After midnight

Su Ziling woke up from his dream and had to face the cruel reality. He looked at the unfamiliar scene, the white ceiling and white walls. This was a hospital. Su Ziling sat up immediately with tears streaming down his eyes.

Brother! Su Ziling sobbed silently. Memories uncontrollably clung to his brain over and over again. He recalled it over and over again, heard that voice over and over again, saw that scene over and over again, and he was pulled into the abyss countless times.

He fell into the abyss countless times, letting regret and pain invade him madly and drown him.

Su Ziling stayed in the room quietly, losing his sense of time. Just as the pain in his eyes became worse, the door of the ward opened. Someone walked in, like a gust of wind disturbing a bent grass. Su Ziling turned to look at him. It was An Yan.

Su Ziling withdrew his gaze, lay down calmly and turned over.

His eyes lingered on the bulging quilt for a while before leaving. After the door closed, Su Ziling's whole body suddenly relaxed and then suddenly stiffened into a straight line. Not long after, the door was opened again.

"Zi Ling, come with me to see him off." Wuying said from far away at the door.

The day of the funeral was sunny. Su Ziling stood under the bare sycamore tree and looked at the gray stone tablet in front of him. The stone tablet stood in the cold wind, and the black capital letters carved on it burned Su Ziling's eyes.

It turns out that the winter sun can be so dazzling, Su Ziling thought.

The farewell ended in silence. One by one, figures passed by Su Ziling. They all tacitly stopped mentioning Yin to Su Ziling. Su Ziling also did not dare to look into anyone's eyes. Wuying's, Ye's, He's, and many others', including An Yan's.

Su Ziling walked at the end and was the last to leave. When he walked down the long steps, he saw another bunch of blooming chrysanthemums in front of another tombstone. The bright colors caught his eyes and Su Ziling trembled all over. He couldn't make a mistake. He was very familiar with the name engraved on the tombstone. He looked at An Yan, opened his mouth and slowly closed it. The man's name was Lin Xuanfeng.

Since Yin's death, it has become Su Ziling's normal state to have his lips touching each other. He cannot open his mouth, and cannot talk to others about everything as if nothing has happened. On the night when he said goodbye to Yin, An Yan finally couldn't help but quietly entered Su Ziling's room and said in an attitude that could not be refused, "Su Ziling, let's talk."

Su Ziling sat on the bed and turned a deaf ear to everything. He turned his head and saw that it was pitch black outside the window, without a single star in sight.

Without encountering strong resistance, An Yan considered for a moment before continuing, "Sorry..."

As soon as he heard An Yan speak, especially when he said these two words, Su Ziling immediately turned his head again and stared at An Yan with deep anger in his eyes.

An Yan shut up. He thought for a long time about what to say. He wanted to apologize and try to comfort him. He knew that if he said this, Su Ziling would probably get in the way, but he didn't expect Su Ziling's reaction to be so intense. He couldn't even utter a complete sentence.

"Get up and go out and fight." An Yan opened his mouth again and quickly changed what he was about to say.

Su Ziling looked at An Yan again, but this time he wasn't glaring at him. He rolled his eyes at An Yan and turned over to lie on his side on the bed.

"What, you don't dare?" An Yan challenged him, deliberately angering him. But Su Ziling just pulled the quilt at the opposite corner and rolled it around him.

An Yan stepped forward, twisted Su Ziling around with all his strength but was stunned. Su Ziling was crying. It was not quite accurate to say that Su Ziling was crying, because there were no tears in Su Ziling's eyes, just redness.

"I'm sorry." An Yan let go and apologized subconsciously.

Hearing An Yan's apology, Su Ziling pulled An Yan down, pressed An Yan on the soft blanket beside him and grabbed An Yan's collar. "An Yan, can you please stop apologizing? Do you know that I am the one who should say sorry to my brother? I hate myself so much. If you apologize, then what am I? My brother doesn't need you to apologize. Everything he did was for me, for me!"

Su Ziling's tears fell and hit An Yan's neck. He quickly stood up and left, taking his pair of red and fierce eyes with him, leaving An Yan alone in the huge cold.

A strange triangle formed between An Yan, Wu Ying and Su Zi Ling. They only blamed themselves for all their pain. Meanwhile, time passed relentlessly.

One gray morning, sporadic snowflakes were falling in Xindu. When Song Xinjun saw the tiny snowflakes falling from the window, he thought that this might be the last snow of the year.

Song Xinjun didn't think the first snow or the last snow had any romantic meaning. He looked at it for a while and then turned his eyes back to the house. At this time, he was still living in the ward of Xindu Hospital. When his eyes moved from the empty space in the house to the white bedding, they suddenly became heavy.

The injury on his left thigh was not very serious. Song Xinjun reached out to cover his right ankle. At that time, when he fell and felt a sharp pain in his right ankle, he knew desperately that he had broken a bone and could not stand up. He watched Song Yu insert the sword into Yin's heart with his own eyes. He desperately slapped himself and tried to stand up, but he could not stop it.

He couldn't stop Lin Xuanfeng before, and now he can't stop Yin. Song Xinjun clenched his fingers to try not to be too gloomy.

There was a creaking sound of the door lock turning in the cold and quiet ward. Song Xinjun looked up and saw Fang Hao pushing the door open and coming in without knocking.

"How is your injury?" Fang Hao said, pulling a stool and sitting down in front of the bed.

"Much better," said Song Xinjun. His right leg was in a cast and he could barely get out of bed, but he was much better now.

"They, I mean Zhou Chen and Lu Li..."

"Don't worry about their injuries." Fang Hao interrupted him, "The most important thing for you now is to rest well."

"Yeah, I know Uncle Fang." Song Xinjun glanced at Fang Hao, who was fidgeting. Since he opened his eyes in the ward, he had lost contact with the outside world. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't find out any information about the war. He didn't believe that people outside hadn't heard about the war. They destroyed the purgatory in one fell swoop, and they lost a lot of money, and almost lost Lu Li, Zhou Chen, and himself. But for so many days, he didn't see any of them again, and he didn't receive a reply to the letters he sent.

Song Xinjun looked at Fang Hao, confused and puzzled.

"You did a great job, but..."

"But what?"

"But there is a small omission. There is neither Liujiu's body nor Song Yu's on the battlefield."

Eh? Song Xinjun wanted to refute in horror. He clearly saw that after An Yan did that, Song Yu and Song Nan fell to the ground together without a sound.

"Liujiu and Song Yu, you don't need to worry anymore. Someone has already gone to clean up the mess. Speaking of which, do you know how Song Nan died? His upper body was blown into a bloody mess, and all the blood had drained out of his body. It looked really horrible."

Song Xinjun was silent. He no longer wanted to recall that scene, including the scene of Tongyin's death.

"When it comes to this, Shangguan Can and Zhou Chen have the same expression as you. Okay, I won't say anything more. Just take care of your injuries." Fang Hao observed for a while, and felt that he couldn't get anything out of him, so he stopped forcing him. "The new Jiu Kingdom is coming soon, New Lord, please don't let me down."

"No, Uncle Fang. I have been working hard for this all along," said Song Xinjun.

"That's good. I'll come see you again in a few days."

After watching Fang Hao leave, Song Xinjun looked out the window again. It was still cloudy outside, but the snow had stopped falling. It seemed that this was the last snowfall of this winter. That was it. The snow would not accumulate again.

After a while, there was a knock on the door of Song Xinjun's ward. Song Xinjun turned his head and saw Shangguan Can turning the doorknob and walking in. He placed oranges and apples in front of his bed and asked stiffly, "Are you okay?"

"Not bad." He was not very familiar with Shangguan Can, but after that battle, it was not surprising that Shangguan Can came to see him. Song Xinjun thought for a moment and asked, "Have you visited Zhou Chen? How is he?"

"Not very good. It's a penetrating wound. I can't lift my arm. But it will be fine after a while."

"Yeah." Song Xinjun hummed, and the two of them fell silent. What they had experienced together was too tragic, and they didn't want to talk about it again, but those painful pasts of each of them could not be mentioned.

Song Xinjun was racking his brains to think of a topic, but unexpectedly Shangguan Can spoke first. "Uncle Fang doesn't seem to like me coming to see you."

"why?"

"I don't know. Maybe the result this time didn't meet his expectations. I saw Uncle Fang came to see you just now, so I sneaked over here. I think you should know about Song Yu and Liu Jiu."

"Got it. Shangguan Can, do you know who will handle this matter?"

Shangguan Can looked at him strangely. "No one went. I wanted to go but Uncle Fang didn't agree. Now, it's as if the two of them don't exist in this world. No one knows where they went, no one looks for them, and no one knows whether they are together or separated."

"Why is this happening?" Song Xinjun frowned.

"Maybe Uncle Fang just doesn't want us to worry. We just cleaned up the battlefield and settled the children. You and Zhou Chen are also lying in the ward, and your injuries have just healed. Yin he..."

"Yin he?"

"Yin was buried a few days ago in the Martyrs' Cemetery, in the same place as Lin Xuanfeng. Originally, they said he would not be buried there, but later An Yan said that Yin deserved to be remembered by everyone, so he was buried there."

"An Yan is right. Yin deserves to be remembered by everyone, just like Lin Xuanfeng."

"Yes."

Shangguan Can nodded solemnly. He thought, the same thing happened to Zhao Yunqi. All those who died in this conspiracy deserve to be remembered. Now, as long as Song Yu and Liu Jiu are caught, everything will be over.

After this snow, spring will come.