In the fourteenth year of Zhaode's reign, when Shen Yingyue was sixteen, he saw a man wearing a moon-white gown behind the window of Nuange Pavilion in the Imperial College. He recited a sentence, "It's snowing in the evening, so I can drink a glass of nothing." He lowered his head and smiled, his smile as light as a plum blossom falling on the snow. She spent half a year looking at the shadow from a distance through the bamboo curtains of the teahouse, the bookshelves of the bookstore, and the last row of the lecture hall. She wanted to wait for the best time for him to see her. But she didn't wait. She only waited until he walked out of the back door of the Imperial College, turned sideways, and pulled up the hood of another woman with a smile. She asked someone to deliver a box of sweet-scented osmanthus cake without a signature. Then she walked into her own life.
Three years later, she was admitted to the Hanlin Academy with third place in policy theory and became the only female official in the court. She met Jiang Qingchuan, a man who was seventy percent similar to the man back then, but a hundred times colder and tougher. He took her to look at maps, check old files, and protected her from the wind at night when the Museum of History was leaking. He said: "Tomorrow at midnight." She came. He said, "Do you believe me?" She did. But in the court, his father's name was implicated in the water transport corruption case, and she found the note. She joined him. He broke off the engagement. She tore up the edict. He's gone.
In the autumn of the seventeenth year of Zhaode's reign, Wei Huaizhong vouched for her in front of the emperor and offered her a lifetime of good reputation in exchange for her staying in the capital. In the winter of the same year, Taifu's mansion was attacked at night, and Wei Huaizhong died. He held a small fish jade pendant in his hand, which she had lost when she was young, and he had kept it for her all her life.
Shen Yingyue resigned and went into seclusion. She lived in the mountains for three years, practicing swordsmanship, studying the art of war, and waiting for an opportunity that she didn't know when it would come. Three years later, Jiang Qingchuan intercepted her in the north. He said: "Why don't you run?" She said: "Because I still owe you." He asked her: "Are you in pain?" She said: "I know you are in pain." Then she put down the sword and walked into the snow.
From then on, the two did not owe each other anything.
Intention: A person can grow his own roots again without being chosen by anyone.
This is not a story about "being loved", but a story about "no longer needing to be loved in order to survive." Shen Yingyue reached the end without returning to anyone or forgiving anyone. She didn't pick up the sword, nor did she put it down completely - she just left the sword in the snow and walked into the snow.
She lived the four words her master said: a river of her own.