“Go clean the study,” I ordered. “And do a thorough job.”
“Got it!” she chirped cheerfully, not the least bit bothered that this was supposed to be a punishment. Watching her carefree attitude, I gazed at the sky in silence. A girl this clueless… she was utterly at odds with the meaning of her name.
While cleaning the study that day, Qian Ling dragged out a large chest. It was the first time I had seen it.
“What’s that?” I asked.
"I don’t know," Qian Ling said, pulling the chest further into the light. "I found it in a dusty corner of the attic in the study. Looks like it hasn’t been touched in ages. I thought it might have gotten moldy, so I dragged it out to air."
As she spoke, she opened the chest. Inside was a stack of scrolls, each meticulously rolled. When she unrolled one, we found that every painting depicted the same woman—sometimes standing serenely on a mountaintop, other times reclining on a bed. Her expression, whether smiling or angry, always carried a hint of casual indifference.
“Master, these are all you!” Qian Ling exclaimed, unfurling one scroll with a sudden laugh. “Wow, this is so lifelike! Look, Master!”
I glanced at the painting in her hands. It depicted a woman with a face like rouge, reclining by a wine pool beneath drooping willows. A man was leaning over her, stealing a kiss.
The breath nearly caught in my chest.
“Master, who is this man?” Qian Ling asked with a bright grin. “And this pose… You two look so beautiful together!”
Listen to this… is this something a proper young lady should say?! My anger flared internally, but since this was a wound I carried deep in my heart, I forced a calm expression and lied through my teeth: “The woman is me, the painter is also me. The man… is someone I dreamed up in my reckless youth, back when I didn’t know better. He’s just a figment of my imagination and meaningless now. Take these and burn them.”
Qian Ling gave me a puzzled look. “But Master, you didn’t even know what was inside this chest a moment ago…”
I stood and headed back to my room. “Burn them, burn them.”
Once I closed the door, I finally allowed my face to flush uncontrollably.
To see a tactile sensation from years ago—one I had buried deep within my memory—suddenly brought to life as a painting before my eyes was enough to leave me shaken.
Leaning against the door for a moment, I caught the faint scent of smoke. Peeking through the crack, I saw Qian Ling casting a spell to reduce all the scrolls to ashes.
My lips twitched, but in the end, I suppressed my emotions and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in my room, sighing over the weight of it all.
Qian Gu… he hid so much from me.
From that day on, life returned to its usual rhythm. Qian Ling’s frequent escapades down the mountain gradually lessened. At first, I thought the girl was finally learning to mature. But one day, after boasting about mastering a new technique, she sighed wistfully:
“It took me three months to get to this level. But I heard that back then, Senior Brother mastered the same technique in just a few hours. I’m so far behind…”
I froze. “How do you know that?”
Qian Ling clapped a hand over her mouth, looking sheepish. After some hesitation, she admitted, “I went to the Ling Xu Cave to visit Second Senior Brother…”
I hadn’t explicitly forbidden her from visiting Qian Zhi, so I only raised an eyebrow. “Visiting is fine, but remember—don’t let him out.”
“Why not?”
“Your Second Senior Brother’s temperament is unstable. Keeping him confined serves two purposes: first, to stabilize his mind; and second… if he were released, he would undoubtedly fall into the demonic path. He’s different from your Senior Brother. Qian Gu has a resilient will and an innate sense of balance. He won’t do anything harmful to himself, Kong Ling, or the world. But your Second Senior Brother… he’s too easily influenced by others.”
Qian Ling stared at me, stunned by the gravity of my words. After a long silence, she muttered, “I didn’t realize Master… thinks about so much…”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you think I’ve lived these hundreds of years without learning to think things through? I’m not as impulsive as you.”
Qian Ling scratched her head with a sheepish smile. “But still, Senior Brother has been gone from the sect for so many years, and yet… it feels like Master still trusts him deeply.”
I fell silent. Of course, I trust Qian Gu. He was my first disciple, someone I poured my heart and soul into teaching. He was, in many ways, my greatest pride—something I could boast about for a lifetime. Even though he strayed from the right path later on, if I were to look at it objectively, Qian Gu did nothing truly wrong.
If there was any fault… it lay entirely with me.
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