Rising Phoenix

As she retreated, he pursued, and after this little exchange, Feng Zhiwei felt sudden coldness on her face.

She lifted her hand to touch that spot of coldness, and when her finger came away it was covered in blood. In this absent-minded moment, Feng Zhiwei thought back to that day in that small yard when a drop of his blood had fallen between her eyes, and while she was distracted he heard his quiet voice: “That day my blood also fell on your face — were you happy? Were you proud?”

The gentle tone hid a flavor of biting and gnashing of teeth. Feng Zhiwei looked up in shock, utterly confused, but in front of this man’s dark eyes, heavy as gloomy clouds, she could not speak.

After a moment, she could only embarrassedly reply: “These words that you speak…”

She spoke utterly sincerely, but he could only see her actions as a mechanical deceit — his long eyebrows twitched as a nameless anger swelled in Ning Yi’s breasts, and suddenly his hand pounced.

Feng Zhiwei did not understand what Ning Yi was doing, and she naturally struggled, and because of her struggle, she unknowingly generated Qi inside her body and pushed with a surprising strength, mistakenly pressing on some part of Ning Yi’s body and forcing out a groan of pain.

Feng Zhiwei startled herself and immediately loosened her hands, but in that moment of hesitation, Ning Yi’s hand had already reached forward and grabbed her throat.

His bloody fingers were around her neck, and the scarlet only made her skin more translucent in comparison. Her large eyes stared back into his, without fear or supplication, and only gradually watered. Her eyes did not tear up in pain or worry, but dewed with a natural mistiness, as a dreamlike shroud fell over gaze.

Like a solitary flower before the dawn of day, misted with cold and clear dew, waiting in the lonely dark to blossom.

His hand began to tremble.

He could not help but think of the first time they had met, this woman sinking in the water, thin, black feather eyebrows over mighty and bright eyes. Even after a murder, her eyes seemed to flow with brilliance and beauty.(The end of Chapter 2)

In her he saw an elegant beauty free from the stains of earthly wind and rain, immutable.

His fingers clutched her neck.

But his heart was a mess.

She knew too many of his secrets, and could only bring him worry and misfortune. She saw too deeply, and with too much cunning, and was an obstacle he had to eliminate, but as she stood there staring calmly, his fingers suddenly lost all their strength.

If she begged, he would kill her.

If she cried, she would die.

But she did nothing, calm in the face of his killing intent, and he was once again lost in the little details of their first encounter.

They had been the same, trapped for years in a lonely city, struggling against a doomed fate clutching at their souls.

His fingers slowly loosened their grip.

He was as a sudden hurricane, loud and fury, suddenly turning aside the pitching current of his movement to pass peacefully by a sea of flowers, relinquishing his fury to preserve the beautiful and fragile blossoms.

His fingers finally left her neck, and he sighed silently with the depths of his being. He comforted himself — this had not been a good opportunity anyway, there were too many people outside, and he would not have been able to explain … yes, this was why he had let her go.

Feng Zhiwei slowly lifted her hand to her neck.

There were no marks, and no sense of pressure; just then, he had not even revealed the slightest hint of his killing aura, but she knew with certainty that this moment, out of all their past encounters, was her closest brush with death, and that this time Ning Yi had truly wanted her life.

At that moment, with his fingers around her neck, her mind had blanked, and she had lost all her cleverness and all her wit. She had stared at him then because she wanted to understand, to know what he was thinking.

She did not know what made him finally give up her death, and she fell into a rare long silence.

After a moment, she slowly moved, picked up the ointment once more, and shifted to his side, removing his outer clothing and applying the medicine.

Ning Yi did not speak, and silently accomodated her actions. The two were no longer at war, and had somehow reached a wordless understanding.

With his clothes half off, the man’s smooth, jade skin was open to the air, and if it were said to have the firmness and elasticity of an able swordsman, it also had the elegance and brilliance of a wealthy and honored prince. His defined collarbones were out in the open, and the tight and fluid line of his shoulder and neck.

Feng Zhiwei saw none of this, and stared in shock at the bloody puncture wound that had almost pierced through his shoulder blade. The skin and flesh around the wound was hideously curled and twisted, and it was a wonder that he had been able to chase so staunchly with such a serious injury. Feng Zhiwei could not help but gasp, almost as if it were her shoulder and her pain.

Ning Yi watched her expression change, and the darkness around his eyes seemed to almost lessen.

Feng Zhiwei gently dressed the wound, attentive to every twitch and quiver. “Is it painful?” She asked, and quietly leaned forward and gently blew on the wound.

Ning Yi was surprised into laughter, and could barely believe that the clever and screwed girl was capable of such a childish move. His heart lightened, and he could not resist speaking: “What are you doing?”

Feng Zhiwei awkwardly straightened, her eyes downward as she replied. “When I was young and scraped my knee, my mother blew on it like this…” Her voice quietly faded as she spoke.

Ning Yi’s smile fell from his face. He knew how Feng Zhiwei had been cast out of her home.

After a moment, he quietly replied: “To have had someone blow on your wound before is a happiness…”

Feng Zhiwei was startled, and looked upward with an expression of disbelief — was he comforting her?

After the words left his mouth, Ning Yi immediately felt as if he had let too much slip, coughing and closing his mouth. Feng Zhiwei bit her lips and continued applying the medicine, her hair hanging downwards, brushing his shoulder, and though it itched, he suddenly did not feel like moving.

The soft exhalation of her breath beside his ear was sweet and refreshing, like a half-bloomed crape myrtle in early summer.

Beyond the partition, the sound of arguing could be heard, and though Ning Yi should have been paying attention, he felt lazy and ignored it.

Feng Zhiwei also paid no mind to the furor, and quietly continued her task, staring at the blood and bone. As she worked and thought about what had happened, she felt a pain in her heart, and could not resist quietly saying: “and for what?”

Ning Yi froze, and he turned slightly to look at her.

Feng Zhiwei kept her peace — what was all of this for? The struggle and trouble of planning, the determination to sacrifice his body and to take such a deep wound, and to not even have anyone by his side to ask after him or speak to — this highest throne under heaven, this imperial glory, was it truly worth it?

Ning Yi calmly looked at her, not growing angry as he seemed to read her thoughts through her eyes. After a moment, he finally said: “You do not understand.”

Feng Zhiwei listened in silence, wondering if this claim was true.

You lost your mother at a young age, and suffered with your sickly body for years; even with your great talent, you were always ignored or oppressed. Although you and Xin Ziyan are friends with completely understanding, you must pretend to be strangers, and though you once owned Qing Ming Academy, you had to relinquish it to the Crown Prince. You are not favored by the Emperor, so you must attach yourself to the Crown Prince, and in so doing, have constantly paid the price for his stupidity… All this time you’ve hidden away all these wounds and all these secrets, without a single person by your side to treat you with kindness or offer you protection, and so you’ve come all this way and do not mind pushing yourself even harder, treating yourself even more harshly.