Purple River Chapter 03 Part 08 - Love

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“Sir.” Guard Captain Cobra handed Di Lin a letter: “Just got it from the mailbox.”

Di Lin opened the letter, revealing only one sentence: “xpsspnpulsbqmbsuofd.” He gave it a look and nodded. Captain Cobra knew better and dismissed himself.

“What is it? What letter is so important? It came as soon as you returned to the Capital.” Lin Xiu Jia, his beautiful and gracious wife approached his side. Di Lin planned to hide the letter, but it was too late.

“A love letter?” Lin Xiu Jia asked mockingly.

Di Lin’s icy cold cheeks smiled in a way that was rarely seen: “You are the only one I love.” And handed her the letter.

“I was kidding. You are always like this, no fun at all!” Even though she complained, she couldn’t be happier on the inside: “Is it about work? I don’t think I should look at it.”

“It is fine. Between us, there is no secret.”

With that, he instantly melted her heart. She was so glad that she agreed to marry Di Lin back then. It was the best decision she ever made: “Luckily I chose him…”

Di Lin was young, handsome and talented. Given his position of prominence in the army, countless ladies were captivated by the Red Banner Master’s aloof charm. (He is now a Deputy Commander). But all of them were met with an icy mountain, a mountain made of Di Lin’s cold demeanor and calm, keeping them a thousand miles away. It was a common saying amongst the young misses in the Capital: “Di Lin was an impassable mountain of ice!”

“Too bad they never saw the other side of him when he is at home.” Lin Xiu Jia smiled pleasantly. Is there another husband out there who still loves his wife as much as he does after two years into the marriage? Everyone says that marriage is the graveyard of love, but in her eyes, this is the paradise, because she married an almost perfect husband…

Almost, the only flaw was the position he found himself in, an extremely dangerous secret identity… and the cause of her constant worry…

……

“xpsspnpulsbqmbsuofd.” “What does it mean?”

Di Lin explained to her: “It is a simple substitution cipher, try substituting each letter with the previous one in the alphabet.”

“worromotkraplartnec…” “It still doesn’t make sense!”

Di Lin gave her a naughty wink: “Try reading it in reverse.”

“Central Park tomorrow… Oh, I get it. Someone is asking to see you tomorrow in the Central Park!” Seeing the way Di Lin smiled, she leaped into his arms and pushed against his broad chest: “You are mean! You are making fun of me again!”

Instantly, Di Lin was on his feet, pulling up his sleeves in anger and glanced around him: “Who?! Who dares making fun of my wife? I will kill him!”

Lin Xiu Jia laughed happily at the sight of his act.

Di Lin sat back down again, holding Lin Xiu Jia gently in his arms: “Like I said, surely my wife is the smartest of them all.”

Lin Xiu Jia felt a wave of happiness wash over her… but then a question popped up in her mind: “Who sent the letter?”

“Oh, just an idiot who thinks he is being cleaver!” Di Lin revealed another gentle smile, together with his usual cold demeanor, it was surprisingly charming.

“ZiChuan Xiu!” Lin Xiu Jia guessed the name right away.

Di Lin smiled again: “I’m glad. We both think alike!”

……

In truth, ZiChuan Xiu’s extracurricular measures were mostly useless. If the letters were to fall into Yang Ming Hua’s hand, his cryptographic experts would solve a basic cipher like this in less than a minute. But it was in ZiChuan Xiu’s nature to do pointless things. In his words: “This is how you do things in secret!” and thus he insisted that all exchanges between him, Di Lin and Stirling had to be encrypted. And they weren’t allowed to use the same encryption either, sometimes shifting one letter in the alphabet, sometimes two, and sometimes the cipher even included highly sophisticated form of algebra…

In the end the real victims of the whole ordeal were Di Lin and Stirling. Every time they had to go to great lengths in order to decipher the unreadable gibberish. Sometimes even after they finally deciphered the code, its content would appear to be simple messages like:

“It is quite sunny today… I ate too many watermelons; my stomach is making noises.”

“There is a new waitress at the Heaven’s Dream tavern, super hot, just a bit uptight.”

“Stirling, the money I owe you, can I get a three month extension?”

……

Lin Jiu Jia seemed a bit agitated: “Him again, is he asking you to do something dangerous again… I don’t understand. Aren’t the three of you supposed to share the burden together, why do you have to be the one to go undercover? You keep saying that he is your friend, but every time you are the one taking all the risks…” Di Lin’s face was cold as ice; she instantly knew the look and stopped herself.

Di Lin stared motionlessly at the thick clouds covering the blue sky through the window, calm as ice.

Lin Xiu Jia didn’t dare to utter a sound. She knew his husband, even though he loved her deeply and would do everything she asked, there was a place hidden deep in his heart so sacred, that she could never reach.

After a long while, Di Lin sighed: “ZiChuan Xiu and Stirling are not my friends… They are my brothers. I didn’t hear what you just said.”

Lin Xiu Jia lowered her head obediently: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“It is alright, just that…”

Di Lin couldn’t finish the sentence; he kissed her lightly and said: “You should rest.”

Only after Lin Xiu Jia’s shadow disappeared from his study, did Di Lin mutter the rest of the words he wanted to say but couldn’t: “Just that you don’t understand what we have been through… I guess it is hard to explain to a woman, what it means to be brothers!”

Chapter end