Under The Moonlight (2)

The time after a case closed was always the time Song Caitang could relax. She thought she would be able to have a good night’s rest, but in the end, her dreams continued to overwhelm her. Toward the end of the night, when the moonlight had begun to dim, she woke up.

She was used to waking up at this hour, so she didn’t feel any discomfort and wasn’t sleepy either.

She put a coat on and slowly made her way to the corridor outside her room without even wearing any shoes.

The night was quiet, the moon was high in the sky. A gentle and cool breeze blew past her face and hair.

Song Caitang sat on a barrister and leaned against the pillar. She shut her eyes and sighed quietly.

The nights were so beautiful. No wonder everyone loved springtime.

After some time – she wasn’t sure how long, because it both felt long enough to sleep and also felt like just one moment. Song Caitang sensed something and suddenly opened her eyes.

In front of her stood a tall, broad and icy silhouette that seemed as sharp and tough as a weapon. She didn’t need to see his face to know who it was.

Zhao Zhi was standing against the light, so his face was shrouded in darkness. The gentle moonlight softened his jawline and much of the dominance he displayed during the day was gone. He was like melted ice, so just like the moon, he seemed cold and distant, but he was actually gentle and warm.

Regardless of whether they were in Luanze or in Bianliang, the two of them had gotten used to meeting in the dead of the night. Song Caitang stopped asking Zhao Zhi why he was here or how he was able to accurately predict what time she would wake up. She was only very displeased that he had come empty handed.

He didn’t come with snacks this time.

Disappointment was written all over her face. Zhao Zhi felt bad and slowly pulled a wax paper bag out from his coat.

Song Caitang instantly brightened up.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a little cold at night now, so I thought you might like this.”

A slightly longer than average bamboo container was wrapped tightly in several layers of paper and its lid was very tight. After she pulled the lid off, the smell of almond and milk wafted out.

It was a cup of warm, almond-flavored milk tea!

The temperature was just right too. It felt a little hot in her hands, but the liquid inside wasn’t too hot. It helped to warm her tummy.

Song Caitang let out a pleased sigh after taking a sip and she smiled at Zhao Zhi. “Where did you get this from?”

Zhao Zhi’s response was aloof. “I have my ways.”

Song Caitang continued smiling at him, making him turn to look elsewhere.

Actually, she knew that it would be impossible to buy something like this at this hour. Even if you were filthy rich, the stoves would have been put out a long time ago and it would take some time to get the fire going again.

And even if he was willing to pay a lot for someone to make this and nobody grumbled, this was usually something that only women would drink. It would definitely result in some gossip.

That would upset him and it would also… make him feel shy.

Song Caitang noticed this a long time back. Zhao Zhi was a domineering man who spent a large part of his youth fooling around, so he was pretty thick-skinned. As long as he got the result he wanted, he didn’t care how he got there. He didn’t mind embarrassing himself either. The only exception was when it came to romance.

He would feel shy and he would be extra cautious.

Perhaps it was because his first serious relationship had not gone well, or perhaps it was because of his childhood. He cherished love very dearly and had great respect for it too. He was very possessive, yet he was also able to force himself to control his urges.

It was very contradictory, but also… a little adorable.

Zhao Zhi was pleased to see that she was happy with the drink. He flipped his robe and sat down on the floor next to Song Caitang.

He was very tall and Song Caitang wasn’t sitting on a very high barrister. They were almost at the same height after he sat down, except that she was a little taller than him.

But this was a very new angle for both of them and they stared at each other in stunned silence for a moment.

Song Caitang was the first to burst out laughing.

Zhao Zhi looked away and randomly said, “You’ve not been sleeping well recently.”

Song Caitang didn’t find the prim and proper Zhao Zhi cute at all, so she teased him, “When… have I ever slept well?”

She blinked her clear and pretty eyes to hint at him, as if to say: You’ve been around me at night, from Luanze to Bianliang. Don’t you know I wake up in the middle of the night almost every day?

Zhao Zhi stared intently at her and his voice was low, “Don’t say it like that.”

“How should I say it then?” Song Caitang leaned forward quite a bit toward him and grinned at him. “Like this?”

Zhao Zhi stared at the bare neck in front of him and gnashed his teeth as he roughly pulled her coat more tightly around her. “Don’t catch a cold.”

Song Caitang was still grinning at him. “You’re worried about me?”

Zhao Zhi rolled his eyes at her. Of course he was!

He made her sit properly on the barrister again to stop her from teasing him and continued what he was saying earlier, “You haven’t been sleeping well recently.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be close to her and it wasn’t like he didn’t like her to tease him. But he felt that if he didn’t talk about something serious, he might not be able to control himself…

Song Caitang just responded with a soft grunt.

Zhao Zhi’s comment sounded casual but it was not casual at all. While it was true that Song Caitang often woke up in the middle of the night, her sleep had not been peaceful recently. And given how she had been interacting with him recently…

He felt that she might have remembered something.

He really wanted to ask her about it, but she didn’t seem like she wanted to tell him, so he had to ask her indirectly instead, “Do you have anything you want to tell me?”

Song Caitang shook her head. “Don’t you already know everything about me?”

In other words, she didn’t want to talk about it.

Zhao Zhi sighed inwardly. His girl was distancing herself again.

He had done a bad job.

He started to reflect and wondered where he had gone wrong and how he could salvage the situation. He didn’t want to grow further and further away from his girl and become strangers… He didn’t want them to become strangers ever!

Song Caitang did not answer him, so he didn’t probe further. He just sat there in silence. He didn’t complain or grumble, but he stared at her with such a pitiful look in his eyes, she felt bad.

She felt like a jerk bullying his girlfriend.

“Are you… unhappy?” She patted his shoulder.

He didn’t say anything and just glanced at her as if to say, ask yourself.

She felt even more like a douchebag now.

This wasn’t going well, so she quickly changed the topic, “Why are you here today?”

Zhao Zhi was excellent at learning new things, so he quickly learned to respond like her, “What do you mean? I come every day, don’t I?”

Song Caitang didn’t know how to respond to that.

He sighed inwardly again when she fell silent again.

He was never going to win.

“I just wanted to talk to you.” His voice was faraway like the stars in the sky.

“Talk about what? The moon?” Song Caitang looked up at the moon and started smiling again. “Or today’s case?”

“Both.” Zhao Zhi frowned slightly. “I feel like we solved the case a little too easily.”

Being able to solve a case easily was a good thing, since nobody wanted to run into problems. But…

Song Caitang knew what he was really saying. She narrowed her eyes slightly. “For example, we would get answers immediately when we wanted to find out something.”

Zhao Zhi nodded. “That’s right.”

How Fourth Missy Gan was killed, finding Jing Yan’s remains in the yard in Qingxian, the connection between the suspects within Zeng Deyong’s household and their respective relationships and feuds… as long as they found one clue, they would get the rest of the answer.

“When I was first sent to the border, I wasn’t a general leading soldiers. I started as a scout. The first thing I learned was that if I ran into danger and was captured by the enemy, I had to say something if I wanted to get out alive. But what would I say?”

Zhao Zhi narrowed his eyes. “I would purposely tell them a lot of lies that sounded realistic, or information that was a mix of the truth and lies. That would help to bury the truth deeper.”

Song Caitang said, “So, you’re saying that the other party is purposely setting this up for us.”

Zhao Zhi nodded and didn’t speak for a long time.

Song Caitang shut her eyes and thought through the entire case, including Zeng Deyong’s confession earlier that day. After she took her time to seriously recall everything, she said quietly, “Zeng Deyong was Fourth Missy Gan and Jing Yan’s killer, that’s for sure. But his actions did seem a little over the top and he seemed a little too sensitive. You could even say he was trying to muddy the waters and make us focus on something else…”

Zhao Zhi added, “There’s something odd about Sang Zheng too. He did have a motive for killing Fourth Missy Gan and he did try to kill her, but was eventually framed by Zeng Deyong. But based on his confession today, while he seemed to be at odds with Zeng Deyong, could they actually be working together?”

“He acted like he was very embarrassed by his actions and didn’t want others to know about his affair, but he was observing our facial expressions the whole time, as though… he was testing us to see how much we knew.”

Song Caitang noticed this too. “Zeng Deyong was doing the same thing.”

When they were talking about the case, the two men would be interested in the truth, but also purposely muddy the waters and even attack and protect each other perfectly. Who exactly were Sang Zheng and Zeng Deyong? What were they doing and what were their intentions?

Zhao Zhi frowned. “It’s a pity they died so quickly.”

He had failed to prevent it.

“That way, the two men would look like they killed each other over love, and it would make sense because one was having an affair with the other’s wife and they wanted each other dead. But the timing of these deaths seem a little too coincidental. Someone might have already arranged for this beforehand.”

Song Caitang suddenly recalled something and her eyes lit up. “The official heir to the Count of Peace, Madam Wei’s son – remember him? He died.”

Zhao Zhi’s pupils constricted. “Exactly. That’s the part that’s odd.”

Zeng Deyong definitely meant to kill the people he did. His hatred toward Madam Wei, Sang Zheng, and even this supposed son of his was real. If he knew he was going to die, he would certainly want them to die with him. But if he had not already arranged for this double death ahead of time, why would he have kidnapped the son and killed him as soon as the case was cracked?

Kidnapping the son without killing him immediately meant that he was waiting to see what would happen first. If he was able to get away unscathed, then he would follow his original plan of slowly torturing Madam Wei and Sang Zheng and getting his revenge later. But if he couldn’t get out of this situation, then he was going to make sure everyone died!

“He only killed the boy and Sang Zheng, but did not kill Madam Wei,” Song Caitang smiled sadly. “Perhaps he thought that this would hit Madam Wei the hardest. If he killed her, she would be relieved and he didn’t want that”

“So,” Zhao Zhi nodded as his gaze flickered, “why did the two men behave the way they did?”

Song Caitang put the empty bamboo milk tea container aside. “Because we’ve already made too much of a stir. The other side knows we exist.”

That was very important…

Zhao Zhi said, “My men are very careful, so regardless of how many people the other side has and how good they are, even if they find out that I know some things, they won’t be able to find out exactly what I’ve done and what information I have.”

Song Caitang said, “So, they’d rather kill the wrong people than to take the risk.”

Zeng Deyong and Sang Zheng were already stuck in this situation and couldn’t get out of it, so they might as well be sacrificed while putting up a show that could give Zhao Zhi a good reason why they would kill each other. If they could fool Zhao Zhi and stop him from investigating, that would be best. But even if it didn’t fool him, it would stop him from getting more clues since the two men were already dead.

This discovery was rather demoralizing.

The case had been solved, but they had barely skimmed the surface of the deeper mystery behind it.

“Actually… I have remembered some things,” said Song Caitang very softly as she hugged her knees. “My father once corresponded with a woman and he had a portrait of her as well. She was very beautiful and she was around the same age as Fourth Missy Gan.”

Song Caitang recounted everything she remembered from her dream about Song Yi, the letters and the woman to Zhao Zhi in full detail.

“Actually, I don’t have any proof that this woman has anything to do with Fourth Missy Gan, but this timing and these circumstances have made me remember some things and my subconscious tells me that there’s a connection. But before I could ask, Fourth Missy Gan was already found dead.”

Zhao Zhi was rather surprised to hear all of this. “But you were the one who conducted your own father’s autopsy.”

She had confirmed back then that he had died from falling off a cliff and it was an accident.

Song Caitang had fallen ill and Song Yi was worried, so he climbed a mountain to gather some herbs, but fell off the cliff by accident.

Zhao Zhi and Song Caitang had checked what happened before and after his fall, and their conclusion was that it had merely been an accident. But now, Song Caitang had recalled this matter. “So, you think your father’s death was not an accident?”

If that was the case, then this mystery was even bigger than they had initially thought.

And they had to get to the bottom of it.

Zhao Zhi had a fairly grim look on his face.

Song Caitang was silent for a long time before she turned to look at Zhao Zhi. “Back then… did we run into really big danger?”

She still couldn’t remember everything, especially the part with Zhao Zhi in it. Perhaps it had been too traumatic, so her subconscious didn’t want to go there. But even though she couldn’t remember it all, she could make guesses.

Zhao Zhi stiffened. He didn’t dare to look at her, so he shut his eyes to cover the pain he felt inside. “Yes.”

Song Caitang spoke softly and cautiously, “What happened? Can you tell me?”

Zhao Zhi felt his heart ache even more.

What happened back then was a big blow to him. It must have been a big blow to her too.

Yet she was still considerate toward him. If he didn’t want to talk about it, she would not probe further. If the topic hadn’t come to this, she wouldn’t have even brought it up. She was so lovely to him, just like… in the past.

How could he be so cruel to his girl? He thought keeping quiet was for her good, but perhaps he was wrong after all.

“Back then, the war along the border was quite fierce. A very important Liao official died and we happened to pass by, so we got caught up in it. The Liaos were cruel and vicious people who used equally cruel and vicious methods. I was not able to get help for a variety of reasons, so…”

It was a dangerous time. He barely survived the ordeal.

Under the moonlight, the two of them were sitting very close to each other. Song Caitang’s soft hair blew in the wind and touched Zhao Zhi’s face.

Zhao Zhi turned to meet with Song Caitang’s clear, bright and lively eyes, and he suddenly felt overcome with emotion.

He wished he could hug her now.

He had nearly lost her.

“You were very severely injured, and I… had forgotten you, so I did not look for you.”

Zhao Zhi’s voice sounded extremely bitter.

Song Caitang paused to think. “Could it be that those dangers were not an accident, but intended by someone else?”

There was definitely some huge wall of difficulties in front of them, but right now, they had no idea what it was.

Sometimes, Zhao Zhi thought that way too.

He went through a very dangerous situation and didn’t have the time to stop and think about what happened, like the things that he went through, the poison he was fed…

He couldn’t describe what happened clearly to her because he didn’t have all the answers either.

Song Caitang asked another question, “Did I fall into the water?”

Zhao Zhi stiffened again, as though that memory was too frightening and it was still scary to him now. It took a long time for him to find his voice, “Yes… the other party had too many people and I couldn’t protect you or jump into the water immediately to rescue you. You… did not resurface for a very long time, and by the time I was finally able to jump in and pull you out, you… had already stopped breathing.”

“I was already on the brink of exhaustion and couldn’t stay awake anymore, so I fainted.”

“By the time I regained consciousness, I had forgotten you. But I never forgot the fear I felt. Whenever I had nightmares, I would feel like I’ve done something wrong, that I’ve let someone down…”

The pain in his heart was simply too much to bear. Zhao Zhi couldn’t hold himself back anymore and reached out to pull Song Caitang into his arms.

He hugged her very, very tightly, as though he was trying to merge her body with his.

She couldn’t remember much of their past together, but this hug felt familiar and made her feel at ease.

As they embraced and their chests touched, she could feel his warmth that was usually higher than other people’s, and their heartbeats that gradually reached the same pace.

His breathing next to her ear was warm but also a little too warm, so she felt her face redden and she tried to push him away.

But he refused to let go and hugged her even more tightly. “My girl… don’t go… let me hug you for a while… just a while…”

The words “my girl” seemed to have some magical power. She had never heard him utter those words before, but hearing them made her heart skip a beat and she felt herself relax.

These two words were filled with yearning and memories from the past.

She felt a little ticklish on her head. It was Zhao Zhi’s kiss.

He kissed her so lightly and so gently.

This man was a domineering and arrogant character most of the time, but when it came to her, he would subconsciously become cautious, as though he was afraid that he would hurt her, make her upset or angry, or worse, make her reject him.

She couldn’t help but ask, “How did we interact back then?”

She could remember her first impression of him. As far as she could remember, Zhao Zhi was aloof and distant, domineering and tough. He was ridiculously arrogant and wary of strangers. How… How did she make a man like him so sweet to her?

She couldn’t help but express admiration to her past self.

“You really liked to discipline me.”

“You didn’t allow me to drink alcohol, you didn’t allow me to be by myself, you didn’t allow me to look at other girls… there were so many things you didn’t allow me to do. But you never said it directly. You never commanded me not to do things. If I said I wanted to drink, you’d let me drink and you’d purposely buy a lot for me to drink so that I’d get so drunk, I’d do stupid and embarrassing things. You could even bash me up.”

Zhao Zhi let out a low laugh. He was talking about his embarrassing moments, but he sounded like he was enjoying this, “After this happened twice in a row, I wouldn’t need a third time. I would realize that I would end up this way if I drank too much, so I would control my intake.”

“I was so clever?” Song Caitang grinned as she leaned against his shoulder. “So, instead of telling you not to look at other women, I encouraged you to look at them more and even introduced you to some?”

“Yes…” Zhao Zhi grumbled, “You made me realize that there were women who were unfaithful, women who were swindlers, women who were scary… so I would never look down on them again and I would be wary at all times…”

He started laughing. “I was younger then and didn’t know any of this. You were younger too, yet you knew so much and you dealt so cleverly with me. You didn’t tell me to do things or not do things directly, but helped me to understand that doing certain things would lead to bad consequences. I learned everything myself as a result. You didn’t have to come down very hard on me.”

Song Caitang laughed too. “So, you’re saying I fell for you first?”

Zhao Zhi looked at her and said quietly, “I wouldn’t dare to say that…”

“It’s alright! You can say so boldly! I won’t punish you for it!”

“I always thought that one day, you would come to me and ask if I wanted to marry you. But in the end, I was the one who was more impatient and I came to ask you instead.”

When he thought about how they interacted in the past and how they interact now, he felt that he was always the weaker one who caved in first. Song Caitang was going to have him eating out of her hand for the rest of his life.

Song Caitang asked, “What did I say?”

Zhao Zhi replied, “You said you were someone who would not tolerate sand in their eyes, that you were not someone who gave another person a second chance. If I was just a friend, you wouldn’t care. But if I wanted to be your partner for life, then I should think about it carefully. You said that your husband would not know the word “freedom”. If he ever did anything to let you down, you would cut ties with him immediately and have nothing to do with him ever again.”

“I really said that?”

That sounded really tough.

Then again, given her personality, that would be something she would say if she fell for someone.

As a woman from modern times, saying something like that was nothing controversial. Many women who believed in having equal rights and having only one partner for life would say such a thing. But in an extremely patriarchal society where women had poor standing in society… that would have sounded insane.

Song Caitang was shocked. “And you… agreed to that?”

Zhao Zhi nodded. “I did.”

He tilted his head to lean against her hair. She didn’t like using fragrances and didn’t fancy hair oil either, but she loved being clean and her hair always smelled lovely.

This was the smell that accompanied his dreams. Even though he had forgotten their time together, he never forgot this smell.

Song Caitang suddenly felt her heart go out to him. “And so that’s why… you never allowed the women around you to come close to you, because your subconscious remembered that I wouldn’t like that and I would cut ties with you. And you never got drunk because you remembered what I said…”

“Both of us forgot that we knew each other before, but after we met again in Luanze and got to know each other again, you didn’t recall who I was, but… you fell for me again.”

Saying this made her sound a little thick-skinned, but she was fairly sure about it. “You suddenly ran away after we solved the boat courtesan serial murder case without saying a word, also because… you didn’t want to do anything that would let me down.”

But he didn’t know then that the Song Caitang he knew in Luanze was actually the same woman he had been dreaming about, the woman stuck deep within his subconscious.

Zhao Zhi took her hand and placed it on his left chest. “You said before, you’re the only one allowed to have a place here.”