Ran Qingsheng. A familiar name, and one that had gone as far away as a name can go. The sea of Ran Chenxin’s heart shook violently. She stared at Ye Tianxie and murmured softly, “Big Brother Xietian, is this… is this what fate means? Only… your eyes are nothing at all like that little boy’s, back then.”

That year, though he was only five and a half, he had grown up far too early. He had watched his family die horribly, and he had taken the measure of more people’s warmth and coldness than he could count. Resentment and hate, rejection and wariness, deepened in him every day. When he looked at anyone at all, it was with wariness in his eyes, and sometimes with hatred, and that was the look that frightened off the small, soft girl she had been.

Now, in Ye Tianxie’s eyes, what Ran Chenxin saw was a gentleness that all but made her lose herself in it.

“That’s true. There is far too much difference between the man I was then and the man I am now… A kingdom is easier to change than a man’s nature — I stopped being able to agree with that a very long time ago. There was one person. She changed me completely.” Ye Tianxie half closed his eyes, and into his mind came the immortal shape he thought of every minute and every second.

She had used her gentleness to smooth over every wound in him. She had shown him one beautiful thing after another, taken him along to help people who needed helping, and led him to feel the gladness that comes afterward… The resentment in his heart and the sharp corners of his temperament she rubbed away a little at a time, without his ever noticing it happen. Without her, the Ye Tianxie of today would be an entirely different Ye Tianxie — and would at the very least carry a great deal more darkness in him than he does.

“Your father saved my life. All these years have gone by and I have never been able to repay that enormous kindness, and by the time I had the power to repay it, he was gone. You are his daughters. How could I let anyone bully you again?” Ye Tianxie said.

That year, the place Ran Qingsheng took him back to was a country farmhouse, not a luxurious one — but everything about the man, the way he spoke and moved and the way he dressed, carried an ease and a nobility that ordinary people cannot imitate. Even at five and a half, Ye Tianxie had been sure the man held a high station and had a family behind him that was not ordinary. And from talk he happened to overhear, he learned that Ran Qingsheng was staying in the countryside for the winter on purpose. Perhaps he had grown tired of the noise of the big cities.

And now Ran Qingsheng is dead, and his two daughters have fallen this far. Something enormous must have happened in that family.

Huaxia First Military District General Hospital.

As the helicopter came in, the air-defense installations let out a shrill alarm. But the moment the people below got a clear look at the insignia on it, the alarm was cut off. A dozen-odd doctors made ready every kind of emergency transport equipment that might be needed, ran out, and stood waiting in the landing area.

The helicopter set down, and it had hardly steadied before Ye Tianxie had the hatch open and was jumping out, brows drawn tight, Chenxue in one arm and Chenxin’s hand in the other, walking fast to meet them. Zuo Pojun and Murong Qiushui came close behind.

“Young Master Zuo—” The doctor at the head of them had got no further than a greeting before Zuo Pojun cut him off. “Get the best doctor in every field here right now… the cardiac ones above all. Go!!”

“Yes. Arranging it now.” The doctor took one glance at the girl in Ye Tianxie’s arms, and his heart lurched… A face gone that white meant her life force was very near the edge of running out entirely. An illness like that… He shouted at once, “Quickly! Go and prepare the life support equipment first!”

Chenxue was taken into the largest emergency room in the place. Ran Chenxin watched her wheeled bodily into that enormous life support apparatus, watched the tubes of every kind go into her, and bit down hard on her lip. Her hands gripped her own clothes as if she would never let go, and her face was a frightening white…

“Don’t worry. Chenxue will be all right. Let’s go outside.” That was all Ye Tianxie could offer her by way of comfort.

In the cold, bare waiting room, Ran Chenxin’s face was still that terrible white with the strain of it… The thing she feared most every day of her life was that the demon of the illness would take Chenxue and she would be gone forever. Then she really would be left with nothing but her own solitude.

If she could trade her own life for Chenxue’s health, she would do it without hesitating.

After several cups of water one after another, Chenxin was somewhat calmer. Ye Tianxie hesitated, then said, “Besides the heart defect, does Chenxue have anything else wrong with her?”

Ran Chenxin shook her head. She seemed to feel cold. Her hands went to her chest without her meaning them to, and she said in a low voice, “After Xue’er was born, a lot of things about her were not normal. She caught colds constantly, and she would often lose consciousness with no warning. In the end the doctors confirmed it: she had a very serious congenital defect of the heart… She could live to ten at the most. After ten, the heart would stop beating, and every other function of the body would fail fast.”

She kept her head lowered, and told it in a soft, slow voice. “In those days, to cure Xue’er, Papa and Mama went to very nearly every one of the country’s best hospitals, and the answer they got was the same every time. They all said Xue’er could not live to ten. Papa and Mama tried every method they could think of, and even thought about a heart transplant for her, but… Xue’er’s condition was too unusual and too severe, and there was no way to carry out any of the methods. The hope was put out a little at a time. Papa and Mama never gave up, but… by then there was hardly any hope left that anyone could see.”

“Xue’er is truly strong. She never cries, she never complains, and she has never let her body drive her to despair or to giving up. Since the day she was born I have spent nearly every day at her side, and she has never once needed me to comfort her. She comforts me instead, tells me not to worry, tells me she will get better soon… When I was very small, I used to think Xue’er was an angel heaven had given to our family, with a life as fragile as glass and a heart as pure as glass…”

Ran Chenxin lowered her head further, and her voice went softer and slower still. “The closer we got to the limit the doctors had put on Xue’er’s life, the further we seemed from any hope of saving her… But she really is strong. She turned ten, and though her body was too weak by then to walk normally, the demon of the illness had not beaten her. She still talked to me every day with a smile, still comforted me with a smile and told me not to worry. She would say, I haven’t seen my sister find a happy home of her own yet — I’d never have the heart to go.“

“When did your parents die?” Ye Tianxie asked, his brows drawing in slightly.

“The year Xue’er was… nine.” As she answered that question, Ye Tianxie saw it plainly — a hatred buried very deep showing through in her eyes… To put hatred into a woman as soft as this one, what an unforgivable crime that would have to be.

“How did they die?” Ye Tianxie’s brows drew tight. When he had gone looking for Ran Qingsheng that year, he had learned of his death and been told the cause of it. Only, at the time he had no thought at all of running the thing down to the bottom. And now, by the look of it, the cause of that death was nothing like as simple as it appeared.

“A car accident.” It was a long pause before Ran Chenxin gave him the answer, head down, in a very low voice.

“An ordinary car accident, and nothing more?” Ye Tianxie pressed.

A look of pain came onto Chenxin’s face. She shook her head and said, “Big Brother Xietian, please don’t ask… It’s all over, and I’ve forgotten it… I’ve forgotten all of it.”

Ye Tianxie looked at her a while and then said nothing more, and did not go on asking. He knew the two sisters must have found something out, and that this was why they had left home. Otherwise, with the family they came from, even with both parents dead, how could they possibly have fallen this far? Even with her sister gravely ill, Chenxin had refused to go back to what had been her home and ask for a single coin. They had chosen to leave, and to forget… Two girls with nobody at all to lean on could only choose to forget.

Chenxin, for her part, was unwilling to tell him the truth she knew. Because she was too good-hearted. She was afraid that if she told Ye Tianxie, he would really go after them… She did not want to bring trouble down on him, and at the same time… the hatred had been planted, but those people were still family, and shared blood with the two of them.

For Ye Tianxie, though, this was an answer he had to have. Ran Qingsheng had been a kind and cultivated man — his memory of that was still fresh — and a man he had to repay. If there was something hidden behind his death, he could not leave it alone. And he believed, too, that Liu Qiyue already had it. She had known long ago whose daughters these two were, and with the reach she has, she would long since have found out exactly how Ran Qingsheng and his wife died that year.

Since I cannot repay the kindness directly, then let me avenge you… and settle your two daughters properly. Ye Tianxie said it silently to himself. He never forgets a grudge, and he remembers a kindness better still.

Time went slowly by in that anxious waiting, and every second of it was long. His questions to Ran Chenxin had shaken the sea of his heart again and again. Four years ago, their parents died… Three years ago, they left home — and even if they had not left, that place was no longer their home. Chenxue reached ten and was still living, still holding on, and not one person in that house cared about her or gave a thought to whether she lived or died. Some of them were waiting for her to die soon and have done with it.

At ten, she did not die.

At eleven, drifting outside with her sister and having a hard time of it, she still did not die.

At twelve, weak as she already was, she was still stubbornly alive.

This year she is thirteen, with no money for a good hospital and no money for better medicine, and she is still stubbornly alive. Because she cannot let her sister be alone, and cannot leave her with nobody to lean on.

A body of glass, and inside it a heart as pure as diamond and as hard to break. In that moment, deep down, he felt a real respect for this girl of thirteen who had used that frail body to beat back the most terrible of illnesses, over and over again.

He did not know how long it was before the waiting-room door was pushed open and a middle-aged woman doctor, a little heavyset, came in and said, respectfully, “Young Master Zuo.” Zuo Pojun came here often; the doctors here all knew him and knew who he was, and knew his violent temper better still. So in front of him they were as respectful and as careful as they could possibly be.

“Doctor, how is my sister? When will she get better?” Chenxin hurried to meet her and caught hold of her sleeve to ask, her face full of strain and dread… She was afraid of hearing the answer she did not want to hear.

“What’s happened to Chenxue? There’s no problem, is there?” Zuo Pojun stepped up, his face dark.

The look on Zuo Pojun’s face made her heart lurch. But she dared even less to lie to him. She shook her head faintly and said in a very level voice, “She has an extremely severe congenital defect of the heart. Her cardiac function has now failed almost completely, and her body’s systems lost essentially all capacity to run a long time ago… That she has lived to this day is already an unbelievable miracle.”

(End of Chapter 274)