Chapter 4

Chapter 4

When he found her, she was squatting at the bridgehead of Qingxi Town, selling lanterns.

It was a small town where spring rain fell incessantly, the river ran shallow and clear, and wine flags hung low. No one would ever associate such a place with a Demon Princess. Dressed in worn green robes, Yan Guichen walked from the other side of the bridge. From a distance, he saw a girl tucking the last rabbit lantern into a child’s arms, smiling as she charged two coins less than the price.

When she looked up, her eyes struck his heart.

It wasn’t because of a physical resemblance.

It was because of that look in her eyes-the exact same gaze he had remembered for two thousand years.

In that moment, Yan Guichen could barely keep his footing.

But she only took him for a stranger, asking with a smile, “Sir, would you like to buy a lantern?”

His throat tightened, and it took a long time before he managed a response. “Yes.”

“Which one?”

Yan Guichen looked at her and said softly, “The most beautiful one.”

Wen He felt a bit self-conscious under his gaze. She lowered her head and searched through her stock for a long while before finally handing him the Lotus Lanterns she had kept for herself.

“This one isn’t for sale,” she said. “But you don’t look like a liar, so I’ll just give it to you.”

Yan Guichen took the lantern, his palm feeling as if it had been lightly seared by fire.

He suddenly remembered many years ago, when Fei Li had also snatched a Lotus Lanterns from his hand at a festival, laughing as she said, “You Upper Immortals have terrible taste. Something like this should obviously be red to look good.”

That night, Yan Guichen stood on the riverbank outside the town, watching Wen He through the city lights for a long time.

In this life, her parents were dead, and she made a living by crafting lanterns. Her life was far from wealthy, yet she was still willing to give the driest spot under her eaves to a sick neighbor child. She could be happy over a bowl of hot soup and would complain about mud getting into her shoes when it rained.

She was Fei Li, and yet she was not Fei Li.

For the first time, Yan Guichen felt a sense of trepidation.

If she only wanted to be Wen He in this life, should he really thrust the blood debts of her past life back into her hands?

Ultimately, Yan Guichen stayed in Qingxi Town.

He rented an old house at the entrance of the town, claiming his surname was Yan and that he was a rogue cultivator practicing medicine. Seeing his handsome features and extraordinary medical skills, the townsfolk accepted the newcomer as Mr. Yan within a few days.

At first, Wen He was somewhat wary of him.

She always found this man strange. He appeared cold and aloof, yet he always seemed to show up at her most pathetic moments. When the wooden wheel of her lantern rack got stuck in a stone crevice, he was the one who knelt to lift it out for her. When she had a fever at night, he was the one who braved the rain to deliver a cooling decoction. When her hand was cut by a bamboo sliver, he was the one who bowed his head to bandage it, his movements so practiced it was as if he had done it many times before.

“Mr. Yan,” Wen He finally couldn’t help but ask, “are you this good to everyone?”

Yan Guichen was tying a white cloth around her finger. His movements paused at her words.

“No.”

“Then why are you like this only to me?”

He looked up at her, his eyes dark and deep, like the river at dusk.

“Because I owe you.”

Wen He was stunned for a moment, then laughed. “Did we know each other before?”

Yan Guichen wanted to say yes-that they had known each other a very, very long time ago. But when the words reached his lips, he only whispered, “Perhaps.”

Wen He took it as a joke and didn’t press further.

Later, she would still come to knock on his door to borrow a medicine stove, a paper umbrella, or a blunt short blade to shave bamboo. She called it borrowing, but she would always leave behind a small bowl of hot silver ear soup or a new lantern she had made herself when she left.

Yan Guichen kept every single item.

He even began to grow greedy-greedy enough to want these days to last a little longer, and then a little longer still. Ideally, they would last until her hair turned white and her teeth fell out, and she would still never know that he had once personally sent her to face punishment in the Endless Prison.

But in the dead of night, Wen He still had nightmares.

She often woke up startled in her dreams, drenched in cold sweat, crying out a word she didn’t even recognize herself.

“Mr. Yan,” she asked him softly one night, sitting under the veranda wrapped in a cloak, “can a person remember pain that doesn’t belong to them for no reason at all?”

Yan Guichen stood behind her, his knuckles slowly tightening.

After a long silence, he finally said, “Yes.”

“Then, if one day I remember things I shouldn’t, will you leave?”

Yan Guichen looked at her thin silhouette, feeling as if fate was handing him a blade once again.

“No,” he said.

This time, he answered faster than he had four thousand years ago.