After Yun Lan burned Qin Jianmei’s incorporeal body to ash, the demonic puppet slowly crumbled in like manner, restoring peace and quiet to the surroundings.

“Father,” Yun Moxiao called out, stepping forward. 

Yun Lan continued standing on his blood-red sword, motionless. He glanced down at Yun Moxiao, his gaze skimming over Yun Ruoyan. She thought she could see a note of sorrow in his eyes, but only for an instant.

Was that an illusion? 

Yun Ruoyan thought.

“Father, you aren’t hurt, are you?” Yun Moxiao asked.

Yun Lan slowly shook his head, then landed on the floor of the teahouse. Yun Ruoyan was a little worried that Yun Lan had recognized her—after all, even Qin Jianmei had managed to do so, and Yun Lan’s sensitivity would be far stronger as a sword saint.

Yun Ruoyan glanced at Li Mo, who shook his head minutely before dragging her toward Yun Lan. At the same time, Yun Lan stumbled, then spat out a mouthful of blood.

“Father, what’s wrong?!” Yun Moxiao ran forward to help support him, and Li Mo brought Yun Ruoyan to a stop.

“No matter.” Yun Lan shook a hand at him, but mere moments later, he slumped and fell unconscious against Yun Moxiao.

“Father!” Yun Ruoyan called out, almost involuntarily. She was just about to step forward when Li Mo pulled her back. “There’s nothing wrong with Official Yun. He’s just stepped into the realm of a sword saint, and because he did so using the fruit of cloud and sky, his foundation isn’t stable. He used too much of his spiritual energy to get rid of that puppet, so both his spiritual vortex and body have received a definite amount of damage.”

“However,” Li Mo continued, “now that he’s a sword saint, this sort of injury won’t be critical to him. He just has to recuperate a little to return back to normal.”

“The two of you should leave now,” Yun Moxiao advised. “There might be imperial guards heading here at any moment.”

This battle had caused a rather significant disturbance even in the capital, and it was sure to have startled at least the civilians. Luckily, Li Mo had chosen to meet Qin Jianmei at a rather isolated area, far from ordinary civilians and without the possibility of causing too much damage.

Li Mo left with Yun Ruoyan and his guards. Yun Moxiao was just about to bring Yun Lan away when the imperial guards arrived.

“Official Yun, General Yun, may I ask what happened here?” The captain of the imperial guards immediately stepped forward, noting their dishevelled appearance.

“Send us back to the Yun manor for now. I’ll explain things later.” Yun Moxiao was the general in charge of the imperial troops garrisoned at the capital, and this imperial guard was his subordinate. The guard didn’t dare to question his superior, and could only nod and reply in the affirmative.

“How should we deal with this corpse over here?” He then pointed at Qin Jianmei’s body.

After being brought back to the manor, Yun Lan only woke up after three days and three nights. Meanwhile, Yun Ruoyu woke up that night in her rooms and walked out of her cottage.

When her maids saw her walking out of her rooms rubbing her eyes, they all jumped up in shock, then gathered around her to ask where she had gone. How had she vanished, then appeared so suddenly from her rooms?!

However, Yun Ruoyu herself hadn’t even realized that she had gone missing. When she woke up in bed, she only thought that she had been so tired that she had gone to bed without realizing it.

After Yun Lan woke up from his coma, he informed the household that Madam Qin had died of a sudden, severe illness, revealing no further details to anyone else. Even Yun Ruoyu was unable to find out the truth, let alone an outsider. Of course, no outsider would care much about a concubine. 

And because she was only a concubine, Qin Jianmei didn’t have the right to be entombed in the Yun family mausoleum. Instead, she was buried in one of the better plots of land nearby.

Yun Ruoyan and Yun Moxiao weren’t her children, so they didn’t have to attend her funeral. Yun Ruoyu was the only one who showed up in mourning clothes. After the affair, Yun Ruoyan specially went to Qin Jianmei’s grave and burned a cloth sack in front of it.

[1]

Li Mo was a little confused by her actions. “Shouldn’t you hate her? After all, she poisoned your mother, and she was the cause of your childhood trauma!”

“I used to hate the culprit behind my mother’s poisoning, and I did loathe Madam Qin while I suspected her of being the poisoner,” Yun Ruoyan sighed. “However, when I think back to what happened during my childhood, when I was grievously wounded during a friendly bout, Madam Qin was the only one willing to take me in and take care of me. Perhaps she was the root cause of all my troubles, but she did give me a spark of hope when all seemed lost to me. I thank her for that, if nothing else.”

The cloth sack burned away, revealing the twinned statues inside. 

“These two statues are emblematic of the shamanic tribe, and I’m sure she’d be happy to have them. With this act, I’ll let bygones be bygones.”

Yun Ruoyan then followed Li Mo away.

Not long after their departure, a shadow appeared before Qin Jianmei’s grave. She hastily dumped a pile of dirt on the burning sack, then shrugged off her funeral clothes and used them to pick up the statues, which she cradled in her arms as she ran off.

In the blink of an eye, two weeks had passed, and the next day would be the eve of Chinese New Year. Kongming Academy was on leave, and Lin Qingchen, Lin Qingxue, and Zhuo Yifeng had all returned to the capital. 

During this period of time, Yun Ruoyan would frequently head to the Lin manor in the mornings to chat and play with Lin Qingchen and Lin Qingxue. In the afternoon, she would then go to the Slaughtering King’s manor to learn swordflight. At night, she returned to her own cottage to cultivate and rest.

The Yun matriarch, who hadn’t been very strict in the past, suddenly began to restrict her movements after her engagement with Li Mo. She had summoned Yun Ruoyan to her rooms and had told her, rather severely, that she had to avoid spending the night at her fiance’s place both for propriety and for self-respect.

Yun Ruoyan obediently nodded her head and added another task to her daily routine: paying her respects to her grandmother daily after returning from the Slaughtering King’s manor.

Initially, she was a little worried that Yun Lan would suspect that she was involved in Qin Jianmei’s death. However, when she heard her brother mention that Yun Lan had tasked him with uncovering the identity of the Demonic Duo and provided him with a list of potential suspects, she relaxed—neither she nor Li Mo had been on her father’s list.

Yun Lan treated Yun Ruoyan no differently than before, but according to her grandmother, he had been single-handedly responsible for preparing her dowry. Yun Ruoyan harbored extremely complicated emotions for her father: she had once hated him and begrudged him, but after discovering the truth, neither of those feelings seemed appropriate. At the same time, however, she felt no sense of kinship toward him. Regardless, it didn’t feel strange to call him ‘Father’, something Yun Ruoyan chalked up to habit.

On the night of Chinese New Year’s Eve, as Yun Ruoyan held a night vigil with her grandmother, her grandmother slowly began to snore. Yun Ruoyan and some of her grandmother’s maids quietly snuck to one of the outer chambers with a portable stove as they waited for midnight, for the dawn of a new year.

At midnight, Yun Lan and Yun Moxiao also arrived at the Yun matriarch’s quarters, bringing with them a chain of firecrackers, something which had recently grown very popular in the capital.

Xiao Lan woke the Yun matriarch up, and the gathered crowd took turns kowtowing to her and paying their respects. With a smile, the Yun matriarch handed everyone a red packet, filling the room with a festive cheer.

Only one thing marred the festivities: the fact that the Yun matriarch had suddenly brought up Yun Ruoyu. Ever since Qin Jianmei’s death, Yun Ruoyu seemed to have become a different person entirely. She had moved from her previous quarters to her mother’s residence, and she stayed cooped up in the house the entire day.

“Yun Lan, have someone go look at Ruoyu tomorrow. How pitiful she is, to have lost her mother so suddenly!” the Yun matriarch exclaimed.

“Mother, I had someone bring her some food this evening. There’s no need to worry; she’ll surely recover with time,” Yun Lan replied.

“Grandmother, why don’t I light some firecrackers? I’m sure you’ll like seeing them!” Yun Moxiao suggested.

No one noticed anything unusual about Yun Ruoyan, and the mood that had suddenly turned awkward at the mention of Yun Ruoyu returned to normal. This was the first New Year that Yun Ruoyan had experienced at the Yun family after her rebirth, and she marvelled at how long the year had been, as though she had managed to resolve any regret she had had in her past life.

However, as the memories of the past year flashed by her mind, she couldn’t help thinking that the year had actually passed by quite rapidly. There had been no time to rest between all sorts of crises and challenges that awaited her. Now that she was looking back at them, however, those challenges had only been stepping stones, which she had made use of to forge a path for herself.

Beyond her own improvements, both mental and physical, Yun Ruoyan felt that her most important gain was the courage to face any challenge and the desire to seek out self-improvement even if she had a powerful support she could lean on in times of need.

Peng! Peng, peng!

A series of fireworks exploded in mid-air, drowning the night sky in all sorts of bright and glittering colors. Thus ended the first year of Yun Ruoyan’s rebirth, and before her lay all sorts of future challenges…

After the midnight celebration, everyone returned to their own residences. Because of how relaxed she was, Yun Ruoyan allowed her drowsiness and lethargy to fully overcome her. She began nodding off during the walk back to her cottage, and her eyes slowly shut. The responsibility of bringing her back to her rooms fell to Xi Lan and Peony, each supporting one arm of hers as they dragged her to bed. Then, they wiped her hands and face, removed her outer garments, and covered her up with a blanket before blowing the lights out and gently closing the door to her room.

The moment she was alone, Li Mo snuck noiselessly into her room through a back window. If she weren’t so tired, Yun Ruoyan would have immediately awoken from her sleep, but this time, she only rolled in bed, kicked off her blanket, and continued to sleep.

Li Mo’s lips curled up as he shrugged off his robe and lay by Yun Ruoyan’s side. Only then did she realize that she had a visitor, but his familiar scent was enough for her to ascertain his identity. Without even opening her eyes, she curled up next to him. “What’re you doing here so late?”

“It’s New Year’s Eve, after all. I don’t want to spend it alone,” Li Mo replied.

Yun Ruoyan could feel the cold permeating through Li Mo’s body and realized that he had to have been waiting outside her window for her. She was a little sorry for him, so she pulled his body tight against hers.

“Li Mo.”

“Hmm?”

“In the future, I promise I’ll accompany you day after day, year after year…”

1. It is customary to provide offerings to the dead by burning them.

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