Chapter 4656 — A Letter of Six Characters
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
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.)