Chapter 147

The autumn night wind carried a chill, slipping through the mottled wisteria trellis. The dry vines groaned in the breeze, sending the last few withered leaves spiraling toward the sky. Like exhausted butterflies, the leaves danced in the air before vanishing into the edge of the darkness. Shen Mingyue leaned against Gu Jinghong’s shoulder, listening to him add charcoal to the small red clay stove. The charcoal clicked as it touched, followed by the crackle of burning wood. As the flames flared, they cast flickering light across the contours of his face. In the distance, the rhythmic strike of the night watchman’s wooden clapper—*dong, dong, dong*—sounded like a questioning of time itself, weaving with the sounds of the stove into a melody unique to the autumn night. The Bi Luo Chun tea in the purple clay pot exhaled white mist, which condensed under the moonlight into a hazy glow. In a trance, the shape of that rising vapor overlapped with the dark mists of the Nether Palace from the valley years ago, pulling her into a whirlpool of memory.