Clear as Ever - Chapter 6

Tu Qinyu misjudged his strength and sent me tumbling backward into a snowbank.

It didn’t hurt, but I was stunned.

I lay there on my back like an overturned turtle, stupid and bedraggled as I stared up at him.

“Are you… shy?” I asked blankly.

His fingers twitched. He seemed about to pull me up, but when his gaze touched the lips I had puckered, his body stiffened and he withdrew his hand.

“Xie Qingru.” He said my name in the same solemn way he wrote it in letters. “You have misunderstood. I do not like you.”

I blinked as snow slipped from my lashes into my eyes.

“Are you teasing me? You just said you didn’t want to end our engagement.”

Tu Qinyu looked toward the distant pines. “I’m sorry, but only the sword exists in my heart. There is no room for worldly romance.”

“Our engagement is simply my duty as a disciple of Kunlun. Wanting or not wanting it does not enter the matter. I have no private affection for you.”

I bit my lip and stubbornly pressed him. “You don’t cultivate the Heartless Path. How can you have no private feelings?”

This time he thought for even longer.

I believed I had persuaded him and was about to argue that affection could grow when he answered with complete seriousness.

“Perhaps I may one day develop feelings for someone, but that person is very unlikely to be you.”

“You understand neither swordsmanship nor cultivation. We have nothing in common. I see no possibility of falling in love with you.”

“But I can promise that you alone will be my Dao companion. In return, I hope you will not cross the line or develop unnecessary feelings for me. That is for your own good.”

For my own good.

Junior Shishu confined me to Bright Moon Cliff for my own good. The elders forced unsuitable techniques on me for my own good. Now my fiancé ordered me not to love him for my own good.

Everyone wanted what was best for me.

Why, then, did none of them like me?

I struggled out of the snowbank and brushed off my clothes. My new robes were soaked, which made me sad.

Then I remembered that sadness was nothing new to me.

But this was Tu Qinyu’s first visit to Bright Moon Cliff. Even if our meeting had gone poorly, I still wanted him to be happy.

If his heart belonged to the sword and he might someday love someone else, how miserable would he be if I forced him to become my Dao companion?

So I straightened and waved magnanimously.

“All right. If you truly can’t love me, then let’s end the engagement.”

I thought I looked magnificently heroic. I even secretly expected him to thank me and praise my kind heart.

I waited.

Instead, he frowned.

“Xie Qingru, are you throwing a childish tantrum?”

“A marriage alliance between sects is not a children’s game. Since you occupy this position, you must bear the corresponding responsibilities.”

“I do not want to hear such irresponsible words from you again.”

I stared at his moving lips.

Until that moment, I had still thought of him as the earnest, old-fashioned boy from the letters. It didn’t matter that he did not love me, or that he had shoved me into the snow. He was Tu Qinyu, my only friend during all those years.

But how could he think so little of me?

If this was how he had always seen me—if every reply he wrote had been nothing but duty—

“You never cared who I was,” I said, humiliated. “It doesn’t matter whether your fiancée is Xie Qingru or someone else. I’m only a tool wearing the title of the sect leader’s daughter, aren’t I?”

Tu Qinyu inclined his head. “I’m sorry, but that is correct.”

So that was the truth.

I said nothing else that day. When the elders asked how we had gotten along, I told them everything was fine and the engagement could continue.

Even when Junior Shishu saw my soaked hem and repeatedly asked whether I was truly all right, I did not change my answer.

If maintaining the engagement satisfied everyone except me, there was no need to end it.

That was what I told myself.

But I never touched the matching jade Tu Qinyu had given me again.

My only ally had betrayed me, and I sank into despair for a long time.

That was years ago.

In the five years since, Tu Qinyu and I had interacted only a handful of times. Aside from exchanging a few perfunctory letters each month, we were strangers.

Just as he had said, no amount of time would make him love someone as mediocre as me. The pink clouds that once filled my head had long since faded.

I had agreed to continue the engagement for everyone else’s sake.

But circumstances had changed.

Once the truth came out that I was the daughter switched at birth, they would end it anyway. Compared with the interests of outsiders, I now cared more about preserving my dignity.

I would rather propose the separation first than be discarded amid public ridicule like a drowning dog.

At least then it would be less humiliating.