Leaving the Lake Behind
By the time the sky began to pale, the boat was no longer in the old side channel where it had spent the night.
When Fang Yingjie woke, he lay still for a moment before realizing something was wrong. Beyond the window, the water no longer looked like the reaches outside the mouth of Taihu, where scattered lamplight drifted over the dark and the noise of the wharves carried faintly across the water. Even the wind was different. Before, every gust had come with the smell of fish, wine, wet timber, and that nameless muddy brine that clung to the wharfside chaos. Now, what slipped in through the paper window was only a cleaner, flatter breath of water—cool and damp, touched with the pale softness of morning mist—gliding along the hull. If one listened long enough, it almost seemed capable of smoothing out the turmoil in a person's heart as well.
He sat up slowly. The tightness in his chest was still there, but it was no longer like it had been in the past few days, when the slightest movement would throw his breath into disorder. Last night, when they had left Taihu behind, neither he nor Wang Yan had said a word. They had only listened to the creak of the oars, stroke by stroke, pushing the old shore farther away. But that had been in darkness. No matter how clearly one understood something in the heart, the night always put a veil over it. Only now, waking to the pale green light through the window paper and seeing the day spreading over the water in broadening sheets, did he feel it with complete clarity for the first time.
They were truly on the road now.
They had not merely changed anchorages. They had not slipped away for half a stretch of the journey.
They had left the whole circle of Taihu behind.
Lowering his eyes, he followed the breath-settling method Old Daoist Xuan had taught him, slowly guiding the unsettled air in his chest downward. At first it still caught in places, and the old wound beneath his ribs drew tight, but he did not force it. Instead he worked with patient care, easing it down inch by inch. By the time the breath finally settled into the steadiest point low in his abdomen, faint voices and footsteps had begun to sound outside. The people aboard had already risen.
On the small couch opposite, Wang Yan woke as well.
She came awake more slowly than Fang Yingjie. Her lashes trembled twice before she turned to look out the window, as though searching for the scattered lights of Taihu she had seen through the drifting mist the night before. But after staring for some time, she saw only a line of brightening sky, a sweep of water broader than yesterday's, and now and then a white bird skimming low above it. At first she simply sat there in a daze. Then, as if something had suddenly come clear to her, she bit her lower lip lightly.
That departure last night had not been a temporary retreat.
They had really left.
She sat up, her hair not yet fully gathered, the composure she had forced over herself not yet restored. She had always been a girl with brightness in her eyes, and when she smiled she was like sunlight at its best on the lakeshore. But now, what rose first in those lively eyes was not spirit, only a hollow still hanging there from the moment of waking, before she had managed to press it down.
A maidservant outside the curtain knocked softly.
"Young Master, Miss Wang—you are awake? Madam has sent hot water first, and asks that you join her for breakfast afterward."
They answered, and before long both had washed and made themselves ready. When they came out of the cabin, the water beyond was indeed nothing like before. Dawn had not fully broken yet, but the morning light had already begun to spread layer by layer. The boat moved through broad water now, and from bow to stern it bore the unmistakable order of a vessel accustomed to long journeys. The deck was spotless. The retainers moved soundlessly; the older servants and maids carried water and porridge without haste and without confusion, each thing done with quiet steadiness. It was as though some invisible thread ran through the whole vessel, lifting every hand and every step just enough—not allowing anything to drift, and not allowing anything to fall into disorder.
Madam Wen was seated beside a small table just outside the forward cabin.
She was dressed simply as ever, though the lake-blue outer robe she wore today was lighter than before. Her hair was arranged without a single strand out of place. In the pale morning light, she seemed somehow to steady the entire boat simply by sitting there. When she saw the two of them emerge, she first looked at Fang Yingjie's face, then at Wang Yan, and smiled faintly.
"Did you both sleep well last night?"
Wang Yan nodded, though her voice was lower than usual. "Well enough."
Fang Yingjie answered too.
Madam Wen asked no more. She merely had the servants bring over the porridge and the little cakes. Fine shreds of fish and tender greens floated in the porridge, steam rising from it in a light curl. The cakes had just come off the griddle, their edges thin and crisp, fragrant with rice flour and hot oil. She did not speak at once of the road ahead, nor did she hurry to explain where they were bound today. Only after the two of them had each taken half a bowl of hot porridge did she speak at last.
"When we set out last night, both of you were too exhausted, so I said nothing more."
"We are already some distance from the mouth of Taihu now. After another two turns through the waterways, we will reach a broader river route. Once we come to a wharf where we can stop in safety, I will send men ashore with letters."
She said it in the most natural tone, as though she were merely arranging something that ought to have been arranged from the beginning.
Wang Yan, who had still been holding one of the small cakes in lowered hands, looked up at once.
"Letters... to my home?"
Madam Wen shook her head lightly.
"What should have been sent back to your home was sent last night. What should have been taken away has already been taken. If we chase after that direction with more letters now, it may not be any safer than before."
She paused, then went on.
"I mean the other side—Four Seas Gang, Mount Hua Sect, and Fang Stronghold."
At the mention of those names, Fang Yingjie's fingers tightened almost imperceptibly.
Madam Wen, however, behaved as though she had not noticed the movement at all. She continued calmly, "Since you left your name with me last night, we cannot afford to be vague about the line that follows. The moment we find a proper wharf along the way, I will have word sent separately to each of them. The letters will not say too much—only that you and Miss Wang are traveling south with me for the time being, and will first settle at Biyue Manor on Poyang Lake in Jiangxi; that you are aboard ship, and safe enough for now. Four Seas Gang, Mount Hua Sect, and Fang Stronghold should all be told, so they need not keep wasting men and effort around Taihu. Once they receive word, they will know to come to you by way of Biyue Manor."
When she finished, she lifted her eyes to Fang Yingjie, her tone still as gentle as before.
"If there is anything else you want included, tell me later, and I will have it written in as well."
The words were not forceful, yet they touched his heart as lightly as a hand pressing down.
He had nodded last night, yes—but even so, somewhere in him there had remained the helplessness of someone placing his fate into another's hands. Yet at this moment, hearing her speak so naturally of Four Seas Gang, Mount Hua Sect, and Fang Stronghold one after another, as though all those tangled lines that had once seemed so distant and chaotic could be set into order the moment they reached her, the strain he had been carrying inside him truly eased a little.
At the word letters, something more solid finally entered Wang Yan's eyes as well. She bit her lip and thought for a moment before asking quietly, "Then... if my father manages to free himself, he'll know where we've gone too, won't he?"
Madam Wen looked at her and nodded.
"He will."
"If your father can get away, Chief Steward Zhou will naturally connect this road to him. For now, you need not rush to think through every worst possibility first. Since the road has already opened before you, there will always be a way to join the next stretch when the time comes."
She spoke with perfect calm, calm as the small, natural folds made when wind passes over water. It was not much, and yet it was enough to make one believe that those ripples would continue onward with the current, all the way ahead.
Wang Yan asked no more. She only answered softly. The hollow that had hung in her eyes from the moment she woke finally seemed, for the time being, to have found somewhere to rest.
The Waters Turn South
Once the boat had left Taihu Lake behind, the waterway did not at once open into some vast, shoreless expanse. Instead, it first ran into a longer, narrower vein of Jiangnan water.
At first, the banks remained level. Diked fields, whitewashed walls, old trees, low landings, wooden frames hung with drying nets—one by one they slipped past along the water's edge, looking not so very different from the village docks near Taihu. And yet, looked at closely, they were not the same after all. The wind by Taihu Lake always carried a faint lake-reek, and the water there felt broader, looser, more spread out. Here, the current seemed as though some invisible hand had drawn it together. It ran steady. It ran straight. The boat followed it forward, and the people aboard, too, seemed slowly to be taken up by that same current, as if there were no longer any choice but to keep going on.
After two or three days, the landscape truly began to change.
First, the water widened. Not merely because the banks fell farther apart, but because the whole surface suddenly seemed to brighten. In the mornings it held an entire breadth of sky; by afternoon, the wind would push long, fine ripples across it. Along the banks, the landing places now had taller wharf sheds, and the vessels moored there were no longer only fishing boats and common river craft. Larger cargo boats had begun to appear, with high sides and deep drafts, moving back and forth with a kind of weight that was never ostentatious, yet impossible to miss.
Later still, hills began to show along the shore.
At first they were only a pale wash of blue in the distance, like a careless brushstroke pressed across mist. Then that faint blue drew nearer and slowly took on rising and falling lines. By the time they had gone farther south, even the wind off the water seemed to carry a different scent. There was less of the raw dampness of the lake now, and more of stone, grass, and a trace of warmth that felt strangely unfamiliar.
Wang Yan noticed these changes sooner than Fang Yingjie did.
She had been born by the lake and knew water and wind with unerring instinct. On the afternoon of the third day, she stood by the rail for a while, watching, then said softly, "This isn't Taihu wind anymore."
There was no alarm in her voice when she said it. It sounded, rather, like someone finally speaking aloud something she had long understood, but had only at this moment truly admitted.
Fang Yingjie stood beside her, also gazing toward the place ahead where the sheen of the water tangled with the shadow of distant hills. After a long while, he said only, "Mm."
He had felt it too. But he had grown up on Mount Hua, and mountains were more familiar to him than water. All along the way from Taihu, he had seen the turns of the channels, the quarter from which the wind was blowing, the changing accents at the docks—but he had always seen them through a certain remove. Only in these past few days, when the color of hills had begun to rise faintly on both banks, had the feeling of truly having left become suddenly, unmistakably real.
Madam Wen did not always sit with them, and yet she always seemed to appear at exactly the moments when she should.
Sometimes the boat would stop at a small dock in the afternoon to take on provisions, and she would send over a small plate of freshly steamed glutinous rice cakes for them to taste the flavors of the southern waterways. Sometimes, when the evening wind came up, an older serving woman would bring Wang Yan an extra outer robe and say in passing, "Madam asked me to bring this. She feared the wind off the water would give you a headache if you stood too long by the rail, miss." On another occasion, Fang Yingjie lingered by the side of the boat a little too long, and the breath in his chest began to float upward in that familiar, uneasy way. By the time he returned to the cabin, a cup of warm medicinal tea was already waiting on the table—not bitter, only faintly fragrant with herbs.
This was how she treated them. She never tried to make a display of kindness, and yet before any discomfort could truly settle into hardship, she had already quietly pressed it down.
That kind of care was more formidable than open consolation.
Its power did not lie in anything grand.
It lay in its steadiness.
On the fourth day, the boat put in at a larger landing to take on fresh water. As expected, Madam Wen had letters sent out in different directions. She did not hide any of it from the two of them. At the small desk in the forward cabin, she laid three sealed letters neatly in a row and named them one by one.
"This one goes to the Four Seas Gang."
"This one goes to Mount Hua."
"This one goes to Fang Stronghold."
When she said that last, she lifted her eyes to Fang Yingjie.
"I did not write too deeply of what has happened. Only that you are wounded and traveling south with me for the time being, and that whoever is meant to receive you need not continue searching around the mouth of Taihu."
"If the people you spoke of truly are looking for you, then once they see these words, they will know where to come next."
After saying this, she handed the letters over to the man seeing to the errand, as though she were simply setting a matter already decided quietly and firmly into motion.
Fang Yingjie stood to one side. He had meant to say, Madam, you have my thanks for the trouble, but when the words reached his lips, they suddenly felt too light. He watched the three letters vanish into a sleeve, watched the messenger disembark and leave the dock, and the taut cord that had been drawn tight inside him for so long seemed, with that sight, to loosen a little.
Wang Yan, meanwhile, watched in silence.
She did not know how far Mount Hua and Fang Stronghold truly were, nor did she know exactly what sort of power the Four Seas Gang held in the martial world. Yet after seeing the way Madam Wen had arranged one matter after another over the past few days, and after watching her dispatch those three letters with such clarity and composure, a thought arose in her heart—simple, plain, and strangely solid:
As long as they remained aboard Madam Wen's boat, things would not truly fall apart.
Old Stories by Lamplight
On the night of the fifth day of their journey south, the boat put in at a small harbor sheltered from the wind.
It was not a large harbor. Willows lined both banks, and only a scattering of lights shone from the shore. The boat lay steady at anchor, and with the wind fallen, the cabin was quieter than it had been on the previous nights. After supper, Wang Yan had meant to sit for a while by the rail, but the old maidservant had talked her out of it with a single sentence. "The water turns cold at night, miss. Best not stand there too long."
Fang Yingjie had taken his medicine as well, and the dressing on his injured right foot had just been changed. He was still lean, but no longer so frail that every movement made him seem on the verge of breaking.
That evening, Madam Wen did not send them back to their cabins at once.
Instead, she had the lamp in the forecabin turned up a little brighter, then told the servants to clear the table of everything unnecessary. Only a few small plates of delicate sweets remained, together with a pot of warm tea and a single flask of wine. The wine was pale in color, so light it seemed meant more for its fragrance than for drinking.
"The wind is gentle tonight," she said. "There is no harm in sitting a while."
At once, Wang Yan relaxed a little.
In the past few days she had gradually grown used to the quiet order of life aboard the boat, but she was not, after all, the sort of girl who could remain still from morning to night without restlessness creeping in. Sure enough, after only a short while, the plate of sugared pastry had tempted her hand. She picked up a small piece, bit into it, and her eyes brightened at once.
"This is finer than the kind at Pingma Wharf."
Madam Wen smiled.
"I happened to pick it up along the way."
"If you like it, then if we come across something similar again farther down the road, I'll have them buy extra."
Wang Yan had still been trying to mind her manners, unwilling to sound as though food was all she cared about. But when she heard that, she could not help smiling anyway.
"Thank you, Madam."
After saying it, she paused. It was as if something inside her had stirred, just lightly, and she added in a softer voice:
"...You've really been very kind to us, Madam."
The words were plain and direct, entirely in keeping with her nature. Precisely because of that, they sounded all the more sincere when they fell on the ear.
Madam Wen did not answer at once. She only poured half a cup of warm tea into Wang Yan's cup before saying gently, "Whether I have been kind or not, there is no need to keep saying it."
"You are on my boat now. It is only natural that I see you safely through this journey."
It was an ordinary enough thing to say. Yet with that calm, unhurried manner of hers, that effortless way she had of taking matters into her own hands for others, it warmed the heart all the same.
It was that night, too, that their conversation at last began to turn, little by little, toward themselves.
Wang Yan was the first to speak.
She had never been a sullen girl by nature. In the first days, the upheaval at home had weighed too heavily on her; but now that the boat had settled into the rhythm of the river, and Madam Wen never pressed or hurried them, the lively part of her that had been forced under was slowly rising back to the surface.
She began by speaking of the wine her family used to brew.
"My father always said he only made it casually, for his own drinking. But my mother and I both knew how much it meant to him."
"Every year, when the new rice came in, he would say, 'This year I'll just make a little, nothing serious.' But the moment it came time to steam the rice, spread it to cool, mix in the starter, and seal the jars, he was more serious than anyone. If somebody so much as disturbed the bit of sealing clay around the rim of a jar, he could scold about it all day."
At that, she laughed first, and for the first time in many days, a trace of old brightness returned to her eyes.
"When I was little, I didn't understand. I thought wine was just wine. What was there to care so much about? Later I realized it wasn't only the drink he wanted. What he really wanted was the day when our family wine could finally be sold at a stall by Pingma Wharf."
"He used to say that if that day ever came, my mother would be in charge of hot cakes and fish soup, my brother would carry the jars and tend the fire, and I would stand at the door calling out to customers. Then, once we had enough people coming in, I wouldn't even need to shout anymore. I'd only have to sit behind the counter and collect the money."
Madam Wen listened with a smile in her eyes.
"Then wouldn't you be the most important one of all?"
Wang Yan made a small sound of agreement and nodded in complete seriousness.
"Of course I'd be the most important."
"If I didn't keep the accounts, how would anyone know whether a bowl of fish soup had been paid for or not?"
The moment she said it, she broke into laughter herself. Yet there was still the faintest thread of bitterness wound through it, as if that little shop, never truly opened, had already lit its lamps and set out its tables a thousand times in her heart, only to be kicked apart before it could even be raised.
Madam Wen did not follow that bitterness any further. She only said slowly, "A life does not have to be built only once."
"Sometimes it is smashed in one place, and in another, it may rise even more firmly."
When she said it, there was nothing deliberate in her tone, nothing that sounded like consolation prepared for the sake of comforting a child. It was more like she was merely stating a truth she had seen too many times to doubt.
Wang Yan's lashes trembled faintly. Somehow, she no longer let herself sink into the worst of her thoughts. Instead, she tucked those words away in silence.
Only later did the conversation gradually shift to Fang Yingjie.
He was slower to speak than Wang Yan.
It was not that he did not want to. There were simply too many things weighing on his heart. When asked to speak of himself, he often did not know where to begin. He lowered his head and sat in silence for a long while before finally saying, "I didn't grow up by the lake."
Wang Yan turned to look at him.
He paused, then added in a lower voice, "I grew up on Mount Hua."
Madam Wen did not interrupt. She merely waited.
So he went on. His voice was quiet, and at first there was a hint of stiffness in it, but gradually it began to flow more naturally.
"The wind is strong in the mountains, and in winter it's especially cold. I was always in poor health, too. Before dawn, everyone else would already be up, but more often than not I was still curled beneath my blankets coughing. My martial uncles and senior martial brothers all made allowances for me. When they saw my hands and feet were cold, they would always make room for me by the brazier first. If there was fresh hot water in the kitchen, someone would remember to warm a cup for me before anyone else."
"Senior Martial Sister Xi was older than I was. When we were children, she always complained that I walked too slowly, that taking me along was like dragging half a sack of herbs that hadn't been dried yet. But when the mountain paths turned difficult, no matter how impatient she sounded, she still stopped and waited for me."
"Senior Martial Brother Zheng was the best at looking after people, and the one who liked managing me most. Sometimes I thought it troublesome and never dressed properly, or secretly put off drinking my medicine. If I coughed badly at night and tried to pretend the next day that nothing was wrong, he could tell at a glance. He was always saying I had no sense, that I never knew how to take care of myself, that I couldn't even walk the mountain roads properly and still insisted on forcing myself. But after all that scolding, he would still turn around and pull my cloak tighter, press the medicine bowl into my hands, and stand there watching until I drank every drop. Senior Martial Brother Ji had an even sharper tongue. Whenever my complexion looked poor, he liked to laugh and say I was made of paper, that one gust of wind would scatter me. But if I truly coughed badly, he would still frown and bring me the medicine once it had been warmed, all while calling me a nuisance."
At that point, he seemed to realize he had spoken rather more than he meant to. The tips of his ears warmed faintly. He paused before adding in a lower voice still, "And Brother Xi..."
The moment those words left his mouth, his voice turned softer than before.
"When I was little, there were many things I didn't understand. The rules on the mountain. What the elders really meant when they spoke. Why people said certain things, or why they did them. A lot of it went over my head. Sometimes people teased me for it. Sometimes they simply couldn't be bothered explaining. Only Brother Xi never did that. He was always willing to tell me slowly. If I didn't understand the first time, then he would explain it again. He never once grew impatient, no matter how many questions I asked."
"And... whenever we walked any distance, I always fell behind in the end. Sometimes I would look up and see him standing ahead, waiting for me. When I finally made my slow way up to him, he never urged me on. He would only take whatever I was carrying from my hands and lead me onward with him."
As he spoke, there was little rise or fall in his tone. There was even the faintest trace of embarrassment in it, as if he were speaking of nothing more than trivial, ordinary things. But it was precisely those small, ordinary things that brought Mount Hua, the elders, the senior disciples, and those earlier days—days not yet utterly crushed beneath the cliff and the pursuit—quietly back to life, piece by piece.
Wang Yan listened in silence. By the end, she had forgotten even to bite into the piece of pastry in her hand.
Until now, she had only known him as an injured, honest, tongue-tied boy who seemed always to be carrying too many unspoken things inside him. Only now, hearing him speak of all this, did she suddenly understand that he had not been born with wounds all over him, born only to flee from place to place. Once, too, he had lived days in which he was protected, indulged, and remembered.
After a moment of silence, Fang Yingjie spoke again, even more softly.
"And my mother..."
The moment he said it, his voice dropped lower still, as if the words had first stopped within his heart before he could make himself continue.
"My father met with disaster early. I never knew him from the time I was small. Everything in Fang Stronghold, inside and out, was held up by my mother alone. She had so much to manage, and yet whenever she could spare the time, she was always thinking of me. No matter how far the road, she still came all the way from Shandong to Mount Hua to see me."
"Sometimes when she arrived, she had clearly come in a hurry. There would still be dust from the road on her cloak. But when she saw me, she never asked anything else first. She would only feel whether my hands were cold, see whether my coughing had worsened, whether I had been sleeping well at night. She always said that I was grown now, and that she could not keep fussing over everything as if I were still a child. But whenever it was time for her to leave, she still worried I was not wearing enough, or that I hadn't taken my medicine on time, or that no one would remember to add an extra blanket over me at night."
"Every time she went back down the mountain, I thought that this time she ought to be at ease. But the next time she came, she would still be just as uneasy as before, as if she were always afraid that the moment she turned away, I would fall ill again, or grow cold, or suffer some grievance."
He pressed his lips together lightly before adding, in an even softer voice, "I didn't understand it then. I only thought she worried too much. But after she was gone, I finally understood. The person in this world who could never let me go was my mother."
The cabin fell silent.
Only when he had spoken of his poor health did Madam Wen's gaze drift, very lightly, to his still-slender wrist, before moving away again as though nothing had happened.
When he finished, she said at last, "I heard something, back in those days, of what happened to Great Hero Fang. Though you never knew him, your mother and all of Mount Hua still protected you well."
"For a child to remember so clearly who treated him kindly, who sheltered him, who was willing to wait for him, yield to him, think of him—that is enough to say that though you have suffered much all these years, you did not endure them all alone."
Her voice was very soft, yet it struck the mark more cleanly than any ordinary comfort could have done.
Fang Yingjie sat in silence a moment before answering in a low voice, "...Mm."
It was only a single syllable, but behind it seemed to stand a great many words that could not be said.
He did not continue after that. Yet in that one quiet sound, there was already so much folded away—longing, reluctance, and that thread of attachment he had never truly laid down through all these years.
Madam Wen did not press him further. She only added a little more hot water to the cup before him.
"Then all the more reason to tend your health first."
"You children carry too many people and too many matters in your hearts. But if you yourselves give way first, then no matter how much you care, it will all remain shut inside you, and you will be able to do nothing."
It sounded like the sort of ordinary advice any elder might give. Yet from her lips, for some reason, it truly felt as though she saw them as younger ones who ought to be sheltered a little, steadied a little.
By the time the evening wore on, Wang Yan even had one fleeting moment in which she nearly called her not "Madam," but "Aunt Wen."
The word reached the tip of her tongue, then she swallowed it back down herself. Only a faint flush rose in her face.
Madam Wen, as if she had noticed nothing at all, merely pushed the pale wine farther away with a smile.
"You are still young. Best not learn this too early."
Wang Yan laughed as well, following her lead. But that small, indefinable sense of closeness had already settled quietly in her heart.
First Sight of the Manor
A few more days passed, and at last the water truly began to change.
The change had not come all at once. It was as though it had been gathering in secret the whole way south, only waiting for this day to make itself plain at a single glance. The sky had opened wider, and so had the water. The banks were no longer only low embankments and flat riverland near at hand, but showed clearer mountain shadows in the distance and a broader, wilder light beneath the heavens. Even the wind blowing off the water had changed. It no longer carried only the damp, soft breath of the Jiangnan region, but something of the openness of a great lake.
As the boat passed the edge of a shallow sandbar, Wang Yan was the first to step to the rail.
At first she had thought there would be nothing ahead except another, broader stretch of water. But when she looked again, her eyes suddenly brightened.
"This lake…"
Before she could finish, Madam Wen came forward from behind them at an unhurried pace.
She did not say we've arrived at once. She only stood with them, looking out over the widening water ahead.
The sun was high, and the sky astonishingly clear. Under that pure light, the water separated into several shades at once: nearest at hand it shone bright, reflecting the boat's shadow and the fine ripples around it; farther out it deepened into blue-gray; farther still it thinned into a pale wash of blue where water met sky. There were islets on the lake, branching channels, sandbanks slanting out from the shore, and smaller lonely patches of land half veiled in mist. White birds skimmed low over the surface, then wheeled again into the air, and even their cries sounded freer and more far-flung than they had beside Taihu.
"Is this… Poyang Lake?" Fang Yingjie asked softly.
Only then did Madam Wen incline her head.
"Yes."
That single word turned the long, floating sense that they were truly heading south into something real at last.
Wang Yan stared ahead in silence.
Before this, though she had nodded and followed the boat south, there had always remained inside her a vague, drifting feeling, as though she were hurrying through a dream. Only now, seeing this utterly different expanse of water, sky, reeds, sandbars, and wind, did she finally understand—they had come too far to treat this journey as a mere detour any longer.
And yet, strangely enough, she was not as frightened as she had imagined she would be. Perhaps it was because Madam Wen's boat had moved so steadily these past days, and her care had been so attentive. Or perhaps it was because the letters, the bowls of hot soup, and those quiet words that were never heavy yet always seemed to catch a person before they fell had already smoothed away the sharpest edge of her unease.
The boat moved on for a while longer.
Before long, Madam Wen lifted a hand and pointed toward a line in the southeast of the eastern shore.
"Ahead lies Biyue Manor."
The two of them followed the direction of her hand. Sure enough, at the far boundary where light on the water met the dark line of land, the shape of a great manor slowly began to emerge.
What appeared first was not a building, nor a wall, but a long, steady embankment. Behind it stood ranks of trees; only beyond those did white walls, dark tiles, and half-lifted eaves begin to show themselves. The manor had been built by the water, yet it did not loom oppressively. Instead, it possessed an order so exact that, from a distance, it looked less like the residence of an ordinary wealthy household and more like a place where dignity, security, and discipline had been laid one upon another along the lakeshore.
When the wind stirred, a tall banner at one corner of the manor unfurled softly. Its moon emblem caught the light above the water, unmistakably of a piece with the design carved on that jade token.
Wang Yan stared for a long moment before drawing in a quiet breath.
"So this is… Biyue Manor."
There was almost no shock in her voice when she said it. It sounded instead like the voice of someone who, after drifting for a very long time, had finally found a place where she might truly put down her feet, if only for a while.
Fang Yingjie, too, stood gazing at the distant estate.
It was not as though nothing stirred in him. Taihu, the Wang family, Old Daoist Xuan, Mount Hua, Fang Stronghold—all those threads were still there. They would not vanish merely because of a sweep of white walls, dark tiles, and clear wind over the lake. But even he had to admit that if he were forced, at this moment, to choose between continuing to stumble blindly around Taihu and first resting within the manor before him, then this place did indeed look more like a road that could still be followed onward.
Madam Wen stood beside them. She did not urge them forward, nor did she seize the chance to speak of how good her manor was, or how well they would be cared for there. She only watched the shape of the estate drawing nearer and said quietly,
"Let us arrive first."
The words were less a comfort than a kind of steadiness born of duty.
As the boat drew closer, Biyue Manor came more and more clearly into view. Servants and older women stationed at the dock had already spotted the returning vessel and begun moving to and fro in preparation to catch the ropes. Nearer still, even the drooping willows along the embankment and the stone lantern bases set before the main gate could be made out in faint outline.
The wind off Poyang Lake carried a breadth of water-borne freshness far greater than anything at Taihu.
Fang Yingjie suddenly remembered the first time he had seen Madam Wen. She had been standing beside the small blue-canopied carriage near the outlying quay at Pingsha Market, with no more behind her than a single carriage and two elderly attendants. At the time, he had only thought her poised and gentle—the sort of person who could reach out a hand and quietly steady a gathering chaos. But now, gazing at this lake that was truly hers, this manor that was hers, this order that was hers, he understood at last where that composure had come from.
Wang Yan was still looking ahead as well. That long-lost glimmer in her eyes was slowly, bit by bit, returning.
Not the bright innocence she had once worn in the Wang family's little courtyard, untouched by shadow. This was something else: like a traveler, after days of wind and spray, broken dreams, and a road without end, finally sighting at the far edge of water and sky a shore where she might rest for a little while.
The bow shifted slightly.
The boat was already angling toward its berth before the manor.
The water road was not yet at an end. But Biyue Manor had already taken its place before their eyes, solid and real.
Poetic Coda
The night channels of Taihu slipped away like drawn cords;
after days of south wind, even the voice of the water changed.
One thread of homesick sorrow drifted far with the oars,
while old roads, twice retraced, grew light beneath the boat.
Cabin lamps cast a thin glow on words spoken beside old wounds;
the jade moon carried a faint traveler's longing in its sheen.
Most of all, Poyang's sky widened little by little,
until the manor first appeared ahead—a place where the journey might pause in peace.
(End of Chapter Twenty-Seven)