Vast

“What did you do to her?”

Hua Yu’s face was so cold it seemed ready to drip ice, but her tone gave nothing away, as if she were asking about the weather.

Yu Tiantian said calmly, “I helped her recover her health, of course. I’ve said it many times; I’m sincere about Xiao Yin. It’s a pity neither of you believed me. Surely you believe me now?”

Hua Yu walked into the room, shut the door, glanced up at the camera, then moved to a spot outside its range.

“I know her condition best. What did you do to make her end up like this?” Hua Yu lowered her voice.

Yu Tiantian’s tone turned almost cryptic. “If Dr. Hua is interested, you’re welcome to join my research team.”

“I’ve already agreed to invest in you,” Hua Yu said coldly. “The paper has also been submitted; at the earliest, it’ll be published by the end of the month.”

“If something doesn’t succeed right away, it’ll keep you worried for a while. I’m not trying to keep you in suspense; I’m a very generous person. At the very least, I’ve fixed your Wei Yin. Isn’t that enough sincerity?”

Yu Tiantian told Hua Yu not to worry. “As long as you stand on the same rope as me, everything you care about will remain yours.”

“On the contrary,” Yu Tiantian said with a soft laugh, “I can make you have nothing at all.”

Hua Yu said nothing and hung up.

In her mind flashed Wei Yin’s medical report from her university days. The glands, much like the human reproductive organs, were present from birth but only matured rapidly during puberty.

Wei Yin’s glands had been slow to develop and had remained in an immature state, only about the size of a fingernail and merely 1 mm thick. In fact, this wasn’t a serious issue; with careful monitoring and regular medication, it wouldn’t even affect normal life.

But when they met again four years later, Wei Yin’s glands had already atrophied.

Before that, her glands must have gone through the process from immature development to maturity; only mature glands would show symptoms of atrophy.

Hua Yu now concluded that the maturity and atrophy of Wei Yin’s glands were absolutely tied to Yu Tiantian in a major way.

Good.

She stole Wei Yin from her side, then after taking her away let others smear her with filth and spread disgusting rumors; after graduation she went abroad and ignored Wei Yin completely, and after they met again she harassed Wei Yin once more to win Hua Yu’s support...

And now Wei Yin’s illness was also related to Yu Tiantian.

Very good.

Hua Yu sat quietly in the dark room for forty minutes. Then, as if she had made a decision, she called her parents.

After hanging up, Hua Yu remembered there was still someone across the hall who needed to move, so she composed herself and went to knock on the door.

She knocked three times, waited half a minute, and heard nothing inside.

Hua Yu assumed Wei Yin was sulking. Unwilling to give up, she knocked a few more times and said softly, “You still have things left behind.”

Still no sound from inside.

Hua Yu frowned, feeling a little strange.

Wei Yin wasn’t the type to freeze someone out. Her little moods were easy to coax away and never lasted long; why wasn’t she even answering the door this time?

Hua Yu opened the monitoring app, logged in, and checked the footage from forty minutes earlier.

Sure enough, after Hua Yu closed the door and went home, Wei Yin had come out in less than half a minute, carrying her luggage, and pressed the elevator button.

After her figure disappeared into the elevator, she never appeared again.

There was no way she had just gone to pick up a package or buy something.

Hua Yu grew anxious and quickly called Wei Yin, only to be told the line was busy.

Still unwilling to give up, she called again ten minutes later; it was still busy.

Hua Yu didn’t call again. She sent Wei Yin a WeChat message asking where she had gone.

The chat box remained empty, and the other side never replied.

Wei Yin didn’t have her own house, and she wasn’t renting one either. It was already late; in another two hours, it would be dark. Where could she possibly go?

Hua Yu could instantly picture Wei Yin dragging her heavy luggage aimlessly down the road, lights shining everywhere, with nowhere she could belong.

A trace of bewildered panic flashed across Hua Yu’s usually composed face.

-

In Pedro’s private villa, Wei Yin was wearing mist-blue silk pajamas and had just dried her hair. She stared blankly at the lion’s mane jellyfish meatballs and French snails in front of her.

This was nothing like the impoverished situation Hua Yu had imagined.

“Sorry, I’m used to living alone,” Pedro said. Her own clothes were very plain, pure white fabric with only hand-painted floral patterns. She was eating a hawthorn cake as she walked over. “There’s only these things in the fridge at home.”

Wei Yin held out a hand. “I want the hawthorn cake.”

“Last piece,” Pedro said with a smile. “It’s gone.”

Wei Yin let out an “oh,” then her gaze fell on Pedro’s pajamas. “I want to wear those pajamas too.”

Not the ones she was wearing now, with their exaggerated Western palace style; clearly gorgeous, and obviously expensive as hell.

“That won’t do,” Pedro said lovingly, stroking the pattern on it. “This was hand-painted by your Aunt Bai.”

Wei Yin: ...

Even if she couldn’t be called destitute, she couldn’t exactly be called comfortable either.

“I’ve already called them; the food, drinks, clothes, and daily necessities will be sent over soon,” Pedro said, sitting down opposite her and pouring her a glass of milk. “Tell me, why did you suddenly come to me for help? Weren’t you living at your girlfriend’s place?”

Wei Yin picked up the only food she could actually eat and took a big gulp.

She licked the milk from her lips and, in front of what was currently her only elder, tried to downplay it a little. “I just suddenly wanted to go out for a walk.”

“The luggage is heavy; that at least means you packed with intention. It didn’t look very sudden.”

Wei Yin thought to herself that wasn’t wrong. For the person packing the luggage, they had long ago planned to throw her out. But she was the one being thrown out; of course it was sudden, very sudden, extremely sudden!

Wei Yin told the truth: “We argued.”

Pedro nodded. “Got it. You’re running away from home.”

“No,” Wei Yin said very firmly. “It’s the home that’s running away from me.”

Pedro didn’t understand young people’s little romantic games, but she expressed respect. “You can stay here as long as you like. But young people probably don’t like living with us old folks; if you want to go out and live somewhere else, there’s a place for that too. Just tell me if anything comes up.”

Wei Yin was one of the few traces Sun Bai had left in this world. Leaving that aside, she was also a very spirited, good girl. Pedro already had a natural pity and sympathy for girls with incomplete glands, and with all these factors added together, whenever she looked at Wei Yin, she felt as if she were looking at her own child.

If none of these things had happened over the years, if she had adopted some children, she probably would have raised them into someone like Wei Yin.

So Pedro became even fonder of her.

“I can go help you vent your anger on Hua Yu,” Pedro said without the slightest strain. “Beating her up once is completely fine.”

Wei Yin glanced at her and felt Pedro looked a little like a bandit chief. “No.”

“If violence won’t work, we can use something civilized,” Pedro suggested from another angle. “For example, she wants to publish a paper recently. I can make trouble for her there.”

“How would you make trouble?” Wei Yin asked.

Pedro thought for a moment. “Slip the editor a little incentive for life, push the deadline back, drag it out for a few more months, things like that. Or if you need something else, I should be able to come up with a dozen different methods.”

Wei Yin’s eye twitched. “Money can even make the millstone push the devil.”

Pedro answered seriously, “Need it?”

Wei Yin sighed. “Not for now.”

Hua Yu was already busy enough every day. These past few days she’d finally gotten some time off; only after hearing Pedro did Wei Yin realize she was still working on some paper. She really never had a moment’s peace.

“I want to travel around the country for a while,” Wei Yin said softly after a long silence. “Broaden my horizons. The soil in each place is different, and I can talk and exchange ideas with others in the same field.”

Pedro smiled in pleasant surprise. “I support you.”

This wasn’t a decision Wei Yin had made on a whim. Since Pedro brought her that piece of ocean-themed pottery, she had wanted to go out and walk around.

Art is born from the customs and culture of different places. Since Wei Yin happened to have nothing to do, she might as well use the time she would have spent on romance to enrich herself.

“Do you have any places to recommend?” Wei Yin frowned, troubled. “I want to go see Qinghai. I haven’t thought about anywhere else yet.”

Pedro took out her phone. “Add this person on WeChat. She’s my assistant. Just call her Sister Mi; she’ll help arrange your itinerary and route.”

“No need,” Wei Yin said with a smile. “Just tell me the route I should take. I want to walk it myself.”

She was lucky to have met a group of people who treated her well, but this little escape from home also reminded her that for many years she had lived on her own and taken care of herself. A life where everything was arranged for her by others was certainly comforting and pleasant, but she couldn’t lose the ability to live alone.

Distance makes beauty. Maybe she and Hua Yu had been stuck together for too long; separating for a while might feel different.

Wei Yin now wanted a space to herself, to be alone with her thoughts, to wander and look around, and to sort out her feelings along the way.

A lot had happened lately. She had met the person she wanted to spend her life with; that was important, and she definitely needed to think it through carefully...

“On your own?” Pedro considered it, then nodded. “That’s fine, but be careful. Even though this is China, you still need to stay alert.”

Wei Yin nodded in assurance. “I’ll report my itinerary every day.”

“Good,” Pedro said, relieved. “When are you leaving?”

Wei Yin patted her bag. “Tomorrow.”

Over the next half month, Wei Yin went first to Qinghai, then to Namtso in Tibet, and finally to Meili Snow Mountain. She was lucky the altitude sickness wasn’t too severe.

After leaving Tibet, she stayed in Yunnan for a week; she ate local specialties, lay under the blue sky of Daocheng for an entire day, and traveled westward to admire mountains, grasslands, and snow, all the way to Erhai Lake.

Farther up, she hiked in the Four Girls Mountains, chatted with locals, and found inspiration for color from the multicolored lakes of Jiuzhaigou.

She went to the Potala Palace, saw all of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, and painted an entire oil painting by Sayram Lake, known as “the last tear of the Atlantic.”

Every place she could reach on foot, she went herself. The scent of the grasslands, the breath of the high mountains, the silence of the earth, the gifts of nature; all of it slowly merged into her understanding of life.

Gradually, Wei Yin became more and more tranquil, to the point that she no longer dwelled on Hua Yu’s letting her leave.

Because every day she spent away from her made her like Hua Yu more than the day before.

When she saw beautiful birds, she thought of Hua Yu.

—She would look lovely in these colors.

When she ate delicious mushrooms, she thought of Hua Yu.

—This kind of deliciousness might make Hua Yu jump with surprise?

When she met the cows and horses heading home after dark, she thought of Hua Yu.

—Cows and horses go home after grazing. Cow-and-horse Dr. Hua should go home too.

Every beautiful feeling the scenery brought her was somehow similar to what Wei Yin had come to understand from Hua Yu.

She had seen clouds in many places. Though her heart was happy, she always thought that if Hua Yu were here too, the view would be even more beautiful.

On the second day of Wei Yin’s journey, Hua Yu finally managed to find out where she was and began sending her one little sun every day.

She also sent photos of all three meals, telling Wei Yin: I miss you too.

On the twenty-third day of the journey, Wei Yin finally sent Hua Yu a picture.

It was a casually snapped photo of a cat.

The cat lay beneath brilliant sunlight, its glossy black fur sleek and lustrous, clearly cared for attentively by its owner.

Hua Yu, finally receiving a reply, didn’t dare speak of longing first. Instead, she kept nagging Wei Yin to pay attention to her glands and, preferably, get a routine checkup nearby, then send the report to Hua Yu.

Wei Yin chose to selectively ignore it on the spot.

Two days later, Hua Yu received a checkup report from Wei Yin.

All indicators were normal.

Then, naturally, Liu Cong’s pheromone test results also came out.

“No abnormalities,” Liu Cong said over the phone. “Now you should be able to relax. Wei Yin’s body really has improved.”

Hua Yu didn’t say much and thanked Liu Cong.

“Oh, right. The hospital wants you back at work as soon as possible.”

The hospital had already been calling her back to work half a month earlier, but Hua Yu had refused, wanting to use up the annual leave she had saved.

A doctor actually taking annual leave; what an unforgivable offense. But this time Hua Yu was dead set on not going, and in the end even Hua’s father and mother had to intervene before the hospital finally, in a show of deference, let her off to rest in peace.

Wei Yin was busy with her own things, and Hua Yu was busy too.

“Dad, Mom, has the paper I asked you to prepare had its publication date confirmed?”

On the other end of the call, Hua’s mother said, “I’ve already seen the proof copy; it’ll be out the month after next.”

Hua Yu said, “Okay. My paper will be published soon too. By then... if any relatives come asking, just say you know nothing.”

Hua’s father sighed beside her. “We understand. But have you really made up your mind? This is no small matter. One mistake, and you could be ruined.”

Hua Yu’s expression was more resolute than ever before. Stripping away all the anger and irrationality she had felt earlier, she was now one hundred percent certain that this was something she had to do.

“At any cost.”