Governor's Residence
After hearing this, Wang Yi fell silent for a long while.
The carriage rolled slowly onward, its wheels creaking softly over the official road.
After a long time, Wang Yi finally said in a low voice, "Brother Lin is right.
"What has troubled me most these past days wasn't people cursing me. It was that even I didn't know where exactly we had gone wrong.
"Now that I've heard you put it this way, I feel as though I understand a little."
He raised his head, lifted the carriage curtain, and gazed at the distant sky, his expression tangled with emotion.
"If I hadn't sold her back then, would everything have been different?"
Lin Xuan thought for a moment and shook his head. "I don't know. But at least it wouldn't have become what it is now."
Wang Yi gave a bitter smile. "Yes. At least it wouldn't have become what it is now. I bear responsibility for her death."
Wang Yi's gaze sank into gloom once more.
Lin Xuan advised him, "Brother Wang, there's no need to be so dejected. Once you achieve success in martial arts, why worry that no beauty will stand by your side?"
"No, she was different!"
Seizing the chance, Lin Xuan boasted, "She truly was different. When I was poor and wanted to practice martial arts, my wife smashed open her piggy bank and gave me the only four taels of silver she had to support me. Back then, she truly had nothing—not even meat had passed her lips for half a year."
Wang Yi's face flushed red at that, but he stubbornly said, "You wouldn't understand even if I told you."
After that, both of them fell silent.
Not long afterward, Wang Yi asked, "I heard earlier that Brother Lin is