For all their relationship is still fraying raw surface-deep, and despite the desperate clutch Nie Mingjue has taken to keeping around Nie Huaisang given their past weeks, when Nie Huaisang begs leave from the Unclean Realm for business to which he will not be pressed to elaborate, he’s granted it with little argument.

Nie Huaisang is reluctant to leave Nie Mingjue like this, too. It’s a terrible thought to have, that he might come back and have no brother to come back to, anymore, but it is, nonetheless, an apparent inevitability he is being forced to face with foreboding frequency. It’s why he’s leaving at all: their ancestral halls snuffed the fire out of Nie Mingjue, but lit it beneath Nie Huaisang’s feet in exchange, making hearth of his ribcage. As long as there’s fight left in one of them, both of them won’t go down without bloodshed.

Er-ge has Gusu Lan’s dutifully crafted and diligently curated library of knowledge, bruised and battered by the bludgeon and blaze of Qishan Wen. San-ge has Lanling Jin’s wealth, doled out sparingly from underneath the thumb of Jin Guangshan. Didi has nothing but a face that people trust and a heart yet soft enough to ensure that such trust remains unpunished.

This time, the faith that is placed in him is what sees him out and through. It gets him out of Qinghe, and ensures the guards his brother insists he takes with him concede to a separation at the border of Tianjin. In a run-down inn with all the stylings of a brothel but neither the patrons nor the prostitutes to exemplify it, Nie Huaisang unbinds his braids. Away goes his guan; the fineries; all the pampered accoutrements that surmise his defining. Left is only him; the body, the brother.

This cannot be all there is for them. Surely in a world so vast there lie yet stones unturned— slippery things smalled for his spindling fingers to unearth. In this, there is nothing left in him but hope, and that must then make him certain. All he need find is anewed patience. All he need learn is ached hunger.