The Guide to Faking Innocence to Win His Wife - Chapter 14

“Master Jiang, you’ve been looking for quite a while. Have you found anything noteworthy?”

“What do you want to know?”

Xie Zhiyi looked up, sitting on the bluestone steps. The mountain wind whistled past, stirring waves in the emerald sea of trees while small yellow flowers at her feet swayed rhythmically.

Somehow, things had turned into this—an indescribable, inexplicable atmosphere. The “kid” she used to tease had suddenly become a fortune-telling mystic.

Jiang Zhongmu didn’t look like she was joking at all. Her lean back was slightly curved, her loose collar revealing a stretch of straight collarbone. Strands of hair from her braid fell forward, half-veiling her serious eyes.

She looked a bit too young for the part, lacking the beard or wrinkles of a sage. With her skin a bit paler, she might have looked like a “pretty boy” learning new tricks to amuse a benefactor. But Jiang Zhongmu didn’t fit that mold; her narrow phoenix eyes looked even longer under the shadow of her lashes as her gaze meticulously swept downward.

Her rough fingertip brushed against Xie Zhiyi’s cool knuckles, sparking an unbidden tingle. Xie Zhiyi instinctively tried to pull back, but she was held firm—the girl wouldn’t let her retreat.

Because of this movement, Jiang Zhongmu looked up. Her light amber eyes, crystalline in the sunlight, seemed to invite one to trace the very lines of her iris.

Xie Zhiyi looked away, saying casually, “Master Jiang, you’ve scrutinized me for so long. Is there a verdict?” Her tone was teasing, like an adult humoring a child.

“A little. What do you want to know?” Jiang Zhongmu asked plainly.

Xie Zhiyi arched an eyebrow and picked one at random: “Career?”

Jiang Zhongmu looked at her steadily and said something unexpected: “Most people ask about marriage first.”

“Marriage, then?” Xie Zhiyi said dismissively. She didn’t believe a word of it, but she cooperated out of patience, not wanting to crush the girl’s confidence. She even made a small joke, smiling: “Only kids care about romance. Adults just want a successful career and to get rich enough to do nothing.”

“You too?”

“Who doesn’t?” Xie Zhiyi countered.

“Then your dream will come true,” Jiang Zhongmu said. Despite sensing the other’s insincerity, her tone remained grounded.

“Oh?” Xie Zhiyi tilted her head, confused.

“Your career line originates from the Mount of Moon and heads straight for the Mount of Jupiter. It suggests you needed help from parents or elders early on, but later you will rely entirely on yourself. The line is clear and straight, meaning your career will develop very well,” Jiang Zhongmu explained, rattling off professional terms with a straight face.

Xie Zhiyi’s expression turned a bit more serious. Jiang Zhongmu wasn’t wrong; she had relied on her parents’ connections at the start.

“And there’s a ‘Benefactor Line.’ If you encounter problems, someone will definitely step up to help you…”

At this, Xie Zhiyi suddenly let out a cynical scoff. “A benefactor? More like a villain. If it weren’t for her…” She stopped abruptly.

Jiang Zhongmu knit her brows slightly but lowered her head to hide it. “That’s just what the lines say. Perhaps your benefactor hasn’t appeared yet.”

Xie Zhiyi nodded. The thought of her past seemed to dampen her mood. “Let’s look at something else.”

“Marriage?”

“Sure,” Xie Zhiyi said, wanting to move past the previous topic.

Jiang Zhongmu looked down, her eyes catching the bracelet on Xie Zhiyi’s wrist. It swayed, making her forearm look even fairer and more delicate.

“Marriage…” She paused, focusing. “Your marriage line isn’t very clear, and there are two parallel, symmetrical lines. You might live with someone for a long time.”

“The kind without getting married,” Jiang Zhongmu added.

The words were blunt. Xie Zhiyi merely twitched her lips, not taking it seriously. “You can even calculate that?”

Putting aside whether she had a partner, her upbringing and values made the idea of a long-term cohabitation without marriage difficult to accept.

“I just learned it for fun. Don’t take it to heart. There’s no need to believe in this stuff,” Jiang Zhongmu said, sounding more displeased and nervous than the person being read. The fortune teller was now actively debunking her own craft.

Xie Zhiyi found it amusing. “Anything else? Marriage after living together?”

“I don’t know…” Jiang Zhongmu shook her head. “Your marriage line is straight without branches, and the depth is consistent. It should be a marriage with very deep affection.”

“But I’ve never thought about getting married,” Xie Zhiyi looked at her. Her face was still the image of gentle smiles, but her voice was resolute.

Before Jiang Zhongmu could ask, Xie Zhiyi stood up and checked the sky. “Let’s go. It’ll be late if we don’t head down now.”

Night in summer is always slow to arrive. The children playing by the river were urged home by their mothers, and the water settled into its usual calm.

Jiang Zhongmu entered the third floor with a kettle. Since Xie Zhiyi’s bout of pain, the door had remained unlocked, giving Jiang Zhongmu the convenience of entering without knocking.

The room was dim. Xie Zhiyi, who had returned early, hadn’t turned on the lights, letting the darkness swallow the space.

Jiang Zhongmu walked into the innermost room. The silhouette by the window didn’t turn around. Moonlight traced her graceful outline; her grey silk nightgown hung by thin straps, unintentionally revealing the startlingly pale curve of her chest.

Jiang Zhongmu saw the lit cigarette between the woman’s fingers. Her eyes were glazed with sorrow, reflecting the white champaca flowers outside for a moment before they vanished.

Jiang Zhongmu’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the kettle. “The water is boiled. I brought a jug up for you.”

The person by the window hummed in response, still staring out. The wind ruffled the stray hairs by her ear. She brought the cigarette to her lips, the ember illuminating a weary, dejected face.

Gone was the forced maturity and polite warmth of the previous days. The “white magnolia” of Jiang Zhongmu’s memory now seemed tinged with a sense of decay, the smoke she exhaled drifting away in thin wisps.

Jiang Zhongmu took a stealthy breath. Outside, a bird flapped its wings past the third floor, a silent witness to the alluring woman and the dazed girl behind her.

“…Don’t take what I said today seriously,” Jiang Zhongmu finally blurted out after a long silence. Once she started, the words came more easily. “It’s just feudal superstition. There’s no basis for it. There’s no such thing as ‘destined by fate.'”

“Besides, I’m not that good at it. I just flipped through some books. It’s not reliable. You don’t need to care.”

The woman leaning against the window paused. Her voice was light and faint. “You think I’m angry because of that?”

Jiang Zhongmu opened her mouth but no sound came out.

The woman seemed to give a short laugh, which was quickly swallowed by gloom. “It has nothing to do with you.”

“I see…” Jiang Zhongmu didn’t know whether to feel relieved or sad.

“This is my own business…”

“What business?” The girl interrupted, finally acting on a reckless impulse of youth.

Xie Zhiyi was taken aback. Until now, Jiang Zhongmu had never pried; she had only expressed her concern through silent actions. She instinctively hid the truth, brushing it off. “It’s resolved. It’s just annoying to think about.”

She quickly changed the subject. “Why did you learn palmistry?”

Moonlight flowed down Xie Zhiyi’s neck, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone. Jiang Zhongmu felt like she was drowning in that shallow pool, unable to climb out yet unable to sink to the bottom.

She clenched her hands at her sides, her voice flat. “Something to do in high school when I was bored.”

“Really? You must have had a lot of free time in high school,” Xie Zhiyi remarked.

“Not really. I’d look at it when I didn’t want to listen in Literature class,” Jiang Zhongmu lowered her gaze.

The other woman didn’t want to talk about her past, and Jiang Zhongmu didn’t want to expose her own naive, secret heart.

It was true she hated Literature class, but she was never so idle that she needed fortune-telling for entertainment. If she was bored, she could have filled her time with endless mock exam papers.

Xie Zhiyi was the only reason she had squeezed out time to learn things that wouldn’t increase her grades.

She had struggled with self-doubt—working so hard based on a university the woman had mentioned in passing years ago. What if the woman had already graduated and moved to another city? What if she had just been being polite? What if…

But Jiang Zhongmu had no other choice. She only had her hazy, inexplicable feelings. She couldn’t even bring herself to say the word “love” to anyone else.

Could someone that young truly love? They had only spent a month together, with no contact afterward. Who would hold on that long for a shadow that was fading in their memory?

During those boring Literature classes, Jiang Zhongmu would look out the window at the sky, wondering about an impossible future. She had scoured the library for books on physiognomy and palmistry, trying to use those ephemeral methods to calculate a future that didn’t exist.

“Get some rest,” Jiang Zhongmu muttered, choosing not to pry further.

Xie Zhiyi nodded.

“You’ve just recovered. Smoke less and don’t drink.”

Xie Zhiyi said nothing.

Jiang Zhongmu waited, then finally let out a helpless sigh. Adults were like this—they only saw the young as children, perching themselves on a “mature” height, assuming the young couldn’t possibly understand their suffering. They viewed the worries of a child with the same dismissiveness they felt toward an elementary student complaining about a heavy workload.

“I bought a pack of mints. They’re pretty good; you can try them,” Jiang Zhongmu said, placing the prepared mints on the nightstand before leaving the room without looking back.

The dark room fell silent again. The night wind rushed in, blowing Xie Zhiyi’s curls. The ember between her fingers glowed and faded, one cigarette after another.

The night was long, white champaca petals fell, and the mints were placed in a drawer, not a single one unwrapped.

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