Chapter 403 — Meeting
Purple Streets of Chang'an · Page 1 of 4
In the previous life, because Ji Yong had become the abbot of Longfu Temple, Longfu Temple gained the strength to stand against Puji Temple as an equal.
Dou Yan did not remember when the name of Longfu Temple had first begun to ring loud. By the time she heard of Longfu Temple, a single stick of its incense was already hard to come by.
But in this life, though the temple's incense burned abundantly, its name was not yet notable; those who came to offer incense were wives of small households, and one seldom saw a carriage or sedan chair finely adorned.
Standing at the gate of Longfu Temple, Dou Yan could not help raising her eyes to the temple's mountain gate.
She wondered whether Ji Yong would again be bound to Longfu Temple in this life.
She glanced back at Song Yan.
To avoid drawing notice, Song Yan and she had both changed into plain Hangzhou silk of unpatterned weave; she wore only two silver hairpins, traveled light and with few attendants, bringing only Chen He, the Jingui sisters, and a handful of guards such as Duan Bing.
Incense smoke curled through Longfu Temple, and Song Yan and Dou Yan offered incense in Chengguang Hall.
From time to time the women who had come to burn incense stole glances at them.
Chen Jia smiled bitterly.
He had settled Yigui here precisely because the temple's incense was thriving and the crowds passing in and out would let her pass unnoticed among them; but he had forgotten how striking in appearance Song Yan and Dou Zhiwei were. Even in the plainest of clothes, the ease and nobility that showed in their every gesture could not be hidden.
Had he known, he would have done better to settle Yigui in Puji Temple!
He muttered inwardly, and thinking of Yigui's timid little face, he shot Hu Zi a look, signaling him to go and give Yigui word, lest she see Song Yan and Dou Yan and shrink trembling into a corner like a small animal.
Hu Zi understood and hurried off to the side rooms on the east.
Song Yan and Dou Yan donated their incense money, then went with Chen Jia toward the side rooms.
On a midsummer morning, the air turned sultry the moment the sun rose; the great trees of Longfu Temple, thick as a man's embrace, spread shade over the ground, yet could not hold back the fretfulness in Song Yan's heart.
The night before, he had scarcely slept at all.
He could not put a name to what he felt.
Pity. The girl was the daughter of his father's outside woman, the proof of his father's betrayal of his mother. Such a feeling seemed a little out of place.
Hatred. Had he not known what had befallen the girl, he might have hated her; but when he thought that it was precisely his father's irresponsibility that had brought her to such a pass, he found he could not hate her at all.
Liking. That was even less to be spoken of. He had always honored strength; even for a woman, to have reduced herself to such a state showed a flaw in her own character, and how could he bring himself to like her?
Until the moment he stepped into Longfu Temple, he still had not decided how to deal with the girl.
From childhood to manhood, Song Yan had never been so torn.
He could not help taking Dou Zhiwei's hand.
Dou Yan gripped Song Yan's hand tightly in return.
Her feelings were as tangled as Song Yan's.
As a woman herself, she pitied the girl's plight deeply; but at the thought that the girl might be Song Yan's half sister, her partiality for Song Yan left her unable to feel any greater compassion for the girl.
The two walked unhurriedly into the wing room.
In the heat of the day the lattice windows of the wing room were shut tight, and only a single beam of sunlight came through the skylight tile in the roof, leaving the room very dim.
As they came in, Hu Zi was speaking softly with a woman seated in the armchair at the head of the hall; hearing the stir, he quickly withdrew to one side, and the woman slowly rose.