He took a deep breath, intending to communicate with her, when he noticed a bulge beside her and some strands of black hair peeking out. Recognizing those black strands and the swaying, uncertain cowlick, he knew who it was.
The plan for the night attack had failed.
Su Bei sighed. He had a rare excuse today to meet her at midnight, yet such an incident had occurred, preventing them from embracing in sleep. It was truly a pity...
He would find an opportunity to ask her about it tomorrow.
Besides, what could a similar hairpin really say?
In Su Bei's heart, however, he was simply avoiding reality, just like that moment in his previous life when exam results were released: if I don't look, I'll forever be guessing...
He waved at her, and Su Bei could even see a faint, almost imperceptible smile at the corners of Dan Wulan's mouth.
He turned and left.
The voice of Dan Wuque could still be heard behind him:
"What's wrong with my sister? Why are you trembling? I didn't know you had the habit of sleeping without clothes on..."
"It seems like there's some noise outside? What sound is that?"
After that, Dan Wulan's cool voice followed:
"Wild cats. Go to sleep."
"Oh."
Su Bei returned to his own room and lay on the bed, sleepless throughout the night, his head aching.
He remembered Mo Li asking about The Wilderness Scripture and sighed.
Should he fulfill his responsibilities as a master?
Then he started flipping through The Wilderness Scripture...
And then he fell asleep.
Mo Li returned to her room, gently covering her chest with one hand, her back leaning against the gently closed door.
Moonlight poured in like water, casting shadows across the room and reflecting off the smooth floor.
She didn't know why she had worn that Phoenix Gilded hairpin tonight, the one she had hidden in a corner of her storage ring.
In the past, she would have disdained it.
She admitted that perhaps it was a little scheme on her part. With his attentive nature, he would certainly notice.
And he did indeed notice.
Using her Perception Realm senses, she distinctly felt his heart tremble slightly.
From high atop the Sword Sect's platform, her eyes pierced through the crowd, looking toward her master at a distance. From her angle, she could clearly see those two hands tightly clasped together.
The door creaked.
Gently, Mo Li removed the hairpin from her silver hair, letting her silver locks cascade down, shimmering, draping beautifully to one side.
I never thought I would be unwilling to accept this.
Su Bei seemed to have a dream, in which countless strange scenes flew by like fleeting splendor.
Although just fragmented glimpses, they seemed to reveal the first half of his life.
He belonged to a rather wealthy family, where he could vaguely see a woman who seemed to be the mother of this body and a man beside her smoking a dry pipe.
"My husband, the drought is severe... Today on Yan Nan Street, there were more deaths from starvation..."
"When will these days come to an end?"
The infant was unlike typical children, not crying or fussing, with big eyes and tiny fat hands reaching for the sky, babbling something softly.
The man continued to smoke his dry pipe, furrowing his brows, watching tendrils of blue smoke drift up to the sky.
"Open the granaries, distribute the grain."
In an instant, the infant had turned into a boy of three or four years old. Unlike other children, he didn't play or take pleasure in amusement. His deep eyes surveyed everything in the fields. A panting elderly servant in green followed him, calling out from behind:
"Young Master, slow down, slow down, your servant can't keep up..."
The boy turned, gazing at the old servant, his childish voice inquiring:
"Are there really Immortals in this world?"
"Young Master, of course there are Immortals. Our lord even worships at an Immortal temple, praying for rain and a carefree life..."
"Then why is there still such a severe drought?"
"Ah, perhaps that Immortal has forgotten about us, Young Master. It's time to go home for supper."
"I want to become an Immortal!"
"Young Master, you're speaking nonsense again."
Another trance, and the boy had become seven or eight years old. He had seemingly made a name for himself as a talented scholar in this city, with all sorts of strange and curious creations coming from his hands. His invention of the waterwheel had benefitted the people in dozens of cities across Southern State.
He had also composed various poems. Although the city's populace was mostly uninquiring, they enjoyed listening. His poems weren't so abstruse and incomprehensible:
"Rain falls but does not wet the land; yellow dust rises from the fertile fields. Birds die, tormented by the heat; fish in the dried-up ponds are caked in mud."
The local populace wanted to promote him to an official position, and even his father showed a beaming smile of pride as he looked at him.
Because of his precociousness, the man who smoked the dry pipe made a special effort that day. He set up a table of food and wine, taking out a jar of alcohol buried at the time of his birth:
"Son, when your father gets old, the people of this city will depend on you..."
As the man poured the drink into the cup and talked, the silent boy looked up and said:
"I want to become an Immortal."
The drink spilled over the cup, and in a daze, one could see the man's darkened face.
"Immortality? Immortality? What nonsense about impractical Immortality!"
"You've dreamed of it since you were young, but what good is Immortality?"
What followed were various arguments. Eventually, it seemed the man, exhausted from the quarrel, sat on the heated brick bed, smoking his pipe in silence.
The smoke grew sparse, soon filling the room, while the middle-aged woman wept.
It seemed they could never win an argument against him.
Eventually, he packed his bags, taking enough dry food to last a month. He didn't know where to go. He only knew that in a place called Dongfeng Ancient Country, there were said to be many Immortals, unlike in his small Southern State city.