Wei Lan tilted his head slightly to the side to avoid Qin Zhao’s warm breath teasing the rim of his ear. He pressed his lips together, trying to keep his voice as serious and detached as possible to conceal the embarrassment rising in his heart. “Professor Qin, watch what you say. This is a library, not your experimental physics lab where you can spout whatever hypotheses you want.”
Qin Zhao was not discouraged by that cold attitude. On the contrary, he found the young librarian even more irresistibly intriguing. He chuckled softly, his eyes brimming with interest as they followed every small movement of the other man.
Beyond the library’s expansive glass windows, the golden dusk sky over Beijing was abruptly swallowed by roiling black clouds sweeping in from Xishan. Wind began shrieking through the leaves of the century-old locust trees across the Academy grounds, carrying the rich dampness of earth and the musty scent of a summer storm. The air pressure dropped sharply, making everyone feel restless and stifled. Before long, the first raindrops—large and heavy—began pounding out a relentless rhythm on the old building’s blue-gray glazed-tile roof.
Within ten minutes, the thunderstorm had transformed into a violent gale. Rain thundered like war drums, and a curtain of white water sealed off the walkways, blurring the hazy streetlights of the ancient capital.
Just as Shen Shuhe finished clearing away the tea tray, he suddenly heard a dry, sharp crack from the corner of the special storage room farther inside—the room where rare manuscripts dating back to the Song and Ming dynasties were kept. His expression changed at once. Though the old library building had been renovated many times, the northeastern section of its tiled roof remained a vulnerable point that had never been fully repaired. With rain pouring down like this, leaks were entirely possible.
“A Lan! Get to Storage Room Three!” Shen Shuhe shouted urgently, his normally graceful footsteps suddenly hurried and anxious.
Wei Lan realized how serious the situation was as well. He immediately dropped the stack of files in his hands and ran after Shen Shuhe. Seeing this, Qin Zhao’s instincts as an experimental physicist accustomed to handling emergencies in the lab kicked in. Without a moment’s hesitation, he strode after them.
The scene inside Storage Room Three was utter chaos. Rainwater, carrying dirt from between the tiles, seeped through the old plaster ceiling in thin streams and dripped directly onto the camphorwood cabinet containing the ancient poetry manuscripts by the great poet Su Shi that Shen Shuhe had been studying. Those filthy drops, full of acid and organic impurities, were the greatest enemy of ancient xuan paper—a material already extremely brittle and sensitive to moisture after centuries of existence.
“Oh God, Chest Six contains rubbings of Tang-dynasty steles!” Wei Lan cried in alarm, his usually composed face gone white. He rushed over, trying to use his slender frame’s limited strength to drag the heavy wooden chest out of the leaking water’s reach.
Shen Shuhe quickly moved in beside him. His hands trembled, but he still tried to be as precise as possible as he carefully lifted the velvet-lined box containing the original manuscript of Su Dongpo. His face was filled with worry, cold sweat beading on his forehead and mingling with a few icy drops of rain falling from the ceiling.
At that moment, a tall, solid figure appeared in the doorway of the storage room. Lu Chenjue, who should have left ten minutes earlier, was standing there. Half his body was drenched from the rain, his black hair plastered to his broad, high forehead, yet his eyes remained bright and strangely calm. As it turned out, when he had just reached the institute gates and realized how destructive the storm was, all he could think of were the vulnerable ancient books and... the elegant librarian left alone in this dilapidated old building. Without a second thought, he had turned back, braving the torrents cascading outside.
“Shuhe, step aside. Let me!” Lu Chenjue ordered in a low voice as he hurried to Shen Shuhe’s side.
Without hesitation, he took off his expensive wool overcoat, wrapped it completely around the box of precious manuscripts Shen Shuhe was holding, then used his tall body to shield him from the leaking drops above. After that, Lu Chenjue rolled up both shirt sleeves, revealing muscular forearms traced with masculine veins, and bent down with Qin Zhao to carry the several-dozen-pound camphorwood chest to the dry area on the other side of the room.
“Chen-jue, you... why did you come back?” Shen Shuhe stared in confusion at the overcoat wrapped around the treasure in his hands, then at Lu Chenjue’s broad shoulders, soaked through with rainwater. A complicated emotion surged through him—moving, painful, and touched with a sweetness he could not name.
“Save the books first. We’ll talk about everything else later!” Lu Chenjue replied decisively. His voice carried a steadying force that immediately dispelled the panic in Shen Shuhe’s heart.
For the next full hour, the four of them threw themselves into a true battle against nature. Qin Zhao displayed remarkable agility and strength, constantly hauling heavy book chests while also finding a large plastic tarp in the storeroom to cover the fixed shelves that could not be moved. Wei Lan dashed back and forth searching for buckets and basins to catch the leaks. His hands, accustomed only to turning the pages of delicate papers, were now covered in dirt and plaster dust, but his eyes were more determined than ever. Every time Wei Lan slipped on the slick floor and nearly fell, Qin Zhao appeared in time, catching him around the waist with a powerful arm and whispering in his ear, “Careful. If you fall, it’ll break my heart.”
Though Wei Lan was intensely embarrassed by Qin Zhao tailing him and fussing over him so much in the middle of the crisis, he did not push him away. Instead, he gave a small nod and replied softly, “I know. You be careful too.”
By the time the rain outside began to ease, leaving only its steady patter and the distant rumble of thunder, the emergency relocation was finally complete. All the precious ancient documents had been moved to a completely safe, perfectly dry area. By then, all four of them were utterly exhausted, their clothes disheveled and drenched with a mixture of sweat and rainwater.