Lin Ting had a well-prepared excuse:
“I had agreed with her to read and discuss together. Since she’s not here, I don’t feel like reading either.”
Before he could respond, a gust of wind blew in through the rear window, knocking a sheet of paper off the desk that wasn’t held down.
The paper tumbled through the air a few times and landed at her feet, with the side that had writing facing up.
Usually, in such situations, people would help pick it up, and Lin Ting was no exception.
Lin Ting bent down and reached out to pick it up.
The moment she saw the content on the paper, her hand momentarily halted.
This wasn’t the letter she had written to complete her confession mission, was it?!
“I like you.” These four big characters unexpectedly rushed into her eyes.
How could Duan Ling just leave it on the desktop instead of throwing it away directly?
Is he still investigating who wrote the confession letter?
That’s way too persistent.
Could it be that this is the first confession letter he’s ever received, and he can’t bear to throw it away, wanting to keep it as a memento?
But if he wanted to keep it as a memento, how could he just casually throw it on the table?
The key point is, with Duan Ling looking the way he does, there’s no way he’s only ever received one confession letter.
Maybe it’s because she was too straightforward?
When ancient women wrote confession letters, they would probably write something poetic, like the lines from “The Yue People’s Song” – “The mountain has trees and the trees have branches, I love you but you don’t know.”
And she just wrote the plain “I like you,” which is why Duan Ling was curious?
Lin Ting didn’t think that much at first.
She was afraid that if she expressed herself too subtly, the system would judge it as unsuccessful, so she just went with the straightforward “I like you.”
Although writing it on paper was eventually judged as unsuccessful, that was all later on.
Now, looking back, it does seem quite strange.
No, wait.
She had been to the desk before, and there wasn’t this letter on it at that time.
That means Duan Ling just took it out now.
On the day of Duan Xinning’s birthday, when he met her in the pavilion, this letter also fell out, but it was still in the envelope.
The one that fell out today was the letter without the envelope, revealing the content.
He’s still suspicious of her, so he wants to use this letter to test her again?
Lin Ting’s heart started racing.
She picked up the letter, took two steps as one, and walked up to the desk, handing the letter back to Duan Ling, who showed no change in expression.
He took the letter and said,
“Thank you.”
She probed back, “I accidentally saw the words on the letter just now.”
Duan Ling put the letter between the pages of a book:
“It’s just an ordinary letter. It’s not a Jinyiwei secret. It doesn’t matter if you saw it.”
Lin Ting pretended to be curious, cleared her throat, and asked,
“It looks like a love letter someone wrote to you. Which girl from which family is it?”
“I don’t know which girl from which family. She had it delivered to me through someone else,”
Duan Ling stood up, playing with a dagger in his sleeve, and walked towards her step by step.
The door was suddenly pushed open from the outside.
Duan Xinning walked in:
“Le Yun, I just wrote a letter to Prince Xia and wanted to have Zilan send it to him to report safety. But after I finished writing, it got stained with ink, so I had to rewrite it.”
“It took some time to come and go. I thought you were reading in the study, so I didn’t send anyone to disturb you. What are you reading…?”
She looked up and saw Duan Ling.
“Second brother?”
Lin Ting made a face at her.
Duan Xinning, like a child who had done something wrong, hung her head and dared not look at her or Duan Ling:
“Second brother, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have entered your study without permission. Le Yun didn’t know. Don’t blame her.”
Her voice got quieter and quieter.
Duan Ling said calmly, “It’s a trivial matter.
Don’t worry about it.”
Duan Xinning, receiving Lin Ting’s eye signal, moved to her side like a turtle crawling, took her hand:
“We still have things to do, so we won’t read anymore. Second brother, you continue with your official duties.”
He took the dossier he had brought back from the Northern Commandery today and glanced at their intertwined hands as if by accident: “Alright.”
Lin Ting, like an arrow that had been released, disappeared with Duan Xinning in a “whoosh.”
As soon as they were outside the study, Lin Ting couldn’t wait to confront Duan Xinning:
“What’s going on? You said this was your study. Why did it turn out to be your second brother’s study?”
Duan Xinning looked at her with a pitiful expression:
“I’m sorry. I won’t lie to you again. Did my second brother scold you while I was away? He didn’t, right? My second brother has a very good temper.”
Lin Ting: “Your second brother didn’t scold me. Instead, he let me read books to my heart’s content inside.”
Duan Xinning apologized while shaking her hand, her sleeve flapping in the wind, and looked up at her with her doll-like face, making it hard to stay angry.
“I promised Prince Xia that I would write to him as soon as I woke up. I thought it wouldn’t take long… I’m sorry for lying to you and leaving you alone in the study for so long. It’s all my fault.”
Lin Ting tapped her forehead with her finger:
“Alright, alright, don’t do it again.”
“You’re the best, Le Yun.”
“By the way, have you also sneaked into your second brother’s study like you did today?”
Lin Ting started walking outwards, the sight of the bookshelf full of eyeballs in transparent glass jars still vivid in her mind.
Duan Xinning dared not lie to her this time and admitted,
“I’ve been in a few times, I’m not lying to you. But my second brother doesn’t know. He spends most of his time at the Northern Commandery on duty and rarely comes home.”
Lin Ting pursed her lips:
“Did you see anything in there?”
“Books.”
“Besides books?”
Duan Xinning walked back to her courtyard along the small stone path, puzzled:
“Nothing else. What else could there be in a study besides books? Did you find something in my second brother’s study?”
She stepped on the cobblestones:
“No. Your second brother has such a large study, almost comparable to the book rooms in the capital. I was just curious.”
“My second brother loves to read. Father had this study built for him when he was young,”
Duan Xinning reminisced, continuing,
“When we were little, we loved to play, but my second brother preferred to stay in the study all day. We would call him out to play with us, but he wouldn’t come out, such a spoilsport.”
Lin Ting listened absentmindedly.
“But my second brother truly has the best temper in the whole household. I’ve never seen him get angry, not once in my life,”
Duan Xinning went on, getting carried away.
This was true; she had never seen him get angry either.
He was always “gentle” with people.
Duan Xinning chatted away:
“My mother is very gentle and rarely gets angry. But my second brother is even gentler than her. He has a kind and benevolent nature. Everyone says it’s because my second brother looks the most like Mother.”
Lin Ting really wanted to ask the naive Duan Xinning, “Are you serious?”
Could a kind and benevolent person be a Jinyiwei?
Wouldn’t they be swallowed up by the treacherous and unpredictable officialdom, chewed up and spat out without a bone left?
She had seen him kill people without a moment’s hesitation.
But in the end, Lin Ting didn’t say anything.
After all, from Duan Xinning’s perspective, Duan Ling was indeed a kind and “gentle” second brother.
Lin Ting reluctantly nodded in agreement:
“Your second brother is quite good and very ‘gentle.'”
Duan Xinning didn’t notice Lin Ting’s oddness and still harbored the idea of easing their relationship, trying to say more good things about him in front of her whenever she had the chance.
But too much of anything is not good, and it’s better to take things slowly.
Duan Xinning knew when to stop.
Duan Xinning had a sudden thought and brought up another matter:
“My mother is at the residence today. Would you like to come with me to greet her? She actually asked about you a few days ago.”
Her mother often stayed at the temple for half a year at a time, eating vegetarian food and praying there.
She had just returned last month and was expected to stay at the residence for two months before returning to the temple for another half year.
Lin Ting agreed.
When visiting a friend’s home, it was only proper to greet the friend’s mother.
Come to think of it, she had only seen Duan Xinning’s mother a few times when they were young.
After accompanying Duan Xinning to greet her mother, Lin Ting returned to the Lin residence and didn’t go to the study to find Jin An again.
The reason was that it was already getting late, and she had to get to Lady Li’s side to greet her before nightfall.
If she didn’t return to the Lin residence to greet Lady Li before night, she would be grounded.
How dare she take that risk?
On the way back, Lin Ting kept thinking about two things:
One was the eyeballs in Duan Ling’s study, and the other was Duan Xinning’s mother’s attitude towards her.
Duan Xinning’s mother was a gentle and dignified woman, with an elegant demeanor and facial features that bore a seven or eight parts resemblance to Duan Ling.
She was very amiable.
For example, upon meeting, she took Lin Ting’s hand and led her to sit on the couch.
Lin Ting was quite flattered at the time, but then she thought it was probably because of Duan Xinning.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts and stepped into the Lin residence just as the sun was setting, rushing to greet Lady Li and then retreating to her own courtyard to lie down.
That night, Lin Ting dreamed about what she had been thinking about during the day – a dream where she was surrounded by eyeballs.
In the dream, pair after pair of eyes stared at her intently, as if trying to bore a hole through her.
Eventually, they climbed onto her body, their slime sticking to her skin like leeches that sucked blood, clinging to her tightly.
This dream caused her to throw a series of punches in her bed, knocking the soft pillows and bedding onto the floor.
Tao Zhu, who was sleeping in the outer room, heard the commotion and came in.
Seeing a scene that seemed all too familiar, she sighed silently.
It was a common occurrence for her to pick up the soft pillows and bedding for Lin Ting and bring in new ones.
As she approached the bedside, Tao Zhu almost got punched by Lin Ting.
If she hadn’t blocked with a soft pillow, she might have ended up with a black eye.
Tao Zhu was a little worried about the future son-in-law’s safety.
Not to mention other things, first and foremost, he would have to be able to take a beating.
Otherwise, during sleep, he would easily be kicked, slapped, or pinched by Lin Ting.
By the end of the night, minor injuries would be inevitable.
Lin Ting turned over and continued sleeping.
As the sky gradually brightened, Lin Ting couldn’t sleep in.
Lady Li personally came to supervise her getting dressed, changing her makeup, dress, and jewelry.
She placed great importance on Lin Ting’s first meeting with the young masters of the prestigious families.
The custom of men and women meeting in the Great Yan Dynasty was for one of the parents to accompany their child to a certain place, where the two parties would meet separated by a thin screen and have a conversation.
If both parties were interested, they would finalize the arrangement, choose a date to exchange birth date scrolls, and set the engagement.
Lady Li was eager to secure an engagement for Lin Ting not because she was getting old.
Lin Ting had just reached the age of adulthood three years ago.
Women in the Great Yan Dynasty generally got married at the age of twenty, and some in their twenties.
She was only eighteen.
It was just that Lady Li was afraid that all the good young masters from prestigious families would be taken, so she wanted to act first.
In fact, Lady Li also had some other thoughts.
She didn’t want her daughter’s future husband to be inferior to the one chosen for the daughter born to Lady Shen.
She wanted to show the favoritism-prone Lin patriarch just how excellent her daughter was.
She instructed Lin Ting,
“When you get to the South Mountain Pavilion later, remember to perform well for me.”
Lin Ting gave a perfunctory response.
An hour later, they arrived at the South Mountain Pavilion.
Lady Li was even more nervous than Lin Ting.
Before entering the private room, she carefully checked her attire for neatness and any issues with her makeup.
Lin Ting: “…………”
She was still young when she passed away in the modern era and had never experienced the pressure of being urged to get married by her elders.
Now, she was feeling it.
Although she wasn’t very old now, people in ancient times got married much earlier than in modern times.
She would deal with whatever came her way.
She was confident that she could mess up today’s meeting.
Lin Ting thought to herself as she walked into the private room.
As she entered, she casually glanced at the other side of the screen.
It was a shock to see who was there.
Lin Ting was about to run out the door when Lady Li stopped her in time.
The commotion drew the attention of the person sitting inside the private room, who looked up at them.
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