The ladder was made of wood. When Ji Lingchuan stepped on it, it gave out a soft “creak”, which was especially distinct in the silent late - night.
Fortunately, Song Nanxin had already gotten married. In Fengbo Courtyard, there was only an old maid and a young maid to take care of the place. They would come in during the day to clean the rooms and tend to the flowers and plants. At night, they would go back to their own rooms and sleep soundly. They didn't notice at all that someone had broken into Xiaohan Pavilion.
When he reached the second floor, Ji Lingchuan saw the closed door and the copper lock on it.
He took out a slender needle from his bosom. With a little manipulation, the copper lock clicked open.
He pushed open the closed door in front of him, and a denser darkness rushed towards him. Ji Lingchuan's face was as cold as ice as he walked into the room.
He had broken into the Ding'an Marquis Mansion secretly and couldn't light a lamp openly. He could only rely on the fire starter in his hand for illumination. He walked around the room, and his hanging heart settled a little. As Song Nanxin had said, this was indeed a study. There were quite a few books on the cabinets, but they all looked very new, as if they had never been flipped through.
Ji Lingchuan only took out a few books to have a look and then put them back.
He searched the room carefully, not missing any corner. Finally, on the topmost layer of the third bookshelf, he saw several locked wooden boxes.
He took down those large wooden boxes, pried open all the locks, lifted the lids, and shone the firelight inside. The boxes were filled with neatly arranged scrolls, on which were written a few words.
The Scroll of Song Nanxin, Class Three of Female Students in the Imperial College in the 16th Year of Jinghong.
He had found it.
In a small teahouse in Chunhe Fang on the southwest side of the capital city.
Jiang Heng placed a pot of hot tea on the table and said to Ji Lingchuan, “It's so late. You come to me just to look at these scrolls?”
There were many scrolls placed in front of Ji Lingchuan at the moment. They were all the ones he had brought out from Xiaohan Pavilion.
The bright light in the teahouse finally allowed him to clearly see the words on the scrolls. But at this moment, he didn't dare to open them.
Seeing Ji Lingchuan remaining silent, Jiang Heng said, “I've never seen you like this. You look like...”
He hesitated for a moment and then said, “You look like those dissipated men who have suffered setbacks in love.”
Ji Lingchuan said with a bitter smile, “Brother Jiang, don't make fun of me.”
Jiang Heng asked, “Why didn't you bring that smart and clever young friend you mentioned this time? Did you two have a conflict?”
Although Ji Lingchuan didn't answer, Jiang Heng had already got the answer from his expression.
“Come on, it's just a girl. If you lose one, there will always be new ones. With your looks, what kind of woman can't you find?”
“She's different.” Ji Lingchuan subconsciously defended. Looking up, he met Jiang Heng's teasing face.
Yawning, Jiang Heng said, “You come to disturb my dream in the middle of the night. If it weren't you, I would definitely break his legs. You can take your time to look. I'm going to sleep.”
Ji Lingchuan was left alone in the teahouse. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and finally picked up the scroll on the table and unfurled it in his hand.
Under the illumination of the firelight, the content of the scroll in his hand was clearly visible.
When he saw the neat and yet childish delicate - flower - like small regular script on it, Ji Lingchuan's breathing suddenly became disordered, and the hand holding the scroll trembled imperceptibly.
When Song Nanxin entered school in the 16th year of Jinghong, she was only thirteen years old. The handwriting on every scroll was not the same. Her writing state was not stable. Sometimes she wrote patiently and carefully, sometimes in a hurry and a bit impatient. Some words were smeared by her sleeves and fingers, making the scroll look messy.
But on some scrolls, he saw the extremely familiar handwriting that he had seen on the letter paper.
At that time, her handwriting was extremely childish, and the thickness of the strokes was not consistent, which showed that her hand holding the pen was not steady enough.
Before long, he had finished looking at the scrolls from the 16th year of Jinghong, and it came to the first year of Taichu.
In the first year of Taichu, Ji Zihuan, only fifteen years old, ascended the throne, and the empress dowager attended to state affairs behind a screen. Ji Lingchuan was ordered in the face of danger to lead the Xuanjia Army to the border to resist the enemy.
In this year, her handwriting gradually became steady and mature. Every scroll was written extremely carefully, and the paper was clean and tidy. But at this time, her grades were only average.
In the second year of Taichu, the scores on her scrolls gradually improved, changing from average to above - average.
In the third year of Taichu, her handwriting became even more beautiful. The strokes were even, and each one was written extremely steadily, exactly the same as the handwriting in the ledger. And there was no longer any average grade on her scrolls. They were all excellent.
Sure enough, as the empress dowager had said, her grades in the Imperial College were extremely outstanding.
But as he looked through her scrolls over the years, a extremely absurd conjecture gradually emerged in his mind.
He thought that he probably knew why his young friend had appeared in the dilapidated temple behind the Imperial College back then and why he often couldn't find her trace and could only contact her by letter.
Maybe the person who sat in the classroom of the Imperial College, listened carefully to the teacher's lectures, and wrote these scrolls stroke by stroke was not Song Nanxin at all.
Once this conjecture took shape, it couldn't be suppressed anymore.
However, after confirming this point, besides feeling absurd, Ji Lingchuan also felt extremely ridiculous.
The ridiculousness of fate and the ridiculousness of this marriage.
Ji Lingchuan sat in front of the chair for a long time. His expression gradually returned to the cold and solemn look as before from the blank look, and he deeply suppressed all his thoughts in his pair of phoenix eyes as dark as the night sky.
When Ji Lingchuan returned to Yixiang Pavilion again, it was almost dawn.
The woman on the bedside was still sleeping soundly, but the little civet cat beside her had run away somewhere again. Ji Lingchuan sat on the bedside. He lowered his eyes and looked at the woman's exquisite back, not moving for a long time.
It was not until the hourglass made a sound that he shifted his gaze, got up, made a little noise, and called out “Attendants”.
The maids and old maids responded and carried clean water into the room. They stepped forward to serve Ji Lingchuan dress and wash.
This noise woke up Song Yihuan, who was sleeping soundly on the bed. Propping herself up to sit, she found that the man had already gotten up. At the same time, she was secretly surprised that she had unconsciously slept beside him for a whole night.
She raised her hand to touch her face, remembering what “Baishao” had said that the disguise on her face could last for six hours. From last night to now, only four hours had passed, so the disguise on her face should still be there.
Remembering that she was now “Song Nanxin”, Song Yihuan thought for a moment, then lifted the bed curtain, got out of bed, walked around the screen, and walked outside.
The moment she got up, Ji Lingchuan had already heard the noise. Hearing her footsteps approaching him, he turned around. The woman's long black hair was loose, and her small face was slightly lowered. Maybe she had just woken up. Every gesture of hers carried a bit of weariness and laziness, but it made her look even more graceful and charming.