Chapter 395: Chapter 147 Jade Pendant_2
Lu Tong stood in the empty room and suddenly felt an inexplicable sense of loss.
It was strange, back when Ji Xun brought her here, she was reluctant and watched these two with a cold eye. But after half a month, Ji Xun checked her pulse and prepared her medicine daily, caring for her illness. His was the concern of a healer for his patient, yet that patience and gentleness vaguely reminded her of Lu Rou.
When she was ill in Changwu County, it was Lu Rou who had looked after her like that.
Yet, his aloofness and remoteness, his eccentricities and silence were nothing like Lu Rou’s.
Perhaps it was because she had been alone on Luomei Peak for too long, having not been this close to anyone other than Lady Yun over the years. This half-month without Lady Yun, without tasting medicines, she was cared for, like dozing off under a trellis on a spring afternoon and upon waking, unexpectedly tasting a piece of malt sugar. The sugar was suffused with the bitter taste of medicine, yet not as heavy as before, and even had a faint sweetness to it.
Lu Tong thought, she must have not experienced parting for too long, which was why she felt reluctant to leave now.
"Miss, Miss!"
The shopkeeper hurried upstairs and, upon seeing Lu Tong, breathed a sigh of relief: "You’re here, good."
He pushed a round White Jade Pendant into Lu Tong’s hand.
"Last night, the young master who came with you paid all the room fees he owed. I kept the jade pendant at my home, intending to give it to him this morning, but he had already left at dawn."
"Since you know him, it’s the same as giving the jade to you. Please, return this jade pendant to the young master. We run an inn, not the kind of place to keep silent about unclaimed possessions."
Lu Tong looked down subconsciously.
The White Jade in her palm was smooth and cool, like the distant gaze of a youth. She picked up the pendant by its red cord and could see the carving of the High Scholar Playing Zither Picture.
It suited that person particularly well.
Lu Tong gripped the White Jade Pendant tightly and told the shopkeeper, "I understand."
When Ji Xun left, he had overpaid the inn for five more days. Lu Tong waited in the inn for an additional five days, hoping they would remember the jade pendant and return to claim it.
But Ji Xun never came back.
She thought, perhaps Ji Xun had forgotten, or perhaps he remembered but couldn’t be bothered to come back for it. He was the son of a prestigious family from Shengjing; to him, a jade pendant meant little, just like their encounter in Su Nan was just an insignificant part of his complicated life.
A fleeting glimpse of scenery while galloping past fields, seen once and then forgotten.
She took off the new willow-green dress Ji Xun had bought her, folded it carefully, and placed it in the medical chest, along with that piece of white jade.
The beautiful dress was suitable for enjoying spring on the riverbanks, for residence gardens, for restaurants and taverns, for streets and neighborhoods...
But it was not suitable for Chaos Burial Mound on Luomei Peak, nor for execution grounds filled with blood and severed limbs.
It was not suitable for her.
On the last day, she went to the execution ground, and then with her medical chest on her back, she returned to Luomei Peak. She thought Lady Yun would be unhappy, but to her surprise, Lady Yun just gave her an interested look and bent back down to fiddle with the herbs in her Silver Jar,
"Really interesting, I heard you were saved?"
Lu Tong was startled.
Lady Yun had lived in Su Nan for many years. How and when she had come to know about it, Lu Tong had no idea.
"I thought, you might go with him."
Lu Tong: "I..."
Lady Yun cut her off: "He is the son of the Ji Family from Shengjing."
"What a pity, if you had brought him back to Luomei Peak, perhaps you two could have kept each other company on the mountain."
Lady Yun spoke with a touch of regret, smiling.
But Lu Tong felt a chill run down her spine.
A shiver of cold followed by the relief of having survived a calamity. She was relieved she hadn’t dragged Ji Xun into this mess.
Lady Yun smoothed her hair and went into the hut to make new medicine.
Lu Tong clutched the medical chest tight, feeling the usually light box suddenly heavy.
Later...
She kept the jade pendant, thinking that maybe one day she’d descend the mountain and return to Changwu County, back to the original path. The road ahead was long, and the chance to go to Shengjing, however slight, might present itself.
When that time came, she could visit the Imperial Medical Bureau that Ji Xun had mentioned. If she had the opportunity to meet him again, she could personally return the round jade pendant to him...
"Younger Sister Lu," Lin Danqing called from behind her, urging: "It’s getting late, you should rest in bed, we have to rise early tomorrow."
The light flickered inside the room, the warmth of Su Nan’s spring dispersed, leaving only the chill of the long night.
Lu Tong placed the White Jade back into the medical chest and packed it away.
"Coming."
...
The moon fell into the pond by the window, like a piece of jade gone cold.