Qin Jiuye felt as though her mind were a sheet of paper from which all ink had been washed away, gradually fading into a vast blankness. As time stretched on, even her nightmares became fragmented and intermittent.
She could only rely on instinct to trace the youth’s features in her heart over and over again, terrified that even this final shred of memory would dim. In the depths of her dreams, the youth seemed to press his face against her temple, nuzzling her gently before pressing a long, lingering kiss to her cheek.
A slight itch tickled her ear—it seemed this was not part of the dream. Qin Jiuye opened her eyes to find a tiny ant crawling upon her pillow. Its antennae quivered as it explored the strands of her hair. She reached out with great effort, and after a moment’s hesitation, the ant climbed onto her fingertip.
In this isolated hell, this tiny insect was the only thing that made her feel alive.
A moment later, the locked door was opened. The familiar sound of a walking stick approached, followed by Ding Miao’s voice.
“I brought you flowers. Won’t you look at them?”
The Winter Solstice had passed; outside, the world was frozen. Where would flowers come from?
Qin Jiuye remained curled on the bed, unmoved. The drugs had numbed her senses to the point where she could hardly smell anything. Even if he placed blooming flowers before her, they would be no different from a piece of floral silk.
“Why me?”
The woman on the bed finally spoke, though her gaze never once shifted toward him.
In just a few short days, she had endured unprecedented torment. The physical lethargy was eroding the iron will she had always prided herself on, causing the first signs of a mental breakdown to emerge.
Ding Miao watched her waning state with eyes full of pity. Knowing the time was ripe, he did not answer her question directly, but instead gently wiped the cold sweat from her brow.
“You were dreaming. You kept calling his name in your sleep.”
There was likely no one in this world more adept at manipulating fear than him. With that single sentence, the woman’s body involuntarily stiffened. While she had been drifting in a stupor, her consciousness blurred, he had been by her side the entire time. He was chewing on her nightmares, savoring her vulnerability, as if only this could stir some semblance of emotion within him.
Her body began to tremble uncontrollably again. Qin Jiuye fought to overcome it, trying to claw back a sliver of rationality to face him.
“That night on the boat, you told me that if I set up my own practice, I would surely have a thriving business and a limitless future. At the time, I was truly grateful to have met someone who genuinely recognized my worth. But looking at it now, everything you said was merely a hollow pretense used to get close to me.”
“It wasn't.” His voice grew urgent, as if he were desperate to prove something. “I have always been sincere toward you. And no one in this world understands you better than I do. Qin Jiuye, do you dare swear that in the short time we have known each other, you never felt a sense of kinship with me?”
Hearing the anxiety in his voice, she did not hide her scorn, letting out a hollow, absurd laugh.
“If I had known today would come, I would have let those women in the lotus marsh hack me into eight pieces before I ever spent a single moment there.”
She had thought she had encountered a refined immortal of the lotus ponds; who would have guessed he was the turtle lurking in the shadows all along? It seemed that on the day they first met, Heaven had already given her a sign, but she had been truly deaf and blind, only realizing it now.
Ding Miao clearly disliked her laughter. He ruthlessly grabbed her arm and hauled her out from the covers. Her final shield gone, she was forced to meet his eyes and endure the terrifying emotions within them.
“Even without that chance encounter, you and I were destined to meet, to know each other, and to cherish each other, because we are fundamentally the same kind of people. We struggle in the mire of the mortal world, yet we always want to lift our heads and fight for something. But do you know? Neither the gods above nor those seated upon thrones of power like those who dare to look up at them. They do not like being questioned; they do not like being challenged; they do not like being subverted. From beginning to end, all they seek is one word: submission.”
The monster’s fangs were bared; a single step back and she would be swallowed whole. Qin Jiuye saw through it all. She tilted her head back, ready for death, the smile at the corners of her mouth only deepening.
“Just like what you are doing to me now, right? You pride yourself on your methods and your insight into the human heart, believing you can play everyone like puppets, yet you are afraid that I will stop you, that I will ruin everything you’ve planned…”
“Anyone can stop me, but not you!”
Before she could finish, she felt a sharp pain in her wrist. He forcibly pried open her tightly clenched fist. The tiny ant she had been so carefully protecting in her palm was crushed in an instant. The perpetrator stared at the black speck on his fingertip, his voice cold and manic.
“Do you know the suffering of ants? You curl your body as tightly as you can, yet you can never possess even a square inch of ground to stand on. You scream and howl with all your might, yet no one will ever hear your voice. It is as if you never existed in this world; your joys and sorrows, your pain and your life and death—no one cares. You struggle in the mud, trying to lift your head, only to have your body trampled. Those who trample you do not even see you; they think you are no different from the mud itself. Even if they step on you ten thousand times, they only complain that you have dirtied their feet.”
“You compare yourself to an ant, but what are the thousands upon thousands of commoners in this city to you? Where do you place their fates?” Her eyes, usually so clear, turned bloodshot—whether from confusion or rage. “If you are an ant and you know the suffering of ants, why must you trample them?!”
He looked into her eyes, the madness on his face gradually turning to ice.
“Because the suffering of ants has no solution, unless the rules of this world are completely overturned and rewritten. Throughout history, the voice, the suffering, and the struggle of a single person have always been insignificant, ignored by all. No one wants to listen to a calm explanation; yet if you scream and beat your chest, you are blamed for your foul tone and crude manners. I once hoped to fight for these things like a normal person, but the truth is, only after killing so many people does anyone finally care.”
The simple, cruel answer was like a flying arrow, piercing through her in an instant. She felt a suffocating sensation akin to death, as if countless chaotic voices were roaring and questioning in her head.
Was this his excuse for unleashing all this calamity? Was this the reason her home was becoming a den of chaos and depravity right before her eyes?
“Shut up… I told you to shut up!” Qin Jiuye’s voice trembled, but this time it was not the trembling of weakness, but of fury. “If you hate those who trampled you, you should go and take revenge on them. What kind of strength is it to oppress the weak who are beneath you, to brutally snatch away the lives of the innocent?!”
As her words fell, she somehow found a surge of strength and violently threw off his hand. An invisible power flooded her thin, frail body. Every bone in her body seemed to stand tall, bracing her exhausted flesh as she assumed a ferociously defiant posture.
Yet it was all in vain. He let her struggle, and once she had vented her strength, he seized her hand again, pulling it toward his chest without allowing any refusal. Beneath his pulled-open collar were those hideous scars. She fought with all her might to break free, but he gripped her tighter, as if all his past obsessions were concentrated in this single grasp.
“I was only seven years old the year I became a laborer in the Ding Battalion. I had never harmed anyone. I was not yet sixteen when I was locked in the bottom of the West Sacrificial Tower; the only thing standing with me was my own shadow, and the only things willing to listen to my cries were the blood-stained stone bricks of the dungeon. I was once the weak one; I was once an innocent. If I had not become who I am today, I would not have even lived to see this day, and you would not have the chance to rebuke me to my face.”
Her knuckles were gripped so hard they felt ready to shatter. Qin Jiuye gritted her teeth and endured, refusing to make a sound, turning her pain into strength as she spat her words at him.
“There are millions upon millions of people in this world who suffer injustice and hardship, yet only you chose this path. Your past cannot be an excuse for what you do now. The reason you have come to this point is simply because this is who you are at your core.”
The pressure on her hand suddenly vanished. He finally released her, but he stood up and walked to the window.
“You are right. But I am not the only villain in this world. There are far more people who are just like me at their core than you can imagine.”
Before Ding Miao’s voice could land, he slammed open the doors and windows that had been shut for so long.
The biting north wind instantly rushed into the room, pulling a wailing tone from the old window frames. But if one listened closely, it was clear that it wasn't just the sound of the wind—there were also the sounds of mourning and wailing coming from afar.
“So-called good and evil, strength and weakness, are merely matters of temporary perspective. Look at the ghosts wandering the streets right now. Yesterday, they were the 'weak' and 'innocent' you spoke of, yet in a single day and night, they have begun to bully women and children, loot amidst the fires, and band together to seize resources, devouring their own kind in even more barbaric ways. Even without being infected by the Secret Formula, they are driven by instinct to become beasts. The only reason they didn't harm others before was simply because they hadn't grown claws and teeth yet.”
Qin Jiuye stared blankly at the window. Outside was a void where not even a speck of dust could be seen, yet she seemed to see through the frigid wind a vision of hell, filled with rising black smoke and the howls of ghosts.
“So-called order is merely the game rules of those in power. But no order is eternal. Order is broken, rules are subverted, and chaos itself is the only eternity.”
Ding Miao’s voice echoed in the cold wind. It took a long time for Qin Jiuye to find her voice.
“How can you be so shameless? You are the one who brought this disaster upon their heads, you are the one who used a foul disease to twist them, yet you turn around and criticize them for not remaining as they were, waiting to be slaughtered? You cannot execute the people in the capital, so you turn your blade toward Jiugao. But if everything is as you say—if the thousands of citizens in this city are but ants and Jiugao is but a tiny border town—then even if you turn this place upside down, to those far away in the Golden Throne Room, it is nothing more than a tiny black speck on the vast map of the empire.”
“You know that isn't true, which is why you rushed back to Jiugao to stop me, isn't it?” Ding Miao turned around, walking toward her step by step. “Natural disasters, floods, famine, plague, war—and then the fall of a nation. In the beginning, no one notices the things happening in the corners, until everything is beyond salvation. They look down on ants, yet in the end, this great land is ruined by the collapse of an anthill. Isn't that interesting?”
“You want to watch the show, but have you considered if you can survive until the end? If reinforcements arrive in Jiugao, you and those shadows from the First Villa under Heaven will face nothing but death. If Jiugao falls, the Imperial Court will never let you go. This game of yours is destined to be a dead end. Even so, do you still intend to be trapped here with me, waiting for death?”
“What of it? I never intended to walk away unscathed.” Ding Miao’s voice was as calm as ever; life and death on his tongue were no more significant than a cough or a sneeze. “Whether it is a silver thread suspending a vase or a tower crumbling in a storm, I will eventually meet my end. And this time I spend with you is something I deserve. I told you long ago, I am merely inviting you to watch the play with me. As for when the play ends or how it concludes, that is no longer up to me.”
Realizing exactly where he was headed, Qin Jiuye’s head slumped in defeat. Despair and powerlessness truly took hold of her heart at this moment.
“You are no longer trapped in that villa. You have the respectable identity of an academy teacher; you can walk the world and see all its beauty. In all these years, have you never had a single moment of lingering attachment, a single moment where you wanted to stop all of this?”
She had summoned all her courage to ask this question at such a time. However, after a long silence, only two cold, heartless words came through the air.
“Never.”
There was no point in searching the depths of the abyss; there were only insatiable chasms and dark channels that could never be lit. Qin Jiuye closed her eyes, as if shutting the doors and windows to the outside world, refusing all further communication. Yet he did not intend to let her go so easily. To wake her from her numbness, he would continually pick at her wounds, letting hatred and pain occupy her entirely.
“Ask me. Don't you want to know about Qin Sanyou?” he suddenly said, his eyes fixed on her face, not wanting to miss a single shred of her emotion. “Or are you like the others—too disdainful to confront me personally, having already decided that Qin Sanyou was murdered by my hand?”
“Is it not so?” She was pulled from her numbness, her eyes bearing the scars of repeated torment. “Are you going to tell me that my grandfather’s death had nothing to do with you?”
He leaned in closer, just to see every detail in her eyes more clearly, even if it all stemmed from pain and despair.
“Correct. He did indeed board my boat. But before he boarded, I did not know he was Qin Sanyou.”
“You’re lying! You’re lying! If you didn't know who he was, why would you have picked him to board your boat? He boarded your boat, you escaped unscathed, yet he died in the freezing river—how does that make sense?!”
The more urgent her questioning became, the more measured his answers were, as if he had prepared for a long-standing question and could finally speak the answer.
“After the Sword Appreciation Assembly, I met with Xiao Han outside the city. Although he escaped Qiu Ling’s pursuit with Liang Shi’an, he was still noticed by the people from the Villa. I knew you were the one behind the antidote for the Clear Wind Powder, yet I hesitated to act. Di Mo grew suspicious and discovered I was defying his wishes by transporting the Secret Formula to the capital. He immediately intended to kill me, sending assassins to Ding翁 Village to surround you while also sending people to intercept me. Those men were among the Villa’s top experts, skilled in tracking and incredibly difficult to deal with. Two of the boats I was escorting got away, but the one I was on was caught because it stayed behind to cover the rear. Your grandfather steered the boat well, but he was not a man of the martial world after all. He turned the boat, using the current to escape, but was caught off guard by those lying in ambush on the cliffs. He was standing near the stern; in the blink of an eye, he fell into the water and vanished. That is the whole truth. But in the end, if he had never boarded that boat, none of this would have happened…”
Qin Jiuye tried to brace herself, yet she still felt as though she were swaying.
His brief, flat narrative transformed into a series of cruel images in her mind—unstoppable, unpausing, inescapable. She feared that what came from his mouth was not the truth but a lie, yet she also feared she could not distinguish between them, becoming a puppet at his mercy.
It turned out that even after all this time, she was still not prepared to face the truth of Qin Sanyou’s death. Or perhaps, she would never be prepared.
Ding Miao clearly noticed the expression on her face, but he continued nonetheless.
“I remember the wind and waves were indeed very strong that day. No boatman at Chixia Beach was willing to set out, yet I had to leave. After asking many people to no avail, your grandfather came to ask me himself. Seeing he was an old man, I didn't want to hire him at first, but he was adamant and didn't care about the distance, so I reluctantly agreed. Before that, I only knew you had a grandfather. As for what he was called or what he looked like, it wasn't important to me. He just happened to appear before me that day. If he hadn't boarded my boat…” Ding Miao paused here, suddenly looking at her with great anticipation. “…Qin Jiuye, do you know why he boarded my boat that day?”
A powerful premonition roared through her heart. Her every movement froze. Angry tears still hung at the corners of her eyes. He reached up to wipe a tear away, his thin lips parting with pity. She desperately wanted to stop the answer from jumping out of that mouth, but against her wishes, she heard the words.
“…The reason Qin Sanyou boarded that boat was because he wanted to earn those ten taels of silver for the fare.”
The truth behind the truth was like an ice pick driven into her heart. His fatal blow ended this bloodless struggle and seemed poised to completely shatter the woman’s resilient soul.
A massive ringing filled her ears. The images in Qin Jiuye’s mind began to churn again. The rain fell relentlessly, Qin Sanyou appeared without mercy, walking into the rain again and again, beyond all hope of being saved.
If she hadn't woken from her illness and spoken those reckless words to Qin Sanyou about "never having enough silver on hand," if she hadn't cried so heart-wrenchingly, if she hadn't been so obsessed with her courtyard that had already burned to ash—would Qin Sanyou have braved the wind and waves for ten taels of silver?
It was she who had sent Qin Sanyou onto that boat.
It was she who had killed her grandfather.
The noisy ringing faded, and she finally heard her own desperate screams. Heart-wrenching wails poured from her wide-open mouth, suffocating her yet impossible to stop. Her thoughts and reason had been shredded by the emotion called fury, yet her five senses were still functioning. She could see his face drawing closer; she could hear his near-whispered murmur.
“The one who took your grandfather’s life was not me, but the poverty imposed upon him by his birth and fate. Just as the thing killing those 'innocents' you speak of is not the Secret Formula in this tiny bottle, but this world that devours people. Qin Jiuye, give up. You cannot save them, and you cannot stop any of this. Even if you can make an antidote for the Secret Formula, even if you can solve the mystery of the Wild Fragrance Seed, the world will not become beautiful because of it.”
Emotion completely dominated her body. Despair, pain, and remorse swallowed her whole. She threw herself violently against the solid wall behind her; the wound on her head that had been bandaged split open, but the pain did not stop. She struggled to crawl up, intending to strike again, but this time she was held firmly from behind.
Ding Miao used all his strength to restrain her desperate body until the person in his arms went still, no longer making any sound. He gently smoothed her disheveled hair, his gentle voice sounding no different from when they had first met.
“Good medicine is bitter to the taste, yet it benefits the body and mind. Don't be afraid; your illness is almost cured.”
Everything she had hollowed herself out to spit forth with blood was thus neutralized without a trace. A strange fragrance accompanied his murmur, striking again.
Qin Jiuye knew that this time, she was truly ill.
A high fever burned her limbs with aching pain, scorching her very bones. She gradually drifted into a stupor under the influence of the drugs. Her mind seemed to split into several spaces, each with its own season and time, heat and cold alternating, dawn and dusk reversed.
Legend had it that if one wanted to wake from a nightmare, the most direct way was to face death. She swayed on the edge of life and death, but that strange fragrance drifted into her nose, ruthlessly strangling the dangerous thought that had just sprouted.
The fragrance seemed able to penetrate her limbs and bones ravaged by illness, taking away the pain and the burning. She seemed to know the origin of that scent; at first, she always tried to resist it, but in the end, she could not overcome it. After several attempts, she gradually sank into it, closing her eyes and following the fragrance into deeper and deeper layers of dreams.
She fell into a state of chaos, just as she had sunk to the bottom of that black lake. She seemed to hear the sound of ten thousand flower buds blooming simultaneously in the mountains. In her stupor, it felt as if someone were stroking her body in comfort; the movements were extremely gentle, yet they made her tremble uncontrollably. Malicious ghosts and nightmares pressed down on her together, yet she could not move, only able to stare helplessly into the darkness.
At some point, she returned to that eerie red dream of her childhood.
It turned out the red river she saw was blood, and the eyes flickering in the trees were the embers after a great fire. Shadows in the lake were whispering, sounding like curses from ancient gods, or the silent mockery of the disease called the Secret Formula. Fire spread among the branches, the flames dancing and devouring everything, like a demon winking at her.
A figure sat crouched under a tree with her back to her, her body heaving slightly as if she were sobbing. From the sound, it was a woman.
She approached, hesitating before reaching out to pat the other’s shoulder. The woman paused, then turned around—she had the exact same face as her.
Startled, she instinctively took half a step back, her stumbling legs churning up splashes of water. Unknowingly, the water around her had risen to her calves. The surface of the water reflected a sallow, thin little face—also her face.
However, it was the version of herself from when she was eight years old, leaving home and struggling to survive.
“How do you still have the face to come here?” the weeping woman wiped away her tears, glaring at her fiercely. “They are all gone, so you can only come looking for me?”
She was stunned by the question, or perhaps frightened by the resentful expression on the other’s face. After a long while, she murmured.
“I don't know why I came here either…”
As soon as she spoke, she froze. Her voice had become childish and helpless. The woman before her had stood up, approaching her step by step.
“You went to the Sword Appreciation Assembly. You thought you deserved a better life; you thought you could protect the life you wanted. But what happened? You still lost Old Tang, and you lost your grandfather. You couldn't even protect your own grandfather—who else can you protect? Do you truly think you are the savior from Old Dog Du’s prophecy?”
She grew anxious as well, trying to defend herself.
“Who wants to be a savior? I just… I just didn't want my grandfather to die in vain!” Her mind seemed to shrink along with her body, becoming incredibly fragile. After only a few words, her voice carried a sob. “Someone must pay the price; someone must stop him! Even if I failed, it wasn't my fault. Since when does failing mean one shouldn't even try?”
“The dead cannot return to life. What you are doing can only comfort yourself; it is of no other use. If, besides soothing yourself, you are also suffering for that shred of remaining conscience, I advise you to let it go sooner. There are plenty of people in this world who live well without a conscience, while those who die because of it are beyond counting.”
The other spoke coldly, looking down at her as if looking at a coward who was utterly unworthy of being saved.
But… but that was clearly herself.
“I just don't want this world to be overrun by malicious ghosts. I just don't want to live in hell every day. If I have to live like that, I would rather die with my conscience intact.”
“If you want to go to the abyss of hell, why would you need a plague of malicious ghosts? The ugliness, depth, and darkness of the human heart far exceed any foul disease in this world. And conscience, loyalty, courage… the things you believe in don't actually exist. They are merely tools people use to brand themselves, lies used to deceive those above and below, and admonitions for the ignorant!” The woman’s voice was hoarse, her expression resentful, as if she were denouncing some unpardonable crime. “Kindness is a front—it never existed! It is a lie made up by those hypocrites who want to sacrifice your life for the peace of the world! If you believe it, they will practically clap for their own cleverness and won't spare a single glance for your sacrifice. If you don't believe it, they use things like benevolence and morality to crush you, so that you can never rise again for a million years!”
“No! It’s not like that…”
She cried, her tears flowing uncontrollably, as if she wanted to pour out all the tears she had swallowed over the past years.
Tear drops slid down her cheeks and landed on the man’s fingertip, which he then brought to his lips to savor.
Scalding, bitter tears, full of remorse yet ultimately useless—so this was what they tasted like.
Ding Miao savored them for a long time, then leaned down, admiring the woman’s stupor and breakdown with a playful heart.
She was trapped deep within the illusion created by the Hidden Infant Incense and would not easily wake. Having shed the thorns on her body, she was finally willing to show him her most vulnerable side. He greedily absorbed her secrets, as if through this, he had achieved an intimacy between them that no one else could match.
“Perhaps you should have learned to see through it all long ago. Your old family is gone, but you will have a new family. You and he are so similar, and he would never judge you with those high-sounding excuses.”
The man’s voice, through the mouth of the weeping woman under the tree in the dream, stubbornly bored into Qin Jiuye’s ears, into the depths of her stupor and terrifying nightmare.
The little girl crying under the tree seemed to have been driven into a corner. Her hands searched her body haphazardly until she finally stopped upon finding a tattered paper packet. Her crying gradually ceased, and then she slowly stood up, looking toward the dark, empty sky above.
She muttered something, her voice very faint, but every word was so stubborn.
The woman frowned.
“What are you saying?”
“It’s not like that…” The little girl’s lips trembled as they softly opened and closed. “If kindness were just a deceptive lie, my grandfather wouldn't have given me half a sugar cake… he wouldn't have taken me home… and I wouldn't have lived to see this day.”
***
