"Though I wandered among the flowers, I could not bear to look back; half for the sake of the Dao, and half for your sake."
In Sijiu City, within the Xie Residence, a man stared blankly at the jade pendant on the table, then suddenly broke the silence. "Is Xiaohua asleep?" His voice was low and heavy with exhaustion.
"She has already gone to bed," the steward, who had been waiting quietly behind him, answered softly.
The man remained silent for a long moment, then reached out to pick up the jade pendant. Glancing at the brand-new slip of paper beneath it, he unfolded it to check the address written there. "Go and make preparations. We are taking a long journey tomorrow." His time was running out; it was time to go find her.
The steward hesitated, the words of discouragement rising to his lips, but he could not force them out. "Understood, I will make the arrangements right away. Please go and rest first, sir; we have a journey to make tomorrow." With that, he stepped forward to support the man's arm.
Turning his head to look at the steward, whose eyes were filled with unyielding resolve, the man let out a light laugh. "You..." Though his tone was resigned, he nevertheless put the address and the jade pendant back down, used the steward's support to rise, and returned to his room to rest.
Watching the man lie down, the steward extinguished the lamp and left. He needed to prepare the vehicles for tomorrow, and carefully select the people who would accompany them.
He had often considered that the Head of the House might one day go in search of the Eldest Miss. Yet the Eldest Miss had been away from home for decades, and the contents of that box had been sent here the day Young Master Xiaohua was born.
He remembered once seeing the Head of the House sitting alone in the study, weeping as he looked at that jade pendant. As someone born and raised within the Xie Residence, he had witnessed the agonizing despair of the Head of the House when the old Head of the House passed away and the Eldest Miss chose to leave. He had never expected that the Head of the House would finally decide to look for the Eldest Miss, and yet it had to be at a time like this...
Watching the door close tightly, the man slowly closed his eyes. His life could not be called anything less than eventful, and his only regret was probably that he had not stopped his younger sister when she left, and had not gone to see her when he finally received the address she sent. He had simply been afraid—afraid that the person he would find would no longer be his sister.
It was during a stormy night in his childhood. Awakening in the middle of the night, he heard noises coming from his sister's room and, thinking she might be frightened by the thunder and wanted company, he went to check on her. But the moment he pushed the door open—an image that remained as vivid as ever after all these decades—a flash of lightning pierced through the window and struck his sister. Curled up beneath the quilt, she was emitting muffled, stifled groans of endurance. By the light of the lightning, he saw that her shadow cast upon the wall possessed several tails. As he stood there dumbfounded, his sister’s childish voice snapped him back to reality. "Brother? What are you doing in my room?"
When he looked again, his sister had already sat up, propping herself up with one hand while rubbing her eyes with the other. She looked just as adorable as ever, as though everything he had just witnessed had merely been a dream.
Offering a stiff smile, he backed out of her room. "It's raining outside, I just came to see if your window was shut." With those words, he gave another stiff smile and retreated from the room.
The instant he closed the door, he clamped a hand over his mouth. From that moment on, he warned himself to forget everything he had seen that day. He had thought that distance would grow between him and his sister afterward, but she acted completely as usual, as if he truly had failed to distinguish between dream and reality.
That was until their parents passed away, on another stormy night just like that one.
Awakened abruptly in the middle of the night, thinking that even the heavens were mourning with him, he heard a low cry of pain from his sister's room that made his breath catch. The memories of his childhood rushed back into his mind, but this time he did not hesitate. Without even taking time to put on his shoes, he rushed straight into his sister's room.
And there he saw a sight he would never forget for the rest of his life: his sister kneeling on the bed, her forehead pressed hard against the mattress, both hands clutching her chest as her entire back arched upward. Suppressed sobs escaped her lips. A flash of lightning tore through the darkness, passing through the window to strike her. He tried to step forward, but was driven back by the pair of crimson eyes that turned to look at him.
"Quickly... get out," his sister managed to force out through gritted teeth before letting out another muffled groan.
Backing out of the room, he stared at the tightly closed door. He stood right there outside for how long, he did not know, until the thunder and rain ceased and absolute silence returned from within.
Pushing the door open, he found her collapsed on the bed. He strode over in a few steps, seeing that her hair was drenched with sweat. Hearing him approach, she merely glanced at him briefly before closing her eyes once more.
Looking at those blood-red eyes, despite a lingering trace of fear, he hurried to the bathroom to wet a towel, brought it back to wipe her face and hands, tucked her into the covers, and watched over her unconscious form for a long while before finally leaving.
He had thought that the next day, the two of them would act as they had in childhood and pretend nothing had happened. But when he woke up and saw his sister sitting before the dining table, what were the words that greeted his ears? "You're leaving? Why? This is your home." He felt as though a thick mist had clouded his vision, preventing him from seeing the person before him clearly. He had believed that even with their parents gone, he still had his sister—yet now his sister was leaving.
He assumed it was because of what he had seen the night before. "I didn't mean to go into your room yesterday. I don't know anything, please don't go." He had nothing left; he could not bear to lose his sister as well.
The girl offered a smile. "Even if I leave, I am still your sister, the Xie Family's Eldest Miss Xie Nanyou, and Mom and Dad's Yaoyao." She looked at him as he tried once more to stop her. "Brother, you know it, don't you? Perhaps when Mom and Dad adopted me, they already knew. Sooner or later, I was bound to leave."