You rascal, stop right there!

A separate courtyard of the Minister of Rites' Mansion.

Bai Wan followed Ling Shumo into the mansion as if it was a matter of course.

He found that Brother Zichen was truly an official with clean hands. When he walked in, he saw only simple objects and not a single valuable thing.

Standing at the gate of the courtyard, watching the few maids and servants bowing, he felt that it was particularly elegant and lovely compared to Luo Wenqi's luxurious garden.

Especially the lotus flowers in the pond, which remind people of the jade lotus in the orchid garden.

"Sir!" A maid bowed to them as she passed by.

Bai Wan looked at her pretty and sweet face, which was a pleasant sight to behold.

He nudged Ling Shumo's arm with his elbow and smiled meaningfully.

"Although there are not many maids in Brother Zichen's house, they are really beautiful!"

The maid opposite heard the praise and looked at the man's handsome face. She blushed with embarrassment and walked away angrily.

"Abai, her name is Yaocheng. If you like her, ask her to take care of you in the next few days. Or, I can find you a husband?"

Ling Shumo's voice was not loud, but it gave people a faint feeling of pressure.

He looked carefully at the person opposite him, his eyes probing, and listened quietly with his ears tilted.

"No, that won't work. Why should I bother with these girls?" Bai Wan shrugged helplessly.

It is true that he has always been pretty good to pretty girls, but because he is a ruffian, he basically doesn't have much interaction with them.

Ling Shumo pointed out something: "You think about making money all day long, isn't it for the purpose of getting married and having children?"

The person on the other side couldn't help laughing: "I just simply like money, and I'm a ruffian! I won't harm others!"

He waved his left fist as if jokingly.

Ling Shumo couldn't help but smile.

I'm afraid this person doesn't know.

Someone has already been harmed!

He just felt that the person in front of him was very self-deprecating and always had a very low opinion of himself.

Little did they know that they had confused people's minds unknowingly.

So he sighed and led the man into the yard.

Bai Wan walked in and looked at everything in the mansion, walking straight ahead.

Finally, I found a very strange sculpture.

It was a cat half the height of a man, crudely molded from clay and protected by small wooden fences in front and behind.

Bai Wan looked at it and felt it was dazzling.

With Brother Zichen's taste, it would be a bit ugly to put this kind of thing in the house.

He stared at it for a long time, then quietly touched behind it.

"Be careful!" Ling Shumo said softly.

"Ah?" Bai Wan retracted his hand, feeling surprised.

Ling Shumo pointed his finger and said, "This is what you made when you were a kid!"

Bai Wan originally thought that Brother Zi Chen had some strange taste, but she didn't expect it to be her own masterpiece. She just felt embarrassed.

He thought that Han Miaoran was a painting saint and should be considered perfect, but there was actually such a thing.

"You, how many of my old things do you still have here?" Bai Wan felt a little guilty for some reason.

In the past, I thought I was a painting saint, but my hand was broken and my memory was lost. This made Zichen sad and he couldn't bear to ask.

But now it seems that this is not entirely the case.

"Well...I have known you since I was seven years old." Ling Shumo smiled gently.

Bai Wan knew that she and him had grown up together, although she had no memories of them. No wonder Bai Hua Ge felt so familiar with this man when he first saw him.

He couldn't help but follow the man into the study in the side hall, and saw many paintings hanging inside.

He looked at those paintings very carefully, and the signatures on them were all in Yuebai.

In other words, any painting by Han Miaoran would have Ling Shumo’s calligraphy on it.

……

"It's a pity that your former residence has been assigned to another place by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, otherwise I could take you to have a look..."

"After you disappeared, the Han Mansion fell into decline. The servants in the mansion began to sell off your things..."

“It took me a while to get it back.”

“I didn’t collect much… but I tried my best.”

……

"Fortunately, I found you in the end!"

Finally, Ling Shumo's eyes seemed to be slightly red, and he stroked one of the paintings hanging in the middle, "Dance of Liang Meng". The calligraphy and painting overlapped, and the explanation of the painting that day seemed to be just yesterday.

Bai Wan remembered the scene when he deciphered this painting. What a coincidence, it turned out to be the signature of his own Han Miaoran period and Ling Shumo.

It is a kind of fate, like destiny, that allows close friends to meet each other even though they are thousands of miles apart!

It would be a lie to say that I didn’t feel touched or excited.

"Brother Zichen..."

Bai Wan looked up and saw the person opposite her with a gentle look on his face, gently stroking the objects from his old paintings.

Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his heart.

"If, I mean if I can't recover my previous memory in this life. Even my previous talent. Will you be disappointed?"

He asked this question in great earnestness, without a trace of his former thick-skinnedness left.

Ling Shumo couldn't help laughing: "You don't think you were born a painting saint, do you?"

He smiled, and his gentle eyes almost revealed unknown emotions.

"I've seen you when you first started learning to paint. I've also seen you when you couldn't even hold a pen with your right hand, and you couldn't even recognize all the characters..."

That’s the good thing about childhood sweethearts: you’ve seen everything you should and shouldn’t have seen.

This is why, even though he knew that Bai Wan’s right hand was disabled, he still firmly believed that his left hand could start from scratch and even return to its peak.

"I believe that what you were able to do with your right hand back then, you can do with your left hand as well now!"

Ling Shumo looked at him, his gentle tone unchanged, and the trust in his eyes that was independent of anything else was very moving.

Bai Wan on the opposite side was silent for a moment and got goose bumps all over his body.

He was struck by the man's words for a moment, and his heart was burning with anger.

Then, Ling Shumo told him.

When Bai Wan was still Han Miaoran, his father was a failed scholar and his mother was the owner of a tofu shop. The whole family's hopes were on him taking the imperial examination.

Han Miaoran went to the same academy as Ling Shumo when he was seven years old. He was a naughty boy who talked nonsense, skipped school and didn't like to do his homework.

Later, his parents died in a boat accident while visiting relatives. From then on, he became afraid of water and never took a boat again. Even his temperament began to change drastically.

Han Miaoran no longer took the imperial examination, and followed Ling Shumo to worship Li Simeng as his teacher, and began to learn painting. He became a talented person who was well-read in poetry and good at calligraphy and painting.

Bai Wan also knew about what happened later, such as the court painter, the painting master, and even his disappearance and death.

The past is over.

Bai Wan knew that he really had no relatives or friends. It was rare that he had a close friend like Brother Zichen who cared about him.

This was the first time he seriously understood his past after knowing that he was Han Miaoran.

Except for the missing six months.

others……

It's an ordinary life without any thrilling events.

Bai Wan felt a little emotional at first, then immediately regained his cheekiness and smiled intoxicatingly:

"Brother Zichen, I feel lucky that I met you again. Otherwise, I would be eating, drinking, whoring and gambling somewhere, and how could I become a painter?"

Death is not important.

When you are dead and no one remembers you, that is when you are truly dead.

Now, five years later, how many people can still remember Han Miaoran? And those paintings, ordinary people will not remember them either.

Ling Shumo knew what he was feeling and just looked at him quietly.

Bai Wan's eyes were as dark as ink, and with her smile, her appearance became even more like the moon and stars.

Because he met Ling Shumo and Luo Wenqi, he found what he liked to do before, which made him happier than having a hundred younger brothers.

"Then... do you still want to draw the best picture in the world?" Ling Shumo looked at him in a daze.

Bai Wan frowned, and suddenly some passion surged in her heart, and she blurted out, "Could it be that I have already drawn the missing six months, but I just don't remember it?"

Ling Shumo looked at the man with a heavy heart and felt sad.

If that is true, then you must have drawn something so horrifying that you would suffer the pain of having your hand severed, the difficulty of losing your memory, and the disaster of being killed, and you cannot even tell your relatives and friends...

She even had to avoid everyone and go out alone to collect materials and paint, alone and helpless, without even telling him...

"Abai, I'll take you to ask Master Zen tomorrow, maybe we can find out?"

"Ah."