After paying their respects to the Village Chief and Aunty Chen, the food and wine laid out as offerings were not wasted. The woman who had called out to Ruxue earlier took everything away with her.

Xiao Mo and Yan Ruxue continued up the mountain.

Xiao Mo walked along this narrow mountain path, one he had climbed more times than he could count. He knew everything on this mountain with intimate familiarity. Whether because the green hills had endured unchanged across ten thousand years, or because Ruxue had preserved She Mountain as carefully as she had the old courtyard, it seemed as though nothing about the mountain had changed at all.

Without quite noticing, Xiao Mo stopped walking and looked toward a particular spot on the path.

There was nothing remarkable about it. But Xiao Mo remembered. It was right there that he had found the injured little white snake, and without a second thought had carried her home, giving her a name off the top of his head.

He had never imagined that Ruxue would accept that name so readily, foolish and trusting as she was.

And in the end, that little white snake had shed her old form and become a true dragon.

The two of them continued up the mountain, arriving at the halfway point. The stone on the slope was still there.

Xiao Mo still remembered the first time he had come home after sitting for the children's examination. He had returned too late, and Ruxue had been sitting on that very stone, quietly fuming, declaring she would never speak to him again. And yet, in the end, a single roughly carved wooden hair-pin had been enough to make her forgive him completely.

Every time they quarreled after that, she would come to this stone to wait, sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees, face buried against her legs.

"I am a little tired, Ruxue. Let us sit on that stone and rest a while." Xiao Mo said to the woman beside him.

"Mm." Yan Ruxue stepped forward, sweeping the snow from the stone's surface. "Come and sit, husband."

"You sit on it," Xiao Mo said with a smile.

"Me? But is it not husband who is tired?" Yan Ruxue tilted her head slightly.

"Just sit down and try it." Xiao Mo stepped closer.

"Husband is very strange today..."

Though Yan Ruxue did not understand his meaning, she had never been one to refuse his requests. She smoothed the skirt of her white gown with a light touch, then settled herself onto the stone. Just as she had done in her girlhood, Yan Ruxue planted her feet upon the rock and wrapped her arms around her knees, her lovely peach-blossom eyes looking up at Xiao Mo, filled entirely with the sight of him. "As husband asked, this concubine has sat down. Is there anything else husband would have this concubine do?"

"Nothing else." Xiao Mo smiled. "I only thought Ruxue looked rather beautiful sitting like that. What a pity I have no ink or brush with me. Otherwise I would paint a portrait of you just like this."

"Oh, is that all? I thought something was the matter." Yan Ruxue gave a prettily exasperated pout and fixed him with a feigned look of reproach but soon, a smile curved at the corners of her lips. "Though, husband, did you know that this stone, too, has a small story attached to it?"

"What story?" Xiao Mo asked, knowing full well the answer.

"Does husband still remember the story of the scholar and the young girl that I told you?"

"Whenever the girl and that scholar had a quarrel, she would come to this stone and wait for him here."

"Does husband know why?" Yan Ruxue asked.

"Why?" Xiao Mo looked at the graceful, lovely picture she made.

"Because..." Yan Ruxue reached out her slender white hand and stroked the stone gently. "No matter how fiercely the girl and the scholar had argued, she always wanted him to come and find her. She always wanted him to come and coax her back..."

When the words fell, Yan Ruxue hopped lightly down from the stone and continued up the mountain. "Husband, we ought to get moving. At this rate, by the time we come back down, it will be dark..."

"That is true." Xiao Mo answered with a laugh, and followed after her.

As the two of them continued toward the summit of She Mountain, a great black ox emerged from among the snow-covered trees.

"I wonder whose ox has come loose and wandered up the mountain," Yan Ruxue said with a smile.

"We can take it down with us on the way back. Though... does Ruxue want to ride the ox?" Xiao Mo asked.

"Ride the ox?" Yan Ruxue glanced at Xiao Mo's profile, a trace of puzzlement in her peach-blossom eyes.

Xiao Mo said nothing further, only walked toward the great black ox and took up its reins. The ox made as if to resist, but every movement of Xiao Mo's hands, whether guiding the animal or soothing it, was practiced to a degree that suggested he had grown up tending cattle from childhood. Before long, the great black ox stood entirely docile beneath Xiao Mo's hand.

"Would you like to come up?" Xiao Mo turned, smiling at Yan Ruxue.

"Mm." Yan Ruxue nodded gently and stepped forward.

The great black ox, with remarkable good manners, lowered itself onto the ground.

Xiao Mo swung himself up onto the ox's back first, then took Yan Ruxue's slender white hand and helped her up.

"Let's go."

Xiao Mo held the reins with one hand and gave the great black ox a pat on the head with the other.

"Moo."

The ox called out once, rose slowly to its feet, and began making its way toward the summit.

The ox's hooves pressed into the snow, the thick soft drifts giving out a steady, muffled crunch with each step.

Xiao Mo sat on the ox's back, guiding it with the reins. The woman in the white gown sat sideways on the broad back, her small feet swinging gently, watching the man's profile before her.

Flurries of snow drifted down from the laden branches overhead.

The man's blue scholar's robe, the woman's plain white gown, the jet-black ox like a brushstroke of ink, and all around them the vast white silence of the snow-covered mountain forest together composed a picture of extraordinary beauty.

"I have heard something, here and there, of the story of the celebrated Prime Minister that Ruxue spoke of," Xiao Mo said after a while, his voice unhurried.

"He must have come from this very village. The boy and girl you described must refer to that Prime Minister as a child, and the girl he grew up alongside, is that right?"

"Yes." Yan Ruxue lowered her head softly, her eyes stirring gently.

"I have also heard it said that, ten thousand years ago, that celebrated Prime Minister of the Qi Kingdom used to read books while tending cattle as a boy. Something very much like this, I imagine?" Xiao Mo said.

"More or less... yes, something very like this..." Yan Ruxue nodded, a glimmer of distant memory passing through her eyes.

"Ruxue... did you happen to bring a book with you?"

Xiao Mo said it as though something had just occurred to him, with a small smile.

"I did bring one..." Yan Ruxue's eyes flickered with mild curiosity. "But I wonder what husband is..."

"Just hand me one." Xiao Mo did not answer directly.

Yan Ruxue did not press further, only took a copy of the Book of Songs from her storage bracelet and passed it to him.

Xiao Mo smiled, accepted it, and began to read aloud in a quiet voice.

The scholar's reading carried through the mountain forest, each word and phrase drifting and resonating among the trees.

Yan Ruxue seemed to understand something in that moment. She rested her hands on either side of her, and was still, listening quietly, watching him in silence.

The great black ox walked steadily forward, step by step, as though treading across the long river of years.

Ten thousand years ago, it had still been a boy and a girl sitting together on an ox's back.

The boy reading.

The girl watching him.

Ten thousand years later.

Still the same.

It seemed as though... nothing had changed at all.

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