Ink Never Fades

An earthquake hurled Mo Yuan and Bai Qian from Kunlun Mountain into the twenty-first century.

When they woke, he had become a down-and-out middle-aged man who'd quit his job to go into business, now teaching guqin at an urban university. She was his student, sitting in the last row of a lecture hall.

Mo Yuan couldn't understand why cars moved by themselves or what scanning a code meant. The money in his bank account was the only thing he could still hold on to. Bai Qian understood the rules of this world the moment she opened her eyes. She knew how to use an obedient face to get someone to say, “The teacher is right.”

They recognized each other, but neither brought it up. He survived with her help, teaching her one song after another. She used his trust to empty his account, one transaction at a time, without leaving a trace. He told her, “There's no one in this world I trust more than you.”

She smiled and said, “I know.”

When she was nineteen, she tried to run away for the first time, and he stopped her. Now it was her turn to decide whether to keep in this city, along with his money, a man who couldn't even make a phone call.

Rescue and deception unfolded side by side. Whoever fell in love first would be the one to lose.