The next morning, Ouyang and Xi wore dark crescents under their eyes like night bruises. Last night, Xi rushed to burn those indecent paintings, her hand trembling like a startled sparrow, and the fireball went astray. When the room caught fire, Ouyang sat to the side pouring cool tea like moonlight in a cup, watching like a theatergoer, unmoved as stone.
With the room ablaze, Xi refused help, because those “paintings” hadn’t been destroyed and she couldn’t let anyone see that filth like mud splashed on a temple wall. She fought the flames alone like wrestling a wild beast, smothered the blaze, and reduced the “paintings” to ash. By the time she finished, dawn was bleeding into the windows like pale silk.
Half-dead and swaying like a wilted lotus, Xi almost lunged at Ouyang. But he lifted a sheet of paper like a flag, and her fight deflated like air leaking from a drum.
How could that kind of thing vanish just because it burned? As long as Ouyang breathed, those weeds of sketches would sprout again after rain.
She hadn’t seen clearly, yet she knew that paper carried something indecent, like mud on a moonlit path. With Ouyang’s habits, you didn’t need to think—of course he’d draw that filth like a cat returning to the same fish.
“Ugh—no one’s gonna marry me now...” Xi rubbed her eyes like smudging charcoal, muttering under her breath. If not for Ouyang’s drawings, she’d almost buried that mess like leaves under snow, but those sketches dug up a past she’d rather not face, like bones surfacing after a flood.
“Relax—if no one marries you, I’ll hire you as my maid. The kind that warms the bed, like a human brazier...”
Ouyang kept needling from the side, words like sparks flicking onto oil, and Xi’s anger exploded. “Shut up, shut up right now!”
He turned away with a scoff like flicking dust off a sleeve and jogged out to look at the view. The view—since they were on an airship, the vistas outside unfurled like a painted scroll. It’s true—having connections these days is like holding a wind talisman; doors swing open.
With Irina, the duke’s daughter, aboard, Ouyang and Xi got the most luxurious cabin and the warmest service, silk upon silk like plum blossoms in frost.
Xi’s mood had sunk like a stone after last night’s mess, yet Ouyang felt the trip was pretty sweet, like honey stirred into tea.
He glanced around, eyes sweeping like a hawk’s shadow over wheat. A middle-aged man gave him a smile, and Ouyang returned a polite curve of lips like a mask. People nearby stared, baffled, like fish in a pond watching rain dots.
“No wonder it’s an airship—there’s a master sitting in town like a hidden pillar; looks like my plan needs to wait.” Well, no rush; chances bloom like spring weeds. Aspiring to mischief, Ouyang could only sigh and keep watching the scenery like rivers of cloud.
Anyone riding an airship had status, and they carried experts like swords at their hips. When he’d skulked and scanned, at least ten eyes pinned him like needles on silk.
It’s hard to do a little bad in these times. Ouyang kept sighing, breath like mist on glass.
“Huh, Grand Scholar? Fancy meeting you here under the same sky!”
Ouyang followed the voice like a thread and saw a familiar bulk—wasn’t that the muscle-bound guy he’d met before?
“Since we meet again under the same sun, let me introduce myself anew.” Quyas—that’s my full name. “I was an orphan from the cradle, and living among people you need a name, so I carved this one like a mark in wood.” “I now serve as captain of the Karosen Kingdom’s Knight Order—Quyas!” His voice rang like iron.
Quyas’s arrival felt like a rescue rope to Ouyang, because his sneaking had drawn suspicion like crows gathering. A Knight-Captain’s title swept doubts away like wind over smoke.
Ouyang gave Quyas a mysterious nod, face like a lacquered mask, then ignored him and kept watching the clouds drift like herds of sheep.
“Grand Scholar... do you have a moment?” Quyas wanted to invite him along, but seeing that look like fog over a lake, he asked first.
Ouyang didn’t answer straight. He kept that cryptic face, eyes closed, letting the wind lift his hair like river grass. “I’m listening to the voice of the wind, chasing the wind’s footprints...”
Quyas had a sudden epiphany like lantern light in fog; he understood. The Grand Scholar meant he had no time, buried in profound studies like roots in earth. Of course, that was Quyas’s own invention.
Ouyang avoided entanglement with Quyas mainly because he feared Xi would find out and tear off his “Grand Scholar” mask like peeling paper. Another identity for bluffing was perfect for him, bright plumage for a magpie. If Xi learned and ripped it away, the game lost its flavor like tea gone cold.
Seeing Ouyang still “listening to the wind,” Quyas could only retreat with a helpless smile like the tide ebbing. “His Highness said, if we meet a Grand Scholar, invite you to the palace for a talk.” “But since you’re immersed in deep matters, we’ll let it go.” “If you reach the capital, please come to the palace for a chat...” His footsteps faded like rain trailing off.
Quyas dropped the words like pebbles into a pond and left, and Ouyang’s regret turned his guts green like unripe plums. But he was the “Grand Scholar”; he couldn’t chase him down and yank him back like a fisherman hauling a net. The palace? That place was exactly where Ouyang longed to go, not for court talk but for treasure gleaming like trapped sunlight. Its vault held piles of gold and silver like mountains lit at dawn.
Those things didn’t mean much to him in use, yet he loved collecting them like a magpie. In that, he was like the dragon clans, hoarding anything that gleamed like starlight on water.
What a loss, what a bleeding loss, like watching coins roll into a river.
Figures—I overplayed the act, like painting eyebrows too dark.
He glanced at the scenery, colors like a flowing scroll, and murmured, “Forget it, it’s fine; opportunities come like tides.”
Time slipped past like sand through fingers. With a third-tier Holy Knight like Quyas aboard, the airship was fated to avoid accidents like a boat with a seasoned captain. Of course, if Ouyang chose to stir trouble like a storm, even a Holy Knight wouldn’t help.
Right now, Ouyang felt low-key was wiser, like a cat moving in shadow.
As dusk deepened like ink, the airship drifted over Ancient Memory Town. By rule, it wouldn’t stop over a town without a station, but with Irina, the duke’s daughter, aboard, the staff made an exception like bending a bamboo stem.
It’s fair to say, while Grand Duke Layes was away, Irina rode her father’s name like a prancing horse, indulging in privilege. Whether he’d scold her when he returned was a storm for another roof, not Ouyang and Xi’s concern.
Ancient Memory Town—no one knows when it was built, no one knows why it endures, like a stone that remembers rain.
Even Ouyang didn’t know; back in that era, Ancient Memory Town already stood like a tree older than the road. If not for ancient tradition, this town wouldn’t have grown into a city, and perhaps the most ancient city wouldn’t have been Terracafe.
As for the town’s origin, Ouyang had heard many versions, stories like drifting leaves in autumn wind.
First version: celestial folk at the dawn of heaven and earth built this small town, then vanished like stars at sunrise, leaving the town behind.
Second version: this was a playground for the gods, who in ancient ages cast down their projections like shadows and held contests in the streets.
Of course, those were baseless guesses like castles in fog. The most plausible to Ouyang was the third version, passed to him by a guy on the Other Shore nicknamed “Know-It-All,” a voice like a reed pipe in the night.
They say this old town reaches back to the first tick of the Era Calendar, when time began to turn like a gear. Soon after the thirty-two-year First Era ended, the Ancient kind founded the town like planting a flag by a river.
In a distant age, this was a gathering place of the Ancient kind, like swallows nesting under the same eaves.
Truth or tale, this rumor was hard to judge; Ouyang didn’t know if it was all real or all smoke, or half-and-half like twilight.
At least, walking the small path, he felt the beauty here like a quiet stream, and in the unseen there seemed a force keeping it whole like hands cupping a flame.
The sky was the same sky, the sunset still blood-red. Clouds stained at the horizon blushed like a maiden’s cheeks, and cherry-pink petals drifted everywhere like soft snow. This town, this street, this wash of evening light...
That day, he and she had bathed in the same dusk, watching the dying sun and waiting for the stars like lanterns stitched onto velvet.
Then, they were young like new bamboo. They yearned for the future and prayed for happiness like birds calling dawn.
In the pond at town center, on the old tree, the cicada’s song hadn’t changed, a thin thread in the heat. Yet time’s passage had altered much like wind shaping dunes; the cicada was no longer the same one, though instinct kept it crying without pause.
“Ouyang, what’s wrong? You look like a statue in mist.”
Walking ahead, Xi felt a tug in her heart like a thread pulled. She turned suddenly and found Ouyang standing dazed, caught in some memory like a moth in amber. “Have you been here before?”
Been here... more than been here. For Ouyang, this place was where everything began like a first spark, and where everything ended like ash after flame.
That year, he appeared here all at once, lost and blank like a fogbank. He feared the unknown and drifted in the future’s haze like a boat without oars.
And then, by accident, he met her, like two leaves touching in a stream. Here he started that dreamlike adventure, and here he began a meeting that ended before it truly began, like a flower that fell in the bud.
That year...
“My name is Xi Lian; Mother said I should learn to cherish love, so she gave me this name like tying a ribbon to my heart...”
