Chapter 600: Chapter 208 Disturbed_4
"I hope you find someone you like to spend your life with, that’s mine and your mother’s wish for you."
...
When he returned to the study, the outside was already completely dark.
After delivering the bracelet, Pei Yunshu went to bed in her room, tired from the hustle of the Qixi Festival that lasted half the day.
Pei Yunmeng closed the door of his house, sat down in front of a small table, and placed the jade bracelet wrapped in red cloth on the table,
Under the copper lamp, the small table was covered in scattered wooden blocks that Lu Tong had bumped into, a jumbled mess spreading over the entire surface.
He reached out and brushed aside the scattered wooden blocks to clear a space.
Then, he picked up the wooden blocks and began to stack them one by one.
Over the years, whenever he felt troubled or faced with intractable annoyances, he would sit in front of the small table and slowly, methodically build upward.
When one’s mind concentrates on a single task, the heart becomes extremely calm.
It always began with difficulty, but as the wooden pagoda grew taller and taller, he found himself carving wood less and less, as there was hardly anything in the world that disturbed him anymore. The wooden pagoda stood quietly in the corner of the study, cold and hard, like a lingering, silent shadow.
Actually, before Lu Tong knocked it down, it had been a very long time since he last added a block to it.
Therefore, after it was toppled, he had not thought of rebuilding it again.
Yet, on this night, under the new autumn sky and the human world celebrating Qixi, on such a splendid festival, he sat there quietly stacking, block by block.
Pei Yunmeng stacked very slowly.
Circular wooden blocks were placed carefully, layer by layer, meticulously organized, without a hair out of place, with angles so calculated that the wooden tower appeared sturdy and precise.
He had been building for a long time, only the last block remained.
The wooden block was grasped and placed toward the peak of the tower,
but at the last moment, he caught sight of the jade bracelet on the red cloth out of the corner of his eye.
The bracelet’s color was like coagulated green, resembling the paper lotus leaves made in the Qiqiao Tower, a vibrant shade of green.
Suddenly, a woman’s questioning voice echoed in his ears.
"Would Lord Pei also be bound by love?"
His fingertips trembled, as though a butterfly brushing past flowers, and abruptly— with a "whoosh" sound—
The young man snapped back to reality.
The neatly arranged wooden pagoda once again collapsed thunderously.
Shattered beyond recognition.
...
The night was deep, and the revelry in the Red Tower had faded away.
West Street Courtyard was tranquil, as Lu Tong lit a lamp and closed the door behind her.
Yin Zheng waited until she returned before feeling relieved and going to sleep after bathing. Lu Tong walked to the desk, removed the hairpin from her head, letting her long hair fall over her shoulders, and began to comb it with a brush.
After a few strokes, she remembered something else, stood up to fetch her purse, and took out an intricately fashioned comb.
It was the prize from the "Lanye’s Skillful Contest" at the Qiqiao Tower earlier that day.
The comb was made from common materials, with a finely carved peony pattern on it. While it could not compare in luxury to jewelry, it was still quite delicate.
Lu Tong held the wooden comb, her gaze falling once more on the colorful ribbon half completed on the table.
Du Changqing had prepared "Mandarin Duck Tea" for his medical practice, and the grass-woven baskets looked even nicer with the colorful ribbon pattern. Her skills were not as nimble as Yin Zheng’s; not only was she slow at making ribbons, but they also came out rough and were not presentable, so she simply kept them hidden in the house.
Lu Tong picked up the colorful ribbon.
For some reason, the jokes and laughter of the women in the Qiqiao Tower suddenly echoed in her ears.
"To release a thousand threads of emotion to form a new mandarin duck score. Ladies and young masters, those whose threads have fallen, will become inseparable in the future, love each other for life, grow old together— it’s a good omen."
The two being entangled by the red string, the magnified breaths in the dark, the warmth and fierceness in his eyes, his laugh always forgiving...
In the grass, a cricket chirped, startling resting sparrows to fly away. Lu Tong lowered her head, suddenly startled.
The colorful ribbon, halfway finished in her hands, had somehow become tangled, impossible to untie.
Twisted into an indissoluble knot.