Chapter 91
Ji Wei hummed in agreement and didn’t try to persuade him further.
After Lu Shenxing let him go, he sat down at the table and began to eat the cranberry salad.
The dressing wasn’t the usual Caesar or Thousand Island. It had a creamy, delicate texture, and the sweet and sour flavor of the berries made it not the least bit cloying, but rather rich with layers of flavor.
As he was eating with a spoon, he turned his head slightly and found Lu Shenxing propping his head up with one hand, watching him with narrowed eyes.
It was an extremely intense gaze.
He turned back, swallowed, and his movements slowed unconsciously. His chewing pace slackened, and his heart pounded in his chest.
***
The next day, Ji Wei and Lu Shenxing woke up very early. Aleksei was already waiting for them outside the hotel.
They got into the car.
Aleksei sat in the passenger seat, and Huang Bo sat in the front row. His gaze fell on the empty seat.
Lu Shenxing seemed to notice his confusion. After straightening Ji Wei’s shirt collar, he said, “He’s not coming.”
Ji Wei nodded silently.
His idol probably didn’t tell Ying Guanxiao. Even though their relationship was so good, Ying Guanxiao knew very little about his affairs, allowing him to stay quietly in his own world without being disturbed.
Aleksei gave the driver directions.
The mountain road was steep.
Fortunately, they were in a modified off-road vehicle, so driving through the mountains was no problem. It took a full hour to reach the end of the winding road.
The road ended.
“We have to walk up,” Aleksei said, pointing to the mountain peak. “It’s about a half-hour walk.”
Ji Wei looked up at the distant peak, which was covered in a lush, dense coniferous forest.
By the time they reached the summit, it was already ten o’clock.
The mountaintop was a flat, open area. Besides the steep cliffs at the edge, there was only a single wooden cabin, battered and crooked from the mountain winds. Its walls were mottled, and green moss grew in the corners.
“He lived in this cabin before he died,” Aleksei said, not daring to get too close, keeping a distance of several meters. “He would give candy to any child he saw, but the candy he gave out was long expired, all wrinkled.”
Ji Wei suddenly lost the courage to step inside the cabin.
The morning mountain breeze carried a hint of chill, blowing against his face like the dull edge of a small knife. He didn’t find it uncomfortable; on the contrary, it made him feel incredibly clear-headed.
The clearer his mind became, the more he dared not take that step.
Lu Shenxing quietly extended a hand to him.
It was as if a brilliant light had suddenly pierced the long, dark night, beckoning Ji Wei with an irresistible allure. It suppressed all his fears deep in his heart, guiding him toward the light.
He and Lu Shenxing walked into the wooden cabin.
A musty smell assaulted their nostrils. Spiderwebs stretched wantonly from the corners of the walls to the ceiling, hanging suspended in the air.
The cabin must have been an abandoned hut for a forest ranger. There was even a telephone, though the line had been cut.
The cabin had two rooms. The outermost one was small, with opened food boxes scattered everywhere. The food had long since rotted into liquid and had now become a nest for insects.
One could imagine the living conditions of its inhabitant.
Filthy and chaotic.
There was nothing but a jar of candy on the cabinet.
The candy was ordinary milk candy, and the label on the jar was illegible. It probably wasn’t anything expensive.
The oil and salt canisters on the cabinet were all empty. Aleksei had said he starved to death, so he must have been stuffing anything he could find into his mouth before he died, until there was nothing left.
And yet, he hadn’t touched that jar of candy.
Ji Wei pressed his lips together.
He walked toward the other room.
The wooden door was ajar, but it couldn’t conceal the strong, pungent smell, like the stench of a corpse. His hand paused as he was about to push the door. He closed his eyes and pushed it open.
His eyes flew open.
The scene he had imagined wasn’t there. It was just that a body had lain there for too long, leaving the outline of a person on the floor, from which the smell emanated.
But what shocked him wasn’t the mark on the wooden planks, but the scrolls hanging all over the walls. The brushwork was fluid and unrestrained, and the colors were incredibly impactful, as if he had suddenly entered another world.
Perhaps it was Ye Lang’s world.
If a third person had been present, they would have been thrilled by these breathtaking works. No other artist in the world possessed such a style, one that was worthy of a name in the history of painting, a history filled with geniuses.
But Ji Wei and Lu Shenxing’s attention was drawn to a small desk in the room, upon which lay an old leather-bound notebook.
Ji Wei walked over and opened it.
It was a diary.
His fingers trembled, but he opened it nonetheless.
The diary’s owner was clearly not someone patient enough to write every day. He would jot down a few lines from time to time, sometimes with a year-long gap between entries.
—Finally paid off the family’s debt. Rushed back to school this year, spent half a year getting into my dream university, and sold a cow for tuition.
—Brought a leather pouch of oranges to school. My roommates said I was silly but took them anyway. When I went to the cafeteria for dinner that night, they gave me a lot of meat. It was the first time I’d eaten so much meat.
***
As Ji Wei read the diary, a warm, cheerful, and slender young man emerged in his mind. The young man was very popular; both teachers and classmates liked him and took care of him in obvious and subtle ways.
Gradually, another person appeared in the diary, referred to as “Teacher.”
—Turned in my oil painting homework today and still only got a sixty. No one else can understand my paintings. Only Teacher appreciates them and tells me to believe in myself. He even invited me to his home tonight to look at paintings. I’m so grateful to him.
—I’ve discovered it’s not that I can’t paint well. I copied Qi Baishi’s Ink Shrimp at Teacher’s house. He admired the painting, so I gave it to him. But I still don’t like copying other people’s work.
—Sigh, my final exams were mediocre.
***
Ji Wei looked up at the paintings on the wall. The style was indeed too avant-garde and would not have been widely appreciated in that era. His copy of Ink Shrimp was good enough to pass for the real thing, yet he hadn’t gone down the crooked path of selling forgeries.
He didn’t even consider it, merely lamenting that he disliked copying others’ works, even those of masters. What a proud man he was.
He continued reading.
—Graduated. Teacher said he could help me stay at the school, but my grades are really average. I can’t keep troubling him, so I politely declined. But my paintings aren’t selling. It’s worrying.
—Painted for two days without sleep.
—Teacher wants to introduce me to his niece. I was startled. Is she still a minor? Thankfully, she’s only three years younger than me. She’s quiet and doesn’t talk much, but that’s okay. I like to talk.
After the young man got married, Ji Wei couldn’t sense any spontaneous joy from his words. Although he didn’t sell a single painting for a long time, they still lived very happily.
When Ji Wei turned to the next page, he froze.
—My daughter was born today. I named her Ye Zhi.
***
Lin Yiqiu was not a sentimental person, but recently he found himself often thinking of Ye Lang.
His first student.
He suddenly felt like having a drink.
He walked slowly to the wine cellar and opened the door. There was no light, just a pitch-black basement. There used to be a lamp.
How did it disappear?
He remembered.
The young man with pale eyes had said he needed to earn money to support his family, that he was going to paint those disgusting commercial works and would no longer be the Ye Lang he knew.
It was his fault.
You can’t grow breathtaking orchids in a greenhouse.
It was in this dark basement that he had imprisoned Ye Lang and coldly possessed him. The lamp was shattered at that time too.
It wasn’t out of lust, but for spiritual conquest. He wanted the young man’s submission, but undeniably, that was the most pleasurable moment of his life.
Even after Ye Lang slashed his hand, he had no regrets.
Ye Lang was the best work of his life.
***
The moment he saw Ms. Ye Zhi’s name, Ji Wei finally confirmed that the owner of the house was his maternal grandfather.
Ye Lang.
The obscure Ye Lang, remembered only for slashing his mentor’s right hand. The mad Ye Lang, who eventually starved to death in a foreign land.
He stood stunned for a long while before finding the courage to turn to the next page, on which only one sentence was written.
—He’s a madman, we have to escape.
The words on this page were shockingly large, but the strokes were kept as calm as possible. Ye Lang’s mental state should have still been normal at this point.
The next page also had only one sentence.
—A-Jing is dead too.
The handwriting was already distorted. He could feel the despair seeping through the words. That must have been his grandmother, whom he had never met. The word “too” filled Ji Wei with an inexplicable sense of dread.
Ye Lang didn’t go mad on his own.
He was driven mad.
He even fled to the distant Xijin, where he painted day after day, with a little girl who loved to daze off standing by his side, silently reciting pi next to her father.
—While I was painting on the roadside with Little Yezi, a craftsman playing the guqin kept looking my way. Besides Little Yezi, I don’t want to talk to anyone. That person gave her a candy jar. She really likes it.
Flipping to the end, only four pages remained.
—I feel my condition getting worse and worse. I’m only clear-headed in the morning, but that person playing the zither says my paintings are getting better and better.
—I’ve decided to send Little Yezi away. She’s a very obedient child. She didn’t cry or make a fuss. She didn’t take her favorite candy jar, and she didn’t look back at me.
—I miss Little Yezi.
—I miss her so, so much.
Ji Wei had a good idea who the zither-playing craftsman was. His grandfather had brought Ms. Ye Zhi back to Border Town. Because she didn’t meet the adoption requirements, he had to send her to a welfare institution.
However, he would bring Ms. Ye Zhi over seven out of ten days, doting on her more than his own son. When his grandfather died of bone cancer, it was the first time he had ever seen Ms. Ye Zhi cry.
A scene seemed to appear before Ji Wei’s eyes.
On a distant frontier, a young man painted in silence while another played the guqin. There was no communication between them, yet they could entrust their dearest kin to one another.
And so, on a day of heavy snowfall, his grandfather carried Ye Zhi back to Border Town.
And Ye Lang went to Russia alone, painting his masterpieces in a wooden cabin on a mountaintop. He wondered if he was lucid in his final moments.
He probably was.
The diary lay on the table.
Perhaps Ye Lang had also looked back on his life.
Ji Wei closed the diary, his heart heavy. He looked up at the oil paintings on the wall, which showed no signs of being touched.
Aleksei’s father may not have been a successful businessman, but he was a good man, a thoroughly good man. Any one of the paintings in the room could have brought him a huge profit.
But he only took Ye Lang’s body.
He didn’t take a single painting.
He silently said, “Thank you.”
As Ji Wei and Lu Shenxing left the room and passed the cabinet outside, he saw the jar of candy on it. For some reason, his eyes grew hot. He lowered his head and said, “My grandfather wasn’t born a madman.”
He couldn’t even bring himself to eat that jar of milk candy when he was at his hungriest.
“He wasn’t.”
The man squeezed Ji Wei’s hand.
His tone was certain.
Hearing Lu Shenxing’s words, the shadow of madness that had been hanging over Ji Wei’s heart seemed to vanish, like slowly melting milk candy. He knew it was warm.
Ye Lang’s bloodline was warm, too.
He was no longer afraid.
He took the old jar of milk candy with him.
***
It was already ten o’clock at night when they returned to the hotel.
Ji Wei suddenly felt like writing in a diary too.
He took out a notebook from his suitcase, opened it to a new page, and began to write.
—Today, Lu Shenxing and I went to the place where Ye Lang lived before he died. We will bring his paintings back to the country so he can rest in peace. I’m not afraid of him anymore, and I’m not afraid of myself anymore. I’m even proud of him. I’ll also bring the candy jar to Ms. Ye Zhi.
Lu Shenxing walked over, lowered his head slightly, and saw the content of his diary. He let out an imperceptible sigh of relief and lowered his gaze.
After Ji Wei finished writing and closed the notebook, he noticed that Lu Shenxing had also pulled up a chair and was writing in a diary just like him. He only wrote one sentence, which Ji Wei inevitably saw when he turned his head.
—Sometimes I think, what a fortunate thing it is to have met my Ji Wei.
My Ji Wei…
His face suddenly flushed at the sight. The question he wanted to ask Lu Shenxing about what he was writing got stuck in his throat. He eventually swallowed it down, turned around, put the notebook away, and got into bed.
A while later, Lu Shenxing also got into bed.
They didn’t talk about the diaries again. His tightly closed eyes gradually relaxed, and his breathing became steady and long.
The lights were turned off, and the room plunged into darkness.
Thinking of Ye Lang, Ji Wei had some trouble sleeping. He tossed and turned several times, which seemed to disturb Lu Shenxing. He heard the man beside him ask in a sleepy voice, “Can’t sleep?”
He was afraid his idol was talking in his sleep.
He replied with a very quiet “mhm.”
The man turned on his side and wrapped an arm around his waist, saying in a low voice, “Let me tell you a bedtime story.”
Ji Wei didn’t expect his idol to know how to tell bedtime stories. He was stunned for a moment before saying, “Okay.”
“Once upon a time, there was a very cute child named Weiwei. One day, he couldn’t sleep, so he went to the riverbank and worriedly asked the River God how he could fall asleep,” the man said plainly. “So the River God came out of the water.”
“And then?”
Although he didn’t think it would be an interesting story—it sounded more like something made up on the spot—Ji Wei still played along to avoid hurting his idol’s pride and making him unhappy.
“The River God said—” The man paused before speaking slowly, “Weiwei will fall asleep if he says ‘I like big brother’ a hundred times.”
“You say it. I’ll listen.”