Chapter 165 — The Back Hill
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 1 of 4
The little river on the back hill ran clear and bright.
Song Yan stood at the water's edge, gazing quietly at the shadows of the trees mirrored in the murmuring current.
In his blue-green brocade robe and jade hairpin, straight-backed and still, he seemed to have become one of the trees in the wood behind him, dissolved into that clear breeze and blue sky—a vast, hushed emptiness shot through with the crystalline purity of a crisp autumn day.
Dou Chi, just stepped down from his soft sedan, halted in his tracks.
Song Yan had already turned at the sound, and smiled. "You came!"
His gaze was gentle, his smile sincere, and Dou Chi abruptly lost his voice. "How have you grown so thin?"
Features once fine and flawless were now sharpened by the gauntness, so that even with a smile on his face he seemed grave and stern.
"Do I?" said Song Yan. "I hadn't noticed."
Dou Yan sighed inwardly.
Anyone caught up in such a business would toss and turn, unable to eat or sleep—and he was carrying injuries besides. That he could stand before her at all was no small feat.
She could not help asking, "Your wounds—how are they?"
"Not bad!" Song Yan clearly did not care to dwell on it, and said briefly, "Gu Yu helped me call in the finest physician in the Imperial Medical Academy; they all say there is no hurrying it, only slow nursing. These days I have done nothing but lie abed, eating and drinking and idling, going nowhere at all." Then he asked her with a smile, "I hear the coming-of-age ceremony was a lively affair. What a pity I could not come and offer congratulations..." A faint regret showed in his eyes, and it was genuine.
Dou Chi could not help grumbling to herself.
Even if you had not run into this wretched mess, even if you had no wounds on you—could you have come? In what capacity, on what pretext?
The thought had no sooner crossed her mind than she felt she was overthinking.
Was there anything Song Yan set his mind to that he could not accomplish?!
Perhaps his inability to come and congratulate her was a good thing.
If he found a pretext to associate with her openly and aboveboard, how could she ever steer clear of the Song family's affairs thereafter?
And then she thought of Ji Yong.
Why was it that every last man she met had this same temperament?!
And then she thought of Wu Shan and Wei Fan... and felt that both Song Yan and Ji Yong gave her a headache.
She simply stopped thinking altogether, glanced about her, pointed to a large bluestone not far off, and said to Song Yan, "Shall we go sit over there?" The words were barely out of her mouth before she felt they were ill-advised—they said Song Yan's injuries were grave. Who knew how he was now? She hurried on, "Never mind, let us just talk standing here?" And privately she wondered whether standing like this was taxing for him...
Song Yan gazed at Dou Xin, the smile flowing from the depths of his eyes all the way to the corners of his brows.
He said softly, "I am fine. The external wounds healed long ago; as for the internal—my eldest uncle felt that training in the external martial arts was too brash and showy. We of the Song family are the Emperor's close attendants, and such studies ill become me. Years ago he specially sought out a master to teach me the internal arts of nourishing life. This discipline is like brewing tea over a gentle flame—it must be done slowly, and there is no hurrying it."
"That is good, then!" Dou Yan recalled that the first time Duan Bing met Song Yan he had said Song Yan seemed to have learned some peculiar martial skill; reflecting that the Jiang and Song families were both houses of a hundred years' prosperity, they must surely possess arts of self-preservation unknown to outsiders, and so she answered casually.
Song Yan smiled faintly. "Last time you told me there were wild vegetables on the estate—do they not grow on this back hill? I have not seen a single one."