Chapter 4656 — A Letter of Six Characters

While Xu Lingchong and Kang Jingming were here scheming and plotting, every other faction was likewise rousing itself, making all manner of preparations for the coming West Island trial. Wei Zhao alone remained as he always did: once back in his room, he sat down to meditate and cultivate.

This time, however, he ended his meditation in less than half an hour. There was no other reason—Ning Xuefei's expression, at once faintly reproachful and faintly hopeful, kept rising unbidden in his mind, and at such a moment he truly had no heart for cultivation.

Though he had secretly made up his mind at the banquet to enter this West Island trial, now that the hour had come Wei Zhao still hesitated. The whole business had descended far too suddenly, and his relationship with Ning Xuefei had hardly ripened of itself—they were nowhere near the point of discussing marriage.

And if he truly succeeded this time, what of his other confidantes? Would that be fair to them? What would they think once they learned of it?

Yet Wei Zhao could not bring himself to harden his heart and simply abandon Ning Xuefei either. Every time he recalled the look on the girl's face at the banquet, an ache he could not suppress rose in his chest.

He was still caught in this uncertainty when the door was suddenly pushed open. Wei Zhao looked up at the sound and saw, to his surprise, that the arrivals were Shangguan Lan'er and Han Jingyi. Why had the two of them left the comforts of the island mistress's palace to come out so late at night?

"What are you two doing here? Not sleeping at this hour?" Wei Zhao asked, eyeing them curiously. Then he added, "Where's Feifei? Why hasn't she come?"

Only the one who tied the knot can untie it. To resolve this awkward predicament, Wei Zhao felt he had to speak plainly with Ning Xuefei face to face—at the very least, he first had to understand her intentions beyond all doubt. What if those so-called hints had all along been a misunderstanding born of his own wishful thinking?

This concerned Ning Xuefei's lifelong happiness, and not the smallest carelessness could be permitted. Even if he was to help her out of this deadlock, Wei Zhao felt the one who must take the lead had to be Ning Xuefei herself. Only if she stated her wishes with her own lips could Wei Zhao devote himself wholeheartedly to fulfilling them; otherwise everything rested on guesswork, and his heart would never be at ease.

"She couldn't come." Shangguan Lan'er shrugged helplessly. Near vermilion one grows red, near ink one grows black—she had mastered Wei Zhao's little habitual gestures to perfection.

"Couldn't come?" Wei Zhao was taken aback, then could not help asking anxiously, "Why? Has something happened?"

"Don't worry, Brother Wei Zhao, Feifei's fine. The reason she couldn't come out with us is the rules of West Island. Any noble lady who has reached the age of eighteen must remain in her chambers awaiting the choice of a husband and may no longer go running about outside. Feifei is the princess of West Island—so many eyes across the island are fixed on her," Han Jingyi explained.

"So that's how it is. In other words, until a husband is settled, she's effectively lost her personal freedom?" Wei Zhao could not help feeling that Ning Xuefei's lot was rather pitiable. To be born princess of West Island was her good fortune, and at the same time her great misfortune.

Though he had been on West Island only a few days, Wei Zhao had noticed a most interesting phenomenon. West Island was said to be a place where feminist thinking prevailed, yet the higher one went, the less pronounced that feminism became; in their conduct and dealings, the upper echelons resembled a patriarchal society more and more, and in some respects even surpassed it.

Take marriage. In a properly feminist society, the woman should hold the absolute initiative—it would be more fitting for the men to be kept waiting in their chambers. And indeed, among the common folk of West Island that was so. But once one reached the level of the nobility, the women were instead expected to stay behind closed doors and never step outside.

Wei Zhao surmised that West Island did this deliberately, and its chief purpose was likely to keep in step with the outside world. After all, noble ladies might well be married off to great powers beyond the island; if they too adhered absolutely to feminist doctrine, it would not only fail to benefit West Island but might bring down catastrophe upon it.

"True enough. But being confined to the island mistress's palace is no great hardship for Feifei. She's a homebody much like Jingjing—she's in the research room right now," Shangguan Lan'er said. Words from the secular world came to her as easily as if she had been born to them; she spoke them more fluently than Wei Zhao himself.

"That may be so, but she can't be feeling very good about it. After all, her lifelong happiness is now left to the mercy of fate." Wei Zhao sighed and lapsed into silence.

"Brother Wei Zhao, if you aren't chosen this time, Feifei will grieve for the rest of her life. You absolutely must not fail!" Han Jingyi said, her eyes burning as she looked at Wei Zhao.

"That's right, that's right! Feifei would sooner die than marry one of those greed-blinded wretches. Junior Brother, this time you can only win, never lose—we're all counting on you!" Shangguan Lan'er urged him on.

"Well, that's only our own wishful thinking. Feifei may not see it that way..." Wei Zhao could only smile bitterly. He did not know what Ning Xuefei truly felt, and that was precisely what made it so difficult.

"Who says so!" Han Jingyi suddenly produced a letter and handed it to Wei Zhao. "Brother Wei Zhao, Feifei asked me specially to give you this."

Wei Zhao was slightly startled. He took the sheet and opened it, and found that it held no content at all—only a single line of delicate handwriting. To be precise, just six characters: See me, or never see me again.

At first glance it read like a stream-of-consciousness prose poem, baffling anyone as to what she meant to express. But this could not stump Wei Zhao. He had once been a top student in the secular world, stuffed since childhood with every kind of knowledge by Old Man Wei; for a time he had even applied himself with a battered little netbook to the study of poetry and classical prose, the better—so the fine excuse went—to elevate a killer's self-cultivation...

After a moment's thought, Wei Zhao understood what Ning Xuefei meant. It seemed subtle, yet in truth she had spoken with perfect directness.

Either they would go on meeting always, or they would never meet again—from then on, each at the far ends of the earth, with no further intersection between them.

How they might go on meeting always—the answer was self-evident. And if that could not be achieved, then once Ning Xuefei was married to another, the birthday banquet just past would have been their final parting.

Holding that thin sheet of letter paper, gazing at the delicate handwriting upon it, Wei Zhao stood rooted to the spot. Never before had he imagined that at heart Ning Xuefei was such an unyielding woman: either they would stay together for a lifetime, or each would go their separate way—no room for compromise, no middle ground between the two.

Those brief six characters looked like a choice, yet in truth there was no choice at all. Wei Zhao could never leave her to her fate. With this declaration, so close to absolute, Ning Xuefei had made her feelings unmistakably clear to him. (To be continued.)