“Pei Ziheng! I beg you, please, please, please!”

“Are you still not going to tell the truth? I’m going to hang up on 1. 3… 2…”

“Don’t hang up! I’ll say it! I’m Xia Ling, alright! I’m Xia Ling!” Her voice shouted out before her brain could process what she was saying. She then said in a low voice. “Pei Ziheng, please save him… I beg you to please save him…”

It was quiet on the other end of the line, but she could hear his heavy and steady breathing clearly.

“Pei Ziheng…” She pressed him.

“Just saying you’re her is not enough.” Pei Ziheng said very slowly like he was trying to control his emotions. “How are you going to prove you’re Xia Ling? Xiao Ling, tell me something that was private between the two of us before. Tell me some things that no one else knows. Then I’ll believe that you’re really back.”

“Pei Ziheng! How do you have the mood to hear about our past given the urgency of the situation?!”

“I’ll go save Li Lei once you’ve replied me.”

“Okay, I’ll say it…” Xia Ling knew that resisting him was useless. She remembered the ringback tone earlier, so the first thing she recounted was about it. “That song ‘Perfect Dream’ was a birthday song that I wrote for you because you gave me the most perfect dream. That night when the recording of the song was completed, you came to the recording studio to fetch me home. You told me then that I was your perfect dream.”

This was something that only the two of them knew about. Pei Ziheng was always careful when he was speaking sweet nothings to her, afraid that someone else would hear him.

“I asked you why that was and you just smiled and kissed my eyes.” Xia Ling did not understand then why Pei Ziheng had said that she was his perfect dream. It was only now that she was another person, in another lifetime, that she understood a little of what he had said. Perhaps to him, “Xia Ling” was a dream that he had created — beautiful, weak, fragile — and she was the epitome of his most perfect dream. This was completely separate from her human form, her as a living person with blood and flesh.

“Keep going.” Pei Ziheng’s deep voice insisted.

Xia Ling’s mind drifted further out and was becoming increasingly cluttered with past memories. “There was one year when I was filming an MV that I picked up an abandoned kitten. It loved to crawl into the blankets with us and sleep in between the two of us. You didn’t like it and insisted that I give it away to someone else. I refused and argued with you over it. You then got Chu Chen to secretly give it away to a fan. I didn’t speak to you for a month because of that incident.

“When you took me away from the orphanage, the irises were in full bloom. You picked a bunch from one of the bushes and handed it to me. Later, I told you repeatedly that that was the first time someone had given me flowers…”

“I revered you like you were God. You held my hand and taught me to write… You chose my clothes for me… Whenever I took a nap in your study room, you would cover me with a blanket…”

She described each incident and each event so clearly that it seemed that they had just occurred yesterday.

Pei Ziheng was completely silent on the other end of the line like she was speaking to the air.

“Pei Ziheng…” She knew that he was still listening, and she begged him again. “Pei Ziheng, save Li Lei… Only you can save him now!”

“Li Lei is that important to you?” His voice was hoarse.

She wanted to reply “Yes,” but was afraid that it would anger him. She thought of saying “No,” but was again afraid that he would not care about Li Lei at all. She was in a conundrum and did not know how to answer him. Her palms were sweating as she fretted about the situation.

Thankfully, he did not seem to want to hear her answer. He continued, “Tell me what happened.”

She hurriedly told him everything that had transpired.

There was slight anger in his voice as he said, “You’re injured?! Why didn’t you tell me so earlier?!”

She was stunned for a moment, before softly replying, “I forgot.” What were her injuries in comparison to Li Lei’s life? She was already numb to the pain in her body, like her body was not hers. Under the cold torrential rain, blood was flowing from her injured limbs.

Yet, she was not concerned for herself, and said again, “Save Li Lei!”

“Tell me your detailed location.” Pei Ziheng’s voice was calm and steady as a mountain amidst the howling wind.

“I’m at the Paragliding Club up north from the city, at the bottom of the cliff mid-way up the mountain. That cliff has a cherry blossom tree growing out of it. Li Lei is located at the third mountain to the East from the cherry blossom tree.”

“I don’t want to hear that man’s name again.” Pei Ziheng said, and his voice was so cold that it seemed he was speaking from the depths of hell. “I’ll save him… But Xiao Ling, I want you to break all ties with him and come home with me.”

The wind howled loudly in the background, and the rain kept pouring down.

A flash of purple lighting crackled through the dark sky.

Xia Ling felt her body become colder by the second, and her heart was even colder. She said through chattering teeth, “I… I don’t want to go back.”

“I’m not having a negotiation with you.”

“I don’t…” Her tears flowed freely from her eyes, as she knew that there was no going against him. It was always this way. Once he had made his decision, her views were unimportant.

She had paid a huge price to be able to leave from the prison he created.

And now, how could she go back there?

“You have all the time to think about it…” Pei Ziheng’s voice was impassive. “I’m not in any hurry.”

Xia Ling’s heart clenched tight. Yes, he was not anxious at all. It was Li Lei that was in a precarious situation. With a loud rumble of thunder, she saw another flash of light strike the peach blossom tree on the top of the cliff. The tree was engulfed in flames in an instant before the fire was expediently put out by the pouring rain. The branches and trunk crumbled and fell down the ravine.

“Li Lei…”

Her hand gripped tighter onto the phone, before she finally said in a quiet voice, “I’ll go back.”

She heard him give a satisfied grunt on the other end of the line.

She did not have to wait long before he arrived to pick her up. In the thunderstorm, two helicopters came near, one headed in the direction where Li Lei fell, and the other flew towards her, circling the skies above her for a while to search for a landing area.

The door of the helicopter opened, and Pei Ziheng was the first person out of the door.

Xia Ling rarely saw him in a disheveled state. He was not wearing or holding anything to shelter himself from the rain, jumping straight off the plane into the mud. The rain soon drenched his shirt completely. He strode quickly over to her side, and the first thing he did was to bend over to shelter her from the rain.

“Quick!” He shouted over his shoulder.

An emergency first-aid team followed behind him, running over through the mud carrying a stretcher.

“Xiao Ling, how are you feeling?!”

“How is Li Lei?!”

They said at the same time.

Pei Ziheng’s gaze turned cold, and he did not reply to her question. He reached out his hand to check her injuries.

Xia Ling became anxious, and she grabbed onto his wrist. “Pei Ziheng! Tell me, please! How is Li Lei?!” Perhaps she used too much strength in this action, pulling on the injury near her chest. She felt a pain shoot through her heart and started coughing uncontrollably, hot and bloody liquid spouting out from her mouth. She choked and coughed harder, almost curling into a ball.

“Hurry… hurry up and tell me…” She said through her coughs, gripping tighter onto Pei Ziheng’s wrist.