In the dream, he was still in the cold palace—but the door was open.
He stood at the threshold looking out. Beyond it was not the palace road, not the red walls, but the Gobi.
Someone was walking across the Gobi, a tall figure in a dark blue robe billowing in the wind. He called out, but the person didn’t turn back.
Xi Yu wanted to chase after him, but his feet wouldn’t lift. He looked down and saw a golden thread tied around his ankle, the other end fastened to the threshold of the cold palace.
He began to pull at it desperately. The golden thread cut into his skin, blood dripped down, staining the floor of the cold palace.
Then he woke.
No gasping breath, no sudden jolt upright. He simply opened his eyes quietly in the darkness, a thin layer of cold sweat on his forehead, his fingers unconsciously clutching the corner of the quilt.
The oil lamp in the room had burned dry. A sliver of moonlight leaked through the crack in the window, falling on the hand resting at the edge of the bed.
Que Zhi’s hand lay there, just as it had been before he fell asleep—he hadn’t pulled it back. His breathing was steady and deep, his chest rising and falling gently beneath the quilt. The lines of his face had softened considerably in sleep.
He was asleep. He had actually fallen asleep.
Xi Yu suddenly realized something—from the very first night on the Gobi, Que Zhi had always slept leaning against a rock or a dune, his curved saber pressed across his knees.
No matter how brightly the fire burned, he always kept three stones within arm’s reach. He wasn’t sleeping—he was keeping watch. But now his eyes were closed, his breathing long and even, his eyelashes casting quiet shadows in the moonlight, his lips slightly pursed.
His curved saber hung on the bedpost, clear across the room.
He had hung his saber somewhere he couldn’t reach. He had turned his back to the drafty walls of a relay station where anyone could push open the door at any moment. He had fallen asleep in a strange room. Not keeping watch—his last words before sleep had been “Sleep” directed at him, and then he’d truly slept.
Xi Yu turned over gently to face him and looked at him for a long time in the darkness.
He said softly, “You’re the first person who’s made me feel like maybe I could turn my back to someone too.”
So softly that even he couldn’t hear it himself.
—
The next morning, when Xi Yu woke, Que Zhi was no longer in the bed. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, then realized he was covered by two quilts—his own and Que Zhi’s, both piled on top of him, tucked in tightly, wrapped around him like a cocoon.
He turned his head. Que Zhi was standing by the window, already dressed in his robe, holding a waterskin and tilting his head back to drink. Morning light streamed in from behind him, gilding the edges of his hair in a pale gold against his silhouette.
Que Zhi finished drinking and turned around. He saw Xi Yu poking a messy head out from the quilts, his peach-blossom eyes not yet fully open, the faint flush at their corners deepened by the stuffy warmth of the bed—like ink spreading across rice paper.
Que Zhi looked down at the figure curled up in the blankets, having wrapped both their quilts around himself, and a low, husky laugh escaped his throat. His voice was lazy and indulgent.
He asked casually, “How did you end up stealing my quilt too?”
There was no reproach in his tone—just an idle, affectionate tolerance.
His own body was exposed to the cool night air, but he showed no sign of minding. He simply stood there watching the youth buried in the bedding—all his innate dominance and stubbornness, when it came to Xi Yu, transformed into silent accommodation.
Xi Yu looked down at the two quilts covering him, then back at the fully dressed man by the window.
He instinctively pulled the soft bedding tighter around himself, curling deeper into its warmth, the tips of his ears faintly flushed.
He buried half his face in the quilt, looking up at Que Zhi with the faintest flush at the corners of his eyes. His voice was soft but utterly certain: “It wasn’t me who took it. You put it on me.”
His tone was so assured, as if he’d witnessed the whole thing with his own eyes.
Que Zhi didn’t argue.
He set the waterskin on the table, walked over, crouched by the bed, and reached out to feel his forehead.
When he’d first come in, Xi Yu’s face had been too pale—it didn’t look like he’d slept well.
Que Zhi pressed his palm against Xi Yu’s forehead for a few breaths, then withdrew his hand, as if confirming it wasn’t a fever. He said, “Get up. The innkeeper’s wife made milk tea.”
He turned to fetch Xi Yu’s boots.
The boots were by the door. Que Zhi had brushed them clean the night before—all the mud spots and bits of grass scraped off—and set them side by side, neatly aligned.
Xi Yu watched him crouch down, pick up the boots, and place them by the bed. Then he said, “I used to wake up three or four times every night. I’d wake at the sound of wind, at the sound of rats scurrying. But since we started crossing the Gobi, it seems like I’ve been waking up less and less.”
He looked down, tying his sash, winding it around his fingers several times. He paused. “Last night, I only woke once.”
Que Zhi didn’t ask why.
He just carefully helped him put on his boots. “It won’t happen again.”
Xi Yu heard him. He threw off the quilt, got out of bed, and crouched on the rammed-earth floor to tie the other boot himself.
Que Zhi stood beside him, watching the stray strand of hair at the back of his head bob in the pale gold light streaming through the window lattice. After a moment, he reached out and pressed down the unruly tuft.
The hair was fine—it sprang right back up. He pressed it down twice.
“There’s a lock of hair at the back of your head that won’t stay down.”
“Leave it. Is there still milk tea? I won’t drink it if it’s cold.”
“There is. Keeping warm on the stove.”
—
When they came downstairs, the innkeeper’s wife was adding dried dung to the stove. She watched Xi Yu descend the steps—his left sleeve cut short, the fabric strips still wrapped around the tall man’s leg behind him; his right empty sleeve fluttering in the morning breeze, his hair neatly tied with a wooden comb, chin lifted slightly. As he walked, his shoulder brushed against Que Zhi’s arm, and the other man stepped half a pace aside to make room.
Xi Yu sat down on a bench at the inn entrance, lifted a bowl of milk tea to his lips, and blew on it gently before taking a sip. The tea was golden-brown, with a thin layer of milk skin and butter floating on top—salty, fragrant, and warm, tasting of wind-blown sand and cozy comfort.
He looked up and saw the mountain ridge they’d been following for over a dozen days now, reduced to a pale blue dotted line against the sky.
They had reached the highest point of the trade route. Ahead, the downhill slope would grow gentler, and the Gobi would gradually give way to grasslands.
He finished his bowl of milk tea, set the empty bowl beside the bench, stood up, and stretched lazily into the mountain wind. Turning back to Que Zhi, he said, “Let’s go. Time to set out.”
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