Incurable Chapter 21 Part 2

Chapter 21 (2/2)

It rained through the night, washing even the dust from the hills clean.

At Wuling Tea House, the tea fields were cool and clear, with a hint of moisture. Beneath a blue sky laced with pale cloud, a few tea girls dotted the slopes, moving among the rows.

Ahead, the wooden windows stood wide open.

The view stretched across the tea fields and on toward distant mountains veiled in pale mist. The room itself was large and mostly empty. With the windows thrown wide, the fresh morning wind moved through freely, carrying clean air back and forth.

Mei Yaozhi sat on the hard-woven mat, his wide eyes still holding a trace of sleep.

His posture was easy and careless, a sharp contrast to Liu Qianxiu’s straight-backed composure beside him.

Between them stood a low tea table laid with a tea set. A woman in hanfu was serving tea. Freshly picked Longjing buds floated tender and green in the water. Tea poured from the purple clay pot into the cups, and the fragrance rose in soft curls.

Mei Yaozhi glanced sideways at Liu Qianxiu again.

He was a man of frightening discipline and self-restraint. Sitting upright like this, watching the morning sunlight slowly dissolve the mist over the mountains, he seemed to carry an otherworldly air around him, completely out of place among ordinary people.

Then again, that was exactly the point.

He was out of place.

“You got up this early only to sit in a tea house and drink tea,” Mei Yaozhi said.

He took a cup and downed it in one go. The smooth fragrance slid down his throat and shook off a little of the drowsiness that still clung to him.

Once the tea service was done and the woman withdrew, Mei Yaozhi finally straightened up to speak of business.

He handed a file to Liu Qianxiu.

“The person you asked me to look into.”

The paper folder made a crisp sound as Liu Qianxiu took it.

There was not much inside. At most, three pages. But the content was dense and highly detailed. Mei Yaozhi read the summary aloud to him.

“The Mu family in the west part of the city made their living in fabrics and tailoring. They rose to wealth in the Republican era and peaked in the eighties. After the old matriarch died, Mu Yatang took over the family, but they’ve declined ever since. Mu Wan took her mother’s surname. Her mother, Mu Qijun, got pregnant out of wedlock. To hide it, the family claimed Mu Wan was adopted, but she was actually her biological daughter. The Mu family saw Mu Wan as a stain on their reputation, so her circumstances in that house were terrible—especially after Mu Qijun died. As soon as she came of age, she moved out. Since then, she’s had no contact with them at all.”

At this point, Mei Yaozhi remembered one more coincidence.

He poured himself another cup of tea and said to Liu Qianxiu, “It took me a ridiculous amount of effort to find the man who got Mu Qijun pregnant back then—Mu Wan’s father. Funny thing, he also happens to be—”

“Song Kangze,” Liu Qianxiu said calmly, having reached the last page of the materials.

Mei Yaozhi froze.

“You really do know him.”

Liu Qianxiu pulled out the second page. It contained information about Mu Wan’s father. He lowered his eyes to it and said nothing.

“So that’s why you asked me to investigate her?” Mei Yaozhi asked. “Because of her father?”

Liu Qianxiu lifted his eyes to him, giving no clear answer.

Mei Yaozhi had never been able to see through Liu Qianxiu’s mind.

He was like a pool of water—clear to the bottom, yet impossible to tell how deep it truly went or what lay below the surface.

So Mei Yaozhi did not ask any more.

He merely went on, “She’s just some tiny eighteenth-tier actress now. Some of the roles she plays look pretty exhausting. If you wanted to help her, though, it would take you nothing more than lifting a finger—”

His phone rang before he could finish.

Mei Yaozhi looked at it and stood up.

“I have to go.”

Liu Qianxiu tapped once against the file.

“Thanks.”

“What are you thanking me for?”

Mei Yaozhi laughed it off. Then, right before leaving, he remembered something and tapped his forehead.

“Oh, right. Grandmother knew I was coming up to see you this morning. She told me to remind you to go back with me for dinner tonight.”

Old Madam Mei was Mei Yaozhi’s grandmother, and Liu Qianxiu’s maternal grandmother as well.

Liu Qianxiu’s lips curved once.

“All right.”

Mei Yaozhi smiled too.

“Then I’m off. Good lord—I didn’t even get breakfast first. Straight tea on an empty stomach...”

Before the sky had even fully brightened, Mu Wan was already at the studio base filming.

This round was for war scenes. In them, Mu Wan played an army doctor. From dark before dawn all the way into morning, it was one explosion scene after another. By the time they paused, her whole face was covered in soot and dust.

Day had fully broken now.

The wartime dawn sequence was finally done, and once they added one more death scene later, her role would be wrapped.

She had been running back and forth, treating the wounded the whole time. Her body felt drained, her back and waist aching. When the crew stopped for a break, she sat on the edge of a trench made of stacked sandbags and played Plants vs. Zombies on her phone.

She had not even finished planting her sunflowers when the screen vibrated.

A text banner appeared across the top.

Taoist Liu: Where are you?

Her heart jolted with it.

Mu Wan opened the message screen immediately and typed back.

Mu Wan: Filming. At the studio base.

After sending it, she bit down on her lower lip and smiled—only to get a mouthful of dust. Laughing, she spat twice, then sent another.

Mu Wan: What about you? What are you doing at home today?

Since it was Sunday and he did not have work, he ought to be at home.

Liu Qianxiu did not answer the question.

Instead, he replied:

Taoist Liu: I have plans tonight.

The smile on her face stilled.

Mu Wan understood at once.

She curled in on herself a little, shoulders narrow and slight, like some tiny flower-cat retreating into a corner. Someone sat down beside her, stirring up another puff of dust, and she coughed twice. Even her phone screen was dirty now.

“Mu Wan, look! That guy’s so handsome!”

Gao Mei had apparently plopped down beside her. Tugging her arm, she pointed ahead. “Is he an actor? No way. If a face like that were an actor, I would know.”

Mu Wan was feeling a little low.

She ignored Gao Mei and stared at her phone, about to reply. Since Mu Wan would not cooperate, Gao Mei simply cupped her face in both hands and forcibly turned it toward the handsome man in question.

“Hey—”

Mu Wan’s small face was squeezed into a little lump, her eyes darting uselessly around before fixing at last on the figure directly ahead.

The set smelled of explosives and dust, thick enough to sting the nose. Smoke rolled through the air.

And there, standing in the middle of it, was a man in a light-colored shirt and trousers, his figure spare and elegant, his face cool and pale, clean and remote, utterly apart from the world around him.

Mu Wan’s heart jumped hard.

She stared for two seconds, then got up from the edge of the trench.

Liu Qianxiu stood there, looking at her from a distance.

Her face was filthy with grime. Only her eyes remained clear and bright. Seeing him, she first looked disbelieving, and then a little flustered. She lifted a hand and tried wiping the dust from her face. After several frantic attempts, all she managed was one small patch of pale skin on her left cheek.

In the end, she gave up, ran straight toward him, and moved with all the quick, light grace of her narrow body.

She stopped in front of him and looked him over again, as if confirming with her own eyes that he was really here.

Then, once she had confirmed it, the corners of her eyes curved.

“Why are you here?”

Her voice shook a little.

She had rubbed at her face too hard, and the skin there had gone pink.

Liu Qianxiu looked at her quietly.

“I don’t have time tonight,” he said.

“Huh?”

Mu Wan blinked, confused. Her lips came together. She nodded and said, “I know. I got your text—”

“Would you like to have lunch together?”

The words in her throat stopped dead.

Mu Wan lifted her head.

Her eyes were suddenly bright all over again.

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