Lin Guanqing smiled faintly and waved his hand dismissively, not caring much. “It was just a small effort, don’t mention it.”
After cleaning the wound on her hand and carefully applying medicinal powder, he finally let go once everything was properly tended to.
“It is all done. Try to avoid getting it wet for the next couple of days.” After a brief thought, he added, “If you ever need help with anything inconvenient in the future, you can come directly to me.”
Shen Xiu nodded softly. “Thank you.”
With that said, there seemed to be nothing left to discuss.
After offering a few more verbal instructions, Lin Guanqing packed up his medicine chest and turned to leave.
Just as he reached the doorway, however, a thought suddenly struck him, causing him to turn back and look at the person behind him.
Shen Xiu was still sitting there quietly, her hair falling down to her waist, a few strands even slipping inside her collar.
She kept her head lowered in that quiet manner, her gaze cast downward and looking somewhat absent-minded as she stared at the wrinkled marriage contract on the table. A thin, indistinct mist seemed to shroud her entire being.
Faint and elusive, it gave people a feeling that she was just out of reach.
She herself appeared completely out of place with her surroundings, exuding an air of aloof detachment and loneliness.
Only the warm candlelight reflecting from the tabletop granted her a faint touch of worldly warmth.
Watching Shen Xiu like this, Lin Guanqing frowned unconsciously, feeling an inexplicable sense of internal discomfort and a rather unsettled feeling. To be honest, she was somewhat afraid she might do something foolish, but some matters apparently had to be worked through by herself.
Lin Guanqing continued watching her like that, but Shen Xiu did not notice him until he spoke up to remind her:
“You can live here in the manor with peace of mind from now on. No one will come to pester you anymore, and you won’t need to worry about anyone bullying you.”
Hearing his voice, Shen Xiu slowly returned to her senses.
She looked toward him, her gaze pausing briefly before gradually growing gentle and vivid, losing that completely lifeless look she had just worn.
“Young Master,” she softly called out, her voice carrying a genuine and gentle smile. “Thank you truly for giving me such a place where I can settle down with peace of mind.”
Seeing her smile, Lin Guanqing’s mood finally seemed to improve a bit. However, listening to her continually address him as Young Master, he felt exhausted just hearing it when she didn’t even seem tired saying it, so he smiled and spoke up:
“Since that is the case, stop calling me Young Master all the time. It sounds rather awkward; you can just call me by my name directly.”
Shen Xiu smiled at this, nodding in agreement. “Alright.”
Lin Guanqing then smiled, the corners of his brows twitching slightly. With the youthful vigor of a teenager, he casually said, “Fine, then why don’t you call my name right now for me to hear? I have never heard you call my name before.”
Shen Xiu froze for a moment, seemingly not expecting him to be so proactive. Still, this was no difficult task, so she pressed her lips into a slight smile and then softly uttered:
“Guanqing.”
Her voice was very soft and slightly hoarse from having cried earlier. When she called his name, her tone was exceptionally gentle, brushing across Lin Guanqing’s chest like a light feather and causing ripples to form deep within his heart, inexplicably making his ears feel warm.
Lin Guanqing felt a slight throb in his chest.
He let out a low acknowledgment and said nothing more.
Shen Xiu’s gaze remained fixed on him, warm and soft, yet it inexplicably made him feel somewhat ill at ease. An urge to turn and leave quietly rose from the bottom of his heart, as if staying any longer might lead to things falling out of his control.
He took a secret breath, suppressed all those complicated and chaotic thoughts, and this time truly turned and walked away.
Meanwhile, Shen Xiu remained seated in her original spot, quietly watching his receding figure until it completely vanished around the corridor’s corner.
The curve of her lips then slowly deepened.
Three days passed in the blink of an eye.
As for what happened that day, it ultimately and inevitably became known to the others within the manor.
On the other side, Lin Guanqing did not hide the matter from his little Senior Sister either, recounting the entire sequence of events from beginning to end. Naturally, after hearing it, Meng Jinjin learned that he had squandered the better part of his personal savings for an unknown stranger.
Lin Guanqing had originally expected his senior sister to praise him for doing well, seeing as saving people was a good deed after all.
He had never imagined, however, that upon learning the cause and effect of the incident, her first reaction would be to raise her eyebrows in anger and lecture him fiercely from head to toe:
“Did I not tell you long ago not to take in women of unknown origin? Look at you now. Not only did you keep her, but you were also extorted out of a thousand taels of silver by her scoundrel of a fiancé for no reason!”
The more she spoke, the angrier she grew, pointing a finger right at his forehead:
“How could a cowardly, fragile man like that intimidate you? Where has that knack you had for talking back to me gone? You should have just broken his leg and thrown him out.”
“When it comes down to it, this is all because you poked your nose into other people’s business. Why on earth are you still keeping that person in the manor? Are you not afraid of inviting more trouble later on? I truly do not know when you became so warm-hearted; wouldn’t it have been fine to just give some silver and send her away?”
Hearing these words, Lin Guanqing’s expression gradually grew cold. He raised his eyes and gazed at Meng Jinjin with a quiet, heavy look:
“Senior Sister speaking like this is far too hurtful. Miss Shen faced injustice, and we extended a helping hand. What is wrong with that? How does Master usually instruct us? Cultivating martial arts and walking the pugilistic world is precisely about delivering the distressed and aiding the perilous. It is about refusing to tolerate such bullying of the weak.”
His tone wasn’t heavy, yet it carried a trace of annoyance. “Does Senior Sister feel that I acted wrongly?”
Meng Jinjin had never expected him to talk back, and her cheeks flushed red with anger as her tone sharpened: “And do you think you acted correctly?”
“That girl is weak and spineless. Others can help her for a moment, but can they possibly help her for a lifetime?”
“If you ask me, her own character is already flawed, eloping with someone and abandoning her family. Now that her partner tricked her, it is entirely her own fault. Since she was willing, why didn’t you just grant her wish and let her follow that man, so she can open her eyes wide and see clearly what price must be paid for trusting others blindly?”
Her chest heaved. The more she spoke, the more sense she felt it made, and her tone turned cold and hard: “Only after tasting genuine hardship will people learn to remember the lesson. What kind of look is that? Could you possibly think what I am saying is wrong?”
Hearing this, the irritation in Lin Guanqing’s heart intensified even further. He had never realized before that his senior sister could treat others with such cold indifference.
Thinking of the past, he couldn’t help growing even more upset, and words spilled straight out: “Senior Sister thinks women of unknown origin should not be sheltered? When the elders brought Senior Sister back to the manor, was she not also without kin and of unknown identity?”
Only after speaking these words did he realize his tone was a bit too heavy, and deep regret and remorse welled up inside him. Yet stubbornness blocked his chest, and he refused to back down.
Meng Jinjin turned pale the moment she heard this. Her eyes widened in disbelief, and her eye sockets grew somewhat red.
“You are comparing me to her?”
Lin Guanqing braced himself and gritted out a sentence, “Why can we not compare? Miss Shen has never done anything harmful to heaven or reason. She merely misjudged someone once. She is helpless and all alone. Why must Senior Sister be so harsh toward her?”
Meng Jinjin had never been talked back to by her junior brother with such an unaccommodating tone, and a feeling of stuffiness and subtle bitterness welled up inside her. Hearing him say Miss Shen on one side and Miss Shen on the other made her feel even more wretched.
He had clearly explained to her earlier that the words spoken during their argument that day were merely said in a fit of anger, and that he did not like Shen Xiu at all.
Yet if he truly did not like her, what did this kind of defense today mean?
Could it be another burst of momentary impulsiveness?
A sour taste rose in Meng Jinjin’s heart, and she abruptly asked an unrelated question, “Are you harboring feelings for her in your heart?”
“What?” Lin Guanqing started. Once he realized what she meant, his brows knitted together instinctively, and he denied, “How could that be? I merely feel that the things Senior Sister said were too cold and harsh.”
Meng Jinjin’s eyes grew slightly red. “I am harsh? You say Miss Shen this and Miss Shen that, and the moment I say a single bad thing about her, you grow angry with me. Do you still dare say you do not care about her at all? I no longer know whether the words you said to me that day were true or false!”
“Of course they were true!” Lin Guanqing blurted out instinctively. “What I said was true, and my apology that day was even more sincere.”
“Fine, then tell me, have you fallen for her or not?” Meng Jinjin asked once more with reddened eyes, staring closely at his face, unwilling to miss any reaction from him.
Lin Guanqing felt an anonymous fire clogging his chest, hard to shake off and irritating. He truly did not understand why his senior sister had to keep entangling herself in this matter. He had already explained clearly that what he said that day was said in anger and that he did not like Shen Xiu at all.
An indescribable annoyance, coupled with the grievance of being misunderstood, rushed straight to his head, making his tone sharpen uncontrollably as he practically blurted out:
“I told you long ago, I do not like Shen Xiu, not even a little bit!”
“Everything I said that day was said in a fit of anger, and I only helped her out of sympathy. That is right, purely out of sympathy.”
“Do you still not understand? Senior Sister, I have never liked her from start to finish. There is nothing between us, and you must not say such misleading things in the future.”
As his words fell, the surrounding air seemed to grow utterly quiet.
Lin Guanqing looked toward his senior sister, only to find her gaze slightly frozen, fixed on the space behind him.
His heart tightened inexplicably, as if pinched hard by an invisible hand. Instinctively, he turned around.
And right then, he met Shen Xiu’s pair of quietly gentle eyes. Evidently, she had heard every single word he had just spoken.
Lin Guanqing’s fingers tightened slightly, though his expression remained unchanged as he quietly watched Shen Xiu’s direction, as if observing any trace of emotion on her face.
Then he noticed that even upon hearing those words of his, the gentle expression on her face never changed at all. Even her gaze remained just as it had been before, neither dejected nor joyous, looking at him as if he were an irrelevant person, with that same plain and gentle look.
For reasons unknown, being looked at by her with such calm and indifferent eyes caused a sudden sting in Lin Guanqing’s chest, inexplicably stirring up a dense wave of discomfort.
Seeing both people opposite her looking at her, Shen Xiu realized that her appearance had interrupted the two of them.
This brought a slight trace of awkwardness to her face.
She nodded toward the two of them as a greeting, then spoke: “I am sorry, I have disturbed the two of you. I only wanted to come out for a breath of fresh air and did not expect to run into anyone.”
“I will leave right now.”
With that, she nodded to them once more in acknowledgment and walked away in the direction she had come.
There was neither reluctance nor any sorrow or dejection in her eyes. She looked like someone encountering a completely ordinary acquaintance, leaving not the slightest trace in her heart.
This reaction made it clear to Meng Jinjin that this young woman harbored no romantic feelings for her junior brother whatsoever.
Meanwhile, hearing what Shen Xiu said, Lin Guanqing let out a low acknowledgment and said nothing more.
Yet he kept his head lowered, his long eyelashes dropping down so that no one could see the expression in his eyes, nor could anyone tell what he was thinking at that moment.