Chapter Ninety-Two: Qi Baiyu's Unexplained Fall

When Bai Yu appeared, Qin Wanru smiled, one hand over her head. Crouching down, she picked up a stone from beside her, tilted her body aside, and mischievously flung it back at him.

"Qin Wanru, what are you doing? I came to warn you—don't bite the hand that feeds you!" The boy shrank away in alarm to avoid the stone, though he kept his voice low on purpose.

Only after he had jumped down from the tree did he wave to Qin Wanru and slip into an empty courtyard nearby.

Qin Wanru followed him inside.

"Bai Yu, what warning are you bringing me?" she asked with a laugh, clapping the dust from her hands.

"Of course it's about keeping your guard up against Qi Rongzhi. She was supposed to make a scene and come this afternoon, but then she accidentally fell and had to postpone it until tomorrow." Qi Baiyu lifted his chin smugly.

So the original plan had been for Qi Rongzhi to arrive this afternoon, nearly at the same time as the medicinal supplies her mother had sent. By the old pattern, if Qi Rongzhi came up the mountain, she would also have had to pay her respects to Grandmother and greet her elders, making the matter of the herbs even harder to explain.

What a calculating woman that Madam Di was.

"Did Bai Yu make her fall?" Qin Wanru understood at once, her smile bright as flowers.

"Of course it was me. She looks like she's up to no good this time, so be careful. If there's nothing important, don't go out and run into her again." Qi Baiyu warned her earnestly.

"Thank you, Bai Yu. I understand." Qin Wanru smiled and bowed slightly. The two of them had grown up together, both mischievous by nature, and so they got along well.

"I heard that..." Qi Baiyu hesitated, his expression turning uncertain.

"What does Bai Yu want to ask?" Qin Wanru had never before seen him so awkward, and she tilted her head with a teasing smile.

"Is it true that your family is going to leave Jiangzhou?" Qi Baiyu blurted out. Her bright, sidelong glance made his face inexplicably red; he stamped a foot and decided that there was nothing shameful in asking.

"Perhaps," Qin Wanru replied.

If things followed the course of her previous life, they would indeed be leaving the capital soon. But in that life, she had gone away to avoid Jiangzhou's disgraceful rumors. In this life, matters had been reversed with Qin Yuru, and now it was Qin Yuru who had fled to the capital first to escape a reputation in Jiangzhou so foul it could scarcely grow fouler.

"If you really leave, then I won't have a good companion to play with anymore!" Qi Baiyu said miserably.

"Don't you still have Qi Rongzhi?" Qin Wanru teased.

"Her? She doesn't like playing with me. She likes to play with other families' young masters!" Qi Baiyu curled his lip. He knew perfectly well what sort of character Qi Rongzhi was, and Qin Wanru knew it just as well.

"Oh, right. Be careful tomorrow. Today I overheard her talking with Chunyi about you, saying this time they'll make sure you look bad. Maybe they're plotting something else against you too. If you can avoid seeing her, then do so; don't give her another chance to stir up trouble." Qi Baiyu warned her again.

Qi Rongzhi had suffered a serious setback this time, earning a reputation for arrogance and bullying that was scarcely better than Qin Yuru's. That resentment had not yet been vented, and there was a strong chance it would be aimed at Qin Wanru instead.

"Hm, I'll be careful. Will Bai Yu come tomorrow too?" Qin Wanru asked.

"Yes. They say that now Qi Tianyu is gone, as her elder brother I should accompany her. Last night she even made a fuss at the residence, saying she didn't need me to keep her company, as though I were the one insisting on accompanying her." Qi Baiyu said disdainfully. Qi Rongzhi did not treat him as a brother, and he likewise did not regard her as a sister. He thought Qin Wanru was a far better younger sister.

Obedient, well-behaved, and, like him, fond of play, with the same easy companionship.

But after this mishap, Qi Baiyu also knew he had to avoid suspicion. He had not forgotten how his usually mild, dignified elder brother had once berated Qin Wanru, even accusing her of improper intimacy with him. Such slanderous words had actually come from the mouth of the righteous-looking Qi Tianyu.

In the past, whenever he wished to meet Qin Yuru, yet found it inconvenient to summon her openly, he would arrange to invite the Qin sisters together, then have Baiyu keep watch over Qin Wanru while he and Qin Yuru went off somewhere alone. In the end, he and Qin Yuru were left untouched, while the filth was splashed onto Baiyu and Qin Wanru.

This time, Qi Baiyu had finally seen through Qi Tianyu's true face.

The so-called brotherly affection of old had been nothing more than a performance. How foolish he had been to truly think of him as his own brother, unlike Qi Rongzhi.

"Do you have to accompany her tomorrow?" Qin Wanru asked again. A faint, dark light slipped through her clear eyes. If Baiyu was coming with her, then she could not make too much of a scene; otherwise Baiyu would be left with no way to explain himself.

Tomorrow was convenient indeed.

She had just heard the abbess of the Quiet Heart Nunnery mention that there would be a major Buddhist rite tomorrow, and that many people would come to attend it. Women from all around the neighboring villages and market towns would be arriving, and some who lived farther away had already taken lodging there tonight. Because they labored as hard as men in ordinary times and saw more of the world besides, they were far bolder than the sheltered daughters of wealthy households.

There were even some women of questionable virtue coming to join the excitement.

"Yes, but it's fine. When the time comes, I'll just have her fall again and send her back to the residence early." Qi Baiyu kicked at a stone near his foot, then turned his head to look at Qin Wanru and, in a rare moment of adolescent melancholy, let out a sigh.

"If you go to the capital, will we ever be able to see each other again?"

A playmate from childhood, if one had grown close, was hard to part with, whether boy or girl.

"We'll see each other again, I'm sure. Bai Yu, you should study hard too. Then you can go to the capital someday and take the examinations. You mustn't let others steal all the glory for themselves." Qin Wanru smiled and comforted him.

She was deeply moved by him. In her previous life, Baiyu had indeed gone to the capital and had secretly helped her all along. In her darkest days, he had supported her, believed in her, helped her out of the mire of the Qin household, and even wanted to marry her himself after her engagement had been broken off time and again.

In the end, however, Madam Di had sent her away to pacify the house and curry favor with the Chancellor's residence.

Baiyu was a clever man, but in that life she had dragged him into trouble more than once, and even his name had been tarnished because of her.

"All right, then I'm going. Be careful tomorrow, and if you see me there, there's no need to pay me much mind. In any case, from now on you needn't bother with anyone from our household." The boy's sorrow came quickly and went quickly too. Thinking her words made sense, he decided that if he studied diligently, it was quite possible to surpass Qi Tianyu.

If he could earn a good title and remain in the capital, then he could play with Qin Wanru again!

"Very well, Bai Yu. You be careful too." Qin Wanru nodded.

Qi Baiyu leaped up onto the wall and looked left and right before heading toward the corner. If he descended from there, he could turn directly onto the mountain path outside Quiet Heart Nunnery, where his servant would be waiting with the horse at the entrance to the path beyond the wall.

Having fixed his direction, Qi Baiyu dropped neatly from the wall, then vaulted onto another one. After climbing over several in succession, he reached the outermost enclosure and could already see the servant's delighted face outside.

He placed a hand on the wall and prepared to jump down, when suddenly something struck his hand. His wrist went numb at once, and before he could gather himself, he pitched headlong from the top of the wall.

The servant below was so frightened that he hurriedly stretched out his arms, and the two of them tumbled together in a heap.

"Second Young Master, Second Young Master, are you all right? Did you hurt yourself anywhere?" the servant cried as he scrambled up.

Qi Baiyu turned over and sat up, rubbing the place where he had been jolted in the fall. "I didn't hurt anywhere. Strange—how did I fall?"

He looked up at the high wall. To others it might have seemed tall, but to him it was nothing much. He usually spent his days learning martial arts from the guards' instructor and was nimble enough with hands and feet. How could he have suddenly and for no reason fallen from the wall?

"So long as you're all right, so long as you're all right. Second Young Master, let's hurry down the mountain. If the master finds out you slipped out, I'll get beaten again!" The servant was under great pressure. Whenever Qi Baiyu caused trouble, he was often the one who got dragged into the punishment; sometimes they did not beat Baiyu at all and simply beat him instead.

"All right, all right, let's go. No one will know." Qi Baiyu naturally understood what the servant was thinking and burst out laughing. He no longer dwelled on why he had fallen. He stood, brushed off his clothes, took the reins from the side, swung himself onto the horse, and the servant mounted another pony.

The two horses raced one after the other down the mountain path.

After they were gone, Chu Liuchen dropped from a tall tree beside the wall. A guard beneath the tree looked nervously at the young lord, terrified that he might make even the slightest mistake.

Although Chu Liuchen's face was pale, he still seemed to be in fairly good spirits. He coughed softly twice, then looked toward the direction in which Qi Baiyu had vanished and gave a cold snort.

Anyone climbing over a convent wall in the middle of the night was clearly no good.

A child so young already no good—what kind of person would he become when grown? Surely nothing less than a flower thief. Did that little girl Qin Wanru have no eyes at all, calling such a person brother!

"My lord, shall we return now?" the guard asked cautiously, reaching out in a feigned attempt to support Chu Liuchen, afraid that he might be unwell.

"Go." Chu Liuchen replied irritably. Turning away with his hands clasped behind his back, he had taken only a few steps when he suddenly looked back, sneered darkly in the direction of the wall several times, and then strode off under the increasingly wary watch of the guard.

No one knew what this lord was up to. They were to set out for the capital at dawn the next day, yet in the middle of the night he had insisted on coming to Quiet Heart Nunnery to take a look. He had gone inside, glanced at things from a distance, then even followed the others and climbed back out over the wall. Now he had deliberately stopped to stare at the wall again. What exactly was so interesting about it?

Still, the guard felt as though he had stumbled upon some earth-shaking secret. Of course, it was a secret he could not speak of. The more one knew, the faster one died, and he had no desire to die before his time.

So let the secret remain a secret.

Chu Liuchen left early the next morning. His arrival in Jiangzhou had been a secret known only to Qin Huaiyong, and his departure was even more so; not even Qin Huaiyong had been informed. Since everything had already been arranged, he boarded the carriage carrying the palace's secret decree and set off slowly toward the capital.

Qi Rongzhi arrived on the mountain first thing the next morning. Rising early as well, she surprisingly came respectfully to the old madam's courtyard first, putting on the air of a dutiful junior coming to pay her respects.

If the two families were still as close as they had once been, Qi Rongzhi's behavior would not have seemed strange. But under the present circumstances, though one could not quite say the families were at each other's throats, their relations had all but been severed. On the day Qin Huaiyong was married, only Magistrate Jiang had come for appearances' sake. So now, with Qi Rongzhi posing as a respectful visitor, the old madam could hardly have felt much fondness for her.

After exchanging a few brief words, the old madam said she was tired and sent the guest away. Qin Wanru escorted her to the corridor. Just as she turned to leave, however, Qi Rongzhi called her back.

"Second Young Lady, please wait a moment!"