement. Madam Wen never summoned them before her and told them solemnly, This is what I have done for you. More often, she mentioned things in passing, at the most ordinary moments, as though they were no more than small matters.
Once, after lunch, she was taking tea beneath the corridor. Wang Yan had just finished keeping her company through a local account ledger and was preparing to withdraw when Madam Wen, as though recalling something offhandedly, said,
"There was another reply from Taihu yesterday. Your father still cannot leave where he is for the time being, but the injured have all been resettled, and the roads are still open. There is no need for you to imagine the worst every day."
Wang Yan had been holding herself together with difficulty already, but the moment she heard the words your father, the light in her eyes trembled violently.
"Re-really?"
Madam Wen lifted her eyes to her. The smile at her lips was slight, but steady.
"When have I ever lied to you?"
That one sentence alone seemed to press down, lightly but firmly, on the breath that had hung suspended in Wang Yan's chest for so long.
Two days later, after the noon meal, Madam Wen had a plate of freshly steamed glutinous rice cakes sent to the small western courtyard. In passing, she also had the old servant woman bring a message:
"The Four Seas Gang has already been informed, and word has been sent out to Mount Hua and Fang Stronghold as well. If anyone on that side is searching all the way down the line, they should know by now that the trail leads toward Biyue Manor."
This time it was Fang Yingjie who stood stunned.
He had never truly dared place all his hope on the thought that word would reach its destination. Yet when Madam Wen spoke, she always did so with such calm practicality. She never sounded as though she were making promises, nor as though she were trying to comfort them—only stating, with perfect naturalness, what had already been done. The longer he listened to her, the more the taut string inside him slowly began to loosen.
Yes.
The Four Seas Gang, Mount Hua, Fang Stronghold—those three had all seemed impossibly distant to him before, tangled and broken lines too far away ever to reconnect. Yet in Madam Wen's hands, they somehow seemed capable of being separated out one by one and steadily passed along.
That night, lying on the couch with the jade token resting against his chest, he allowed himself, for the first time, to think it through in earnest: perhaps if Old Daoist Xuan had returned to Taihu, he truly would learn that Fang Yingjie was here; perhaps those at Mount Hua, too, would not forever regard him as one who had vanished beyond all trace.
He still did not dare let the hope grow too large. Yet at last it was no longer an empty thing, no longer something he forced himself to believe through sheer stubbornness.
Wang Yan, plainly, believed more quickly than he did.
She had always been the sort who trusted what could be lived through in front of her. If one side sent word back, if one road was said to remain open, then that was the side she would trust first. And Madam Wen had never shown them a trace of emptiness in anything she did. The medicine was there. The food was there. The care was there. If they wished to go anywhere or had any inconvenience at all, someone always seemed to have thought of it before they even asked. That sort of steadiness inspired more faith than a hundred empty words of comfort ever could.
And so, little by little, even the tension in her gaze—that unconscious habit of seeking the northern waterline whenever she looked out—finally began to fade.
One evening at sunset, the two of them stood shoulder to shoulder along the western corridor, watching the dying light on the lake. The wind broke the red reflection into a long scattering of color over the water. Wang Yan watched it for a long time before suddenly saying,
"When I think back on it now, it still feels like a dream."
"Chasing that boat from Taihu all the way here, then settling down in this place, then hearing Madam take one thing after another into hand... sometimes I hardly dare think too closely on it. I'm afraid that if I do, the dream will break."
Fang Yingjie was silent for a while. Then he said softly,
"But dreams don't come with this much food."
Wang Yan stared at him, then burst out laughing. Laughing, she shot him a glare.
"You really are impossible. How does everything sound different by the time it comes out of your mouth?"
The tips of Fang Yingjie's ears warmed again. He had no idea whether he had said the wrong thing or the right one, so he simply lowered his head and said nothing more. Yet the corner of his mouth shifted, just slightly, and in the end he could not quite suppress it.
That fleeting hint of a smile seemed to add a touch of color at last to those warm, quiet days deep within the manor—the color that belonged, after all, to youth.
Talking of Martial Arts
That afternoon, a breeze rose over the lake.
Wang Yan had meant to go sit for a while by the embankment in the rear garden, but Mama Yao would not allow it. She only said, "There's damp in the wind today. Miss has been sleeping lightly these past few nights already. Stand too long by the water and your head will start aching," and gently coaxed her back beneath the corridor.
At the time, Madam Wen was seated in the open hall of the front courtyard, reading through an old ledger. When she saw them return in low spirits, she set the book aside and smiled.
"Sitting in the wind to look at the water is the sort of thing only the young delight in. If you are truly that bored, I do have something here that might amuse you."
As she spoke, she lifted a hand and had a servant woman bring over a long, narrow wooden case.
When the case was opened, what lay inside was neither a book nor a chess set, but an old saber.
The scabbard was not new. In the dark ebony there ran only a single, slender ripple of dull silver, like a shadowed waterline. The leather wrapping on the hilt had grown worn from long years of handling, yet it was not frayed. Instead, it had taken on the deep, quiet sheen of something that had endured and remained worth looking at. Wang Yan knew nothing of sabers. At first glance, she only felt that it was plain, but carried a strange gravity. Fang Yingjie, however, stared at it for a moment before his gaze settled on the join between guard and hilt.
That place had been made very tight—neither loose nor ornate.
It looked like a saber meant to be used, not displayed.
Madam Wen did not touch it at once. She merely looked at the old weapon in the case, and for the briefest instant her expression went still. Only then did she say softly, "My late husband left this behind."
Wang Yan started a little and straightened at once.
Madam Wen, however, remained calm, as though she were speaking of something that had lain in her heart for many years and no longer tore at flesh and bone when named.
"In his day, around Jiangxi and Poyang Lake, he had a little reputation. He used the saber. If one spoke only of the saber masters where water and land met along this region, he would still have ranked among the foremost of his time."
She said it very evenly. And perhaps for that very reason, it sounded all the more true.
Unable to help herself, Wang Yan asked, "Madam's late husband... knew martial arts as well?"
Madam Wen smiled.
"That is an interesting way to ask it. What household of the martial world does not know at least a little of martial arts?"
As she spoke, she lifted the old saber gently from the case. She did not draw it. She only ran her fingertips, very slowly, along one side of the scabbard.
"Only, the saber art of his line was not altogether like the heavy sabers and straight-bladed sabers of the north. Men who live upon the water prize steadiness. They prize knowing how to borrow force. And they prize leaving a little room for life in the stroke. It is not like the hard, driving methods of the north, where one comes in at once with the force to smash through gates and cleave the waves apart."
At the words smash through gates and cleave the waves, something stirred faintly in Fang Yingjie's heart.
The truth was, he knew very little of the Fang family's saber art.
After leaving Fang Stronghold as a child, he had grown up at Mount Hua. During those years, he had mostly been cared for, sheltered, and taught to recuperate in quiet. Martial training had always remained one remove away from him. He knew his father's martial skill had been formidable. He knew Fang Stronghold was famed throughout Shandong. He knew the family had inherited palm arts, fist arts, and saber arts of its own. But if anyone truly asked him what those styles were like—how the saber moved, how the palm struck, how the fist force differed—he could not have answered.
By then, Madam Wen had already turned the conversation toward the Fang family.
"Speaking of which, though I have never seen the saber art of Fang Stronghold with my own eyes, I have heard it mentioned," she said. "A righteous clan of Shandong—its methods should be weighty and grounded, and the force behind its saber should be weighty as well. If one speaks of pressing forward head-on, of breaking through a gate and charging a line, I imagine the saber art there would show far more of the bold spirit of the north than the saber methods of Jiangxi."
When she said this, her gaze drifted lightly toward Fang Yingjie. Her tone remained as gentle as ever.
"You are one of the Fang family. Surely your elders must have told you something of these matters."
It was asked with perfect naturalness.
So natural that it seemed no more than conversation carried forward to its next turn, and a casual question added along the way.
Yet Fang Yingjie still paused in surprise.
He lowered his eyes and thought for a moment before saying slowly, "I... honestly do not know very much."
"Since childhood, I have been away from Fang Stronghold. I only knew the names of the Fang family's martial arts, not their substance. Though I grew up at Mount Hua, I was frail when I was young. My Martial Uncles and senior martial brothers always kept me behind them and never had me properly learn these things. I know the Fang family has saber arts and palm arts, and I know my father made his name with his palm art. But if you truly asked me how the saber is used, or how the palm is worked, I... could not say."
By the time he finished, even he could hear the awkwardness in it.
As the son of the Fang family, to know so little of such things truly did seem rather shameful. But it was the truth. He could not very well invent an answer merely to save face.
Madam Wen, however, did not let him feel embarrassed. She only nodded lightly.
"Not knowing is not necessarily a bad thing."
As she spoke, she placed the saber carefully back into its case.
"If a child is too young, and too frail in body, then his elders will naturally think first of preserving his life before anything else. Had you truly been forced from the start to train in heavy palm arts and heavy saber work, whether at Fang Stronghold or at Mount Hua, you might not have grown into what you are today."
She meant it to comfort him, yet because she spoke so levelly, it never sounded deliberate.
Wang Yan nodded at once in agreement.
"Exactly. The way you used to be, let alone a saber—I'd have been afraid the saber would flatten you before you could even lift it."
The moment the words left her mouth, she realized they were too blunt. She swallowed the rest of what she had been about to say, and even the tips of her ears warmed a little.
Madam Wen laughed.
"What the young lady says may be blunt, but it may not be untrue."
Then, as though merely moving the conversation along in passing, she continued, "The martial arts of Mount Hua have quite a different flavor. The great orthodox sects place more weight on principle, on foundation, and on whether a style stands properly within its lineage. They are not like local righteous clans, which first seek to prove themselves when blades meet at close quarters; nor are they like the gangs of the martial world, which care only for momentum and command. As for the Four Seas Gang—"
She paused, and there was the faintest smile in her eyes.
"If you have met the Qin father and son, then you should know their flavor already. Their fists, palms, and spears all open wide and strike wide, carrying the overbearing force of a style meant to bar a river and split the waves. They need not truly fight at all. One glance at their bearing is enough to tell you that these are men who practise arts made to dominate the water."
Wang Yan stared, slightly stunned.
She truly had not expected that a woman like Madam Wen—who always spoke so gently, who seemed so composed and gracious in all things—could talk about sects and martial arts with such ease and clarity. Before this, Wang Yan had only thought her widely knowledgeable and fine-minded. Only now did she fully realize that this elegant, virtuous mistress of the manor knew not only how to comfort people and keep a household in order, but also understood the veins and branches of the martial world far better than one might think.
She could not help saying, "Madam... truly knows a great deal."
At that, Madam Wen only smiled faintly.
"To know too much is not necessarily a good thing."
"It is only that I live in a place like this, with people of the martial world always passing near at hand. Hear enough, see enough, and in time one simply remembers."
It was, once again, a flawless answer.
She neither made herself sound too deeply involved, nor shut the matter away entirely. She sounded no more than a widow who had seen a little of the world and heard a fair number of stories from the martial world. And yet, for reasons he could not quite explain, Fang Yingjie felt again that very slight unease: when she spoke of sects and martial arts, it did not sound like mere hearsay. It sounded more as though she had truly seen such things for herself—perhaps even studied the differences with care.
The thought rose only for an instant before he shook it off.
Perhaps she was simply sharp-eyed and quick of memory. That was all.
And besides, what was strange in the least about a woman who had taken them in, cared for them, and seen to them so thoroughly knowing a little of such things as well?
Once he thought that, the faint trace of unease in him subsided again.
Little Cakes Under the Eaves
After that talk of martial arts, the people of the manor grew steadily more familiar with them, and even the days themselves began, little by little, to feel as though they might truly be lived in.
Perhaps it was because once a person had stayed in one place for several days, the corners of the walls, the turns of the corridors, the trees and flowers, even the direction from which the wind came, all gradually became recognizable. Or perhaps it was because Madam Wen, from beginning to end, had never once pressed them too far, and that very restraint made it easier for the heart to settle. In any case, by this point, neither Wang Yan nor Fang Yingjie was still like they had been when they first arrived—wondering, every time they crossed a corridor, whether they ought to lower their footsteps and speak more softly.
They were still guests.
But the stiffness of being guests had faded greatly from those first days.
That afternoon, on the little table beside the flowers in the rear garden, there were two plates of freshly steamed cakes and a cup of honey water. When Mama Yao led them over, she bent by the grassy slope, scooped up a white rabbit, and tucked it into Wang Yan's arms, saying, "Didn't miss keep thinking about it yesterday? Then today let it keep you company for a little while."
Wang Yan froze for a moment with the rabbit in her arms, and then her eyes lit up at once.
"You're really letting me hold it?"
Mama Yao smiled. "Only for a little while. Later it still has to be put back. The living creatures in this manor have tempers too. Hold them too long, and they will be the first to grow annoyed."
Wang Yan had been on the verge of saying something stubborn like I'm not a child, but the moment that soft, warm bundle settled against her, and its ears brushed lightly over the back of her hand, all that bravado vanished. She only lowered her head to look at it.
Fang Yingjie sat beside her, watching her fumble to support the rabbit properly. Though she was trying hard to look composed, the brightness in her eyes could not be hidden at all. For reasons he could not quite name, his own heart seemed to grow a little lighter as well.
Seeing that both of them were seated steadily enough, Mama Yao gave one last instruction—"Just stay here and don't wander farther in. I'll come back for you later"—and turned away to fetch the medicinal herbs Madam Wen had asked for from the front courtyard.
For a time, only the two of them remained beside the little table.
The wind drifted through from behind the flower trellis, carrying with it the faint scent of osmanthus leaves mingled with the damp sweetness of the water. The other rabbits still hopped about by the grassy slope. Every now and then, one of them would spring behind the shadows of the flowers and disappear, leaving only half a white ear visible.
Wang Yan sat there holding the rabbit for a while, and then at last could not help laughing.
"It really is light."
"When I was little, I always thought rabbits ought to be heavy when you picked them up—like fish baskets."
Fang Yingjie lowered his eyes to look at the rabbit in her arms and said quietly, "Fish baskets are full of fish."
"So what?" Wang Yan said. "They're both living things."
The moment she said it, she paused. Then she glared at him.
"You think that made no sense again, didn't you?"
Fang Yingjie had not meant anything of the sort. Yet being asked so directly only made him less certain how to answer, and in the end he could only say, "...No."
Wang Yan looked at his face—the way he seemed to want to argue and yet did not quite know how—and burst out laughing again. When she had finished laughing, she held the rabbit out toward him.
"Here. You hold it for a while."
Fang Yingjie instinctively drew back half an inch.
"Me?"
"Yes, you," Wang Yan said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. "You always sit there like a block of wood. Let you hold something alive for once and see whether it makes you any less wooden."
The tips of Fang Yingjie's ears grew a little warm, but he still reached out and took it.
The moment the rabbit settled into his arms, it gave a tentative little kick, as though testing whether he was holding it securely or not. Fang Yingjie did not dare move recklessly. He could only support it with both hands as carefully as he could. The thing in his palms was warm and light, like a living tuft of cloud. For no clear reason, it made him think of the little creatures there had once been at Mount Hua too—things just as soft and weightless, which would leap away at the first alarm.
He was still distracted by the thought when the rabbit's ears twitched, and it nearly did spring from the crook of his arm.
Wang Yan gave a startled cry and darted out a hand to stop it. Their hands knocked lightly against each other, and the rabbit, frightened by the sudden movement, shrank back instead and became still.
Wang Yan did not speak at once. She only lifted her head and looked at him.
At that same instant, Fang Yingjie happened to lower his eyes.
Their gazes met, just briefly, and both of them seemed to have been scalded by something. Each turned away first.
After a moment, Wang Yan said, in a tone that tried very hard to sound casual, "You cannot even hold a rabbit properly."
"I've never held one before," Fang Yingjie replied in a low voice.
"Then learn," she said. "If you've never held anything, what will you do later on?"
The words were spoken without thought, but the moment they were out, she herself felt that there was something odd about them. A flush crept faintly into the roots of her ears. Fang Yingjie had clearly heard it too. He pressed his lips together, suddenly at a loss for any answer, and only lowered his head to stare at the rabbit's ears.
The wind passed through the leaves with a soft rustle.
Neither of them spoke again, yet the silence was not awkward. Instead, it held a faint, delicate warmth, like the first wash of daylight across the surface of a lake—flat and gentle, and yet truly warm when it touched you.
After a while, Wang Yan reached over and pushed half a cake from her own plate toward him.
"Eat this."
"Don't you like sweet things?" Fang Yingjie asked.
"I never said I wanted all of it." She glared at him. "If I tell you to eat it, then eat it."
Fang Yingjie answered with a quiet "Oh," and truly took it.
The cake was small. The outside was lightly crisp, while the inside remained warm, sweet, and touched with a clean, delicate floral fragrance. Fang Yingjie was not especially fond of sweets to begin with, yet when he bit into it, he found that it suited him perfectly well.
Watching him sit there and eat the cake with such earnest seriousness, Wang Yan suddenly felt that though this person was wooden, he was not without his merits. At the very least, if you pushed something toward him, he would truly take it. If you said something to him, he would, more often than not, truly listen. He was not like certain people, who could speak beautifully enough to fill the sky with flowers, while in their hearts they had never really taken your words in at all.
The thought caught even her by surprise.
It was as though only at this moment had she truly begun to see the person before her—this little block of wood who was always half a beat too slow, always carrying some hurt, always speaking so little—as someone who could sit beside her under the eaves and share half a cake.
The flower shadows swayed faintly. On the grassy slope, the rabbits began hopping again.
To anyone looking from the outside, this would probably have seemed no more than an ordinary afternoon: two children lodging in a manor, watching rabbits and eating little cakes. But only they themselves knew that, in such an ordinary afternoon that could not have been more ordinary, something had in fact been nudged quietly one step farther forward.
Not the sort of thing that had to be spoken aloud.
Only that, after being beside each other day after day, each had already become the most familiar person in the other's eyes.
And they had begun to feel—
that with this person nearby, the days no longer seemed quite so empty.
The Corridor Lamps Grew Familiar
As dusk fell, the lamps throughout the manor were lit one by one.
First came the wind lanterns beneath the front-court eaves, then the two small lamps tucked into the bends of the covered corridor, and only after that the scattered lights in the rear garden and along the embankment by the lake. Once the lamps came on, the whole manor seemed to take on a second warmth, one that rose slowly out of the order and quiet of daylight. It was not the warmth of bustle, nor of noise. It was as though someone had pressed the fire of ordinary home life, little by little, into the wind, the water, and the shadows under the eaves.
The wind off the lake had turned cooler than it had been in the day.
As usual, Mama Yao came to call them back to their rooms, and with that had hot soup sent over. It was not medicine, only a very clear, very mild broth, with two leaves of a warming herb and the faintest touch of honey. Once they drank it, even the tightness in their hands and feet seemed to ease a little.
Holding her bowl, Wang Yan stood beneath the corridor for a while and looked out into the darkening grounds. Then she said suddenly, "At night, this place feels more lived in than it does by day."
Fang Yingjie looked out as well.
The surface of the lake in the distance had already sunk into darkness. Only the water by the manor's dock still held a little reflection from the lamps. Farther out, passing boats on Poyang Lake showed scattered points of light, sparse but orderly. Closer by, the wind lanterns beneath the corridor neither flickered nor swayed, and even the shadows of the trees seemed to stand in perfect calm.
Softly, he said, "Mm."
Wang Yan turned to look at him. "Lately, besides 'mm' and 'oh,' do you know how to say anything else?"
The question checked him for a moment. After a pause, he said very quietly, "…It's good here."
Even as the words left his mouth, he felt they were too blunt, too bare. But now that he had said them, there was no taking them back.
Wang Yan heard him and froze for an instant. Yet she did not laugh at him this time. She only steadied the bowl in her hands and said in a small voice, "I think so too."
After that, she said nothing more.
But beneath the corridor lamps, that simple I think so too felt lighter, and truer, than many longer speeches.
Before they returned to their rooms that night, Madam Wen made a point of coming over from the front court herself.
She did not stay long. She only stood beneath the corridor and asked whether the medicine was still going down easily, whether the injury in his foot still felt feverish, and then instructed one of the servant women to change tomorrow morning's porridge to a finer rice gruel, easier to swallow, in case Fang Yingjie coughed in the night and upset his stomach by morning. At last she turned to Wang Yan with a smile and said, "If you truly like those rabbits in the rear garden, I can have someone bring you another one tomorrow to keep you company."
Wang Yan said at once, "Th-that won't be necessary every day."
Madam Wen's smile deepened a little, though she did not expose her embarrassment. "There is nothing wrong with liking living things," she said. "So long as a person still has such fondness in her heart, life cannot be altogether cold."
With that, she said no more and went back toward the front court with the servant woman.
When she was gone, only the two children remained beneath the corridor again.
Watching that lake-green figure disappear little by little into the layered lamplight, Wang Yan felt, for reasons she could not quite name, a thought rise in her heart that was as soft and light as down. From the mouth of Taihu all the way here, there had been so much that others could not hold for them—confusion, fear, shock, the helplessness of having nowhere to land. Yet in Madam Wen's hands, all of it seemed, at least for the time being, to have found support beneath it.
Wang Yan had never liked admitting that she depended on anyone. But in that moment she understood with perfect clarity that without Madam Wen, the two of them would most likely have drifted on to who knew where.
Beside her, Fang Yingjie was also looking toward the lights in the front court.
There was more on his mind. The Mount Hua Sect, Fang Stronghold, the Four Seas Gang, Old Daoist Xuan—those threads were all still there. They would not truly disappear merely because Biyue Manor held one lamplit court. And yet he had to admit that during these days, it was precisely this courtful of lamplight, these bowls of hot soup, these calm arrangements made again and again, that had kept him from wearing himself away first amid that tangle of old threads and broken roads.
He lowered his head and lightly pressed the jade token against his chest with his fingers.
Its surface was cool, its edges smooth.
Perhaps it was because he had carried it against his body so long, or perhaps because, whenever turmoil rose in him during these days, his hand would unconsciously reach for it—but now the token no longer felt merely like a way in from the side wharf at Pingsha Market. It felt more like a real thread, one that had truly led him here.
The wind rose again.
The lamp beneath the corridor swayed once, lightly, but did not go out.
From not far away, Mama Yao called softly for them to return to their rooms. They answered and went together toward the small western courtyard. Halfway down the corridor, Wang Yan paused for the briefest moment, waiting for Fang Yingjie to catch up before walking on.
It was such a slight pause that it hardly seemed worth noticing.
Yet Wang Yan herself knew that she had never been the sort of person who waited for others. And still, over the course of this journey, she had somehow grown more and more used to looking back at the turn of a passage, to slowing a little after walking half a step too fast, to remembering, whenever there was something to eat in her hand, that perhaps she ought to share some with him.
Some things were never born all at once.
They were worn smooth into being by days and days together.
And so the manor's deep, daily warmth, which had filled this entire chapter, came at last to rest in such an unremarkable evening as this—
the lamplight steady, the lake wind gentle, someone deep within the manor still looking after them, and the old road still seeming to wait somewhere in the distance. These two children, who had come from the mouth of Taihu carrying splintered dreams and lingering terror, had by this moment truly begun to think of this place as somewhere they could stop for a while, somewhere they could let their hearts rest for a little while too.
They still believed that people from Taihu would come, that the Mount Hua Sect and Fang Stronghold would in time find their way back to them, that Old Daoist Xuan would surely learn where they were now.
The road had not been cut off.
It had only taken a turn.
And so the lamplight in this one court of Biyue Manor, in the hour before they yet knew how fate would overturn all that followed, quietly warmed this stretch of their young lives first.
Poetic Coda
Beneath widening lake and sky, light fell upon the manor gate;
By white embankments and deep trees, spring seemed to gather of itself.
A warm bowl eased the lingering cough;
Soft words beneath flowered corridors soothed startled souls.
With tidings awaited from three directions, their hearts at last began to settle;
In one quiet court, the gentle lamps grew dearer day by day.
Most of all, Poyang's wind said nothing at all,
Yet blew away half the dust that still lay over their lives.
(End of Chapter Twenty-Eight)