Page 69 of The Scholar's Improper Wife

The mist coiled around the mountain peak like a living thing, thick enough to muffle sound but thin enough to let the moonlight paint everything silver. Ting-zhi materialized mid-step, boots sinking into damp moss, and froze.

Yun-si stood ten paces away, sword already drawn.

Not his dreamy Yun-si who tripped over her own sleeves or stared blankly at teacups while composing mental novels. Nor the fox vixen Yun-si who had invaded his dream and tortured him. This one wore fitted black robes, her hair bound in a single braid that whipped behind her as she turned. The blade in her hand was no prop; it hummed when she shifted her grip.

“Ah,” Ting-zhi said. “This is new.”

Yun-si’s eyes narrowed. “This isdefinitelymy dream now.”

She lunged.

Ting-zhi barely twisted aside, his scholar’s robes flapping uselessly as he stumbled back. The sword hissed past his throat, close enough to feel the wind of its passage. “Si-er, let’s discuss this—”

“Discuss?” She slashed again, this time a diagonal cut that forced him to drop into an undignified crouch. “You lied to me. For months.”

She swung. He ducked. The blade sheared through a sapling behind him; it toppled with a sad littlecrack.

“I never lied,” he protested, scuttling backward on his hands. “I omitted.”

The blade pressed against his collarbone. “Youwroteabout me.”

“Not about—”

“Andyou wrote to me as someone else and never told me!” She shrieked. “Was it a joke to you?”

Yun-si’s foot connected with his ribs. He gasped, curling around the impact, and she flipped the sword to point downward at his chest. “Youdeceivedme.”

Her voice cracked and the sword trembled. “Why?”

Ting-zhi’s mouth opened. Then closed. Then opened again, only for his lips to press into a thin line as he stared up at the blade hovering dangerously close to his throat.

The cold metal glinted in the dappled sunlight filtering through the trees, and for the first time in his life, he found himself utterly at a loss for words. His mind raced, but every carefully crafted excuse dissolved under the weight of her fury.

Cheng-yi’s words surfaced from his muddled thoughts...need to be more honest than anything in his life.

He swallowed hard, the movement making the sword’s edge press just a fraction deeper into his skin. “The—the first letter,” he began uncertainly, “I just wanted to know what you thought of my books. Only that. I never meant to—” His gaze flickered to her hands, white-knuckled around the hilt, then back to her flushed face. “Then you wrote back. And I... I wanted to stop. But then you looked so sad whenhestopped writing to you. I didn’t want you to be disappointed.”

“You could have just told me!” Yun-si shrieked. Her blade jabbed repeatedly for emphasis, the sharp tip pressing into the soft flesh just above his heart. “You could have said,‘Si-er, I’m Moonlit Brush’! You could have trusted me!”

Her voice shattered the quiet of the dreamlike forest, the sound so uncharacteristically loud that Ting-zhi flinched.Since when did his soft-spoken, dreamy Yun-si scream like this?

The sound was almost as shocking as the blade at his chest. He hadn’t realized shecouldscream like this, with such fire, suchvolume. It was rather terrifying.

Her next question cut through his daze like a whip. “What about the huabens?” she demanded, her voice trembling with accusation. “Did you write about us?”

“No!” The denial came out sharper than he intended, laced with desperation. He scrambled backward, only to hit the rough bark of a tree, the sword still following him like a vengeful shadow. “I started writing them because I missed you,” he admitted, the words spilling out in a rush. “When I was traveling, every time I saw something new or interesting, I wanted to share it with you. And then I’d write it down, and it would turn into a story. They were never about you. They were just... things I wished I could do with you. Things I imagined.” His voice dropped, quieter now, raw. “Things I wanted.”

The sword wavered for a fraction of a second, the pressure against his skin easing just enough for him to breathe. But then Yun-si’s expression hardened again, and the blade dug in deeper. Ting-zhi hissed in pain.

“Ouch—” He winced, instinctively raising a hand to press against the wound, only for the sword to follow, pricking his fingers. “That actually hurts.”

Yun-si’s eyes widened. The sword trembled in her grip as she finally seemed to register what she was doing. “You’rebleeding!”

Wen-xin’s advice from the other day flashed through his mind—pretend to be sick.

Desperation made a man clutch at straws. With a dramatic exhale, he let his shoulders slump, his free hand pressing against his chest as if to staunch a mortal wound. His voice dropped into a pitiful whine, “Si-er... if you kill me here, in this dream...” He let his gaze flicker up at her, wide and pleading. “Do you think I’ll die in the real world too?”

Yun-si’s brows furrowed slightly as she considered the question. For a long, stretched moment, she just stared at him.