Chu Wanning lay on the bed, his mind groggy. His consciousness was sometimes clear and sometimes blurry.

     In a daze, he seemed to hear two people arguing. It seemed to be Shi Mei and Mo Ran. Later, the sound of the quarrel disappeared, and the only sound that could be heard was the whistling of the wind.

     Later, he seemed to be lying on a warm bed, and someone was talking to him. The broken voice seemed to come from across an ocean, and he couldn’t hear it clearly. He could only occasionally hear a few words about his past life and something like “Shizun.” He vaguely felt that it was Shi Mei’s voice, but he didn’t have much energy to process it. The words quickly dissipated like the morning fog.

     His memories were slowly becoming complete and clear little by little. The memories of his past were like rainwater flowing into a river and finally rushing towards the sea.

     The first thing he dreamed of was a serene courtyard built atop Sisheng Peak in the Red Lotus Pavilion. The courtyard was covered with vines and flowers, and when the wind blew, fragrant snow fell, filling the paper with flowers.

     He was sitting under a veranda, writing a letter in front of a stone table.

     The letter couldn’t be sent out; Emperor Taxian-Jun did not allow him to have contact with outsiders, nor did he allow him to raise pigeons or any other animals. Even outside the Red Lotus Pavilion, there were countless layers of screaming curses.

     But Chu Wanning still wrote.

     It was so lonely—one person, one side of the world—and he would probably spend the rest of his life like this.

     To say he wasn’t bored would be a lie.

     The letter was written to Xue Meng, but it didn’t contain much. It was nothing more than asking about how things had been recently, whether he was well, how the sun and moon were outside, and how his old friends were doing.

     But in fact, there weren’t any old friends.

     So, he slowly wrote a letter all afternoon without much content. When he finished writing, he was a little lost in thought. He absentmindedly remembered the days when his three little disciples were by his side. He had taught them how to write poetry and paint.

     Xue Meng and Shi Mei learned very quickly. Only Mo Ran wrote a character wrong three or four times, so he had to teach him step by step.

     What did he write at that time?

     Chu Wanning was in a daze as the brush and ink slowly spread out on the rice paper.

     First, he wrote: “The body is like a bodhi tree, the heart is like a mirror.” Then he wrote: “Life has no roots, drifting like dust on the road.” Every stroke was neat and tidy.

     Whether he was writing a book or writing a letter, his handwriting had always been neat and clear. He was afraid that those who read it would not be able to understand it or that his disciples would learn to read the wrong words and go astray.

     His words were like his person, with a very proud backbone.

     He wrote: “Where are my old friends?” and “The sea is vast and the mountains are far away.”

     Later on, the wind blew the wisteria flowers onto the paper. He couldn’t bear to brush them away. Looking at the faint yet magnificent purple, his pen slowly turned, and he wrote: “When I wake up from the dream and see the light rain, the mountains and rivers are still as gentle as before.”

     “May I be like the stars and you the moon, our light shining brightly for each other night after night.”

     As he wrote, his eyes couldn’t help but soften, as if he had returned to the peaceful days of the past.

     The wind picked up, causing the paper to flutter. Some paperweights that hadn’t been pressed properly were blown up, and the papers scattered all over the ground in the mottled afternoon sunlight.

     Chu Wanning put down his brush, sighed, and went to pick up the letters and poems on the ground.

     One after another, they fell on the grass beside the stone steps, among the broken flowers and withered leaves. He was about to pick up a piece of paper amidst the fragrance of fallen flowers.

     Suddenly, a slender and shapely hand with distinct joints appeared in his field of vision and picked up the page before he could.

     “What are you writing?”

     Chu Wanning was startled. He straightened up and saw a tall and handsome man standing in front of him. It was Taxian-Jun, Mo Weiyu, who had arrived at the pavilion some time ago.

     Chu Wanning said, “...Nothing.”

     Mo Ran was dressed in a black and gold robe, wearing a nine-beaded crown on his head and a dragon scale ring on his finger. It was obvious that he had just returned from the imperial court. He first glanced coldly at Chu Wanning, then flattened the paper in his hand. After reading one line, his eyes narrowed. “Seeing the letter is like meeting in person and seeing your comforting face.”

     After a moment of silence, he raised his eyes and asked, “What does that mean?”

     “Nothing.”

     Chu Wanning wanted to take the letter back, but Mo Ran simply raised his hand to stop him.

     “Don't,” he said. “Why are you so nervous?” After saying this, he carefully read the letter again. His gaze swept across several lines, and he said calmly, “Oh. Is it written to Xue Meng?”

     “Written casually.” Chu Wanning didn’t want to implicate anyone, so he said, “I didn’t plan to send it out.”

     Mo Ran sneered, “You don’t have the ability to send it out.”

     Chu Wanning had nothing else to say to him, so he turned around and went back to the table to clean up the ink, paper, and inkstone. Unexpectedly, Taxian-Jun followed him, unfolded the sleeves of his black and gold robe, and pressed down on the piece of paper he was about to put away.

     He raised his phoenix eyes and looked at Taxian-Jun’s mischievous face.

     “...”

     Forget it. If he wanted it, he’d give it to him.

     So he withdrew his hand and went to take another one, only to be caught by Mo Ran again.

     Just like that, he took one, and Mo Ran stopped another. In the end, Chu Wanning was finally a little impatient. He didn’t know what madness this person had, but he looked up and said gloomily, “What do you want?”

     “What do you mean by ‘seeing the letter is like meeting in person and seeing your comforting face’?’” Mo Ran looked at him with a deep and serene gaze, then opened his thin lips slightly. “Tell me.”

     The flower branches and vine leaves swayed gently, and in the mottled light and shadow, Chu Wanning couldn’t help but think back of Mo Ran, who had just become his disciple. His smile and words were very gentle, and he asked respectfully with a smile, “Shizun, ‘the body is like a bodhi tree, the heart is like a mirror;’ what does this mean? Shizun, can you teach me?”

     Comparing the two, Taxian-Jun’s aggressive attitude made Chu Wanning’s heart ache. He lowered his head, stopped talking, and closed his eyes.

     He didn’t say anything, and Mo Ran became increasingly gloomy. In this silence, he picked up the letters on the table and read them one by one. The more he read, the more dangerous his eyes became. The man who could give his reigning era title a name such as “Ji Ba” murmured thoughtfully, racking his brains for the meanings of these sentences beside the stone table.

     In the end, he suddenly flicked the stack of letters to the ground with a sinister look on his face.

     He looked up coldly.

     “Chu Wanning, you miss him.”

     “...No.”

     He didn’t want to tangle with him, so he turned around and was about to leave. However, before he had taken more than two steps, his sleeve was grabbed, followed by a violent and ferocious grip on his chin. As the world spun, he was suddenly pushed onto the stone table.

     Mo Ran’s grip was so strong, so ruthless, that in the blink of an eye, there were already bruises on his cheek.

     The sunlight shone through the vines and into Chu Wanning’s eyes, which reflected Taxian-Jun’s somewhat crazed and twisted face.

     Handsome and pale.

     Blazing hot.

     Taxian-Jun didn’t know the word shame and began tearing Chu Wanning’s clothes apart. If there were other reasons for pushing him down on the stone table, then there was obviously no other reason for tearing off his clothes. Chu Wanning almost flew into a rage out of humiliation as he shouted, “Mo Weiyu—!”

     His tone full of anger and disappointment didn’t extinguish Mo Ran’s evil fire but instead poured down like hot oil splashing into the raging flames.

     When it suddenly invaded, Chu Wanning only felt extreme pain.

     He didn’t want to touch Mo Ran’s back, so he only grabbed the edge of the stone table and gasped in a low voice, “Evil beast…”

     There was a bloody aura in Mo Ran’s eyes, but he did not care about the words “evil beast,” and only said sullenly, “It’s fine if you don’t explain. I really shouldn’t ask you again. You can no longer be considered This Venerable One’s Shizun.”

     His movements were fierce and brutal, only seeking his own pleasure, as if Chu Wanning’s feelings were like dirt, worthless.

     “What is Wanning now?” He was almost gnashing his teeth. “You’re just a side concubine, a forbidden concubine… Spread your legs a little more for This Venerable One.”

     In the midst of their entanglement, Mo Ran flipped him over. The paper and ink on the table were all messed up, and the writing brushes fell to the ground. Chu Wanning was pinned to the side of the table by his hand. His lower body was in endless pain, and the world in front of his eyes became vast and limitless.

     He looked at every word and sentence, every stroke of the pen.

     The body is like a bodhi tree, the heart is like a mirror.

     Where are my old friends?

     The sea is vast and the mountains are far away.

     Every word struck his heart.

     In front of his eyes was the young Mo Ran smiling at him, his dark curtain of lashes trembling gently like a black butterfly flower perching on the ground.

     His ears were filled with Taxian-Jun’s deep breathing. He was insulting and humiliating him as he said hoarsely, “Chu Wanning… Heh, This Venerable One’s Chu Fei is actually still keeping others in his heart?”

     “What do you mean by ‘may I be like the stars and you the moon, our light shining brightly for each other night after night’?” There was a murderous intent in his voice. “Do you really think I don’t understand at all?”

     Chu Wanning gritted his teeth and leaned on the stone table. There were bites and red marks all over, but his phoenix eyes were stubborn. “You don’t understand.”

     Even though he knew that talking back would result in harsher treatment, he still said stubbornly, “You don’t understand.”

     You don’t know who the old friends are, and you don’t know why the sea is vast and the mountains are far away.

     You don’t know who the stars are and who the moon is.

     You… won’t understand.

     After a long time of madness, Mo Ran finally let him go.

     Chu Wanning’s clothes were in disarray. He lay in the wisteria flowers, amongst the poems and ink. The corners of his eyes were red, like the bright color dyed on the fingertips when the rogue flowers were pinched off.

     His lips were bitten, and there was blood everywhere.

     He got up and slowly put on his clothes… After being imprisoned for so long, from the initial heart-wrenching pain to the present, there was no greater sorrow than a dead heart.

     What else could he do now that his spiritual core was destroyed? His so-called dignity was only left after the fact. He had to stubbornly put on his clothes, unwilling to let others do it.

     While he was doing all this, Mo Ran sat by the stone table, holding the letters he had written, and looked at them one by one.

     When he saw the one "Dreaming of Awakening to the World to see the light rain," his hand seemed to freeze slightly, but he quickly turned over the letter and said with ridicule, “His bones are soft, but his handwriting is still beautiful.”

     He put the stack of letters into his robe and then stood up.

     The wind blew through his robes, and the golden threads on his black robe flowed with splendor.

     “Let’s go.”

     Chu Wanning didn’t speak.

     Mo Ran glanced at him, the shadows of the wisteria flowers making his dark eyes seem even darker. “You don’t want to send This Venerable One off?”

     Under the flowing shade of the trees, Chu Wanning’s voice was low and hoarse as he slowly said, “I once taught you.”

     Mo Ran was stunned. “What?”

     “Seeing the letter is like meeting in person and seeing your comforting face.” After he said this, he finally raised his eyelashes and glanced at the man. “I taught you how to write, but you forgot.”

     “You taught me to write?” Mo Ran frowned. He was not deliberately teasing Chu Wanning. From the looks of it, he really had no memory of it.

     The man who was about to leave stopped again.

     Mo Ran asked, “When did this happen?”

     Chu Wanning looked at him and said, “A long time ago.”

     After he said this, he turned around and walked towards the house in the Red Lotus Pavilion.

     Mo Ran stood in place, not leaving for a while but also not coming in. Later, Chu Wanning caught a glimpse of him returning to the stone table from the window. He was flipping through the stack of letters under the paperweight.

     Chu Wanning closed the window.

     That night, because he was tortured and didn’t know how to properly clean himself up, he caught a cold.

     It was originally not a big deal, and he thought Mo Ran wouldn’t know about it, but that day, for some unknown reason, he heard Liu-gong say that it seemed like Song Qiutong had cooked a bowl of wontons, and for some reason, it angered Taxian-Jun. Not only did he not stay at the empress’ residence for the night, he even didn’t eat dinner and left in a huff.

     Deep into the night, it started to rain heavily. At this moment, someone came to the Red Lotus Pavilion.

     “His Majesty has ordered that Chu-zongshi move to his bedchamber.”

     These personal attendants clearly knew the relationship between Mo Ran and Chu Wanning, but they were still asked by Mo Ran to call him zongshi.

     If it wasn’t for the trace of kindness in his heart, it was malice and viciousness.

     Chu Wanning’s body was in great pain. His face looked very pale, and he was very gloomy. He said, “I won’t go.”

     “His Majesty has—”

     “What does he have? I’m not going.”

     “...”

     Sleeping with a patient was no fun. In the past, when he was unusually ill, Mo Ran wouldn’t force him to do anything.

     However, not long after, the servant who had been dismissed returned. He entered the Red Lotus Pavilion and bowed in front of Chu Wanning, who was coughing violently. With an indifferent expression, he said, “His Majesty has ordered that if it’s a minor indisposition, he would like to invite zongshi to head to Wushan Palace to serve in his bed.”