For the next seven days, life was some of the quietest Wang Xiaole had ever known.

In this new place, with no one disturbing him for the time being, he lived so peacefully it almost felt like there was nothing left to do.

Bai kept moving in the shadows, her actions continuing as always, and ending the same way they always did—never once a success.

If there was anything different from before, it was only in the way she acted.

It was like Bai was slowly accepting this constant failure. Her eagerness to assassinate him faded day by day.

The daily, absolutely mandatory assassination attempt was still there, but it got shorter and shorter each time.

At first, when the mermaid big sis wasn’t used to these two special guests yet, she’d worried about that young man who had a dagger aimed at him even while he was eating.

But later, this “stab and counter-stab” between the two of them just looked like play-fighting in her eyes.

In the end she truly got used to it, and once even teased Wang Xiaole:

“Quarreling this much with your little wife already—what’re you gonna do when you have kids?”

Back when he traveled through the East Continent, Wang Xiaole had heard people explain what “niangzi” meant. It was basically the same as “wife” in the West Continent.

Because he knew the meaning, the moment the big sis pointed at Bai, this thick‑skinned young man in his twenties actually had a rare flush spread across his face.

The past hadn’t been devoid of sparks. It was just that his feelings had never gone that deep.

If it were some other girl, he’d just laugh it off a few times and let it end there.

But when someone tried to pair Bai with him, Wang Xiaole, for once, felt his heart actually stir.

Maybe you need reasons to truly like someone.

But that first flicker of fondness didn’t need any reason at all.

If you had to explain it, you could only say it was “fate.”

“Yuan” and “fen”: if you meet, that’s fate.

If you fall for someone at first sight, that’s the “fen” between you…

The seventh day in this city was also the tenth day since they first met.

That day, following a habit he’d kept for years, Wang Xiaole left the inn, just planning to find somewhere to wander and clear his head.

While aimlessly strolling, he noticed Bai quietly following behind him.

By noon, her small shadow stretched longer and longer, but never once did it fade or drift away. It just clung to his heels, stubborn as ever.

Having her trail after him was an unexpected bonus, and Wang Xiaole figured he might as well use the chance to take her somewhere fun.

Problem was, he didn’t really know his way around the city. After a few turns, he somehow ended up leading Bai into a bamboo grove.

This grove had been here for many years, a little patch of scenery tucked inside the city.

The city was so wide that plenty of outsiders, even those who tried seriously to find it, could spend ages searching and still never manage to come across this place.

Wang Xiaole hadn’t wanted to come here. He’d meant to take Bai to a flower field. But by sheer coincidence, he’d ended up here instead.

Given his mood right then, he definitely wasn’t exactly thrilled.

Step by step, all around them was nothing but deep, quiet bamboo.

Wherever the sunlight fell, it broke into scattered dapples, shattered light sprinkling over fallen leaves and wildflowers.

A breeze rose and the jade-green leaves swayed, the shadows flickering slightly, fresh bamboo fragrance drifting and spreading through the air.

This place wasn’t romantic at all—not when the girl here with him was still underage.

Talking to her about moonlight and love stories would be like explaining the joys of grassland to a fish.

Besides, a bamboo forest wasn’t where you went looking for romance in the first place.

Even if Wang Xiaole did have that kind of thought, he should’ve taken her to a sea of flowers, or brought her under the bright moon at night.

Either way, he shouldn’t have brought a little girl to a place like this.

He had no experience with this kind of thing, let alone experience bringing a girl somewhere like this, so soon enough he honestly didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

He looked up at a pair of birds flying together overhead, their wings spread wide as they soared through the clear blue, free and far above the dust of the world.

Even birds knew what they were supposed to be doing right now. He didn’t.

Helpless, Wang Xiaole just sat down under a flowering bamboo, using his gaze on the sky to hide his own awkwardness.

He couldn’t even tell if he was looking at the cottony bits of blossom above, or through the flowers at the blue sky, cut into pieces by the crisscrossing green branches.

On a summer day the sky shouldn’t be this clear, the clouds shouldn’t be puffed up so neatly like tufts of wool, so bright and quietly lovely.

Leaning against the trunk, his eyes, dark as a deep pool, reflected sky and cloud, and within them was a faint trace of calm.

Since he had nothing to do, Bai, who’d followed him here, had even less.

She sat down beside him, then started idly shaking her head in boredom.

Her tail flicked along with the motion, and the soft rustle it stirred up in this sea of green sounded like its own special kind of music.

The sound passed by as light as a spring hidden deep in a valley, like flowers and grass fluttering in a mountain breeze, ringing out softly.

Under the blossoms and leaves, listening to this music, the expression engraved on Wang Xiaole’s face drifted and shifted, a vague mix of complexity and quiet weight.

His eyes suddenly went still and deep, like a pool where you could see the glimmer of light yet no ripples at all.

In that moment, a faint smile slowly rose on his lips. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and calm.

“Bai, just for today… can you forget who you are, and forget who I am too…? Let’s just be two people who can talk, like kindred spirits, and chat for a little while. Okay?”

“…No… can’t.”

It wasn’t “no,” and it wasn’t exactly “I can’t” either.

At first Bai had been about to say “I don’t want to,” but halfway through, she changed her mind and ended up agreeing.

Logically, with Bai’s stubborn temper, no matter what he said now, she should’ve just ignored him.

But on that face turned toward her, there was a smile, and under that smile, a quiet trace of hope and longing.

It was that deeply buried feeling that kept her from refusing all the way to the end. In the end, she chose to say yes.

Bai stared at him, her gaze fixed for so long it slowly turned hot and sore.

Even when her eyes ached, she still didn’t stop watching him, not even for a second.

Facing this, Wang Xiaole kept looking right back at her. The hope in his eyes slowly faded, but his smile grew, joy rising like a tide and filling most of his dark pupils.

Right then, something shifted inside Bai.

Her heart felt like a lone flower blooming on the edge of a cliff, swaying shakily in the wind, unable to settle for a long, long time.

“If we get the chance… can we come back to this bamboo grove again?”

He’d said they should forget who they were and talk for a bit.

But in the end, the only thing that actually came out of his mouth was this one line.

It might’ve been the first line. It might’ve been the last.

Either way, there was never going to be a second.

While Bai was staring at him, her little hands didn’t stay still. She grabbed a blade of grass and spun it in her warm palm.

The spinning grass bent soon enough, yet its surface still shone in the bright sunlight, glowing with a color like fine jade.

Thinking back later, Wang Xiaole vaguely remembered this:

With her fingers still fidgeting, Bai bit her lip and answered,

“I don’t want to come.”

Recently, Bai had been talking more. He could manage one or two exchanges with her a day.

Right now, Bai wouldn’t be able to imagine that—

She would still end up coming here again in the future.

Coming back to this place she would live in for the rest of her life…

At first, when there was nothing left to say, it was just Wang Xiaole lying there, his eyelids growing heavy with time, with Bai looking at him from the side.

Later, after watching for a long while, Bai joined in, shifting from observer to participant.

Bit by bit, Bai’s guard relaxed. Before long, she was lying against a trunk, right next to him, eyes half-closed, drifting on the edge of sleep.

A few minutes later, “half-closed” turned into fully shut, and in that instant her heart sank completely into slumber.

No one knew how long it was until the first of them woke up.

When he opened his eyes, he noticed the small beauty beside him was deeply asleep.

He quietly took off a piece of clothing and laid it over her tiny body.

He just sat close by and watched over her, occasionally reaching out to brush a hand through her hair, soft and smooth as silk.

“If it could stay like this forever, that’d be perfect… that’d be perfect…”

He repeated these words that no one else could hear. After a while, the gentle light in his eyes slowly went unfocused, and he drifted off to sleep again.

Their peaceful time together lasted all the way until the evening sky flushed with sunset.

In the daytime the sky was like it had been covered with a layer of brocade.

Now, at this hour, that brocade’s sheen seemed to spill straight down and hang between heaven and earth.

This very day, this very moment—when Bai looked back on it later, it was without a doubt the happiest day of her entire life.

On that same day, a man began to move.

He was Nan Yinzheng’s only son, the useless playboy Charley had mentioned, and the one who’d hired Bai in the first place.

He acted now for one reason only: the job still wasn’t done.

He’d spent a fortune to hire the best assassin he could find, yet his enemy still lived.

By today, nearly ten days had passed.

Those days of waiting had ground away all his patience.

So on the night of the tenth day, he decided to move personally.

Finding out where Wang Xiaole was wasn’t hard. The Nan family’s information network was powerful.

Tracking down a man who had stirred up a huge commotion not long ago took them no more than half a day.

He knew he alone wasn’t enough, so the man mobilized the guards who protected him and headed straight for Little White City.

This time, he set out prepared to win. There was no thought of turning back, no thought of giving up halfway.

In his mind, it was simple:

Either that wandering swordsman died… or he himself wouldn’t be coming back.

Whatever the outcome, he intended to settle things with his enemy once and for all.

Under the setting sun, his force marched in a pounding rush. From far away, anyone who saw them would think it was an army on the move.

And the sharp edge of that army pointed at only one thing—

Wang Xiaole’s head.