After the small talk, Li Jincheng and Liu Dongjun made an excuse to leave, giving Yang Ge and Shen Fa the space to themselves.
The two men looked at each other wordlessly in the quiet wooden room, where only the sound of boiling water could be heard.
It wasn't that there was nothing to say, but rather that there was too much to say, yet they both felt those words seemed unnecessary now.
After a long while, Yang Ge picked up the teacup in front of him and touched it to Shen Fa's cup as if toasting with wine, "Yuelai Inn... thank you!"
Shen Fa silently drew a gilded waist badge from his robe and gently placed it on the tea table, then pushed it toward Yang Ge with two fingers.
Yang Ge glanced at it and recognized it as his own badge from when he had been appointed as a commandant for the Imperial Guard... only the characters on the badge had been rubbed off.
Shen Fa looked down as he drank his tea, "Keep it as a memorial."
