What he said was so firm and certain that Shen Yujiao couldn’t help feeling curious.
Since she was now no longer anyone’s wife, she asked her parents and elder brother’s family for permission to go out for a while.
After a moment’s thought, Shen Hui sent his son, Shen Guangting, along to accompany her.
In name, he was to look after his aunt, but in truth, it was for the sake of her reputation. If anyone asked later, they would simply say that Zhenbei Wang had invited the Shen siblings and their young nephew Pei Di to go on an outing together.
Xie Wuling hadn’t expected her to agree to go alone with him; as long as she was willing to come along, he was already content.
Half a day later, Shen Yujiao arrived, together with her brother and Di Ge’er, at the place Xie Wuling had promised would make her happy:
Yicheng.
At first glance, it looked like an ordinary city. But as the carriage moved through its streets, she began to see, everywhere, buildings born from her own designs.
Jishan Hall, the Temple of the Earth God, Guanyin Tower, Jian’an Pavilion, Ruyi Tavern, Zhixing Bookshop…
One by one, Xie Wuling took her to visit these structures, some simple and ancient, some grand and towering, some elegant, some magnificent— each one a piece of the little world she had once sketched with her own hand.
It was hard to describe what she felt.
Like stepping into a dream, her feet light, her mind dazed, her heart overflowing with joy and disbelief.
All these painted beams and carved eaves, these tiled steps and soaring towers— could they truly have been born from her brush?
In the past, standing inside her father Shen Hui’s architectural works, she had always felt admiration and envy.
But now, her own dream had come true— she had stepped into the buildings she herself had imagined.
“Jiaojiao, what do you think?”
Through the veil, Xie Wuling couldn’t see her expression clearly, but the way her head turned this way and that told him she must be pleased.
Shen Yujiao looked at him in a daze, as if waking from a dream. “You really… built all of this?”
It was a foolish question—after all, she was standing in it.
Yet she still couldn’t quite believe it, as though she had wandered into a vast, beautiful illusion.
She had never imagined that the blueprints she drew would not end up sealed away in a chest, buried with her a hundred years later— that they could instead take shape in the real world, serving a purpose, perhaps even passing down to future generations who would see her ideas and craftsmanship.
And the one who had made it all real… was Xie Wuling.
He had always been like this, doing everything he could to help her achieve what she wanted.
In Jinling, when she fell into hardship; in Weinan, when she faced danger; in Wenxi, during the three years of her widowhood—
He had always been there.
“Of course,” he said, raising a brow with a touch of pride. “Isn’t it exactly the same as your drawings? From choosing the sites to breaking ground to completion, I oversaw every step myself, made sure they were built exactly the way you wanted.”
He said it lightly, but Shen Yujiao couldn’t help imagining the dignified Zhenbei Wang running to construction sites every few days.
No wonder the outside world had given him so many nicknames.
A wave of unnameable emotion surged in her chest. After a moment, she lifted a corner of her veil. Her dark eyes shimmered faintly, glistening with unshed tears as she smiled softly. “Xie Wuling… thank you.”
Thank you for fulfilling my dream.
A dream I never thought could come true.
Xie Wuling was stunned, staring at her tear-bright eyes and delicate smile.
It felt as though a fire burned in his chest and someone had suddenly poured oil onto it. The flames leapt high, crackling, and his heart felt so hot it might burst from his ribs.
He silently cursed himself for being so useless, already at his age, and still turning into a fool every time he saw her.
But she was so beautiful like this, eyes misted with tears, lips curved in a smile that he was reminded of countless verses praising beauty.
Only, when he tried to recall one, his mind went blank, leaving only one thought—
So beautiful. I like her.
Why is she so beautiful? The more I look, the more I like her.
You’re doomed, Xie Wuling. Utterly hopeless.
It wasn’t until she called his name twice in a row that he came back to himself. “Hm? What did you say?”
Shen Yujiao looked at him curiously. “Why has your face gone all red?”
Xie Wuling coughed. “Maybe… I’m a bit overheated lately.”
Afraid she’d ask more, he quickly changed the subject. “What were you saying just now?”
“Nothing much,” Shen Yujiao said. “I just noticed that every building has a strange mark carved onto its main beam.”
She tilted her head. “Is that a local custom here in Yicheng?”
“Which mark?” Xie Wuling asked.
“That one.”
Shen Yujiao couldn’t quite describe it, so she went into the main hall and pointed to a stylized figure on the right side of the beam. “That—doesn’t it look like a celestial dog swallowing the sun?”
Xie Wuling: “……?”
Xie Wuling: “How could that possibly be a dog!”
Shen Yujiao squinted, trying to make it out. “Isn’t it? It’s a four-legged beast, head raised, with a circle above it, how is that not a celestial dog eating the sun?”
Xie Wuling snapped, “That’s a qilin, a qilin gazing at the moon!”
A celestial dog—honestly! Why on earth would I carve a dog?
Shen Yujiao blinked in surprise. “Ah?”
Then, seeing his exasperated face, she suddenly remembered an old story—
The time he had embroidered her a red bridal veil, with a pattern meant to be mandarin ducks playing in water but which had ended up looking like two rather ugly wild ducks.
It seemed that over the years, his drawing skills had not improved at all.
However—“Why did you carve this pattern onto every roof beam?”
There had never been any local custom in Yicheng worshipping qilins, nor any legend about a “Qilin Gazing at the Moon.”
Hearing her question, a faint, suspicious flush crossed Xie Wuling’s handsome, mature face.
“These pavilions and towers were all built according to your blueprints,” he said. “But for the sake of your reputation, I couldn’t let anyone know they came from your hand.”
“When I was building the defensive walls in Yanbei,” he continued, “the craftsmen would either take on a code name or carve their names into the bricks to mark their work, a small remembrance. So I thought, why not carve your mark into the main beam of every building, to show that all of these came from you.”
Shen Yujiao had guessed at a hundred explanations, but never this one.
For a moment, she stood rooted to the spot, her whole being illuminated under his bright, ardent gaze.
A soft, glowing warmth welled up from the depths of her heart, spreading through her chest, flooding her whole body.
It took her a long while to find her voice again. Turning her face slightly aside in embarrassment, she murmured, “Then… why ‘Qilin Gazing at the Moon’? What does that have to do with me?”
“I’m the qilin. You’re the moon,” Xie Wuling replied without hesitation.
When he first conceived the design, he had thought of those nights in the water dungeon, when he looked up through the skylight and saw that cold, luminous moon.
Shen Yujiao was that moon.
Clear and radiant, dreamlike and untouchable, shining nightly into his dreams, something to look up to, but never reach.
He was like the monkey in the old tale, trying to scoop the moon from the water, knowing it was only a reflection, yet unable to stop reaching for it, again and again.
Even knowing he would come up empty each time, he couldn’t help but try once more. Perhaps next time, it would become real.
But when he drew the emblem, he didn’t want to depict himself as a monkey. Even if, back in Yanbei, people had once called him “Old Monkey Xie.”
A monkey was hardly dignified.
So, taking inspiration from the qilin embroidered on the pouch Shen Yujiao had once made him, he drew a Qilin Gazing at the Moon instead.
He carved that emblem onto every building’s beam so that if a passerby happened to look up at it, that fleeting glance would be one more quiet declaration of his love for her.
He wanted to tell the world: Xie Wuling cherishes Shen Yujiao.
But that love could not be openly spoken of, so it could only be carved in secret, hidden away.
And now she had noticed it, and even asked.
Xie Wuling felt as if all the blood in his body was rushing. No day better than today. He looked at her and said, “Jiaojiao, you’ve always known my heart. Tell me—”
His long fingers tightened under his red sleeve. When he spoke again, his voice was rougher: “Three years have passed. Have you let him go?”
There was no need to name him, he was Pei Shouzhen.
Shen Yujiao’s eyes flickered slightly. After a pause, she lowered her lashes. “I don’t really know how to say it.”
“When I think of him now, I no longer feel the same grief or urge to cry as I did three years ago. But to say I’ve completely let him go…”
Her brows knit faintly in confusion. She pressed a hand to her chest. “It still feels empty here like something’s missing, or like a fine thread still tugs at it. When it’s pulled, it still aches a little.”
So it turned out that, unknowingly, Pei Xia, Pei Shouzhen, had already entered her heart.
She couldn’t completely let him go.
Perhaps, in this lifetime, she would never forget that man as clear and distant as snow and moonlight.
“Xie Wuling,” she said softly, “I know your feelings.”
“I was once married. I once loved Pei Xia. I—”
Before she could finish, Xie Wuling interrupted her.
“Who among us is without feeling? You and Pei Shouzhen were betrothed since childhood, husband and wife for seven years. Even if it were just a cat or a dog, affection would grow, how much more so when he’s a man, and such an extraordinary one.”
The man was dead now, and Xie Wuling didn’t mind admitting Pei Shouzhen’s brilliance. “Someone like Pei Shouzhen, his family, looks, talent, all were the best under heaven. Not to mention that, when your family fell into trouble, he came to your aid. True, he failed to protect you in the end and caused you pain but as he said himself, he was no immortal. He couldn’t foresee every danger, make no mistake at all. For those past matters, you don’t blame him. Then I’ll… barely manage not to blame him either.”
“Jiaojiao,” he said quietly, with a small, wry smile, “I don’t mind that he still has a place in your heart.”
“Or rather,” his eyes dimmed slightly, “ever since he was buried beneath the ice and snow, I knew, you would never forget him in this lifetime.”
How could the living ever compare to the dead?
Both he and Pei Shouzhen had understood that. That was why, in their past confrontations, neither had struck a fatal blow, each afraid of appearing lesser.
But in the end, he was still outplayed by Pei Shouzhen.
When that man said he had a plan, Xie Wuling had foolishly believed him.
That cunning gentleman Pei.
Xie Wuling gave a low, self-mocking laugh, then looked back at Shen Yujiao with solemn eyes.
“I don’t ask for much,” he said. “Only that I have a place in your heart.”
He took a deep breath. “Even if Pei Shouzhen is there too, I don’t mind.”
Meeting his bright, fervent gaze, Shen Yujiao’s throat tightened. “Xie Wuling…”
Her heart felt as though a hand were gripping it, shock, guilt, gratitude, and a tenderness she couldn’t contain.
Seeing her eyes grow wet, Xie Wuling quickly forced a smile. “What are you crying for?”
“Jiaojiao, you should smile more. You’re beautiful when you smile. I like seeing you smile.”
“Xie…”
“Don’t be so quick to refuse me. I waited three years already, I don’t mind waiting longer. Besides, didn’t you once say people should always look forward?”
“Xie Wu—”
“I mean it, I’m really not in a rush. After all, you no longer need to keep mourning, and you’ll have more chances to go out now. I’ll have plenty of chances to make you fall for me…”
“Xie Wuling!”
Shen Yujiao raised her voice slightly. But when she saw him glance away, her heart softened again.
She exhaled deeply, smiling helplessly. “Can’t you at least let me finish what I’m saying?”
Xie Wuling lowered his eyes, muttering at his feet, “I was just afraid you’d start saying things like ‘I’m sorry,’ or ‘Thank you,’ or that I should go find someone better. You know I hate hearing that…”
“Then what do you like to hear?”
He froze, caught off guard by the question.
A moment later, he heard a faint laugh from in front of him, soft as a whisper, followed by what sounded like a quiet murmur of “fool.”
Xie Wuling frowned, about to retort then met a pair of dark eyes, clear and bright like autumn water.
“Xie Wuling,” Shen Yujiao said steadily, “three months from now, come to my house to propose.”
Her voice was calm and gentle. “This time, I’ll truly marry you.”
The instant those words fell, Xie Wuling felt as though countless fireworks burst by his ears, thunderous and dazzling.
A thousand vivid butterflies seemed to take flight from his chest, fluttering wildly. It was like ice thawing, like the world awakening, like a dead tree finally meeting spring, sprouting tender green buds.
He was dazed, as if in a dream.
Until the person before him blinked and said lightly, “What, you don’t like hearing that either?”
“Well then, I suppose I was just being sentimental. Pretend I didn’t say it.”
She turned to leave.
Xie Wuling snapped out of his trance and grabbed her wrist. “I like it! I like it very much!”
No words in the world could sound sweeter, like that line of poetry: ‘As if hearing celestial music, my ears grow bright!’
Shen Yujiao hadn’t expected him to be so worked up. Catching a glimpse of Shen Guangting outside, walking around with Di Ge’er, she flushed red and whispered urgently, “You, let go!”
Though reluctant, Xie Wuling released her hand. Yet his gaze burned still, locking onto hers. “Jiaojiao, are you serious? You’re not teasing me again?”
Shen Yujiao was just about to reply when he blurted, “Even if you are teasing me, I don’t care. As long as you’ll keep teasing me for the rest of my life, I’ll take it.”
“Don’t worry,” he added quickly, eyes shining. “Three months from now, I’ll definitely come to your house to propose.”
Shen Yujiao couldn’t help laughing.
He had taken all the words right out of her mouth, what else could she say?
Just then, Shen Guangting walked in. Seeing how close the two stood, he cleared his throat loudly. “Your Highness, you…”
“Ah!” Xie Wuling beamed, raising a hand cheerfully. “Brother-in-law! I’m right here!”
Shen Guangting: “…?”
What in the world—since when was I your brother-in-law?
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