Chapter 73: Ru Xue’s wisdom

“Gravekeeper, which grave are you going to guard? Is it the grave of the immortal we are going to visit?” I was unable to react immediately. The answer Ruoxue gave me was to guard a grave? Why is it always a grave? Before, it was a village, and now it is a grave?

Ruxue didn’t answer me right away, but kept walking forward. Not far ahead was a large rock, and she sat down on it, gesturing for me to sit down too.

My heart was filled with a variety of emotions, sadness, reluctance, and doubt… but these emotions were all very small, because they were no bigger than the sweetness of being with Ru Xue.

I sat down next to Ru Xue, and Ru Xue naturally leaned on my shoulder. We were both very comfortable in this position, not because of intimacy, but because of the feeling of leaning on each other, as if we were relying on each other to protect each other.

“I’m not guarding the tomb, but the worms. Chengyi, if I say this, can you understand why I have to leave?” Ruoxue’s voice was still light, but at this moment it had a little more melancholy.

I didn’t know what to say, so I reached into my pocket for a cigarette as I usually did. Ru Xue grabbed my hand and said, “I’ve always wanted you to quit.”

I didn’t argue with Ru Xue, but let go of her hand and said, “I’ll count the people who are important to me. First is my family, but I can’t be with them for long before a certain age! So I left home when I was young. My master said my parents had a weak connection. Then there’s my master. He… he left, singing, “Sister, you go boldly forward, flirting with the women in the village, and just like that, he was gone. Then there’s you. You said you were leaving. What’s left for me? My friends. But don’t my friends have their own lives? Sometimes I feel that the only thing I can rely on is cigarettes, and I can’t quit.”

Ru Xue didn’t say anything, but her somewhat cold hands grabbed mine and said, “If you can’t quit, then just accept it. You have to do it, no matter how hard it is. Chengyi, do you know about this bug? It’s a remnant of our Moon Weir Miao Village. It’s finally come to me, and I have to pay it back.”

“I don’t want to hear about this now, Ruoxue. Whatever the reason, I just want to ask you, if you’re going to stay here, what form will your stay take? Will we still be able to see each other? If, Ruoxue, I mean if, is there any chance you might give up?” I said, afraid that Ruoxue would refuse, and quickly added, “Ruoxue, Old Zhang said that if a woman wants to leave, a man can’t stop her, so he’ll give her a blessing to make her feel at ease. But I can’t let you go without saying goodbye. You know…”

Ru Xue covered my mouth and said, “If you want to, listen to me finish! You never change your impatience, but this is also Chen Chengyi.”

I took a deep breath and said to Ru Xue, “Well, you talk, I’ll listen.”

“From the moment I entered the forest, I actually felt a call from my soul. I’m not lying to you about this. What I’m hiding from you is that the call was so urgent that I could hear someone telling me over and over again in my dreams that it was already too late! At that time, I really wanted to tell you that something was wrong, but do you know why I didn’t say anything?” Ru Xue said in a low voice.

“I don’t know.” Naturally, I don’t know why Ru Xue never mentioned this to me from beginning to end.

“It’s because for so many years, I have been suppressing myself, disregarding everything, abandoning everything, being intimate with you, and the urge to be with you. Whenever I have that urge, I choose to stay up all night, and then I let myself get extremely tired. After sleeping, I don’t think about anything. After a long time, this suppression has become a habit. I am used to not sharing my thoughts with you, not being too intimate with you, keeping my promise to see you once a year, and suppressing all my feelings! In the end, I was afraid of being weak, and once I was weak, the defense in my heart would be loose. In the end, not telling you at first was just a habit, and I got used to it.” Ru Xue said these words very calmly.

I looked at Ru Xue in shock. I never imagined that the seemingly indifferent Ru Xue had spent so many lonely years. I always knew that Ru Xue was the type of woman who was not good at expressing herself, but she was also a woman whose heart burned like a fire. But what I never imagined was that she could suppress her emotions so deeply that it had become a stubborn habit!

“Isn’t it surprising?” Ru Xue smiled, as beautiful as always, but her tone was very relaxed, as if the pain had never happened to her. She held my hand and wouldn’t let me speak, but continued to say, “Chengyi, in fact, we are very similar in some ways. We know that we will be deeply in love, so in many cases, we are blunt and even cold, resisting others’ closeness. I am even worse than you. I suddenly found that I wanted to tell you a lot of things, just like the pain of my parents’ separation when I was a child. I was depressed for a month, but she got over it and lived a lively and happy life. I was depressed in my heart and grew up until now. I found that I was talking in a mess, but you could understand me, right?

“I can understand.” I held Ruoxue’s hand tightly. How could I not understand? From sadness and confusion to getting used to it, from getting used to it to numbness, and finally from numbness to resistance, isn’t that what I’ve been doing over and over again?

“Yes, you can understand. We always have too much tacit understanding, but we are wrong. We are wrong because we can’t see through love. We always deliberately let love stay in its most beautiful form. Just like me, I have always maintained this image, clear and light, making you feel like snow, but in fact, how many nights have you stayed up all night like a crazy woman? How many times have you been hysterical, screaming and even going crazy in a remote place alone? Not to mention that after we get closer to life, our love falls from the heavens to the mortal world. Is that the most beautiful look of love? In fact, we love each other, but we don’t really understand each other. Having a tacit understanding doesn’t necessarily mean understanding each other.” Ru Xue looked at me and actually smiled.

“Ru Xue, don’t say it. You know that no matter what you look like, I will always…” I said eagerly.

“No, Chengyi, just like the most powerful fortune-telling pulse, it can’t even count the trivialities of a lifetime, and just like the most powerful pulse of physiognomy, it can’t see through the changes in feng shui after a hundred years. How can you say that you’ve seen your own love to death? That’s what really needs time to settle, and to get along with each other day and night, then after that, can you still say, I love you, just as I first saw you? Chengyi, I’m very grateful to you for letting my love stay in its most beautiful form. What else is there to regret?” Ru Xue looked at me and said.

“Are you telling me the answer? Are you saying that you won’t see me again in the future? Are you not coming out? What is it? Tell me, okay?” I was powerless. I thought that I had understood Zhang’s words very deeply, but in the end, I couldn’t overcome the pain of the moment. I grabbed Ru Xue’s hand and pressed it against my face, and my eyes were red.

“I’m telling you the answer. Once I was a girl who was enslaved, and all I wanted was freedom, just like my great-aunt. Because only with freedom could she stay with Master Jiang, even though by the time she gained her freedom, marriage was no longer important. I also asked my great-aunt in secret why she didn’t fight for her freedom. My aunt told me that the words “freedom” and “selfishness” may seem unrelated, but it is possible that they can be combined in a split second, because both words are preceded by the character “self,” which emphasizes the self, that is, the word that centers on the self! Later, what my aunt often said was that people always have responsibilities, and no one can be isolated from the world. Just as Master Jiang often says to you, people need to have a bottom line, which is the same. No matter how beautiful our love is, there are too many things that can’t be overcome. Just like you, Chengyi, if you count the most important people in your life, you will have your parents. Can you bear to see them worry about you until the moment they close their eyes? Do you think that if you keep watching over our love, your parents, even if they don’t mind the future of the next generation, will be at ease if they think that their only son will live a lonely life, or even end up alone? And I, leaving the village to be with you no matter what, even if the people in the village don’t blame me, can I rest easy? I’ve let you down, I’ve let the village down, you’ve let me down, you’ve let your parents down. We’ve been stuck in a life-and-death choice for too long, and now it’s not so bad, right? Fate has helped us make a decision.” Ru Xue said to me word by word.

“Yes, fate has helped us make a decision, but in the future, if I have my own family, or even my own children, don’t you think it will hurt? I think it will hurt me, really, it will hurt me.” I said with tears in my eyes.

“I don’t doubt the sincerity of your words at this moment, but as Lao Zhang said, the pain at that time was already outweighed by the trivialities of reality at that time. The other thing that Zhang didn’t say was that the heartache at the time was already outweighed by the responsibilities at the time, those of the parents, the children, the wife… They all said that you had a difficult love life, and that your lack of compliance was reflected in me, but I am a woman after all, and I am very grateful for this lack of compliance, which allowed my love stayed at the most beautiful time. In the end, you still love me, and in the future, you will really reserve a place in your heart for me, just like Lao Zhang. When I hear him say that, I will think of the woman he likes, and I will already be satisfied. At that moment, I will be completely relieved! Am I still selfish and calculating like a woman?” Ruoxue gently circled her finger around my chest.

At this moment, if I still don’t understand Ru Xue’s meaning, then I really am a fool. Things are really irreparable. Ru Xue didn’t say that she wouldn’t see me again, but she was already saying something else鈥攆rom this night on, it was a complete let-go. I understood that Ru Xue’s mind was made up.

“Not selfish, that’s good. Thank you for loving me so much.” My voice was choked, but I didn’t shed a tear.

Letting go is also a kind of wisdom. Ru Xue is more wise than I am. Yes, she is very good.