SS CH66

There are some things that can be understood rationally but can never be accepted emotionally.

Zhou Shen had more right than anyone to hate Qin Hebai, yet he also knew he could not.

For the country and the people, Qin Hebai possessed great righteousness; to his brother and to himself, he had shown great kindness. Regardless of the original intent behind this grace and duty, just as Zhou Xi had said, he understood better than anyone that Qin Hebai’s feelings were undeniably genuine.

Zhou Shen felt like he had lived the past few years as an utter joke. Carrying a jug of wine, he sat by the moat and drank from dusk until dawn. Only after the morning dew had completely soaked his hair and clothes did he stagger back indoors, drag out his parents’ spirit tablets, kneel before them for a long time, and then walk out the door.

Three days later, Zhou Shen became the closed-door disciple of Ruan Qingxing. The Southern Scholar personally intervened to erase his past, and from then on, his surname was changed to Ruan.

On the day of his apprenticeship ceremony, Ruan Shen shadowed Ruan Qingxing and met a multitude of people—scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants—all prominent figures in their own right. Yet most of them wore faces thick with flattery, spinning lotus flowers with their silver tongues while speaking words worth less than dog shit.

He grew weary of watching. Ruan Qingxing, taking a moment while sipping tea, murmured quietly, “Find it annoying?”

Before he could reply, Ruan Qingxing set down his cup. “I find it annoying too, but you must get used to it.”

“Why?”

“Because I am old,” Ruan Qingxing replied. “One day you will become me, and you will help me watch over these people and affairs.”

There was too much revealed in those words. Ruan Qingxing had many disciples, and Ruan Shen had the least seniority. Yet, the old man’s tone suggested he intended to pass down not just his martial arts and scholarship, but far, far more.

Ruan Shen wanted to ask for clarity but was suddenly startled by a steed bursting into the courtyard.

Atop the tall, date-red horse sat a man in dark blue robes holding a red-tasseled spear. It was Qin Hebai, who by all rights should have been stationed at the northern border. Covered in the dust of travel with dark, exhausted shadows beneath his eyes, he swept a brief glance over the crowded courtyard before his gaze locked onto Ruan Shen and Ruan Qingxing. Cupping his hands, he said, “Prime Minister Ruan, Yunfei has a few words he would like to discuss privately with your disciple, if I may…”

Without waiting for him to finish, Ruan Qingxing pushed Ruan Shen forward and smiled. “Seeing General Qin’s demeanor, it must be an urgent matter. This old man naturally has no reason to obstruct… However, returning to the capital privately without a royal summons—I wonder how the General plans to explain this to His Majesty?”

He lowered his voice for the latter half of the sentence. Ruan Shen’s expression shifted, but Qin Hebai acted as if he hadn’t heard a thing. He simply grabbed Ruan Shen’s hand and pulled him outside.

Before Ruan Shen could even utter a complete sentence, he was hauled onto the horse’s back. With a fierce crack of the whip, they galloped madly all the way to the moat.

The vegetation by the river had withered and scattered, revealing the rustling chill of the autumn wind. Across the river lay the road out of the capital. Seeing that Qin Hebai had no intention of stopping, Ruan Shen drove an elbow hard into his chest. Predictably, the strike was blocked, but he instantly channeled his strength into his other palm and struck the horse’s back. The horse shrieked in pain and went wild, nearly throwing them both off. Seizing the opportunity, Ruan Shen flipped off the horse and stared coldly at Qin Hebai. “What are you doing?”

Qin Hebai steadied the horse and looked closely at Ruan Shen.

In less than a month, the person before him had completely transformed. The clothes he used to wear so carelessly were now meticulously neat, swapped for the scholar’s long gown that Qin Hebai disliked the most. His hair was bound high. He looked starkly different from the explosive, mischievous boy he used to be; he now carried the refined air of a true scholar.

More than anything, the playful scowls and smiles had faded from his face. Though he hadn’t yet mastered completely hiding his emotions, he had already become utterly unfathomable.

For some reason, the bellyful of words Qin Hebai had prepared suddenly wouldn’t come out. He held it in for a long time before finally managing a single sentence: “Your brother asked me to bring you back to the northern border.”

“My brother?” Ruan Shen said lightly. “Has General Qin found the wrong person? Ruan Shen hails from the Eastern Province, his parents died early, and he is an only child. What brother?”

“A-Shen!” Qin Hebai hadn’t expected him to speak like this. His expression grew agitated, but he was never good at coaxing people. Over the years, he had always appeased Zhou Shen through actions, not words. Right now, he was at a total loss. “You… don’t be like this.”

“Like what?” Ruan Shen stared at him. “General Qin, as the commander of the northern border, you left your post without authorization to return to the capital, and now inexplicably want to drag me across the river. And you ask me like what?”

Hearing his words, the sheer exhaustion of the hurried journey suddenly crashed down on Qin Hebai. His hands and feet turned to ice. He fell silent for a moment before saying, “I am the one who failed you. You… shouldn’t take your anger out on Zhou Xi for my mistakes, nor should you punish yourself.”

Complex, unspeakable emotions churned violently in Ruan Shen’s heart. Sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and salty stewed into a nauseating hodgepodge. He tasted every single flavor in his chest, then looked up. “Who I am, what I want to do—what does it have to do with you?”

He turned to leave, but Qin Hebai violently grabbed his sleeve. They pulled back and forth until Ruan Shen finally lost his temper. He struck out with a backhand palm, clashing directly with Qin Hebai. The general remained as steady as a mountain, while Ruan Shen stumbled back three steps, finally creating a distance between them.

Ruan Shen quietly wiped the trace of blood from the corner of his mouth. Without looking back, he said, “General Qin, rather than engaging in meaningless entanglement, you’d better return to your border pass. After all, you secured it with the blood and bones of countless people. If it were to be lost again, then you truly wouldn’t be able to face anyone.”

Left holding only a torn scrap of fabric in his hand, Qin Hebai watched his retreating silhouette drift further and further away. Just as Ruan Shen was about to disappear, he suddenly shouted, “A-Shen!”

Ruan Shen’s footsteps paused as Qin Hebai’s voice echoed from behind: “What will it take for you to finally forgive me?”

He had thought about this question for a long time, and Qin Hebai had been waiting all along, like a prisoner awaiting his final execution order.

He finally received Ruan Shen’s answer. It was light and airy, yet it carried enough weight to crush everything Qin Hebai had bet his life on—whether it was his fortune, his survival, his success, or his honor.

Ruan Shen’s figure vanished behind a row of withered, rotting tree trunks, leaving behind only one sentence: “I don’t hate you.”

Qin Hebai, I don’t hate you, so I will never forgive you.

Following Ruan Qingxing was harder to endure than Ruan Shen had ever imagined. Not just because Ruan Qingxing was a strict master, but more importantly, because aside from being the Southern Scholar, he was a powerful, calculating minister.

Once his scholarship and martial arts were finally acknowledged to have progressed, Ruan Qingxing began taking him along to handle troublesome disputes. Everything he heard was a theatrical play; everything he saw was a calculated trap. It felt as though everyone wore multiple masks, acting one way to a person’s face and entirely differently behind their back.

Ruan Qingxing saw his disgust but pretended not to notice. Unable to resist, Ruan Shen could only submit to adversity. Gradually, he learned how to posture and put on airs from these very people. He saw plenty of hollow, gilded veneers and weathered countless vicious power struggles.

In two years, he went from initial revulsion, to opportunistic interest, and finally, to total acclimation.

When he finally passed the imperial examinations and took up a post in the Hanlin Academy, he finally received the answer to his old question through Ruan Qingxing’s praise.

Ruan Qingxing was not merely treating him as a disciple; he was grooming him as an heir. To inherit his civil and martial prowess, his schemes, and eventually replace his position to finish the work he could not.

He said to his master, “You intentionally told me the truth at that specific time.”

“If you were destined for a life of mediocrity, you wouldn’t have needed to know the truth,” Ruan Qingxing replied plainly. “Useless people are not worth wasting effort on. You must remember this too.”

“But at that time, I wasn’t worthy of shifu spending so much effort,” Ruan Shen said, closing his book. “It was for Yunfei-ge?”

Ruan Qingxing smiled. “I didn’t expect you to still be willing to call him that. If General Qin heard it, he would certainly be overjoyed.”

“What I call him is my own business,” Ruan Shen looked up at Ruan Qingxing. “Judging by shifu’s tone, it seems he hasn’t been faring well recently.”

Ruan Qingxing praised his sharpness and handed over a letter. It detailed a military official in the northwest who had severely neglected his duties. Yet, that fool Qin Hebai, out of nostalgia for old ties, had only given him a light punishment for a capital crime that should have implicated the man’s entire family. What’s more, Qin Hebai hadn’t covered his tracks well, and a spy had reported it straight to Ruan Qingxing.

Ruan Shen frowned so hard he could crush a fly between his brows. Such a massive affair could not be covered up. Ruan Qingxing couldn’t personally step forward to impeach Qin Hebai, so naturally, he needed a disciple to do it for him. Placing the letter in front of him made the intention glaringly obvious.

Without much hesitation, he shoved the letter into his robes and said, “This disciple understands.”

Ruan Qingxing asked with a smile, “Doing this might truly sever your ties with him forever. Can you bear to part with it?”

Ruan Shen didn’t answer. He slammed the Southern Scholar’s door and strode away, returning to his own room to pick up a brush and write a letter.

The recipient was addressed as “Yunfei-ge,” but he had absolutely no intention of sending it. The “Yunfei-ge” in his memory had completely vanished the moment he learned the truth; the two of them could never go back to how they were.

Yet, when he was still “Zhou Shen,” he had been accustomed to telling “Yunfei-ge” everything. It was both confiding and venting, a habit he couldn’t break even now. From two years ago to the present, he had written one letter every single year.

Sometimes Ruan Shen found it laughable. Back when they were in close proximity, he found it annoying if Qin Hebai spoke even ten words to him. Now that they were separated by vast distances and everything had changed, it was he who had a bellyful of words to say, only able to pour them out onto paper and hide them away in a wooden box.

He wrote eloquently across six pages, half of which were spent viciously cursing Qin Hebai as a fool who ruined great plans for small sentiments. Only after cursing to his heart’s content did he write down his next move—since it couldn’t be hidden, rather than waiting for someone else to kick him while he was down, it would be better to expose the matter himself, figure out a way to blur the internal details, and end it with loud thunder but little rain. At the very least, it would teach that idiot a lesson.

When he finished writing, he put the letter away and finally had a good night’s sleep.

The next day, Ruan Shen made an exception and attended the morning court, publicly impeaching Qin Hebai for neglecting public duty for private reasons and shielding a criminal official, shocking the entire court. Far away at the border, Qin Hebai was summoned back. This was their first meeting after more than two years of separation. Qin Hebai looked at him with a gaze full of shock and realization, while Ruan Shen’s cold facade almost cracked.

His bad premonition came true. He didn’t know if this fool had taken the wrong medicine, but Qin Hebai actually pleaded guilty right in the royal court and requested that Ruan Shen thoroughly investigate him. Although Ruan Shen had planned to intervene in the investigation, assisting from the sidelines was entirely different from being the primary investigator. He would go from peering in the dark to being a glaring target closely watched by everyone. Trying to cover for this fool would be nearly impossible.

Ruan Shen’s two years of cultivated restraint broke that day; he barely resisted the urge to beat the Great General right there in the court. After the court was dismissed, his face was utterly dark, yet Qin Hebai still had the gall to chase after him.

Qin Hebai said, “A-Shen, I was wrong.”

Ruan Shen was mentally exhausted. Too lazy to even speak to him, he walked faster. This rare reunion was abruptly choked off before he could even clearly see if Qin Hebai had aged or grown thinner.

He busied himself investigating the case, and actually unearthed something massive—that military official hadn’t just neglected his duties; he was a spy colluding with foreign states.

When he discovered this, there were many people around. Ruan Shen’s very first thought was to destroy the evidence and subsequently detain and threaten everyone who had seen it. But just as the thought arose, a hand pressed firmly onto his shoulder.

Ruan Qingxing had arrived unnoticed, looking down at him as if he could see straight through all of his thoughts.

Ruan Shen finally understood. Ruan Qingxing had known about this from the very beginning. He had perfectly calculated Ruan Shen’s mindset, concealed the true gravity of the treason, and let him stick his neck out, thereby pushing him right into the teeth of the storm.

His self-proclaimed cleverness had long since made him nothing but a blade in someone else’s hand.

He couldn’t quite remember the events that followed. He only knew that the Southern Scholar, who was “bedridden with illness” in the eyes of outsiders, took over the case from him and sent people to follow the vines to get the melon, eventually dragging out numerous troubles of all sizes. These minor faults would be harmless in normal times, but right now, they constituted a catastrophic disaster.

Qin Hebai was flogged twenty times in the royal court and confined to his manor for a month. Ruan Shen tossed and turned, thought long and hard, and finally lost his composure, vaulting the wall into the General’s Manor in the dead of night.

The moment his feet touched the ground, he was almost skewered alive by a spear. A girl with willow brows and a lotus face was practicing in the courtyard and mistook him for an assassin. Because the girl could not speak, she didn’t call for guards; she simply thrust her spear forward. Thirty-six spear techniques whistled with the wind—the exact forms of the Suolong Spear.

He had heard that Qin Hebai had a mute sister named Qin Liurong, though he had never had the chance to meet her. After dodging for a dozen exchanges, Ruan Shen heard coughing from inside the house, sounding as if Qin Hebai was coming out.

At that moment, he suddenly lost all his courage. Not daring to look at the man, he vaulted back over the courtyard wall and sprinted madly away.

After that, he never went to the Qin residence again. Qin Hebai sent people to deliver letters three or four times, but he refused to accept any of them, blocking them all at the door.

It wasn’t until the day Qin Hebai left the capital that more than half the military officials in the court went to see him off. When Ruan Shen heard the news, he stomped his feet in fury. This fool had already provoked the Emperor’s suspicion, yet he still didn’t know how to hide his edge. He truly deserved it if he died from his own stupidity.

After smashing two teapots, Ruan Shen couldn’t resist going anyway. Using his qinggong skills, he rushed out and caught sight of Qin Hebai more than ten miles outside the city. He traveled light with a small retinue, riding through the dust toward Jinghan Pass. Behind him was the towering capital, but his gaze remained fixed straight ahead.

Ruan Shen hid in the branches of a large tree, watching him fade into the distance, and cursed, “Get the hell out of here.”

Get the hell out, you fool. The royal court isn’t a place you belong. Hurry up and roll back to your border pass and Jianghu, and it’s best if you never come back for the rest of your life.

After returning, Ruan Shen prayed day and night that he would never cross paths with Qin Hebai again. Every time he met this idiot, trouble invariably followed. Right now, he was all alone; if something happened, only Zhou Xi would shed tears for him. Qin Hebai, on the other hand, had over a hundred distant relatives in his clan despite not having a wife or children. If a disaster struck, Ruan Shen couldn’t bear the collateral damage.

Unfortunately, because he never respected the gods and buddhas in normal times, his last-minute prayers proved useless.

Nine months later, the late Emperor vomited blood and fell critically ill due to an “immortal elixir.” The entire court was implicated, pulling countless people down with it—even the Second Prince was dragged into the fray. For a time, everyone lived in terror.

But Ruan Shen knew perfectly well: the critical illness and vomiting blood were entirely fake. The late Emperor was perfectly fine. He was merely using this method to suppress his increasingly powerful second son and eradicate his most loathed thorn in the side—Qin Hebai.

The late Emperor had grown old. He was always a man with more suspicions than actual capability, and the older he got, the more terrified he was of death. The older he got, the more he felt that everyone was coveting his throne. Because of this, he even grew paranoid of his own biological son. All because, in a momentary lapse of judgment years ago, he had handed the Second Prince military power. Watching the prince maintain a close relationship with Qin Hebai and seeing their weight in the court grow heavier by the day, the Emperor finally came to bitterly regret his own decisions.