"Lan Guan-Yin said Wu TianLan is still alive. I came to ask you, master Ye, is this real?"
The two old men sat in dead silence. Not even a wind carried over the still lake, their reflections clear over the smooth surface of the water.
"She has done it then," Ye WeiRu whispered, his visage suddenly much older than what ZhiYi remembered.
"So, it is true, then?" ZhiYi said, his heart slowly sinking into the bottom of his stomach. "TianLan is alive?"
"Lan Guan-Yin has always been unpredictable," Fan ZhiHao hurried to say after seeing WeiRu's torn expression. "She could have tried, but there is no guarantee she would have succeeded. She could have said that just for you to spare her life, ZhiYi."
"She has succeeded, ZhiHao."
ZhiYi felt like his heart was strung over a thread, being pulled by these two old men. One gave him a sliver of hope, while the other plunged the knife of truth deep within his already bleeding heart.
