On the border between the State of Wu and the State of Wei lived a couple: the man, Xu Jing, and the woman, Yu Ming.
Xu Jing was once a renowned lecturer in Luoyang, celebrated for his sharp wit and eloquent critiques of the world’s most powerful figures while lounging at the Lake Heart Pavilion. However, after being betrayed and framed by Jia Lingyun, his reputation was shattered, and he was forced to flee into seclusion with his beloved, Yu Ming. This desolate, uninhabited region suited a man who sought to escape the prying eyes of the world, and there, the couple built a quiet, deepening love.
Back in Luoyang, Xu Jing had been a delicate scholar who had never known a day of manual labor. In the wilderness, however, his scholarly talents found no purchase. He traded his brush for a woodcutter’s axe, surviving by chopping firewood and hunting wild game. The physical toll transformed him; his once-soft skin grew weathered and calloused. The transition from scholar to woodsman was a painful shedding of his old self, a transformation known only to him.
Chapter 806