After her furious roar, the girl drifted back onto the water with a look of utter desolation.
She floated there slowly on the surface.
Her face was full of dejection.
And no wonder—being trapped in a small pool for two hundred years was hardly a joyous affair.
Seeing this, Nanxi prepared to leave.
Lingering here might only invite more trouble.
He had no desire to be drenched again.
The boy was soaked through.
Both his outer clothes for warding off the cold and his inner undergarments had become dripping wet cloth.
Wearing them felt miserable, especially in winter.
If he did not deal with it soon, he would surely catch a chill.
Falling ill in this harsh winter was no pleasant matter.
And given the poverty at home, the one who would end up paying for treatment would undoubtedly be Nanxi himself.
The hard-earned money he had saved with his own efforts had important uses.
He absolutely could not spend it on illness.
Thinking of the trouble this girl had caused, Nanxi casually untied his headcloth, letting his silver-white ponytail that had hung down his beautiful back fall forward.
He began wringing out the thoroughly soaked strands with force.
But having just had a fierce argument with his master, where was he supposed to go now?
Suddenly, as he twisted his silver hair, Nanxi realized this problem.
His expression turned as gloomy as the girl floating on the pool.
His hands unconsciously dropped.
A child who had left home—where was he to go? Nanxi could think of no answer.
He did not want to go to the Zhang mansion.
Having just emptied their pond of fish, he had no face to return there.
Ao Xian, who had been listless, noticed the boy beside her wearing the same expression as herself.
Curiosity stirred, though her face remained cold.
“Stinky brat, what, you don’t have a home?”
Her tone carried some mockery.
“Looking at that face of yours, were you kicked out?”
“At least I still have a home—unlike a certain dragon who has to be trapped in a pool, like a loach in a pot.”
Nanxi, poked at his sore spot, naturally abandoned all politeness.
“Looks like I hit the mark.”
She no longer floated but slowly stood in the water, walking on the waves toward the shore.
Ripples spread in circles beneath her feet.
“What happened? Fell out with the one at home? Over what? Caught stealing fish?”
“It wasn’t that.”
Nanxi instinctively retorted, but his voice lowered.
He pressed his lips together, looking at the non-human girl before him who somehow seemed able to see through people’s hearts, then at the silent, empty peach grove around them.
A strong impulse suddenly surged in his chest. Perhaps because she too was trapped, sharing a plight she could not speak of to outsiders?
Or perhaps simply because, in this moment, he desperately needed an outlet to spit out the tangled mess choking his chest.
“It was with my master.”
He finally spoke in a low voice, walking to a slightly drier rock by the pool’s edge and sitting down.
Hugging his knees, his gaze fell on the gently rippling water.
“I wanted to help someone—do what I thought was right. But she wouldn’t let me. She said I’d bring disaster on myself, that I didn’t know the weight of things. We argued, and then I ran out.”
Hesitantly, bit by bit, he told of how the Fei Family Army had surrounded the master and servant pair, how he had wanted to intervene but was forcibly stopped and carried away by his master.
He even named the Daoist sect, the Buddhist sect, and the Liang imperial family—despite knowing the gravity of it.
Yet the unwillingness, confusion, and near-stubborn insistence on “upholding justice” in his tone were laid completely bare.
“I just feel that if you have the ability and see injustice, you should do something about it. ‘Draw your blade to help at the sight of wrongdoing’—isn’t that what all the storybooks say? Isn’t that what those heroes do?”
Nanxi’s voice grew agitated, as if returning to that moment of confrontation with his master.
“Why can’t I act just because she says I can’t? If those people really were villains, killing them would be ridding the people of harm. If I killed the wrong ones, then I should bear the consequences myself. It was my own choice!”
Ao Xian listened quietly without interrupting.
She had reached the shore and sat leaning against a large smooth stone polished by water.
Her long black hair trailed in the pool, her dragon horns faintly glowing in the slanting sunlight.
When Nanxi finished in one breath and looked at her with heaving chest, only then did she speak slowly.
“In the end, you feel you weren’t wrong. You feel your master stopping you was wrong.”
“I… I’m not sure.”
Nanxi opened his mouth, wanting to declare firmly “Yes,” but his master’s harsh words—those mentions of “trouble,” “consequences,” “implication”—rang in his ears once more.
He remembered her eyes, usually tinged with weariness, yet filled with anger then; the heavy helplessness when she spoke of “grudges” and “the world.”
His righteous indignation unconsciously subsided.
“My master… what she said, I don’t completely fail to understand.”
He muttered gloomily, fingers unconsciously picking at the moss in the rock’s crevices.
“I know the world is chaotic, that some things cling to you once touched, that it might bring trouble to home—to her. She just wants to protect me, to live a peaceful life.”
His voice grew lower, laced with struggle.
“But if everyone only thinks of ‘peace,’ only ‘sweeping the snow from their own doorstep,’ then won’t the injustices of the world never be addressed? Won’t those who bully with power forever go unpunished?”
He lifted his head to look at Ao Xian, eyes full of confusion and a longing for agreement.
“I just don’t want to become that kind of indifferent person. Is that wrong too?”
Ao Xian met his gaze, the boy’s stubborn yet bewildered face reflected in her vertical pupils.
After a long while, she let out a soft sigh, the sound seeming to carry the chill of the pool water.
“Your master…”
She weighed her words carefully, speaking slowly.
“She is perhaps not wrong.”
Nanxi’s face paled instantly, his vermilion lips pressing tighter.
“Listen to me.”
Ao Xian continued, her voice losing its earlier teasing and gaining seriousness.
“Think about it—how long has she lived? How much has she experienced? She has seen far more than you. She knows that behind the four words ‘upholding justice’ lie not only satisfying grudges but endless schemes, betrayals, costs, and many outcomes that cannot be changed at all.”
“She stops you because she fears your hot blood will lead you to charge in and end up battered and bruised—or even lose your life. Even more, she fears you’ll drag those you care about into it or be swept into a vortex you cannot resist.”
“That ‘fear’ comes from experience, from responsibility, perhaps even from lessons she herself has endured.”
Nanxi listened in a daze.
Ao Xian’s words were like cold water, gradually extinguishing the fire in his heart—yet also letting him see more clearly the outline behind his master’s anger.
“But,” Ao Xian noted his sudden change of expression and quietly shifted her tone, “that doesn’t mean you are wrong either.”
Nanxi’s eyes snapped up.
The dragon girl’s golden vertical pupils appeared especially deep in the fading light.
“You believe you should help at the sight of injustice. That heart itself is not wrong. This world is indeed complex and dangerous, but if even this bit of foolishness and hot blood were lost—if everyone became shrewd and calculating, preserving only themselves—then the world would truly be beyond saving. Your mistake, perhaps, lies not in what you want to do, but in how and when you do it.”
She paused, as if recalling some distant memory, her voice growing distant.
“When your strength is insufficient, rushing in recklessly is called courting death. Meddling blindly without seeing the situation clearly might turn good intentions into bad outcomes—or even make things worse.”
“Your master stopping you doesn’t necessarily mean she thinks the matter shouldn’t be handled, but that with your current age, experience, and ability, you are not yet qualified to handle it—at least not in the way you want.”
“Then what should I do?”
Nanxi could not help asking, his voice somewhat hoarse.
“Just keep watching, keep waiting? By the time I feel qualified, it might all be too late.”
“Then make yourself qualified faster.”
Ao Xian’s answer was simple and firm.
“Practice the skills your master taught you until they are rock-solid. Sharpen your eyes, hone your mind. A true hero relies not only on hot blood but must have shoulders that can bear responsibility, eyes that can pierce the fog, and the awareness to accept consequences. When you have those, then do what you believe is right. By then, your master might not stop you so fiercely.”
Seeing the light rekindle in the boy’s eyes, she added a final sentence, her tone carrying a faint self-mockery.
“Moreover, the affairs of this world are sometimes not so simply divided into right and wrong. Standing in different positions, one sees different truths.”
“You think someone should be saved; your master thinks self-preservation is best; those heroes think vengeance is due; that master and servant perhaps feel themselves innocent.”
“Who is wrong? Perhaps no one—just different stances, different desires. The difficulty lies in how you find a path you can walk between your own truth and the safety of those you care for.”
The peach grove fell completely silent, only the wind moaning and the pool water gently lapping the shore stones.
Nanxi hugged his knees, motionless.
Wet hair clung to his cheeks, his body ice-cold, yet inside, scalding waves seemed to surge.
Ao Xian’s words were like a key, unlocking the door in his heart that grievance had sealed shut, letting him glimpse the more complex—and more real—world beyond.
He still did not think his beliefs were wrong.
But he seemed, at last, to be truly trying to understand the deep meaning behind his master’s sternness.
The sky gradually darkened.
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