Read Chapter 20: — THE LIFE HE REFUSED TO OWN

With Cai gone and Huashi stable under Gu Cheng, Mufeng made the decision he had postponed for years.

He resigned for good.

Hua asked him to reconsider.

"The door will always be open," she said.

"I know. That's why I can leave without being afraid."

He devoted himself to painting, to the preservation of Cimo Hall, and to design work he chose rather than inherited.

Qiu Zanchen died peacefully not long afterward, leaving behind calligraphy, students and the unresolved legal future of the old residence.

Qiu Bin wanted Mufeng to take it.

Mufeng refused again.

"It isn't yours to give me and it isn't mine to receive. It belongs to the city now."

The Qiu family donated Cimo Hall for heritage preservation. After review, it received protected status, and Mufeng accepted responsibility for its daily care and restoration.

"So you rejected a fortune and kept the maintenance bills," Song Dacheng said.

"A perfect investment."

"You and Qiu Bin are the only people I know who become happier after losing ownership of valuable property."

Dacheng himself had changed. After studying industrial heat treatment abroad, he returned and rebuilt his relationship with his father. Huashi invested in his workshop—not as charity, but as a business project Mufeng had once defended before the board.

"If it fails," Dacheng said, "I want it to fail because the engineering was wrong, not because we were too afraid to try."

Duoduo opened a new branch of the Zhihe Restaurant at the confluence of two canals.

Qiu Bin joined an electric-vehicle company and finally worked on the machines he had loved more than calligraphy since childhood.

Daidi took over her grandfather's pear-candy craft as a real business rather than a family curiosity.

One by one, the five children of Yongfeng Lane became adults without becoming the adults they had once imagined.

Mufeng considered that a success.