He had driven her all the way to the wooden staircase. Taking advantage of her smaller stature, she crouched down and squeezed herself into the narrow gap between the staircase and the cabin wall. Her eyes wandered frantically in every direction, but she stubbornly kept her head lowered, refusing to meet the gaze of the man who had just uttered such outrageous words.
A few mute attendants suddenly came up the staircase carrying hot water and food boxes. As they passed beside them, not one of them spared her so much as a sideways glance.
The incident in the bathhouse at the Imperial Grandson’s residence over ten days ago resurfaced in her mind. She had truly never imagined things would develop into this.
Casually wiping a small bit of minced meat from her sash, she forced an awkward smile, pretending not to understand what he meant. “These enchantress’s clothes can just be thrown away later. Mine aren’t actually that dirty. I’ll change into a fresh set when I get back to my room. It’s your face… y-you should properly… wash… I mean, properly wash your face.”
Seeing her flustered speech, her little face flushed crimson and her apricot eyes widened adorably in shock, Ying Wuji finally let go of what had happened moments ago. So what if a beauty had dirtied his face? The blood and filth of the battlefield smelled far worse than this. He could simply make her repay him thoroughly later.
Provocative images flashed through his mind. The night was long ahead of them, and since Jiaoyue was dependable enough to carry out the task, why should he continue waiting so patiently?
Thinking this, Ying Wuji clicked his tongue with an amused grin. Paying no attention whatsoever to appearances, he crouched down and reached beneath the staircase. Amid the young woman’s startled cry, he caught her with one hand and pulled her straight out.
She crashed directly into his chest, instantly staining his shoulders, back, and sleeves with soup as well. Leaning close to her ear, the man threatened in a low voice, “There’s only one bedroom on the second floor of this boat. Where else do you think you’re going to change? Either walk there yourself, or let me carry you. Your choice.”
She had never expected him to say something so shameless. Zhao Shu understood perfectly well that when one lived under another’s roof, one had no choice but to bow one’s head. Judging from his actions, since he had not forced her last time, he probably would not this time either… would he?
Uneasy, she pulled her hand free and stepped onto the staircase first. Keeping her back to him, she deliberately resumed her disguised masculine voice and answered a completely different question in an intentionally bold tone. “Your Highness has shown me great kindness. Since I was the one who dirtied your clothes, it’s only proper that I help you change.”
…
Her heart pounding, she finally arrived at the south bedroom on the second floor. She casually grabbed two clean sets of men’s clothing. Turning around, she saw that Ying Wuji had already briskly disappeared behind the folding screen.
Hearing the sound of rushing water and receiving no instructions from him, she hurried over to the bed on the opposite side and drew the gauze curtains around it.
Riiip. Using the fastest movements of her life, she quickly wrapped on her crude chest binding, slipped into the ill-fitting outer robe she had grabbed at random, and was just about to gather her hair into a Daoist topknot when the sound of water behind the screen stopped, followed by his voice calling for her to bring his clothes over.
Even though the man was bare only from the waist up, Zhao Shu still kept her head turned away. Stretching out her arm from a distance, she handed him the clothing without so much as another glance. She knew he was handsome, but at a moment like this she had no desire whatsoever to look at him.
As he accepted the clothes, that mischievous hand deliberately pinched her wrist. She jerked it away as though shocked by lightning. The man beside her merely chuckled softly.
“Finish your dinner first.” The cabin was rather warm. Still carrying the dampness of his bath, Ying Wuji wore only a moon-white inner robe. After taking several steps to the window, he pushed it open, turned back, and spoke in a much gentler voice. “Weren’t you saying you wanted to see the rabbit lanterns? This is the perfect spot.”
Standing casually against the window with his long hair hanging loose, his tall frame elegant and his features almost bewitchingly beautiful, the moon-white robe somehow softened him. Leaning there at an angle, even his warm smile unexpectedly revealed a trace of youthful mischief.
Although he had told her to continue eating dinner, after opening the window he truly did sit her back down at the table. He calmly picked up a bowl of vegetable soup with noodles and began eating again as though nothing had happened.
The evening breeze was cool but gentle. As the crimson clouds gradually faded, one rabbit lantern after another on the distant pleasure boat was lit. Round and luminous like silver moons, they floated across the darkening lake with an indescribably warm and charming beauty.
After only a few bites, Ying Wuji finished his bowl of soup. Rising to his feet, he lit the standing bronze lamps fitted with glass shades throughout the cabin. Then he returned, poured her a cup of wine, and, with his emerald eyes gazing toward the rabbit lanterns in the distance, casually asked, “Are they beautiful? If you like them, when we return to Lantai I’ll have some made and hung there as well.”
For that brief moment, she almost believed that everything he had said earlier on the deck had merely been a hallucination brought on by her illness.
“The nights are cold. Have a little wine to warm yourself. Weren’t you saying you were hungry? Why aren’t you eating?”
As he spoke, he continued leaning there with effortless elegance, facing the vast lake. Starlike reflections danced in his eyes, and not the slightest hint of his earlier intentions could be seen.
The lake breeze truly was a little chilly. Afraid that saying the wrong thing might provoke him again, and with her stomach still empty besides, she simply lifted her cup and obediently began eating as he had instructed.
Before she had even finished her first cup of wine, the man came and sat beside her, lifting the earthenware jug to refill her cup.
A short while later, unable to endure his gaze any longer, Zhao Shu finally sensed something was amiss. She repeatedly poked the last half of a pastry until it crumbled into pieces, nibbling at it one tiny bite at a time.
The glass lamps flickered softly. Ying Wuji seemed to have grown tired of simply watching. Resting an elbow on the table, he propped up his chin with one hand. He continued staring at her without blinking, still saying nothing.
Just as Zhao Shu’s patience finally wore thin and she began to let down her guard, he suddenly raised his brows and asked in an almost playful tone, “You still haven’t answered me.”
Answered what? Zhao Shu froze for a moment before realizing he meant his earlier remark about sharing his bed. Heat instantly spread across her face.
Seeing the teasing expression on his face, she steadied herself. Perhaps because she truly could not hold her liquor, the wine had already left her pleasantly lightheaded. Alongside her nervousness, a trace of grievance and disdain also rose within her.
After letting out a very soft snort, she lifted her cup and drained it in one gulp. Then she set it down on the table with a heavy thud and said disdainfully, “Even the courtesans of every state have their price. If Your Highness is serious, there are countless beauties in Xianyang, you need only choose a couple. Yet instead you tease me. Even if I’m the deposed crown prince…” She paused, then sneered drunkenly, “Ying Changsheng… I’m afraid… you can’t afford my price.”
Barely had the second cup of wine settled in her stomach before she almost blurted out, You’re nothing but the barbarian son of a Hu woman, what makes you think you’re worthy?
Knowing full well how poorly she handled alcohol, Ying Wuji was not angered. Instead, he found himself increasingly captivated by the honest nature she had not shown in a long time. Tilting his head, a deep gloom gradually welled up in his emerald eyes, yet he deliberately spoke in the tone of someone who had been wronged. “But if I remember correctly, that rainy night at Lantai, when you begged me to save your cousin, didn’t you say that if there were wine, you’d be willing to sleep with me?”
“Was it you who saved Yingying from Changming Palace? Then where is she now? I don’t believe… Ah!”
Before she could finish, the world spun around her. Like a kite being yanked by its string, she was pulled violently into his broad, solid embrace.
Forced down onto his lap, she was just about to lift her head and angrily rebuke him when she met a pair of emerald eyes blazing with undisguised heat. His gaze openly roamed over her, filled with naked desire.
Holding the warm, soft woman in his arms, Ying Wuji’s heart pounded wildly. Seen this close beneath the lamplight, her skin seemed almost translucent, her eyes innocent and gentle. Yet beneath that softness still lingered a touch of fearless pride, like a little wild beast baring its tiny sharp fangs. It only made him want her all the more.
Ignoring her attempts to push him away, he murmured almost to himself, “Think carefully about your price. It’s only a few more fiefs. It’s not as though I can’t afford them.”
Before she could reply, he lowered his head and claimed the lips he had coveted for so long.
Some people spent their entire lives chasing power, their hearts as lifeless as dead wood. But once those feelings finally awakened, when spring at last returned, it was precisely such people who became the most obsessive, and whose desires ran the deepest.
The fragrant spring night and gentle breeze wrapped around them endlessly. One grew ever more intoxicated with passion, while the other trembled and struggled in alarm.
He had assumed that after taking care of himself earlier, his desire would have diminished considerably. Yet after tasting only a little sweetness now, the passion consuming him surpassed anything he had ever experienced in his life.
After only a brief moment of entwined kisses and tentative exploration, it no longer satisfied him.
Gradually, the kiss transformed from gentle probing into a torrential storm. Her resistance only inflamed the burning desire within him even further.
The phrase the victor becomes king, the defeated becomes outlaw suddenly flashed through his mind. A fierce light flickered across Ying Wuji’s lust-clouded eyes. Hesitating no longer, he wrapped one arm tightly around her, pinning her in place, while his other hand reached clumsily for her slender, yielding waist.
Her sash had evidently been tied too tightly. In the confusion, he failed to get his hand where he wanted, and with one desperate shove she actually managed to push him back slightly.
“Y-you’ve gone mad…”
She had not even managed to finish half a sentence through her sobs before Ying Wuji refused to hear any more. This time he no longer held back. Tightening his grip around her back with all his strength, he ripped apart the ties at the back of her waist with a sharp rrrip. Without saying a word, he bound the troublesome hands that kept resisting him.
It was the method used in the army to bind prisoners, her wrists tied securely behind her back. Even with the strength of nine oxen, there would be no escaping it.
The next moment, as his rough, burning palm slipped beneath her clothing and began traveling upward along her waist, a sharp pain shot through his neck.
She had bitten him.
Anger flared within him. Just as he was about to surrender completely to his fury and desire, he seized her chin and forced her face upward. His ragged breathing abruptly stopped.
It felt as though someone had struck his chest with a heavy hammer. The pain was suffocating.
The woman in his arms was biting her lower lip so hard it had turned white. Her apricot eyes were filled with terror and humiliation. Tears streamed freely down her face, yet for reasons he could not understand, she stubbornly refused to make even the faintest sobbing sound.
The room fell completely silent, only an occasional choked breath could be heard.
“Don’t be so foolish.” Closing his eyes, he let out a long sigh. The harsh words of reprimand and intimidation that had risen to his lips ultimately refused to come out. Instead, he gave a helpless laugh. “You really ought to be sent to Changming Palace to broaden your horizons. A hostage from a conquered state whose title has been stripped away… do you truly think Ji Qiao can take you away?”
“And what does that have to do with you!” As though stabbed by those words, she finally burst into tears. “For five hundred years the Zhou royal house endured while the feudal states fought for supremacy. How many more generations any of them may last is anyone’s guess. Even if I die, I am still a direct descendant of the Zhou royal bloodline!”
When she spoke of the ancestral temples and royal mausoleums, her crying only grew louder. She suddenly shouted at him, “Even if I die, I wouldn’t choose to be buried in the royal tombs of Handan! I’ll follow my mother and sleep forever at Beimang outside Luoyi. Who do you think you are, some common-born nobody? What do your mighty armies have to do with me? Even if Luoyi has changed hands, if I die in Qin, they’ll still demand my body back and bury me with the honors I deserve!”
Watching her sob uncontrollably, as though her emotions had completely collapsed, Ying Wuji inwardly scoffed at the antiquated ideas she clung to. Even so, he patiently waited for her to finish every word.
He had thought he would argue back. But looking into the tear-filled eyes of the woman in his arms, listening as she spoke of death again and again, Ying Wuji swallowed every rebuttal. Instead, he merely sighed softly.
“Everything in this world has a price. People always cling to life. You’re indeed trapped now. Name your price. I’ll indulge you a little. From now on, I’ll protect you as well.”
Feeling the restraints around her wrists being untied, Zhao Shu finally let out a trembling breath of relief. Cold sweat clung to her back. Deciding she had to seize the initiative before he did again, she gathered her courage and said, “If you can persuade the Great Imperial Preceptor to refine a real antidote… or find someone who can completely cure my cold poison… then I… I will… with you…”
She could not bring herself to say the final two words, sleep together, no matter how hard she tried.
She stammered hesitantly for a long while, overcome with anxiety, when she suddenly noticed a flicker of conflict and hesitation pass through Ying Wuji’s eyes.
