Waiting for You for a Long Time, But You Haven't Arrived - Chapter 51

“I will continue to be shamelessly persistent.”

Ming Yishu was not overly suspicious, but she was not dull. After her rebirth, she only wanted to live out her days in peace; thus, she never spared much thought for the identities of those around her. She no longer had the strength to calculate such matters, and so she had not realized that the Duanhua Residence had long since been seeded with eyeline spies by Jiang Qionghua.

This place had once been so desolate, yet now so many servants had arrived. Ming Yishu did not need to think deeply to know that Jiang Qionghua’s hand was behind it.

Jiang Qionghua was cunning. To make her subordinates gain Ming Yishu’s trust, she deliberately used Xieyang as an excuse, falsely claiming that these were people sent by Princess Xieyang to serve her.

Later, Ming Yishu also sensed the dissonance. She had deliberately avoided Princess Xieyang specifically to keep the other woman from being implicated; it was impossible for Xieyang to repeatedly send people to the Duanhua Residence while they were supposedly avoiding one another.

However, even though Ming Yishu sensed it, she could not truly drive all the servants out of the residence.

When Jiang Qionghua brought up Xieyang’s name, it wasn’t out of a desire to do someone a favor. Ming Yishu knew that Jiang Qionghua mentioned Xieyang as a way to threaten her.

“You are best at using the people and things I care about to threaten me, aren’t you? Before it was Ji Zijun, Su Qian’er, and Heyi; now it is Xieyang,” Ming Yishu spoke coldly into the night, her gaze never landing on Jiang Qionghua. “Jiang Qionghua, you are the Right Chancellor of peerless power, and I am merely a commoner. Now that I treat you with such a cold face, you could easily find someone else. With your power and beauty, you wouldn’t need to go to such lengths to receive endless flattery from others.”

Jiang Qionghua held a silk handkerchief, drying Ming Yishu’s hair, acting as if she couldn’t hear the mockery in the words. The corner of her mouth still carried a faint smile. “What are they compared to you? I only like you. Whether it is a cold face or ridicule, as long as you speak to me, I feel at peace and content.”

Ming Yishu had nothing to say to this person. She had gained a deeper understanding of the woman’s brazenness in recent days.

If she locked her door at night, the woman would enter through the window. If she blocked the window, Jiang Qionghua would stand before the window for the entire night. Ming Yishu was a light sleeper; waking in the middle of the night, she was often startled by the shadow at the window. Jiang Qionghua stood there motionlessly—how could she sleep?

After several consecutive days, Ming Yishu had hardly slept. Just as her patience reached its limit, Jiang Qionghua began to push her luck. The woman started knocking on the door and window at midnight, trying every possible way to be let in. If Ming Yishu did not respond, she would call her name over and over. But if she did respond, the other woman would take the opportunity to say even more, making Ming Yishu’s brow furrow and her body turn cold.

Finally, on a certain day when the spring chill returned, Ming Yishu woke from a dream to find that Jiang Qionghua’s patience had run out; it seemed she intended to pry the door open.

A wave of revulsion washed over Ming Yishu. She pulled out a knife she had long hidden under her pillow.

She gripped the knife tightly, staring coldly at the door. If Jiang Qionghua dared to break in like this, she didn’t mind seeing blood drawn once more.

That night, she waited with the knife for a long time. In the end, she only saw Jiang Qionghua and her subordinates pry the door open a crack, followed by the rustling of something being pushed inside.

Ming Yishu had no interest in moving closer to look, but the noise she made let Jiang Qionghua know she was awake. Knowing she wasn’t sleeping, the woman relentlessly tried to strike up a conversation.

“The weather has turned cold again today. I was worried you’d be cold while sleeping, so I came to bring you a light cloak.” Jiang Qionghua peered through the crack in the door, trying to glimpse Ming Yishu’s silhouette. “Actually, there was a wild fox that kept provoking our Heyi. I took it upon myself to skin that fox and make you a garment to ward off the cold.”

Ming Yishu’s gaze fell upon the neatly folded clothes on the floor—this garment was stitched thread by thread; it had absolutely nothing to do with a fox. Jiang Qionghua spoke of it with such cruelty and bloodthirst, yet the clothes sent didn’t have a single fox hair on them.

She didn’t know how to judge this. If the clothes were truly made of fox skin, she would have certainly returned them to their rightful owner and told Jiang Qionghua to deal with them herself; she would not wear such a sin upon her body…

But now, the clothes were hand-sewn. Why did Jiang Qionghua lie? Did the woman finally realize she loathed the scent of blood and decided not to kill so lightly?

Ming Yishu hesitated as she looked at the clothes, but in the end, she did not keep them. “Take them away. I am not cold. You are the one standing outside the door, not me.”

Hearing her cold voice, Jiang Qionghua did not feel discouraged. She continued to coax her in a good mood: “There really was a bad fox approaching Heyi. I caught it, but I didn’t kill it. I just wanted to find an excuse to persuade you to add a layer of clothing to avoid the chill.”

“I have clothes here; I don’t need yours…” Ming Yishu stopped halfway through her sentence as she suddenly realized something. She looked down, her speech slowing. “Did you make these clothes?”

Jiang Qionghua: “My needlework was once the best in the capital. But from the day of my hair-pinning ceremony, I never touched a needle again. Though my skill is a bit rusty, it is not at all inferior to that of a clever seamstress.”

Ancient needlework carried much cultural atmosphere. In the years since Ming Yishu traveled into this book, she had seen many exquisite embroideries, where every stitch was clever, filled with craftsmanship and soul.

However, what she hadn’t expected was that Jiang Qionghua knew needlework?

When the woman was still a young girl, did she sit quietly in her boudoir embroidering things? What was Jiang Qionghua like then? Could such a ruthless person have once had a time of innocence and kindness?

Mentioning events from over twenty years ago, Ming Yishu inevitably began to imagine that time she had never seen. The Jiang Qionghua she saw after entering the book hadn’t changed much in appearance. So, during the time she still loved the woman, she had imagined a thousand times what the other would look like in her youth. What a stunning sight such peerless beauty would be in one’s early twenties…

Unknowingly, Ming Yishu thought a lot, but she quickly snapped out of it, realizing these things no longer had anything to do with her.

She shouldn’t think about it.

Ming Yishu stopped looking at the clothes on the floor. She turned her gaze away, bending down by feel to pick up the clothes, intending to return them. “I cannot accept the Right Chancellor’s intentions—”

She intended to throw the clothes back to Jiang Qionghua and close the door crack, but she momentarily forgot the knife she had hidden. As she bent down, the knife slid from her sleeve and hit the floor with a sound that was neither heavy nor light.

Ming Yishu’s words caught in her throat. She moved quickly to pick up the knife.

Jiang Qionghua was acutely sensitive to the sound of the blade. Hearing the brief noise inside the room, she immediately reacted as if triggered, breaking the door and rushing in. “Yishu! Put down the knife!”

She was so terrified that Ming Yishu would harm herself that she burst through the door without a second thought, lunging to tackle Ming Yishu and snatch the knife from her hand. Jiang Qionghua threw the knife far out the door, and only then did her soul, which had nearly been frightened out of her body, settle back down. “Are you alright?”

Ming Yishu, having been inexplicably tackled to the ground, didn’t need to understand the situation before a surge of anger rose within her. “Jiang Qionghua, do not come here and act crazy. What does it matter to you if I hold a knife? If you didn’t spend every night without sleep standing at my window, I wouldn’t need to keep a knife under my pillow for self-defense.”

“I will not hurt you; you don’t need a knife for defense.” Jiang Qionghua, having been blamed for nothing, felt her heart turn difficult and bitter. She softened her voice. “I was afraid you might do something drastic when you are in a bad mood. Don’t keep such dangerous things near you in the future; you will hurt yourself.”

Ming Yishu looked into her eyes seriously, her words cutting to the bone: “If you and I had never met, all of this harm and suffering would never have happened.”

Jiang Qionghua was in the wrong, her brow filled with desolation. “It is my fault, I am the one who is bad. We can meet again for the first time; I won’t treat you as I did before.”

“Jiang Qionghua, I will never believe you again. You have told countless lies; I don’t want to guess which one is true and which is a dismissal. If you truly had a heart, you should reflect on your current behavior—your constant disturbances can be considered another form of harm. If you weren’t here, my life would be better. At least I wouldn’t have spent these last few days living in constant fear.” Ming Yishu pushed the woman off her and stood up in disgust. “Since you have such a problem with this knife, take it and leave my residence together.”

Hearing this, Jiang Qionghua’s smile faded. The joy of seeing her beloved ultimately couldn’t withstand the intensity of these heartless words. As Jiang Qionghua heard the other woman finish, her heart instantly felt as if it had fallen into an ice cellar, her hands and feet going numb.

“Don’t drive me away, Yishu. I won’t cause you trouble.” Jiang Qionghua stood before her helplessly, her eyes reddening. “But you said you wouldn’t care what I did anymore; why are you forcing me to leave now?”

“Jiang Qionghua, don’t be too shameless.” Ming Yishu was in no mood to chat further with Jiang Qionghua because she couldn’t tell if the woman was intentionally stalling for time. This person’s mind was too devious, her methods too base; she was entirely capable of using a plea for sympathy to secure an overnight stay.

Jiang Qionghua clutched the door in a bit of a panic, not wanting to be thrown out. “Yishu, I still have things to say—”

Ming Yishu was brief: “Get out.”

Jiang Qionghua had no choice but to leave. As she went, she took the knife with her.

Jiang Qionghua: “This knife is no good. I’ve kept the knife I gave you before, the one you didn’t take with you. I’ve always kept it, hoping that one day I could return it to you personally.”

Ming Yishu: “I don’t need it. There is no need to return it.”

“On that day in the celestial prison, there was a great fire. You barely escaped from the flames, and at that time, you held that knife in your arms and said to me, ‘Given by Auntie, I can’t bear to lose it.’ You had it in your heart; why did you not look at it once more when we parted?” Though Jiang Qionghua was talking about the knife, her words carried many hints. She said, “Yishu, the affection of these years cannot be faked. The look in your eyes then, full of clear love as you gazed at me, I can remember it for a lifetime… Yishu, can we please stop fighting? That person is dead, and we can be as we were before, alright?”

“This is not a fight.” Ming Yishu looked into her eyes, her tone flat and without emotion—her heart was likely completely dead. “I have died once. Between you and me, there is already the separation of Yin and Yang, a parting of life and death, not a fight. Jiang Qionghua, what do I have to say to make you realize—we can never go back.”

Jiang Qionghua felt a pang in her heart at her words, saying softly: “We can go back.”

“Is that so?” Ming Yishu suddenly twitched her lips, letting out a mocking laugh. “If I weren’t an outsider, if I hadn’t been reborn as I am today, then what would have been the last sight I saw before death… After my death, you didn’t even come to the funeral. You ordered people to throw away everything related to me, trying to forget me completely. I don’t know why you want to haunt me again, but it’s not hard to guess… most likely, your headaches have become unbearable again, and you’re thinking of bringing me back to the manor to soothe your discomfort. After all, you won’t trust anyone else. In this world, only I am so foolish as to treat you with all my heart, enduring all your temper and madness.”

Jiang Qionghua’s heart went cold. She suddenly realized something terrible.

During the time after Ming Yishu’s death, when her consciousness still lingered in the world, what she saw and heard were all Jiang Qionghua’s acts and words of venting grief. She truly hadn’t intentionally wanted to forget Ming Yishu. It’s possible she wasn’t far from madness then, and so she made such a mistake.

The price of all those reckless words finally met with a backlash. Thinking that the other woman would feel even more chilled because of this, Jiang Qionghua’s tone ultimately couldn’t hide her grief: “It wasn’t like that, don’t think that way…”

“Stop explaining, I don’t want to hear it.” Ming Yishu smiled bitterly. “Jiang Qionghua, I don’t want to live like this anymore. Counting it up, I’ve lived three lives, and in two of them, I didn’t die a good death. I only want to live plainly; my wish isn’t greedy. Can a high-and-mighty person like you, who gets whatever you want, stop coming to add trouble to a miserable person’s life?”

She so envied those whose lives were smooth and safe. They had happy, harmonious families; they had goals and directions worth looking forward to. They hadn’t experienced countless unexpected disasters, hadn’t tossed and turned through many bitter nights—how could they understand her pain?

Why did people always advise her to be generous, jokingly urging her to celebrate her suffering and make peace with its creator?

She truly couldn’t do it. She only wanted to hide further away. She was already living with great difficulty and didn’t want happy, ignorant people pointing fingers at her choices.

Ming Yishu leaned dejectedly against the door. Her shoulders, which she had been forcing herself to keep straight, felt as if the strength had been drained from them. She couldn’t bear to look back on her life because every time she thought of it, it hurt terribly. She could find no reason for her existence, yet the heavens still left her with more life, forcing her to repeat her suffering over and over.

Time and again, she was given hope, only to be dealt an even heavier blow.

She had once left her original family to go to the city for school, only to encounter a disaster and lose her life. Later, she met Jiang Qionghua and spent six or seven years being deceived and treated with contempt. She later thought Ji Zijun would be her hope for escaping the gloom, only to have that person once again collaborate with Jiang Qionghua to push her into the abyss, leading her to collapse.

“There are some things that haven’t been stated clearly, but I think you know them in your heart. For example—” Ming Yishu looked up to question Jiang Qionghua. “Was your original intention in raising me in the Chancellor’s manor to kill me? To get revenge and vent your anger?”

Jiang Qionghua was speechless, unable to answer for a moment.

She didn’t want to lie to Ming Yishu anymore.

“Yes, yes,” Ming Yishu nodded slowly with self-mockery, reaching up to wipe away tears that didn’t exist; she had long since stopped crying over such things. “You raised me to kill me, yet you dare mention returning to the beginning? Mention a broken mirror being made whole?”

Jiang Qionghua lowered her head, explaining: “I changed my mind later.”

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t care what you meant. Whether you kill me or cut me, what does it have to do with me? That Ming Yishu died in the Chancellor’s manor; you weren’t even there when she was buried. You will never see her again.” Ming Yishu said, “Jiang Qionghua, if I didn’t bring these words up today, you would still be shamelessly clinging to me as if nothing had happened. I just died, I didn’t lose my memory. I remember every single thing you did clearly. Please stop your persistence. When you recall the past at night, do you really not feel a shred of heartache or remorse? How do you have the courage to keep looking for me?”

Jiang Qionghua tried to take her hand. “Only by coming to find you can I make up for my past mistakes. If I let go now, then all the previous guilt will not dissipate; it will even intensify as time goes by. Yishu, I truly wasn’t a good person before, but precisely because of that, I must come to find you. Even if you find me annoying, even if you think I’m shameless, it doesn’t matter. I don’t mind being persistent, day after day, treating you well. Even if it takes ten years or decades, as long as you can forgive me, time is not an issue. Furthermore, I didn’t come to find you out of guilt; I admire you. I have no virtue or conscience; I rarely feel guilt.”

Ming Yishu was truly stunned by her last sentence. What kind of person could speak so grandiosely?

“I will continue to be persistent until your heart softens.” Jiang Qionghua tore off her mask of dignity, simply deciding not to act like a person anymore. “You can’t listen to my explanations, so I can use actions to prove it. It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe me; I can continue like this, being shamelessly persistent with you for a lifetime.”

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