“All right, Mr. Liuchu, getting a little too greedy.”
Xia Lanshi helplessly shook his head, though there was unmistakable indulgence in his voice.
“It’s late. Go to bed early.”
“Mm. All right.”
Xiao answered readily and did not tease him any further.
He lay down on the daybed as instructed, but did not close his eyes. Instead, by the faint light of the dying candle, he quietly gazed toward the inner room.
Ever since Chi Banyue had caught them the last time, Xia Lanshi had placed a four-panel embroidered screen in front of the bed.
One side was embroidered with orchids growing on a cliff; the other with winter plum blossoms in the snow.
Xiao could no longer see inside. He could only vaguely make out the weak halo of light outlining a slender, hazy silhouette against the silk screen.
But he knew Xia Lanshi was there.
The room was filled with that person’s presence.
—The scent of ink orchids and snow, clean and cool, yet after crossing through time, it was the only place in the world where he could feel at peace.
Here, beside this person, the weapon known as the Gatekeeper was finally allowed a moment to breathe.
The room remained quiet for a long time.
Looking at the screen, Xia Lanshi suddenly spoke softly.
“Xiao.”
“Mm?”
A low, calm response came from behind the screen.
Xia Lanshi lowered his lashes slightly.
As a white child, he had endured strange looks from others since childhood. People regarded him as an ill omen.
For the sake of survival, he had grown accustomed to wrapping himself in flawless elegance and cunning, forcing himself to become so impeccable that no one could find even the slightest fault with him.
Everyone said he was exceptionally intelligent, and that was why he was able to stand at Prince Su’s side.
Yet no one knew how much blood and tears lay beneath that perfect exterior, cold as carved jade, or how many times he had walked on the edge of a blade.
But in front of this person, all his defenses and disguises were always rendered useless.
After another moment of silence, Xia Lanshi finally asked the question that had been buried in his heart for ten years.
“Back then… why did you save me?”
Back then, the Gatekeeper who had been a complete stranger to him, cold to the extreme—
why had he extended a helping hand to an aberrant child whom his own family regarded as a monster and had thrown into the snow to die?
Xiao had once said that he saved him simply because the “Gate” permitted it, because the situation in Dasheng required Xia Lanshi to exist.
Perhaps half of that was true.
But to Xia Lanshi, it sounded more like a clumsy excuse.
“Everyone said I was a disaster star.”
Xia Lanshi slowly spoke, peeling back, piece by piece, the self-mockery he would never normally reveal to anyone.
“What was there about me back then… that was worth saving?”
He did not know.
Back then, he was nothing more than a useless person whom even he himself did not want.
Why would Xiao have risked himself to hack open a path to survival for him?
Xiao remained silent.
The room was so quiet that only the sound of the burning charcoal remained.
Occasionally, there was a faint crackle.
After a long while, Xiao’s quiet voice finally came from behind the screen.
“Because I saw myself in you.”
Xia Lanshi’s fingertips paused slightly.
“When I was nine, my biological parents sent me to the Gatekeeper training camp.”
Xiao’s tone was calm, as though he were recounting an old story that had nothing to do with himself.
“I was the eldest son of the main branch. Only when I grew older did I realize that they hadn’t sent me there because I was exceptionally gifted…”
Xiao paused.
There was no resentment in his voice, only a desolation that went all the way to the bone.
“That day, I suddenly understood that, in their eyes, I had never been a child of flesh and blood. I was simply a useful object.”
Xia Lanshi held his breath, his heart seeming to be drawn tight by countless fine threads.
“Every child who entered the training camp for the first time would first be locked in a room without windows.”
Xiao continued.
“It was meant to make them forget ‘themselves.’”
He remembered those pure-white rooms.
They were neither large nor small. Everything that should have been inside was there, while everything that should not have been was absent.
There were no windows, only a single door that could never be opened from the inside.
At first, the children thought it was a game. They did not cry.
Later, they became frightened and began crying for their parents.
They cried and pounded on the door until they were exhausted and fell asleep.
And gradually, they finally came to understand—
tears were the most useless thing in the world.
So they began forgetting who they had originally been.
Forgetting what they looked like.
Forgetting all the weaknesses they were not supposed to have.
“I was locked in one of those rooms too. But for me, it was actually a waste of effort.”
Xiao’s tone remained indifferent.
“Because from the moment I stepped into the training camp, I had already thrown away the ‘self.’”
Since no one wanted him, he discarded himself without hesitation.
He understood that crying was useless.
No one would pity him, and even less would anyone come to save him.
Crying was nothing more than a futile release.
Once the tears had dried up, reality remained an unsolvable dead end.
Listening to his completely emotionless voice, Xia Lanshi’s eyes could not help but sting.
“Later, I was chosen by the Gate and learned to observe cause and effect through it.”
Xiao continued.
“The first time I looked through the Gate, I saw a child. He was also in a room without windows.”
Xiao’s voice remained calm, but every word struck directly into Xia Lanshi’s heart.
“That child didn’t cry either.”
Xia Lanshi’s fingers slowly tightened, his pale knuckles turning faintly white against the brocade quilt.
“I watched him for quite some time.”
Xiao’s gaze seemed to pierce through time and space, seeing once more that small figure curled up in the darkness.
“I watched him once every day. One day he sat there. The next, he curled up. The day after that, he developed a fever. But he never cried.”
“At the time, I was simply curious. Why didn’t that child cry? Could he not? Or had he forgotten how?”
Xia Lanshi’s throat tightened. Through the screen, he asked softly,
“So… you pitied me?”
“No.”
Xiao answered immediately, without the slightest hesitation.
He paused again, as though trying to find words to describe that resonance that had crossed life and death.
“I just thought… maybe no one wanted you either?”
That short sentence caused Xia Lanshi’s eyes to redden faintly.
He bit his lower lip so that he would not make a sound.
Xiao had been abandoned by his closest family with their own hands.
He, meanwhile, had been a discarded child whom his family despised from the moment he was born, a mere tool.
Neither of them had been allowed to possess a will of their own.
No one had ever told them what lay beyond those walls.
They only needed to breathe quietly and live obediently.
“What happened after that?”
Xia Lanshi took a deep breath, barely steadying his voice.
“Why did you come to save me?”
“That day, I saw you being thrown into a courtyard covered in heavy snow.”
Xiao spoke calmly.
“You looked like you were about to die. So I went.”
“And then?”
“I took you out, informed Grand Tutor Xia, and left.”
Xiao made it sound almost insignificant.
But Xia Lanshi knew the price that had been left unsaid.
The words were so light, as though the bone-piercing snow that night and the knife wound that had nearly split Xiao’s entire back apart were nothing more than a negligible gust of wind.
Yet their fates had been bound together forever on that snowy night.
After hearing everything, Xia Lanshi suddenly lowered his eyes and smiled softly.
“So back then, you didn’t like me at all.”
“No.”
Xiao’s answer was exceedingly straightforward.
Xia Lanshi laughed again.
“I thought so.”
He had always known that this man was rational to the point of cruelty.
But now another question arose in his mind.
“If that’s the case, then why did you give me the peace token?”
He was genuinely curious.
Xiao fell silent for a moment, seemingly recalling something.
Only after a while did he speak.
“That was my third year after entering the training camp. That night, all the Gatekeeper candidates were summoned and gathered in one room because the current Gatekeeper had only a breath left.”
He still remembered how stuffy and hot the room had been.
The candidates had been ordered to remove their clothes, leaving only their undergarments, because they needed to determine who would become the next successor.
And although he was still young, he had been summoned for certain special reasons as well.
“The moment the return mark appeared on my body, the person responsible for examining me was my instructor. He looked at me as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, he simply removed his peace token and pressed it into my hand. At the time, I didn’t know what he meant by it.”
Gatekeeper candidates were not allowed to possess personal belongings.
Even after becoming a Gatekeeper, he had no need for personal possessions.
Yet he had kept that white jade peace token all this time, though he himself did not know why.
“When I went to save you, I had left in such a hurry that the peace token happened to be the only thing I had with me. I thought you seemed to need it more, so I gave it to you.”
Even he did not know why he had done that back then, or why he had said those words that sounded almost like encouragement.
Perhaps… deep in his subconscious, he had also wished for someone to say those things to him.
Xia Lanshi leaned against the bolster, forcing back the moisture in his eyes before asking his next question.
“Then when did you start liking me?”
This time, Xiao fell silent.
The silence lasted longer than any of the previous ones.
So long that Xia Lanshi thought he would not answer.
Only then did a somewhat uncertain voice come from behind the screen.
“I calculated it.”
Xiao paused for a moment, seemingly still adapting to this variable he could not control.
“But I couldn’t calculate it.”
Xia Lanshi froze.
“You couldn’t?”
“Because…”
For the first time, Xiao’s voice revealed a helplessness called fate, along with an affection so deep it seemed bottomless.
“There were too many.”
“There was someone who spent ten years searching for the person who had saved his life.”
“There was someone who never knew who I was, yet instinctively kept moving toward me.”
“And there was someone else… who died in front of me while taking a blade meant for another.”
His voice gradually became softer and slower, like a long, lingering sigh.
“I can no longer tell which time it began.”
As a Gatekeeper, he had calculated the world’s countless situations, life and death, cause and effect.
Only when it came to love had his calculations been completely destroyed.
The room was so quiet that it seemed even time had stopped.
Only Xiao’s voice traveled across countless timelines and dead ends before finally settling here.
“Every time, you were the one who came looking for me.”
“Every time, you were the one who fell for me first.”
“Every time, you were the one who refused to let go.”
Xiao gazed at the thin screen, as though he could see through the plum blossoms embroidered upon it and glimpse the person on the other side—cold and stubborn to the bone.
The ice and snow that had never melted from his eyes for so many years had now completely transformed into profound affection.
“It wasn’t that I saved you and then fell in love with you.”
Xiao softly spoke his final answer.
“It was that I watched you, again and again, walk toward me without regard for anything.”
“And in the end… it was my turn to be unable to let you go.”
Xia Lanshi said nothing.
He lay where he was, silent for a very long time.
Then, suddenly, he laughed softly.
“You make it sound as though I was shameless and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Xiao laughed too, his tone carrying a hint of matter-of-fact arrogance.
“More or less.”
From behind the screen, Xia Lanshi asked in a slightly hoarse voice,
“What about this time?”
The room was very quiet.
Lying on the daybed, Xiao’s gaze became deep and helpless.
He had originally decided that this time, all he needed to do was watch over him from afar and protect him for the rest of his life.
But somehow, this person was determined to charge down the road to the underworld with him.
He sighed, his voice filled with resigned indulgence.
“This time, I originally thought that as long as I guarded you from afar, it would be enough.”
“But… you still came after me again.”
Xiao lowered his head, a bitter smile pulling at his lips.
“I can never win against ‘Xia Lanshi.’”
His gaze pierced through the screen and landed upon that hazy silhouette he loved beyond measure.
“It was you who spent such a long, long time turning an ‘object’ back into a ‘person.’”
“So that person could never leave again. This heart was forged by your own hands.”
As Xiao said this, he gently placed a hand over his chest.
There, his heart was beating steadily and vividly because of someone.
“I don’t know when I started loving you. Because the moment I became a person again, my heart was already filled entirely with you.”
There was not a trace of sweet romantic talk in those words.
Yet they possessed more power than any declaration of “I love you” in this world.
They pierced straight through the white-child appearance Xia Lanshi was most sensitive about, soothing the deepest scars within his soul.
Xia Lanshi finally understood.
He had not been the only one to save Xiao.
It had been all the “Xia Lanshis.”
They were the result of countless years of accumulation, growth, and flourishing, finally bearing the fruit that existed today.
He did not say it aloud.
That child who once did not even know how to cry had, after that snowy night, gained a heart of his own.
He had changed from a tool into a person.
And from that moment onward, his heart had been completely occupied, with no room left for anyone else.
He silently wiped away the tear that had slipped down before he could stop it.
Xia Lanshi suddenly asked,
“What if I weren’t a white child?”
Xiao: “It wouldn’t matter.”
Xia Lanshi: “What if I were handsome?”
Xiao: “It wouldn’t change anything.”
Xia Lanshi: “What if I were just the most ordinary person in the world?”
Xiao looked toward the screen.
He answered calmly,
“Through the Gate, all I saw was a child in the darkness who did not cry.”
“I never fell for your appearance first. I recognized your soul first.”
Xia Lanshi’s lashes trembled, his heart burning hot.
The emotions that had already overflowed within him were now even harder to suppress.
He finally understood that Chi Banyue’s words—“to love someone to the utmost”—had not been false.
Xiao called him foolish, but in his eyes, Xiao was just as foolish.
So foolish that he loved him and could not bear to let him go.
He suddenly called out,
“Xiao, come here.”
Xiao did not ask why.
He rose, crossed the screen, and came to the bedside, looking down at Xia Lanshi.
He noticed the faint redness around his eyes and the moisture within them, but did not point it out.
Xia Lanshi shifted farther inward on the bed, patted the empty space beside him, and looked up at him.
Xiao froze slightly, then raised an eyebrow.
“Not afraid I’ll attack you in the middle of the night?”
Xia Lanshi smiled softly.
“If I were afraid, I wouldn’t have let you into my room in the middle of the night.”
But Xiao still stood there without moving.
He merely stared at the empty space, deep black eyes roiling with dark currents, as though he were desperately restraining something.
Xia Lanshi curved his lips in exasperation.
“What, are you afraid I’ll eat you?”
Xiao could not help laughing softly.
He stopped hesitating and lay down on the bed, allowing Xia Lanshi to pull the quilt over him.
Xia Lanshi was sensitive to the cold. In addition to the thick mattress, the bed was covered with a layer of soft fur, making it much more comfortable and warmer than the daybed outside.
There had originally been a warming vessel tucked beneath the quilts, but Xia Lanshi casually set it aside.
“Did you bring me here to warm your bed?”
Xiao asked in a low voice, half-jokingly.
Unexpectedly, Xia Lanshi turned his head and gazed into his eyes through the dim light, his voice carrying a hint of lingering tenderness.
“Just to warm the bed?”
Those thinly reddened eyes always seemed to carry an inadvertent hint of seduction, gently hooking at the heart and stirring up a restless itch in one’s chest.
Xiao pressed his lips together.
He stared deeply at Xia Lanshi, his Adam’s apple rolling once as he remained silent for a long while.
After quite some time, he finally let out a helpless sigh.
“Don’t tease me.”
Xiao reached out and pulled him into his arms.
“Go to sleep. Otherwise, you won’t be able to leave the house tomorrow morning.”
“All right. You rest too.”
Xia Lanshi smiled.
He obediently settled into that warm, solid embrace, his voice soft as though gently soothing him, carrying the faintest rasp.
“I’m right beside you. No matter what happens to the situation from now on, wherever you are, I’ll come after you. So… you can sleep peacefully too.”
Xiao felt the warmth of this little world around them, felt himself completely surrounded by that familiar presence.
Xia Lanshi’s voice lingered beside his ear, like the gentlest lullaby in the world.
He slowly closed his eyes.
Two creatures who had once been covered in wounds and abandoned by the world had finally found each other across the long river of time.
At this moment, they nestled against each other for warmth, tending to each other’s wounds.
“Huaiyu, good night.”
Xiao’s voice sounded especially deep in the quiet night.
The person beside him answered softly, as though he were already truly sleepy.
Xiao tucked the edge of the quilt around him, then moved even closer, giving the person in his arms every bit of warmth his body possessed, without reservation.
He simply remained there in the darkness, quietly keeping watch, listening as the breathing of the person in his arms gradually changed from light and shallow to steady and deep, until he was certain that, beneath his protection, that person had truly fallen into peaceful sleep.
Perhaps he was the most negligent Gatekeeper in all of history…
Because he had already committed so many sins forbidden to a Gatekeeper.
He had fallen in love with a “cause” he should never have loved.
But he willingly surrendered himself to that fall.
All he wanted was to protect the person he loved most.