You rascal, stop right there!

Under the moonlight, mottled shadows of the trees sway.

At this moment, it seemed as if the person in front of me was the only scenery in the world.

Bai Wan looked at the person in front of him in a daze, and felt that what this person said was really sharp.

Selfishly, if this person could stay with him for the rest of his life, what else would he be dissatisfied with?

but……

People can't be so selfish.

This kind of unworldly emotion cannot be seen in public.

The Ministry of Rites is in charge of the laws and ethics of the world, and should be a noble authority that strictly abides by the rules.

Once he is criticized, Ling Shumo will become the talk of the world and the laughing stock. What if his career is damaged?

He closed his eyes deeply, his gaze seemed to be stained with falling flowers: "You..."

"Why did you take the imperial examination in the first place?"

Although he knew that this was against the will of heaven and morality and that his future was bleak, he could not control his thoughts.

Ling Shumo was stunned, but after his eyes moved he smiled, as if a spring breeze was blowing on his face.

"Because you gave up the imperial examination and took the painting exam with me."

Is it really?

Bai Wan's expression suddenly changed unpredictably. He felt that some fragmented memory fragments suddenly flooded into his mind, and those things seemed to be out of his control.

……

Maybe the medication I had been taking for a long time helped me recover my memory, or maybe the stimulation from that trip to the other hospital made something in my heart open up.

After this sentence, his mind was in chaos.

Soon I saw some pictures...

"Ran'er, you didn't study hard and you tricked the teacher into going out to play!"

Under the plum tree, there happened to be a little boy in white clothes in a wooden house who was being hit on the palm with a ruler.

The boy was Han Miaoran, who was only seven years old.

He was not a good and obedient child from the beginning. He was naughty, willful and playful by nature.

If his father had not been a failed scholar, he would not have been forced to study and take the imperial examinations since he was a child.

That is to say, his mother happened to be a tofu beauty who ran a tofu shop, and the family money spent by the father and son on studying together was just enough to keep up.

If it were just that, with Han Miaoran studying like this since childhood, he would only face two possibilities: passing the imperial examination to become an official, or failing and inheriting the tofu shop.

However, he just didn't like reading but loved painting.

Perhaps it can be said that he originally developed this interest by liking to draw on books because he did not like reading in the academy.

The teacher looked down on him and his classmates laughed at his poor grades.

Han Miaoran was very casual and didn't care what others said. She would catch crickets, crawl into dog holes, and draw portraits of her classmates on her textbooks to amuse herself.

Until one day, a new classmate came to the academy—Ling Shumo.

It is said that he was the son of another scholar named Ling, but this man's father did not care whether he could pass the imperial examination and supported his learning painting.

He was narcissistically showing his sloppy painting to others, but when he saw the lotus that Ling Shumo had helped him to finish, he was immediately shocked and bowed down in worship.

"Zi Chen, you are so awesome, you have to teach me!"

Han Miaoran chased after this man and almost gave him all the delicious food and fun things he had.

Seven-year-old Ling Shumo happily took the cloth bag he handed over.

As soon as he opened it, he took a step back in shock: "You liar, who would give a toad away?"

"This is not a toad, it's a tadpole. It just grew up after a few more days!" Han Miaoran said nonsense.

Unexpectedly, Xiao Ling Shumo actually believed his lies.

After that, it became a scene where Ling Shumo taught painting and Han Miaoran gave him strange things, which made him startled every day.

No one among his classmates was willing to pay attention to the messy Han Miaoran, but Ling Shumo, who sat at the next table, was the only one who liked to look at his drawings and would discuss them every time he handed them over.

Gradually, Ling Shumo discovered that Han Miaoran's comprehension ability was obviously better than his own, and his painting talent improved at an amazing speed.

"Do you want to take the imperial painting exam with me?" he once unconsciously asked the person opposite him.

Han Miaoran shook her head: "No, my father asked me to take the imperial examination. He said that the imperial examination is the only right path."

"But you're improving so fast!"

"That won't work either. Father said that our Han family must produce a top scholar."

"Well, my father has agreed to let me become an apprentice of the court painter Li Simeng. If you are interested, we can go together." Ling Shumo looked at him with a smile.

Han Miaoran asked him, "Why do you want to go together?"

"You are such a jerk. If I weren't here, you would have cut off all the Master's beard!"

"Okay! Then I won't bring you any candy today." Han Miaoran angrily drew a line on his face with a brush, "I'm going to eat them all and leave none for you!"

This is half true and half false, but the two seven-year-old children truly remember this friendship.

But I didn't expect that when we met again, things would be different from before.

When Han Miaoran was seven years old, his parents were on a boat trip to visit their grandparents when they were unfortunately collided with another ship.

All of a sudden, all four members of the family died.

Only seven-year-old Han Miaoran survived. She was lifted up and protected by countless uncles, aunts and uncles on the water. She was barely thrown into a small wooden basin and survived.

In that storm, he kept drifting along the wooden basin.

Han Miaoran drifted to the suburbs like that.

He was a little dazed, wearing tattered clothes and begging on the street as he moved forward.

In the entire capital city, the only person he knew and remembered was probably Ling Shumo.

When Han Miaoran saw the elegant and famous painter Li Simeng in the sedan chair and the handsome boy in blue clothes beside him on the street, her eyes widened.

He didn't care that he was being dragged, and grabbed the corner of the servant's clothes: "Zi Chen..."

The servant kicked the dirty beggar away without showing any kindness to him.

Fortunately, Ling Shumo reacted quickly and recognized at a glance that the beggar was his classmate Han Miaoran.

"Wait a minute, this person is Han Miaoran!"

With a frown on his face, he jumped off the carriage and caught the man who had been hungry for who knows how long and whose body was so thin that he was about to collapse.

"Kid, where are you from?" Li Simeng looked at him, twirling his beard.

Han Miaoran paused and spoke weakly: "Cai...Caizhou..."

The two people opposite were stunned.

It would take several days to get from Caizhou to the capital even by carriage. If the child had to walk all the way here, he would have suffered a lot.

I don’t know if it was because the loss of my family was too much of a blow, or because the hardships of wandering along the way were too great.

In short, his whole personality changed after he was taken in by Li Simeng.

He is no longer the playful and willful child he used to be, but has become a cautious and rule-abiding teenager.