After burying Dieyi, Qin Mu and the others rested beneath a maple tree on the opposite shore of the lake.
The men slept while the horses grazed, maple leaves falling in the sunlight of the nine suns.
An hour later, with men refreshed and horses strong, they set off again toward the Royal Palace in the Royal City. Given the faster pace they could maintain after their rest, they would arrive safely within a day at most.
As they left the lakeside, Zeng Mu looked toward the opposite shore. Even though he had buried her himself, he still could not bear to leave. Truthfully, he wanted to stay here for seven days and keep vigil over her. Though Dieyi had never once asked his real name-and would never learn it-he was still willing to do that for her. For no other reason than that what she had suffered needed a lifetime of care and protection to heal.
Sadly, before she could meet someone who would stay beside her for the rest of her life, she had drowned herself in the lake. Had her father not died, perhaps everything could have begun anew.
"Goodbye." He looked at her grave and tried to wave farewell, but his hands had been shackled again, making it impossible.
He knew they would never meet again. This farewell was forever, not because they wished it so, but because the world was too vast. In a lifetime, meeting someone once and sharing a connection was already a blessing of fate. Demanding more was merely greedy insistence and intrusion.
His thinking was absolutely right, and would even have made Miss Dieyi feel deeply happy and content. A few hours earlier, when she had taken off her shoes before drowning herself, she had gazed at the silver lake beneath