Chapter 37
Chapter 37: Old Knots
Zhuang Yu Heng’s gaze didn’t waver. “Is she important to you?”
Mo Ting Feng didn’t answer at once. He only drank.
Zhuang Yu Heng pulled a long face. “I’ve studied medicine for years and only heard of this condition. Finding a cure won’t be easy. If she isn’t that important, forget it. After all—”
“She’s very important,” Mo Ting Feng cut in.
He lifted his head and met Zhuang Yu Heng’s eyes without flinching.
“She is the prime suspect in the White Robe disappearance case. She is the current White Robe of the Dust Warden Office. And she is the only Soul Speaker the Dream Realm has ever had. Of course she’s important.”
“Only for those reasons?” Zhuang Yu Heng’s tone stayed light, but his eyes were sharp.
“What are you implying?”
“Today I learned a Dust Warden official would trigger his he dong backlash for a suspect and subordinate badly enough to suffer a full flare.”
Mo Ting Feng opened his mouth—
And on the Ten-Thousand-Year Moist Jade, Song Wei Chen suddenly coughed in her sleep, brows pinched tight. Blood spilled from her lips in a rush.
“Wei Wei!” Mo Ting Feng surged up, reaching to lift her.
“Don’t move her!” Zhuang Yu Heng barked. “That’s congested blood in her lungs. Coughing it out is good. Don’t panic.”
Mo Ting Feng froze, hand suspended, exposed by his own desperation. “She was injured because of my mistake. I was just—”
“You were moved,” Zhuang Yu Heng said bluntly, stepping in to check Song Wei Chen’s pulse again.
“That’s nonsense,” Mo Ting Feng snapped.
Zhuang Yu Heng glanced at him. “Then add another charge: stubborn as a dead duck.”
He adjusted the cloth at Song Wei Chen’s wrist with a gentleness that didn’t match his mouth. “I’ve known you a long time. I know exactly how you treat other women. In things like this, the bystander sees it clearer.”
Mo Ting Feng shook his head, jaw set. Moved? Impossible. His heart had died a thousand years ago. How could he fall for a little liar, a suspect, a mortal woman?
No.
His he dong was only because Sang Pu still haunted him. Nothing more.
“I told you.” His voice went cold. “The he dong is tied to the past. It has nothing to do with her.”
Zhuang Yu Heng set Song Wei Chen’s hand down carefully and turned back with a faint smile. “If so, why do you keep being dragged back into the past?
“Could it be…” He tipped his head toward the unconscious girl. “Could it be she’s connected to it?”
A thunderclap rolled across the sky, sudden and loud. Both men stilled.
Zhuang Yu Heng stared, then hurried to the window. “Don’t tell me I just spoke a secret of heaven—ah. Never mind. It’s only the weather turning.”
He leaned farther out. “Hm? Isn’t that one of your people?”
Ding He Ran had arrived outside the Marrow-Cleansing Hall. As he approached to deliver a report, Mo Ting Feng stepped out to meet him.
“My lord,” Ding He Ran said quickly, “Wu Jiu discovered a spatial anomaly within the River of Oblivion territory. He went to Lord Cang Yue’s residence to request a search, but he was detained. That lord acts unpredictably. I didn’t dare make a rash move, so I came to seek your instructions.”
“Detained Wu Jiu?” Mo Ting Feng’s eyes narrowed. “What did he say?”
“He said…” Ding He Ran hesitated. “He said he’ll release him once he sees White Robe.”
Mo Ting Feng’s expression darkened.
Did Gu Cang Yue know something?
No. If Gu Cang Yue truly knew Song Wei Chen was this badly injured, he would’ve charged in and turned the entire Dust Warden Office upside down. Detaining someone was more likely an excuse—another way to force her to appear, another way to tug her toward him.
“He really is fixated on her,” Mo Ting Feng said, and there was a sour edge he didn’t bother to hide. “He’ll use anything.”
He looked back at the hall, at the unconscious girl inside. “Wait here. I’ll have Lord Sikong go with you. Stall him. When Song Wei Chen wakes, we’ll decide what to do next.”
Zhuang Yu Heng left with Ding He Ran.
The Marrow-Cleansing Hall fell quiet again, so still it felt like pressure against the ribs.
Mo Ting Feng returned to Song Wei Chen’s side and sat by the jade, watching her face.
Zhuang Yu Heng’s words lingered in his head—like the thunder that had answered them.
If she truly was tied to his past… if—
His thoughts snagged on an old memory: the dream Song Wei Chen had described, the way she played the zither so much like Sang Pu, and the way he kept losing control around her, the way his he dong refused to calm.
Could she…
A fresh wave of backlash pain lanced through him. He pressed a hand to his chest and endured it, breathing through the burn.
No. Song Wei Chen could not be Sang Pu.
Sang Pu had been brilliant—too brilliant. She read a room the way others read ink on paper, weighed advantage and loss with cold precision, and never chose anything that didn’t serve her.
She was composed, self-possessed, powerful to the point of cruelty.
How could a woman like that die for love and leave behind something as foolish as a past-life imprint?
And besides… she had married that aging Imperial Uncle as a concubine. Could she truly have loved so fiercely?
If she had, Mo Ting Feng thought bitterly, then he had lost even more completely than he’d ever admitted.
There was a knot buried deep inside him. He hated Sang Pu, and he loved Sang Pu, and those two feelings had twisted together until he could no longer separate them.
That was why he had built the Sunless Residence in his estate, copying the room from his memory. And that was why he had stayed out of it for a thousand years—why he had set an emotion-severing ward on himself with his own hands, as if pain could cauterize longing.
Deep down, he wanted to be like her: rational, heartless, able to decide what mattered.
Because whenever Sang Pu was involved, he was always the weaker one—the reckless one, the one who forgot consequence.
But Song Wei Chen…
Song Wei Chen didn’t know how to weigh anything. She followed her feelings like a flame follows air. Even sick and injured, she still insisted on searching for a child.
She was nothing like Sang Pu.
If anything, she was Sang Pu’s opposite.
So how could she possibly be her?
Then how had her past-life imprint awakened?
It must have begun after she arrived in the Dream Realm.
And then another thought surfaced—Gu Cang Yue’s obsession with her. Could it be she truly had a past with the Lord of the River of Oblivion?
The instant the thought took shape, something in Mo Ting Feng sank, heavy and sharp. He almost didn’t recognize it as loss.
“You were moved.”
Zhuang Yu Heng’s words echoed again, uninvited.
Mo Ting Feng stared at Song Wei Chen’s pale face, and for the first time he didn’t bother lying to himself.
He didn’t like seeing her close to other men. Not Gu Cang Yue. Not Shu Xue Long. Not even Ding He Ran or Ye Wu Jiu when they grew too familiar.
His concern had crossed a line.
His possessiveness had crossed a line.
Was it possible… that he truly had begun to fall?
When had it started?
His hand lifted, hovering near her cheek, then stopped. He withdrew as if the air itself had burned him.
He took out a folded silk handkerchief and gently wiped the blood at the corner of her lips.
In the quiet, he made himself a promise.
“No matter what,” he murmured, voice low enough to be swallowed by the room, “I will never hurt you again.”