The leaf finally stopped outside of an inn.

JinGe stepped into the inn and recognized the guards who were sitting around a table in the inn. They all looked solemn. Some were even tearing up a bit. The food and wine were served on their table, and they ate silently. ZhenYu could not be seen, he was not with them.

"ZhenYu must be up on the second floor," thought the girl as she took towards the stairs but on the first thread a guard suddenly burst out, "You. Do not go up there."

The phrase made JinGe froze, it sounded like it was directed at her.

However, the words were for the man's friend who wanted to go up the stairs. He was standing instead of dining with them.

"Sit down," he scolded his friend as the others silently watched.

"The master is in pain. He needs us to accompany him," argued his friend. The guard approached him and placed his hand on his shoulder and sighed, "You are not the only one who cares for the master. We all do. Look at their faces."

Everyone had a solemn expression hanging on their faces as they ate. "The master is not ready to meet us yet. He will come out when he is ready. For the time being, he needs to be alone. All we can do is to wait. Did you forget about what he did after that?"

When they finally arrived at the scene, they saw the young master panicking as he tried to move the heavy wooden blocks despite his own injury like a madman and when it was removed, the young mistress was beyond saving.

The master kept shouting and talking to her. Everyone knew, in their hearts that she wouldn't survive, seeing how badly she was injured from the fall.

All of them were an audience to a tragic love.

After the mistress died, rain began falling again. It took a while before they could persuade the young master to move from the spot.

They decided to take the mistress with them. However, when they got close to the dead body, the master pushed their hands away and carried the mistress by himself without a word as they travelled to the neighboring city. Her body was in his arms, nobody could approach him nor the body even after they arrived at the town in the morning.

The guards tried to settle down at the local inn which the master gave a lot of money to stay as he wanted to keep the body in the room instead of the wooden shed behind the inn. There was a huge argument but, in the end, the innkeeper was paid sufficiently to allow it.

He ordered us to bring the local undertaker and a coffin over. Later, he dressed himself in his official robe and went out with a guard to the neighboring office to visit their city lord. He came back at night, still sober and serious and had been in his room on the second floor since then.

The guard who accompanied him told us later that when he was with the new city lord, the young master acted like everything never happened but when the city lord asked him about his wife, the master replied with a forced smile and said, "She just passed away." The news shocked the city lord, and he quickly changed the topic.

"It is better to leave him by himself to figure things out," said the head guard as he poured a cup of wine for himself as the others resume eating while the other guard quietly re-joined them at the table.

JinGe went upstairs and was looking around. "How to know which is ZhenYu's room?"

Suddenly a waiter walked up from the stairs and passed through her as she was literally a ghost now.

The man was holding a tray of white sheets and complaining, "Stupid innkeeper. You can just bring up yourself but no, you had to order me around."

There was an uncomfortable feeling when the man passed through her, but it also gave her a great idea. While the man slowly placed the sheets into a cupboard on the second floor just next to the stairs, JinGe was utilizing her ghostly characteristics as she travelled passed through several rooms, trying to find ZhenYu.

They were some who were sleeping, eating and there were others who were arguing within their rooms, but she still could not find him. At the end of the corridor, the last room, she entered and finally saw Xiao Tao and ZhenYu with her body lying on the bed, with all the mud still on clothes. Everything belonging to LiQin was there in the room, set aside on the table.

"Master, I am sorry. If the Mistress did not save me first, she would have survived. It was all my fault," cried Xiao Tao tearfully but ZhenYu paid her no attention and just sat there right on the floor beside the bed.

He was not crying or sad but sat there silently, his hand still gripping onto LiQin's hand.

"At least let us change her out of her bloody clothes," suggested Xiao Tao but there was no response from the man.

A guard came knocking and entered into the room. He carried a tray of food for ZhenYu, but it was unnecessary. The one he placed before, were not touched.

"Master, you need to eat as well. The mistress will be sad if she knew that you are behaving as such."

He ignored them.

The guard approached her and shook his head. Understanding his gesture, Xiao Tao left the room with the guard, leaving ZhenYu behind.

The man stared at the lifeless body. He didn't have the will to do anything. He just wanted to stay beside LiQin, the wife he couldn't protect. "She isn't dead," the thought kept repeating in his mind.

"LiQin, you will wake up soon, right? I am sure you are just very tired," said ZhenYu at her corpse, before fatigue took over his body, and he fell asleep beside the bed.

JinGe inched closer and sat closely next to ZhenYu, studying him. Her left hand was placed on the bed while the other reached out to touch him. She focused, trying very hard so it would not pass through him so that she could caressed him, slowly lifting his hair away, looking at his face as he slept near her corpse.

His lips were not particularly thick; it was thin and a slightly darker. Her hand traced his eyebrows which were thick and bushy but were kept evenly. Long eye lashes sprayed out from his eyelids. He had a big forehead as well. "Soon, the boyish features in his faces will disappear and replaced by manlier characteristics," thought JinGe as she caressed the outline of his cheek and towards his jaw.

She was regretting deeply, that she had never taken the time to study his face. It was now, she knew that she was very lucky because she had a handsome husband that would have made the other girls envy.

"Although I am glad that I met you, but our meeting had bought you a lot of grief," she whispered to ZhenYu as she gazed at his grief-stricken face.

Her focus changed to the dead body that laid on the bed.

It looked strange to her as it laid there in the bed. Just the day before, she was in it and was looking into the mirror and looking at that face. The face doesn't belong to her, it was LiQin's. It had been so long, she almost forgot how she looked.

A sudden flicker of the candle and the light reflected, directed her attention towards the mirror on the table just behind ZhenYu.

JinGe gazed at her own reflection. It had been so long; she almost did not recognise herself. A familiar face yet strange at the same time, was the only words she could describe herself.

Peeking at the mirror she also noticed the bleeding wound she had on her chest, the one that took her life as Sun YuQiao and JinGe looked away from the mirror.

There was already a clear determination in her mind.

"Although you may not hear what I am saying but I must to save my father. He is the only relative I have left other than grandmother. I cannot return back with you," said JinGe to ZhenYu. "And my revenge for Sun Family against Yongsan. The death of my stepparents and siblings needs to be repaid. I must leave you. Forget about us and live your life, get yourself another wife and lots of children."

Tears fell of her face and passed through, "Fate allow us to meet but we were only meant to be strangers. This is farewell," said the JinGe as she kissed him on his cheek.

"I will regret this, leaving you behind, maybe just maybe if fate allows us another chance in our next life. I will surely find you and no matter what circumstances that we might face. I will always stay beside you. It's my promise to you."

JinGe wiped away her tears and sat down on the bed. She reclined herself slowly and was taken in by the body.

This was her second time as she came back alive. LiQin's body gradually grew warmer, and blood was rushing through her cheeks. Her eyelids began to flutter, and they opened once more.

Slowly she removed ZhenYu's hand and tried to sneak away. She did not take anything with her except for the money that was in her belongings, she needed travelling expenses.

While searching for her money pouch, JinGe noticed ZhenYu's money pouch was placed carelessly on the table, "Always misplaced his stuff. If weren't for Old Man Kang taking care of him. All his items would have disappeared," thought the girl with a sad smile. "This is the last deed I would do for you." She tucked it away safely before leaving the room as she opened the door and closed it again softly.

As she escaped, JinGe also grabbed one of the sheets in the cupboard placed by the waiter before and covered her head and left through the window. She took one of the horses in the stable and rode away. The young woman was in a rush that she didn't notice her bracelet was caught and left at the side of the ledge.

The moon was hanging outside as ZhenYu dreamt of a strange dream. He vaguely remembered the face of a girl whom he had never met before. The young woman approached him in a wedding dress. She spoke regretfully and cried as tears kept falling from her cheeks.

The words she had spoken to him, they were fuzzy, but he remembered bits of it, "I have to save. Revenge for my family. Leave you. Forget about me. Have another wife. Many children, grandchildren. Stay together in the next life. I promise."

Although she spoke sadly, but her voice, it carried a twinkling note, it sounded so familiar. "Where did he hear it before?"

After that the lady disappeared and he faintly remembered that he saw his wife's figure and the door moving as it closed.

"Do not go!" he cried out abruptly, arousing from his sleep. There was a slight headache as his mind recalled the events before he fell asleep.

He remembered that he was exhausted when he came back from the official visit to the new city lord's office. He hadn't eaten anything, only water had passed his throat. And when he returned, Xiao Tao would not leave him alone until a guard ushered her out. "I was holding onto LiQin's hand," instinctively he squeezed her hand, but he realized it was empty.

ZhenYu looked over at the bed, and was in shock as there was no body on the bed "Is there a thief? But who would steal a corpse?"

He rushed over to their belongings on the table. He immediately noticed that his belongings remained the same while LiQin's items were touched. "This is weird."

The young man quickly checked the items that were stolen. Other than her money pouch there was nothing that was missing. "The thief only had time to steal one pouch. Then why didn't he take his. It was in a more conspicuous-" His purse was placed neatly tucked on top of his belongings. "I remembered putting it on the table after I came back."

He rushed out to the floor below, he found some of his guards. One was already drunk while the two others were still chatting. "Did you see anyone coming down here?" he asked them frantically.

They were startled by his sudden appearance, and stuttering they replied to him, "No, we... did not see anyone coming down the stairs... young master."

"There was no one who came down this way," reported the other, still holding peanuts shells in one hand while the other had a bottle of wine which he quickly hid behind his back.

"If there are correct, then how the thief took the body away?" thought the man when ZhenYu suddenly remembered that there was a window on the second floor, just at the left corner. A sudden realization hit him, how can he be so stupid? The thief might climb down from the second floor through the window and reached the ground by slipping off the stable's roof.

He ran up the stairs and surely the window was opened. There were footsteps of mud on the window ledge. "The mud... comes from," if he remembered correctly, they are from the mountains. They were a tinge of yellow mud, the same ones that were tainted on his shoes.

ZhenYu rushed back to the room and return with a candle to have a better look. ZhenYu squinted his eyes and inspected the footsteps closely and those from the corridor too. "No, it can't be," stated ZhenYu because all the footprints had the same design with LiQin's shoes.

ZhenYu had remembered that before they left home, how LiQin and Madam Wong was scolding LiQin for ruining good shoes by marking them with a slash mark on the sole.

ZhenYu could not believe his eyes when he saw the footprints. "It was the same slash as the one he saw that day, in length and in width."

He tried to make sense of everything that had happened. With all the hints and evidence left behind, there was only one conclusion that came from all the scenarios that he thought up, "LiQin is not dead. She left on her own."

And his legs grew weak from the thought, and he slumped to the ground.

He knew deep down in his heart; she cannot be alive anymore.

ZhenYu saw the irrecoverable wound on her body and witnessed her last moments. The young man could still remember the last breath she took, leaving him behind and the warmth of her body slowly disappearing as her body becoming colder as he held her in his arms. It was still the same when he had fallen asleep just now.

ZhenYu cannot comprehend the situation that he was facing right now. All he could do now was to return home without LiQin.

Something shone under the moonlight and caught his eyes; the young man saw the bracelet that he had gifted her and was reminded of the promise he made. He took it into his hands and gripped tightly onto it. "Where are you now?" he whispered into the lonely moon hanging outside the window.

End of Part 3