“Fifteen bed, vaginal delivery turned C-section! Doctor Shi, please prepare for surgery!”
Inside the doctor’s office, a young man in a crisp white coat briskly replied, “Right away!”
The metal wheels of the transport trolley rolled rapidly across the floor. A woman in labor was wheeled out of the delivery room, hurrying toward the operating theater.
Shi Mu set down the medical chart in his hand and quickly stood up, only to feel a wave of dizziness wash over him.
Recently, the obstetrics and gynecology department had been plagued by endless emergencies, either abnormal labor or breech presentations. He had already worked overtime for a week straight, following up last night with an entire overnight shift.
Yet the situation was critical, and as the lead surgeon, he could not afford the slightest delay. After steadying himself for a few seconds, he strode immediately toward the operating theater.
The pregnant patient was quite obese, making the surgical field difficult to expose. A routine half-hour cesarean section stretched on for well over an hour.
Only after the baby was delivered did Shi Mu’s tightly wound nerves finally relax a fraction.
Immediately, he noticed his heart rate was racing to the point of breathlessness, and his fingers were trembling.
Handing over the subsequent uterine cleaning and suturing to his first assistant, he turned backward, wanting to steady himself against the instrument table for a moment.
Instead, his consciousness abruptly blurred, and his whole body drifted downward as he collapsed.
A long time passed before sensation finally returned to his limbs.
He was no longer dizzy, but accompanied by an indescribable, dull ache in a certain area, the back of his neck felt as though it were being nibbled by some animal.
Soon after, Shi Mu was shocked to discover that a man was pressing down on top of him.
The surroundings were pitch black, heavy gasps lingered by his ears, and the waves of heat radiating against his skin made him tremble uncontrollably.
What is this?
A dream?
If this was a dream, it had to be the most absurd dream Shi Mu had ever experienced.
Here he was, a perfectly straight man, being taken from the front by another man.
The air was filled with the smoky scent of burned wood and herbs, faintly laced with a lingering, dark, cool fragrance.
Initially extremely faint, upon washing over him, it wrapped around Shi Mu tightly like tangible vines.
The man’s half-waking voice was hoarse and blurred, murmuring something unintelligible, but his movements were clear. The fingers gripping his waist exerted absolute, unyielding force.
Shi Mu couldn’t help letting out a gasp, “Let go…”
Before the word “me” could be fully uttered, it was muffled by a scorching palm.
The man rasped, “Everyone around has been dismissed. It’s too late for you to call out.”
Shi Mu whimpered into the palm, “Who are you?”
The man leaned down, and his approaching breath scorched Shi Mu with a start, “I am Xie Yi.”
The moment the name was uttered, a flood of memories not his own suddenly rushed into Shi Mu’s mind.
After processing them all, Shi Mu realized that due to dying from overwork, he had transmigrated into a BL historical novel as a cannon fodder character sharing his exact name.
To be precise, he was the cannon fodder’s partner.
This was a world featuring three genders. Aside from ordinary men and women, there was a special type of man known as a Geer.
Although Geers were also male, much like women, they possessed a reproductive system and could conceive offspring by coupling with ordinary men. They could also marry women, though the probability of producing offspring was extremely low.
The original owner was just such a Geer, born to a father who was a minor fifth-rank official in the capital, the Junior Official of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices.
Despite belonging to an official’s household, his mother’s family had fallen on hard times, and she was merely a concubine. As a concubine-born son, the original owner was naturally bullied by the legitimate wife and legitimate son.
Even worse, at the age of twelve, because of his chronically frail constitution, a doctor diagnosed him as infertile.
With his sole value as a concubine-born Geer gone, Shi’s father didn’t even bother looking at the mother and son pair anymore.
Originally planning to endure humiliation and scrape by alive in the Shi household, he never expected that because his father wanted to take a new concubine and the legitimate wife refused, she demanded the original owner and his mother be driven out as a condition for approving the remarriage.
Shi’s father, who had attained his official post thanks to his wife’s family, immediately tossed the mother and son aside for the sake of his concubine, dismissing them with a mere three taels of silver.
His mother, Jiang Xiaolan, suffered from chronic migraines and required one guan of copper coins every month for medicine. The original owner possessed no special skills. By chasing the two of them away, the Shi family neatly shook off a double burden.
With only three taels of silver to their name, his mother needed medicine, and both needed food and shelter. The two quickly became penniless, unable to even afford a meal.
Having no choice, the original owner tried to find a way to make a living. But he lacked any physical strength and had never studied. At eighteen, through Shi’s father’s arrangements, he spent a month doing odd jobs at the Imperial Medical Bureau, only to be sent home for being clumsy.
Ultimately, the original owner resorted to a crooked path, dressing as a minor maidservant to work at Qingyin Pavilion, a pleasure house favored by the capital’s young aristocrats, where he served tea, poured water, and did odd cleaning chores.
With his slender figure and delicate facial features, wearing women’s clothing felt entirely natural, and he earned significantly more than manual laborers carrying grain sacks outside.
Thinking he would continue living through such hardship, he crossed paths with his cannon fodder counterpart, Prince Ling, Xie Yi.
The main plot of this novel revolved around a fierce struggle for the succession between two princes, while Xie Yi was the emperor’s younger brother.
Having backed the wrong faction in the succession struggle, he ultimately ended up exiled among the common folk.
As an exiled concubine-born son, the original owner should have had nothing to do with a prince. But while doing odd jobs at the pleasure house, he happened to cross paths with Prince Ling, Xie Yi, who had accidentally ingested an aphrodisiac.
Driven by a courage born from who-knows-where, the original owner slipped into the pitch-black room where Prince Ling Xie Yi was struggling alone to purge the drug’s effects.
After a night of intimacy, Xie Yi saw the person before him clearly and petitioned the emperor for an imperial decree to marry the original owner.
Although hampered by his identity as a Geer, preventing him from becoming Prince Ling’s official consort, it still amounted to soaring to the branches in a single day.
Yet Xie Yi married him purely out of a sense of responsibility rather than love, leaving the original owner in the estate to resemble a melancholy, trapped canary.
In the end, amid the treacherous currents of political struggle, he was exiled to the common folk alongside Xie Yi, unable to even remain a canary.
Digestive of these absurd plot developments, in the pitch darkness, Shi Mu could see nothing as he was tossed back and forth by the other person.
Shi Mu was a straight man.
At this moment, millions of mythical creatures were stampeding through his heart.
The body pressing down on him was not bulky at all, instead, it was slender and taut. The fingers gripping his wrists like iron tongs offered no room for escape.
The cool, aloof fragrance intertwined with the woody incense washed over his sea of consciousness like rolling waves, making him feel as though he were drowning in warm water, alternately hot and cold, dazed and disoriented.
Not until a fine, prickling pain came from the inner thigh did Shi Mu snap slightly back to reality.
This guy was actually biting him?
“Xie Yi, what are you doing…”
“Get the hell off me!”
Xie Yi hadn’t lied. No matter how much Shi Mu shouted, absolutely no one came.
Until the very end, when that name was finally called out, it devolved into a faint, weak whisper.
“Xie Yi…”
The intimacy lasted so long it induced utter exhaustion.
When he blinked awake once more with a start, Shi Mu saw that dawn had broken, the light piercing through the window lattice making his eyes ache slightly.
Xie Yi was still asleep.
The Chinese-rose-colored silk bedding beneath him was rumpled and piled together in a mess after a night of ravaging.
By the carved wooden bed, the cyan gauze curtains hung low, casting dim, overlapping shadows all around.
Shi Mu moved to get up too hastily, instantly letting out a low gasp.
Every single inch of his body ached.
To make matters worse, this body was exceptionally fair-skinned, right now, wherever his gaze fell, he could see a full body of red marks and faint tooth indents, stretching all the way to his inner thighs.
Enduring the discomfort, Shi Mu cautiously inched outward from the inner side of the bed.
As his lowered gaze landed on the sleeping man’s face, Shi Mu felt an urge to punch him.
Granted, the original owner took the initiative to run into your room, but you went around biting and chewing, tossing me around so many times, don’t you have any problems yourself?
It took him ages to step onto the gold-woven velvet carpet on the floor.
The brass incense burner on the red-wood round table had burned all night, leaving only ash behind. A colorful lacquer screen partitioned this antique room into inner and outer chambers.
Shi Mu had calmed down.
Xie Yi had been under the influence of an aphrodisiac last night, lacking consciousness and remembering nothing of who he was. What he needed to do right now was leave before the man woke up.
Never mind that Xie Yi was a cannon fodder character and staying with him meant no good end. Furthermore, he was straight.
A Geer?
So what if he was a Geer? A Geer doesn’t bend either!
After scavenging through a pile of chaotic garments, Dr. Shi fell silent.
What the original owner had worn today was a turquoise cross-collared, narrow-sleeved short shirt paired with a matching long skirt embroidered with golden butterflies. His waist was tied with a lotus-pink silk ribbon, and on his feet were white embroidered shoes similarly decorated with butterflies.
As he walked, the butterfly wings fluttered gracefully as if poised to take flight.
Having never been slept with by a man in his past life, nor having ever dressed as a female cross-dresser, and having died once…
He could try everything.
Once dressed, he glanced back and caught a glimpse of a corner of the man’s outline tucked beneath the bedding through the parted gauze curtain.
Well, then I wish you a velvet-lined, extra-thick green hat, and may you definitely get the rabies vaccine when bitten by a dog!
In this lifetime, let’s never meet again!
The man on the bed stirred, seeming to show signs waking up. Shi Mu didn’t hesitate any longer, pulled open the door, and left.
The creak of the wooden door axis turning rang out, and Xie Yi woke up entirely. Propping his upper body up, he looked toward the bedroom door through blurred vision, only to catch a fleeting flash of turquoise fabric and fluttering butterfly wings disappearing into the distance.
Shi Mu braved the early morning mist to return home.
Ever since being driven out of the Shi family, the original owner and his mother, Jiang Xiaolan, had nowhere to settle down, and could only rent this small room from the government housing bureau for four hundred copper cash a month.
It was located in a courtyard, living alongside all sorts of miscellaneous neighbors.
The housing bureau properties were houses put up for rent by the government, similar to modern public housing.
Cheap as it was, the conditions…
Low, pitch-black tiled houses with peeling walls, bare of all furnishings save for a broken bed and a dilapidated stove.
The air was filled with a certain rotting stench.
Normally Jiang Xiaolan slept on the bed, while the original owner made do on the straw.
Even this set of clothes had been patched together by Jiang Xiaolan for someone else.
Jiang Xiaolan’s migraine had just subsided. Crawling extremely slowly up from the bed, she called out, “Xiaomu, you’re back?”
Shi Mu’s own mother had passed away due to illness when Shi Mu was ten, so this call of “Xiaomu” stirred up childhood memories. He brewed his emotions for a moment before replying, “Mother.”
Jiang Xiaolan walked over and began meticulously inspecting her son, “Did you run into any trouble today?”
Because the original owner had previously encountered customers with wandering hands, Jiang Xiaolan had always worried endlessly about him doing odd jobs at Qingyin Pavilion.
Having been tossed around by someone all night, Shi Mu’s body felt unwell and his mood wasn’t great, but he still adjusted his expression, bloomed a smile for her, and answered casually, “Everything went smoothly.”
Jiang Xiaolan was reassured.
The child was timid, if he had run into any trouble, he certainly wouldn’t be able to smile.
Last time someone touched the back of his hand, he came back and cried for a long time.
“You must be hungry, let’s eat first.”
Shi Mu was already hungry enough to feel his stomach pressing against his spine, and he longed for a hearty meal.
After changing clothes, Jiang Xiaolan brought out the food.
And then, Shi Mu was dumbfounded.
Crystal-clear white porridge, without a single speck of oil floating on top.
As a modern person accustomed to balanced proteins and vegetables with nutritional equilibrium, how was he supposed to swallow this kind of diet?
He then remembered that ever since being driven out of the Shi family, the two of them had been living beyond their means. For the past three days, the bottom of the rice jar had been exposed, and to save money, they had no choice but to survive on watery porridge.
Shi Mu was genuinely hungry, so he picked up the bowl and drank it down in two gulps.
You have to admit, ancient rice in its original ecological state was actually quite fragrant.
Wanting another bowl, he craned his neck to look into the earthen pot, only to find it completely empty.
Not a single extra drop was left.
Jiang Xiaolan noticed his movement and spoke with heartbreak, “It’s all my fault for this illness of mine, dragging you down to suffer with me.”
As she spoke, tears rolled down, “I will definitely go beg your father again. No matter what, I must make him let you come home. As for me, an old bag of bones, it doesn’t matter where I am.”
In Jiang Xiaolan’s eyes, her son was a Geer and she was a woman, aside from finding a way to return home, what else could they do?
Instead, she heard her son say indifferently, “There’s no need. The two of us can live very well on our own.”
Shi Mu knew that Jiang Xiaolan had a gentle personality and still harbored fantasies about the scumbag father, Shi Xian, whereas he had already seen through him.
That man was heartless and devoid of justice, whatever he had no use for would be cast aside by him without hesitation.
Therefore, returning to the Shi family was absolutely out of the question.
Yet right now, the rice jar was scraping bottom and they were completely penniless. To avoid being found by Xie Yi, continuing to work at Qingyin Pavilion was also out of the question.
How were they supposed to survive relying solely on Jiang Xiaolan doing sewing and mending?
Wiping his body down with cold water and untying the hair bun on his head, letting his long hair cascade down, Shi Mu collapsed powerlessly into the pile of hay.
Just as he prepared to ponder their livelihood going forward.
Suddenly, a flash of white light crossed his vision, and another space appeared before his eyes.