The Snail Shell

Bai Qingxue did not answer.

Ning Qinghan waited for a while.

She couldn’t say exactly how long she waited. It might have been the span of a few breaths, or perhaps the time it took for another leaf from the old plum tree to drift from its branch onto the stone table.

Seeing that the person before her was still unwilling to give an answer, Ning Qinghan lightly tapped her finger against the stone table.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?”

Ning Qinghan leaned forward, propping her elbows on the stone table and resting her chin in her hands. She tilted her head as she looked at Bai Qingxue.

“You’re running away.”

The fingers Bai Qingxue used to hold her tea cup stilled for a moment.

“Your refusal to answer me now...”

“...is it any different from your refusal to answer your Senior Sister?”

“You just sit here, holding a cup of cold tea and staring at a half-dead old tree, waiting for an answer you don’t even recognize.”

“Bai Qingxue, do you know what you look like right now?”

Ning Qinghan lowered the hand supporting her chin and traced another crooked circle on the stone table with her finger.

She looked down at the circle, then up at Bai Qingxue.

“You’re like a snail.”

“Forever retreating into your shell, waiting and waiting.”

“What are you waiting for? For the tea to go cold on its own? For her to come back? For someone else to suddenly have an epiphany one day so you can continue on with a clear conscience?”

“Ning Qinghan.”

Bai Qingxue called her name again.

Ning Qinghan stopped talking.

She looked at Bai Qingxue.

Bai Qingxue turned her head, facing her directly.

Their faces were separated only by the narrow stone table, close enough to see the reflection of the old plum tree in each other’s eyes.

Bai Qingxue did not speak.

She simply looked at Ning Qinghan with a gaze as calm as a frozen lake.

Ning Qinghan saw her own reflection on that surface of ice.

She leaned back and sat upright once more.

She sat very straight, her back away from the stone stool’s edge and her shoulders level. She withdrew her hands from the stone table and folded them over her knees again.

At some point, her eyes had reddened. A glimmer of something bright seemed to be pulled back into the corners of her eyes, as if it had been wiped away by something.

“Fine,” Ning Qinghan said.

A single, simple word.

Ning Qinghan left that word on the stone table, stood up, and turned toward the side room.

After two steps, she stopped. She didn’t look back, only turning her face slightly so her voice carried over her shoulder.

“Don’t drink the tea once it’s cold. It’s bad for your stomach.”

Then she left.

The door to the side room was pushed open and then closed.

The door hinge gave that same stiff creak, trailing a thin, lingering echo through the quiet courtyard.

Bai Qingxue sat alone beneath the old plum tree.

Two tea cups sat on the stone table.

One was empty, and the other was also empty.

Without realizing it, Bai Qingxue had finished the last sip of her cold tea.

The water in the purple clay teapot had also gone cold, and no more steam rose from the spout.

Leaves from the old plum tree continued to fall, one after another, landing on the stone table, the stone stool, and beside the empty cup.

Bai Qingxue did not get up.

She stared at the empty cup opposite her for a long time.

Then she reached out, picked up the withered leaf that had fallen beside the cup, and gently placed it on the edge of the stone table, lining it up beside the leaf Ning Qinghan had placed earlier.

Two withered leaves, identical in their brown hue and curled edges, lay side by side on the bluestone surface like a pair of eyes that refused to close.

Then she stood up and returned to her own room.

As the door closed, the last few leaves finally fell from the old plum tree.

Night seeped in from beyond the courtyard walls.

It began at the corners, then the gaps between the bluestone slabs, then the roots of the old plum tree, finally spreading over the entire trunk and branches.

The bare plum tree stood in the darkness, its branches reaching toward the sky like an open hand, grasping for something it could not reach.

Bai Qingxue sat by the bed, the room still dim.

Moonlight leaked through a tear in the window lattice paper, falling onto her knees and the backs of her folded hands like a thin layer of frost.

Under this moonlight, her hands appeared exceptionally pale—sickly so, even—allowing the fine blue veins on the backs of her hands to be clearly seen.

Bai Qingxue’s breathing was steady.

But her dantian was anything but calm.

At the same time, a layer of fine sweat broke out on her forehead.

She could feel the temperature within her dantian rising rapidly.

Usually, the inside of her dantian was cool, with the ice lotus suspended there year-round, emitting a faint chill that made her dantian feel like a deep well in midwinter.

But now, that chill was being stripped away layer by layer by waves of dark red heat.

Even though the ice lotus was still spinning and releasing cold air, the chill was swallowed by the heat of the restriction the moment it left the petals, vanishing into nothingness.

Bai Qingxue’s fingers gripped the edge of the bed tightly.

Her gaze fell upon her left arm. Her sleeve had been rolled up to her shoulder, exposing the entire arm to the moonlight.

The dark red patterns had already spread to her shoulder and were crawling toward her collarbone. The ends of the patterns branched out into countless tiny offshoots, like the tendrils of a vine, testing her skin.

Bai Qingxue raised her right hand.

Pressing her index and middle fingers together, she tremblingly tapped the acupoints on her left shoulder, trying to seal her meridians and stop the patterns from spreading further toward her heart pulse.

However, the moment her fingertips touched her skin, they were repelled.

The skin on her fingertips was scorched into a small red mark.

Bai Qingxue stared at the red mark, her pupils contracting slightly.

The restriction had never been like this before.

‘Was Liu Ningshuang lying to me?’

Bai Qingxue closed her eyes again to inspect her dantian.

The ice lotus was spinning even faster now.

It spun so fast that the edges of the petals left afterimages in her dantian, so fast that she could no longer tell how many cracks were on the petals.

Dark red light poured out from every crack, gathering at the lotus core to form a dark red vortex.

That vortex was slowly, bit by bit, expanding.

Then she heard it.

An extremely soft, faint sound of cracking.

The edge of a petal closest to the lotus core broke off a small piece during the frantic spinning.

The moment that small fragment left the petal, it was swallowed by the dark red vortex, instantly turning into a wisp of white gas that dissipated within her dantian.

Bai Qingxue’s breath hitched for a beat.

She no longer hesitated.

She gave up on sealing her acupoints and instead withdrew all her spiritual power into her dantian, wrapping it around the ice lotus.

Ice-blue spiritual power coiled around it layer by layer, wrapping the ice lotus into a cocoon.

Under the shroud of spiritual power, the dark red patterns were temporarily suppressed, their light fading slightly.

But this was only temporary.

Bai Qingxue opened her eyes.

The room was very dark.

The small tear in the window lattice paper allowed a sliver of moonlight to leak in, falling on the floor before the bed like a puddle of spilled mercury.

As she stared at that puddle of moonlight, a thought suddenly flashed through her mind.

Ning Qinghan.