(1) A Sudden Turn, and There He Was

Guo Huilian was utterly astonished—she'd never imagined that this Yu Shurong could be so keenly observant, so meticulous in his attention to detail, that he'd notice even the smallest, most trivial thing. She could barely keep up with him at all. Just then, a wave of overwhelming pressure swept through the air, forcing Yu Shurong to sidestep out of the way, not daring to meet it head-on.

"How dare you, insolent wretch..."

As it happened, the moment Yue Heng received the urgent report from the hidden guards, he'd taken the lead and cut straight through the shortest route to Guo Huilian's quarters at the Cao household. The instant he reached the densely packed streets, he leapt up onto the rooftops and made his way across them, avoiding the patrols of the Left and Right Guards enforcing Chang'an's night curfew. His lightness footwork had already reached a level of true mastery, and it took him hardly any time at all to arrive at his destination. Seeing Yu Shurong holding a fire striker close to Guo Huilian, he lashed out furiously with a palm strike. Sensing the vast gulf between their internal strength, Yu Shurong didn't dare meet the blow head-on, and could only dodge aside—but before he'd even found his footing again, Yue Heng was already pressing forward once more, giving him not a moment's chance to catch his breath.

"I let you off easily enough last time, and instead of learning restraint, you dare come stirring up trouble again?" Yue Heng was livid with rage. Never mind that he regarded Guo Huilian as the apple of his eye—even if it had been any other member of Yueyue Manor being threatened like this, he wouldn't have been able to stand for it. How could he possibly allow Yu Shurong to trouble her? The whole way here, his only fear had been arriving too late—if Guo Huilian had come to any harm at all at Yu Shurong's hands, he would never have forgiven himself for the slightest delay in his steps.

Yu Shurong dodged left and right, and though he had little time to study the man carefully, he caught a clear enough glimpse of his attacker: a man perhaps in his forties or fifties, with a scattering of white hair though not much of it yet, sharp, well-defined features, eyes as fierce as a hawk's, tall and lean but powerfully built, dressed in a dark round-collared robe that blended perfectly into the night. That day atop the rooftop of the secret chamber at Yun Xiang Garden, Yue Heng had been standing there too, but Yu Shurong, busy fending off the pincer attack from both Tian Xu and Yueying at once, hadn't paid him much attention at the time. Now, though, a flood of images surged through his mind: twenty years—a man who had been in his twenties back then would, by now, be roughly this very age. Though his memory of it all had long since grown hazy, and he'd even forgotten the man's name, this bearing, this temperament, this martial skill... every bit of it seemed identical to what he remembered from twenty years past.

"Are you the young man whom my eldest martial brother once rescued, the one who followed him ever after?" Yu Shurong seemed visibly stirred; even as he continued dodging Yue Heng's attacks, his emotions ran high, his eyes bright with sudden intensity.

"What did you say?" Yue Heng, caught off guard, felt a flash of shock and astonishment cross his own face, and without realizing it, his attacks slowed.

"That's right. Though I was still young at the time and don't remember most of it, I do still carry some faint impression of this... Though you never joined Tianyin Pavilion yourself, you always stayed close to my eldest martial brother, and that's why I remember you..."

Hearing this, Yue Heng froze completely, his eyes going wide as he stared at Yu Shurong. At that very moment, Tian Xu and Yueying arrived together, having followed the very same rooftop route Yue Heng had taken, and they, too, leapt down from above into the courtyard. Seeing the scene unfolding before them, the two of them, who had been ready to strike, immediately held back, and Tian Xu pulled Guo Huilian close, shielding her behind him.

"How could you possibly know that? You call A-Yuan your 'eldest martial brother'—who exactly are you?" Yue Heng fired off his questions in rapid succession, leaving Tian Xu, Yueying, and Xiaoba, who had arrived close behind, utterly stunned.

Word of the hidden guards' failure had reached Xiaoba too, and he came rushing in himself soon after...

"Just like him—shouldn't he be surnamed Cheng too? Why does he go by Tian instead? Yu Shurong is Xu Ye. He was abducted at the age of four, and knowing full well the reach of Tianyin Pavilion's intelligence network, they forced upon Xu Ye an entirely new identity so he could go on living in Chang'an under a different name..." Yu Shurong said, pointing at Tian Xu.

"Xu Ye?" At the sound of this name, everyone present, save for Guo Huilian, cried out in shock, all four of them speaking as one.

"Are you little Ye?" Xiaoba stepped forward and studied Yu Shurong closely. But Xu Ye had, after all, still been a child back then, and in every possible respect the difference between that boy and the grown man before him, well past his coming-of-age, was simply too vast for Xiaoba to make out any clear signs of recognition at all.

"Are you... Brother Xiaoba?" Yu Shurong, too, strained to place him. The lively young Xiaoba of years past had, over time, taken on the weathered marks of age, his appearance having changed drastically, and it took Yu Shurong a long moment of careful study before he finally recognized him. And that very phrase, "Brother Xiaoba," was the exact term of address Xu Ye had always used exclusively for him—no one had breathed Xiaoba's name aloud just now, and here in Chang'an, Xiaoba had lived almost like an invisible man, someone outsiders had scarcely ever laid eyes on at all. That Yu Shurong could call out that name, combined with his current age, finally convinced Xiaoba beyond doubt: Yu Shurong was indeed the old Pavilion Master's adopted son, the Master's own youngest fellow disciple—Xu Ye. For twenty years they had never once given up searching for him, and yet, by some cruel twist of fate, all this time he had been right here in Chang'an alongside them—truly, "sought among the crowd a thousand times over, and then, turning back suddenly, there he was, in the dim glow where the lantern light grew faint."

"Little Ye..." Overcome with emotion, Xiaoba's eyes brimmed instantly with hot tears. The little fellow disciple the Master and Mistress had longed so desperately to find all these years stood right before him now, and he found himself too overjoyed even to speak. Back when the old Pavilion Master had been fatally wounded in the attack and Little Ye had gone missing, the Master had succeeded him as head of Tianyin Pavilion, and not a single day had passed since then that he'd forgotten his teacher's dying charge: first, that Tianyin Pavilion must be utterly transformed, cast off from darkness and brought back into the light; and second, that Xu Ye must be found. Though they had never once abandoned the search for him, as the years dragged on, hope had grown ever more distant, ever more faint...

"Fourth Martial Sister had harbored feelings for my eldest martial brother for years, and when she learned he had secretly married, and that the bride was not only not herself, but that she didn't even know who the woman was, it became painfully clear just how deeply my eldest martial brother had cared for her, how thoroughly, how flawlessly, he had shielded and protected her. Consumed by jealousy, Fourth Martial Sister's love curdled into hatred, and together with Third Martial Brother—a man consumed by ambition, desperate to see Tianyin Pavilion returned to serve the imperial court, and secretly in league with that old villain Dou—they abducted my eldest martial brother, intending to force him to divorce his wife and marry her instead, on the condition that she would then continue to support him as Pavilion Master. If he refused, he would have to surrender the golden owl token, handing control of Tianyin Pavilion over to Third Martial Brother. It's said that even though Fourth Martial Sister had placed a love-gu upon my eldest martial brother, so that the mere thought of any woman other than her would send agony coursing through him as though ten thousand ants were gnawing at his very heart, he endured nearly fourteen years of a life worse than death, and never once yielded. They tortured my eldest martial brother for nearly fourteen years, and in the end gained neither his submission nor the golden owl token that alone could command Tianyin Pavilion. Finally, Third Martial Brother and Fourth Martial Sister used word that my eldest martial brother was down to his very last breath as bait, hoping to lure the rest of Tianyin Pavilion into a trap and catch them all at once. That day, old villain Dou brought me along with him, hoping to reap the rewards of their scheme without lifting a finger himself—but the moment we arrived, all we found were the corpses of Third Martial Brother, Fourth Martial Sister, and all their subordinates... To this day, old villain Dou still has no idea what truly happened there."