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墨書 Inktalez
Xie Yao suddenly looked up at me, a flicker of surprise in his eyes, quickly replaced by overwhelming joy. He grabbed my wrist tightly and exclaimed, "Liu Liu, can you really decipher it?"
I nodded. "I'll give it a try."
We leaned closer together, using the dim light of the oil lamp to slowly compare the fragmented memories of the "Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art" in my mind, painstakingly deciphering the accounts.
Time passed slowly; outside, the night deepened. Inside the room, only our whispers and the soft scratching of pen on paper could be heard, creating a silent understanding that flowed between us.
The contents of the ledger were shocking: the rice shop mixing sand with rice for sale, withholding farmers' money and grain, hidden clues of salt smuggling in transactions with the Liang Residence, and traces pointing to Old Madam Xie. Everything was more complex and darker than we had imagined.
By the time we finished with the ledger, dawn was breaking. Xie Yao, exhausted and perhaps feeling the chill of the evening breeze, pulled out a flask he must have brought earlier and took several swigs.
His face flushed unnaturally red, his gaze slightly dazed, as if the fatigue and pain he had been holding in for so long finally found an outlet.
Suddenly, he grasped my hand; his hot fingertips carried the warmth of alcohol. With his other hand, he dipped into the remaining Agarwood ink at the bottom of the flask and slowly wrote a character in my palm.
The ink felt cool against my skin, releasing a familiar scent of Agarwood as it spread out in my hand—tingling and carrying an indescribable weight.
I looked down, and at that moment he finished writing, my heart skipped a beat. It was the character "Protect."
To protect.
He wanted to protect me.
The mingling warmth of alcohol and coolness of ink enveloped me; his heated breath brushed against my hand's back, revealing a vulnerability and sincerity that came with intoxication. My palm felt branded with a mark—not just ink but also his heartfelt confession laid bare under the influence of alcohol.
I could feel that it was his left hand—the one burned by Liang Yulan while rolling tea—that held mine. The mark from his six fingers rested against the edge of my palm, silently conveying the pain he endured for me and the deep emotions he kept buried within.
My hand remained clasped in his, feeling both the warmth of the inked character "Protect" and the painful heat radiating from his injured hand. It was as if the entire world had narrowed down to just that one character and the warmth of his palm.
As I returned to the Liang Residence, dawn was breaking, and I slipped back into my courtyard, weary from a sleepless night. The character for "protection," now blurred by sweat and the night breeze, still lingered in my palm.
That character felt like a burning brand seared into my heart, an indelible mark that illuminated the shadows of my life with a faint yet fierce light.
During the day, I forced myself to maintain composure while dealing with my stepmother and Liang Yulan, but inside, I felt as if a massive stone was pressing down on me. The accounts of the Xie Family, my father's embezzlement of salt funds, Old Madam Xie's authority, my mother's death... everything wrapped around me like an enormous net.
Especially when I saw those shocking figures in the accounts, I became even more convinced that my mother's death was far from simple. The prescription she left behind might hold the key to the truth.
And that prescription was likely hidden by my stepmother in the ancestral hall of the Liang Residence.
The ancestral hall was a forbidden place within the Liang Residence, especially for us illegitimate daughters; we were not even allowed to approach it.
As night fell once more, my heart raced like a drum, echoing in my mind were Xie Yao's words: "I will restore clarity to your world."
I could not sit idly by; the truth was within reach, and I had to seize it.
I avoided the patrolling maids and quietly made my way to the back door of the ancestral hall. It was locked, rusted and exuding an air of age.
Inside the hall, faint incense burned, and the flickering candlelight cast eerie shadows on the memorial tablets.
I cautiously entered the hall; the air was thick with a pungent mix of sandalwood and mildew that made my throat itch.
Following the directions my mother had once mentioned in memory, I carefully searched through a bookshelf behind a row of memorial tablets.
Sure enough, in the innermost layer of an inconspicuous wooden box, I found several yellowed sheets filled with writing—it was indeed my birth mother's prescription.
My heart raced as I prepared to examine it closely when I inadvertently brushed against a protruding piece on the bookshelf.
With a soft click, the ground trembled slightly.
Oh no, I triggered a mechanism!
Footsteps quickly approached from outside, accompanied by the low reprimands of the night watchman.
I was startled and frantically tried to escape, only to find that both the front and back doors of the shrine were locked tight.
At that moment, a faint scent of Agarwood wafted in, and Xie Yao's figure appeared like a ghost beside the back door.
He held a golden knife intricately carved with bamboo patterns, its blade revealing complex designs in the dim light.
Without saying a word, he swiftly inserted the knife into the keyhole and gave it a gentle twist.
With a soft click, the lock opened with an astonishingly quiet sound.
"Go!" he urged in a low voice, pulling me outside.
The old woman on watch had already noticed the commotion and was running toward us with a lantern in hand.
We had no time to think; we dashed through the path straight to the dyeing workshop in the estate, where several large dye vats might provide us shelter.
The workshop was empty, and the enormous vats emitted a pungent smell of indigo dye.
Xie Yao pulled me into one of the vacant vats. The bottom still contained some residual dye—cold, sticky, and reeking of something nauseating.
We pressed ourselves against the vat's wall, trying to lower our breathing as the old woman's shouts and footsteps grew closer.
The dye soaked through my clothes, cold and piercing, with a few drops splattering into my hair, turning some strands a peculiar indigo blue.
In the darkness, I could feel Xie Yao's intense body heat and rapid breathing as he held me tightly. His palm inadvertently brushed against the prescription hidden in my bosom, the paper already soaked and blurred.
The footsteps of the old women stopped at the entrance of the dyeing workshop. They inspected the area suspiciously, muttering about "perhaps it was a rat," before finally moving away.
With the crisis averted, I slumped to the bottom of the vat, completely drained of strength, shivering uncontrollably from the cold dye.
Xie Yao also relaxed his grip; in the darkness, it seemed he was gazing at the indigo dye in the vat.
"This world..." His voice was low, laced with suppressed anger. "It's like the water in this dye vat—murky and filthy, capable of staining everything pure and clean black."
As I listened to him, my heart felt as if it were being tightly gripped by something.
"Liu Liu." He suddenly turned to look at me. In the darkness, I couldn't clearly see his expression, but I could sense his intense focus.
"I swear." His voice was soft yet carried the weight of a solemn vow. "I will uncover the truth and cleanse all that is tainted."
His hand reached out, cold and sticky from the dye, gently brushing against that striking indigo in my hair.
"I will restore clarity to this world."
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