Chapter 153

160. Guo'er's Invitation, Weilai Returns

Night.

Under a seven-tenths full moon.

On the roof.

The maids of Yilan Pavilion were immersed in sweet dreams.

In the main room, on a carved incense bed, the vermilion quilt was lifted.

The bed was empty, and the shoe cabinet under the bed was also empty.

And the young Miss Xie, whom they were supposed to be watching, appeared on the roof of Yilan Pavilion.

It was the same old place.

Only this time, Xie Lingjiang didn't have a small wine pot in her hand; instead, it was a bamboo stick wrapped in fortune-telling paper.

Xie Lingjiang sat with her arms around her knees, looking up at the moon for a while, then glancing at the Plum Forest Courtyard next to the Su residence not far away.

Then she buried her face in her knees again.

The bamboo stick in her right hand turned silently between her five fingers.

The folded red paper wrapping the marriage fortune had wrinkles; she had read it thousands of times.

Just like when Xie Lingjiang was studying in the past, she would turn her pen while hiding it under bamboo slips when her father wasn't paying attention.

The daughter's unfathomable thoughts also turned between these fingers.

It's just that what troubled her in childhood was the endless sea of learning.

But after all, she was born into a noble family of scholars and officials, holding the script of a talented woman who chants poems.

The studies, homework, and classics of her student days couldn't stump her, who was intelligent and proud.

But what troubles Xie Lingjiang now is another kind of endless scene.

"How should this question be solved..."

The night wind on the roof carried away the woman's murmurs.

"What question is hard to solve?"

Suddenly, a clear female voice broke the atmosphere of the night wind howling monotonously on the roof.

A nimble figure leaped lightly across the not-insignificant gap between the roofs of Yilan Pavilion and Meiying Studio.

The movement was without hesitation, and she wasn't afraid of losing her footing and falling.

It was that certain girl with plum blossom makeup again.

She came over with her embroidered shoes not fully worn on her heels, wrapped a silk blanket around her arm, and sat down beside Xie Lingjiang without any courtesy.

"Can you be more careful? Jumping around on the roof is very dangerous."

"With Xie Jie here, I won't fall."

"You really are not courteous at all."

"There's no need to be courteous with Xie Jie."

Su Guo'er blurted out.

Xie Lingjiang turned her head to look at her cold, pretty face; her delicate and small chin was habitually raised.

Su Guo'er turned to Xie Lingjiang:

"What is Xie Jie worrying about again? You can tell me about it."

Xie Lingjiang stopped the bamboo stick wrapped in red paper that was turning in her hand and suddenly said:

"Why are you so confident and overbearing about everything?"

Su Guo'er retorted: "Isn't Xie Jie also proud of her talent? Many men in this world see Xie Jie and feel that Xie Jie is like an ice-mountain female immortal, high and unreachable."

Xie Lingjiang shook her head, "It's different. You are... it seems you are like this about everything."

Su Guo'er didn't even raise her eyelids, "I'm too lazy to pretend to be a little white rabbit, speaking softly and acting shy. I can't do it."

Xie Lingjiang lowered her head and asked: "Then what if you meet someone you like in the future? Are you also this unyielding and confident?"

Su Guo'er frowned slightly, as if thinking about this question, but immediately she turned her head, looked at Xie Lingjiang, and asked:

"Asking this suddenly, could it be that Xie Jie, you have met someone? I heard that you went to the Donglin Temple temple fair with your Ru Shixiong a few days ago. Hey, what is this? Is this a marriage fortune you sought?"

Xie Lingjiang didn't answer, and without waiting for Su Guo'er to continue curiously pursuing, she looked up at the moon and interrupted:

"I helped you ask Master Shan Dao, but there is still no news of that poem..."

"Oh, by the way, I also sought a marriage fortune for you."

As she spoke, taking advantage of Su Guo'er's disappointed expression and her head being raised without paying attention.

Her fair hand flipped, and the original bamboo stick between her five fingers was swapped with another new bamboo stick from her sleeve.

Xie Lingjiang looked ahead, reached out to hand over the stick without turning her head.

Su Guo'er raised her eyebrows slightly and looked curiously at the brand-new marriage fortune wrapped in red paper:

"Mine?"

"Hmm."

"Why did you seek this for me? I don't need it." She said with a straight face, "Besides, what decent girl believes in marriage fortunes."

"Sought it on the way."

"What about yours?"

"I don't have one."

Su Guo'er's eyes were suspicious, "You didn't seek one for yourself? Then what did you go to the Donglin Temple temple fair for?"

Xie Lingjiang shook her head and said without blushing or skipping a beat, "I was invited to go to the Beitian Jiyang Yuan with Ru Shixiong."

Su Guo'er shook her head speechlessly and threw the bamboo stick wrapped in red paper into her sleeve.

Her expression was calm, and her little finger brushed the green silk messed up by the wind beside her ear.

It seemed she had no interest in opening it to check at all.

Xie Lingjiang didn't urge or exhort anything either.

She only looked at her own marriage fortune and the interpretation words.

Xie Lingjiang didn't open the marriage fortune she sought for Su Guo'er to look at.

The two sat side by side for a while.

Su Guo'er asked again about the situation of inquiring about the "Ode to the Return," but the answer she got made her expression even more disappointed.

Su Guo'er chatted with little interest, and Xie Lingjiang was also distracted throughout, speaking little.

Seeming to feel a bit bored, Su Guo'er tightened the blanket on her body and stood up, turning her head.

"Leaving."

On the roof, the accumulated rain from the day before still made the bricks and tiles a bit damp, and the girl with plum blossom makeup walked a bit slowly. Before leaving, she paused, as if she remembered something:

"By the way, on the day of my birth ceremony, you can bring your Ru Shixiong along."

Su Guo'er's tone was casual, as if it were a temporary whim.

Xie Lingjiang was startled, her pretty face revealing some hesitation:

"Why bring Ru Shixiong? He lives a simple life and has nothing valuable to give you?"

"Does Xie Jie think I would covet his gifts?"

Su Guo'er curled her lips and dropped a sentence casually:

"Your Ru Shixiong, although born into a commoner family, can be considered a dragon among men. The public trial in the whole county last time was quite interesting... You can bring him along to meet more people."

Xie Lingjiang heard this and couldn't help but take another look at Su Guo'er's departing back.

This Su family sister is still so annoying when she speaks.

Is she like this about everything?

I don't know if anyone will be able to tame her in the future.

Just as Xie Lingjiang was lost in thought and murmuring to herself.

Several hundred meters away.

A quiet Plum Forest Courtyard.

The houses in the courtyard were shrouded in a shadow of darkness like ink.

It was like a large mass of thick ink splashed onto a landscape painting with white space.

And what Xie Lingjiang on the distant roof didn't know was that in a certain dark room that she often looked at, a faint sandalwood fragrance was permeating the room.

Ouyang Rong felt that he had been sleeping very heavily these past few nights. He closed his eyes and opened them, and it was dawn, and he even felt a bit sleepy and yawned during the day.

Right now, in the room in the middle of the night, in this faint sandalwood atmosphere.

Ouyang Rong's breathing was very regular and long.

However, in the direction of the bed, accompanied by the moonlight falling in front of the bed through the gaps in the wooden window, it suddenly became bright and moved forward at a certain moment because the clouds were cleared to see the moon.

The moonlight under the bed gradually shone on the corner of a woman's embroidered shoe.

Two pairs of shoes on the ground.

And across the bead curtain of the bed.

One could vaguely see figures overlapping on the bed...

There were insect chirps in the Plum Forest Courtyard, which set off the quiet night even more.

This ink-like night color didn't know how many secrets and the thoughts of lovers entangled in a hundred turns it shrouded.

Just at this time of night when there was a girl watching under the moon and someone accompanying on the bed.

There was also a young girl clumsily climbing over the wall.

Ye Weilai was actually quite afraid of the dark.

But she was even more afraid of the time without her master.

Since changing ships in Hongzhou, she had gone through several days of tossing and turning and finally caught a boat back to Peng Lang Ferry overnight.

The Zhen clan did not let Ye Weilai return alone and sent two servants to follow her.

It's just that right now, both of Ouyang's servants were still resting at the inn next to Peng Lang Ferry.

Most of the states and counties in the Great Zhou Dynasty were implementing a curfew.

Like Ye Weilai and others, passengers who stopped at the pier overnight and got off the boat shouldn't have been running around and leaving the streets of Peng Lang Ferry pier privately.

But Ye Weilai tossed and turned on the bed at the inn for a long time, but still lifted the quilt, climbed over the wall clumsily, and left the inn.

I don't know if it was a racial talent or what, but the silver-haired girl's movements were light and agile.

As for whether she would encounter danger and bad people in the middle of the night, Ye Weilai felt that it should be others who were afraid of her.

As long as she untied the silver long hair reaching her waist behind her head, bad people would have to secretly say bad luck and retreat three feet.

On the way back and forth, Ye Weilai had seen too many such gazes.

On the streets where night watchmen occasionally beat gongs, Ye Weilai tried hard to overcome her fear of the dark, her gray-blue eyes widened, staring ahead.

Her slender figure passed through one familiar main street after another in the county town and also avoided many patrolling curfew government office officials.

Finally, Ye Weilai arrived at the gate of Meilu Garden on Luming Street.

She walked up carefully and knocked on the door lightly.

Not long after, the night watchman opened the door.

"You..."

"Shh."

Under the surprised gaze of the gatekeeper, the silver-haired girl who was shrinking her head and shrinking her brain squeezed into the door crack quickly.

After entering the door, she didn't forget to turn her head and instruct with a straight face:

"Be quiet, don't disturb the master's sleep."

"..."

Trying hard to restore two updates... Also, taking advantage of the guide, recommending Xiao Rong's old book "I Have a Sword Immortal Xiao Niangzi" to the new good brothers. It's full of water and satisfying!

(End of chapter)