At the crack of dawn, when none of the servants were awake, Li Chenyang was the first to check up on Wen Jinkai. He was startled to see the empty bed and immediately, he ran through the hallways in search of him.
“Annoying prick, where did you go?” he muttered under his breath. “How dare you vanish without a word of thanks!”
Li Chenyang didn’t bother checking the small rooms within the large room. He combed through the house and grew more and more irritated with each passing minute. Wen Jinkai was nowhere to be found.
He was prepared to head back to his room until he glanced around and realized he was in the Eastern Wing where Xueyue resided. Thinking it was best to tell her the news himself, he walked into her room without knocking. Once again, the guards outside were startled by his presence, but no one dared to stop the audacious Young Master.
Li Chenyang walked towards her bed and expected a serene and peaceful face. Instead, it was the opposite.
Thrashing and tossing in her sleep, Xueyue’s conscience heavily plummeted into another nightmare. It was the same dream of abuse, but this time it was one of her most daunting memories: Hearing the passionate sound of Leiyu and Tianai entangled in bed.
“Xue…yue!” an unfamiliar voice called in her nightmare.
“Xueyue!” the same voice called again, blurring the nightmare until she finally realized it was only a dream.
“You have to wake up now. It’s urgent!” Li Chenyang shook her thrashing body. His panicked voice and powerful hands startled her to consciousness.
“Hm… What’s wrong?” Xueyue tiredly grumbled, running a hand through her tangled hair. She tried her hardest to force the memories away, but it always found a way to resurface in the worst manifestation possible.
Her half-opened eyes slowly drifted to him. She was beyond exhausted after tossing and turning last night. She couldn’t fall asleep, but was lulled to bed by an odd sound of a flute. Thinking about it now, she decided it was probably a hallucination.
Who would be playing the flute in the dead of the night?
“That bastard ran off in the middle of the night,” Li Chenyang scowled, angrily crossing his arms.
Xueyue rolled around in her bed and stared up at him in confusion.
Ran off in the middle of the night? Who did? Wenmin?
“What do you mean?” She yawned, burying half of her face into the pillow.
Li Chenyang didn’t mind her sleepy behavior that resembled a stretching puppy awakening from a slumber.
Li Wenmin was the same when he was forcibly woken up.
“I woke up to check on him a few minutes ago, and he disappeared! He had taken his robes and his belongings and left everything else that wasn’t his. The room was left in an almost untouched state.”
It finally clicked for Xueyue that the injured Commander had left the manor.
Xueyue finally sat up in the bed. “But he’s still injured! Why would he just walk off?” she huffed, clutching her forehead in annoyance.
“I don’t know,” Li Chenyang hissed, running a hand through his hair.
Xueyue noticed his obvious distress, so she climbed out of the bed. “Let’s go to his room, maybe we can find some clues,” she said, while tucking her feet into her indoor slippers.
Li Chenyang nodded and walked with her down the halls and into the room that Wen Jinkai was occupying. Lo and behold, all of the Commander’s belongings were gone.
Xueyue noticed the bed was neatly tucked, which meant Li Chenyang didn’t bother to search the bed.
But then again, who would? It’s not like someone could hide within the blankets.
When Li Chenyang began to pace back and forth in the room, biting his nails, and muttering to himself the possibilities, Xueyue noticed something strange.
At the center of the blanket, something was poking out. She decided to examine it.
Li Chenyang hadn’t seen Wen Jinkai for years. He was looking forward to seeing his old friend but that brat actually disappeared in the middle of the night!
The last time they’ve seen each other was when Wen Jinkai decided to enroll in the Imperial Army. He was only twelve years old at that time, but despite his young age, he soared through the ranks until he became the finest Commander this country had ever seen. Within six years, his achievements never stopped piling.
When he was thirteen, he made headlines by becoming the youngest General to grace this country. At the age of fourteen, he led his first army into a complete annihilation of the enemy soldiers. At fifteen, he faced 100,000 men with just 10,000 men on his side. The people thought he’d come out dead, but Wen Jinkai not only kept half of his men alive, but his army killed all of the enemy soldiers. When he was seventeen, he had presented the Emperor with seven out of fifteen heads of the enemy’s group of masterminds.
Now that Wen Jinkai was eighteen, the people had extremely high hopes for him.
Li Chenyang was so absorbed in his pacing, he wasn’t paying attention to Xueyue’s movements.
Moving the blankets aside, Xueyue was shocked to see an object hidden underneath it. Sitting perfectly on the center of the bed was a solid black jade pendant. Resting underneath it was a neatly folded note.
Xueyue grabbed the note first. She slowly unfolded the paper and in an extremely neat ink writing, it said, ‘This will keep you safe.’
Picking up the black jade pendant, she curiously examined it. It was darker than finely grounded ink. Icy to the touch, it was almost as if this jade was the mirror image of despair. She noticed a name carved onto the pendant, but was too naive to understand the meaning of this gift.
Xueyue didn’t know the immense power the pendant possessed. She didn’t know it would forever and always keep her safe, no matter where she was. Be it jail or enemy lines, so long as she wore this pendant, she would be granted protection.
Her finger ran over the cool jade, tracing over the name etched in white jade, ‘Wen Jinkai.’
She tilted her head at the strange necklace. What did he mean that the jade would keep her safe?
“Chen-ge, he left behind a pendant and a note,” she called out, noticing him walking back and forth.
At the sudden discovery, he immediately walked to her. “A note? Let me see,” he said, picking up the note and pendant.
After reading the five simple words, he scowled.
That’s it?
THAT’S IT?!
After worrying for so long, thinking his friend was kidnapped in the middle of the night, he only wrote a five-word letter?
‘And it wasn’t even addressed to me! Even when he was heavily injured, that man still has the time of day to woo a girl?!’
“That bastard…” Li Chenyang muttered under his breath. He was too blinded by anger and annoyance to even realize the pendant he was holding was one of a kind. He thought it was just a normal gift and didn’t bother to inspect the pendant whose worth and significance was more valuable than the Kingdom itself.
