Xia Jian felt as if the other party was like a big cat toying with a mouse, leisurely extending its claws, trapping her within a circle and watching the fun.
She let out a soft sigh, "Young Master Pei."
Pei Guanzhu raised an eyebrow slightly, his smile deepening, "Yes, Cousin."
What a strange person.
Xia Jian couldn't quite tell whether he was pleased or displeased.
In the original story, Xia Jian remembered that Pei Guanzhu deeply despised the original body calling him "cousin." Every time he heard the word "cousin," the descriptions were either "a smile unable to conceal disgust" or "a cold, smiling expression"—in short, he was never very happy about it.
Xia Jian wanted to protect him, so naturally, she had to follow him around every day. She couldn't possibly both annoy him and follow him at the same time. What if he got upset and hacked her to pieces with an axe?
His expression… probably didn't count as displeasure, right?
Summoning her courage, Xia Jian curved her almond-shaped eyes into a smile. The two hanging buns tied on either side of her head were bathed in a soft, fuzzy glow under the candlelight.
"My surname is Xia, and my given name is Jian. Young Master Pei can just call me Miss Xia."
"Alright," Pei Guanzhu nodded, surprisingly easy to communicate with, "Miss Xia."
"Yes," Xia Jian supported her injured hand, gazing worriedly toward the door, "I wonder what exactly happened to Auntie. It really worries me."
"Perhaps she was frightened when she saw me," Pei Guanzhu said with a smile.
Xia Jian: …Seriously, how am I supposed to respond to that?
"Miss Xia's hand needs to be treated, doesn't it?"
Xia Jian looked down. Several crescent-shaped blood-red marks dotted her snow-white forearm—she had actually dug her nails deep into the flesh.
"No wonder it hurt so much just now," she said nonchalantly, shaking her arm and pulling down her sleeve to cover the minor injury. "It's fine. It'll heal on its own in a few days."
"That won't do," Pei Guanzhu's smile was like a mask, "If Miss Xia doesn't mind, I have some scar ointment left from the last time the physician visited. Would you like to come with me to fetch it?"
Xia Jian hadn't expected him to say that. It was so enthusiastic it felt a bit abnormal. She was momentarily stunned, and the words slipped out, "At this late hour… we're unmarried, you a man and I a woman. Me following you to your room… that, that wouldn't be appropriate, would it?"
The smile at the corner of Pei Guanzhu's lips stiffened slightly, "Miss Xia has a point."
Watching Pei Guanzhu rise to leave, Xia Jian began to regret her words again. Pei the Murderer kept to himself most of the time. They say fortune favors the bold. If she missed this chance to deepen their socialist camaraderie tonight, where else would she find another opportunity?
Thinking this, Xia Jian picked up the emerald bracelet she had left on the Eight Immortals table, "Young Master Pei, please wait!"
Pei Guanzhu lifted a cloisonné enamel palace lantern with floral and bird patterns from the doorway—left behind by some maid or matron—and descended the steps.
In the deep night, stars and the moon hung against the curtain of the sky. Pei Fu was illuminated by thousands of palace lanterns, resplendent as a fairyland. The young man walking beside Xia Jian carried a gold-inlaid palace lantern, its glow casting a radiant light onto the black ends of his hair, tied high with a red ribbon. The whole scene made him seem less like a bewitching beauty and more like a carefree youth.
Xia Jian was in good health. Seeing that he was lightly dressed, she instinctively positioned herself to block the wind for him, subtly shielding him from the breeze. It was only after changing her position that she noticed a faint red dot on Pei Guanzhu's pale earlobe, shimmering with a crystalline light—it seemed to be a beautiful red gemstone.
"Miss Xia, what are you looking at?"
Xia Jian snapped back to reality, only to realize that at some point the distance between them had closed, Pei Guanzhu's dark, bottomless eyes now almost within reach.
"Ah… well…" Xia Jian hastily stepped back, caught red-handed peeking, feeling rather awkward.
"Am I good-looking?" Pei Guanzhu suddenly asked out of the blue.
"Huh?"
Xia Jian was momentarily stunned.
Pei Guanzhu chuckled softly, "Or is Miss Xia worried that I'm too weak to walk?"
Only then did Xia Jian regain her senses.
That chance encounter in the corridor that day—it really wasn't her imagination!
Xia Jian was incredibly nervous, feeling as if she had been caught gossiping behind someone's back. "I was just concerned about you, Young Master Pei, absolutely, absolutely nothing else."
"Mhm," Pei Guanzhu replied with a kind expression, "As you can see, Miss Xia, my health is quite robust. You can rest assured."
His reassurance only made Xia Jian feel even stranger.
It felt like a terminally ill patient comforting his fearful, soon-to-be bride who dreaded being left a widow: "My health is fine, you can rest assured with me."
Afraid he might misunderstand, Xia Jian blurted, "No! I'm not afraid of being left a widow, I'm just worried about you!"
Xia Jian: …
Damn, what was she saying?
Ahhh, what was she saying?!
"No, that's not what I meant, let me explain. I mean, I'm very concerned about your health… ugh! What I mean is, I'm not concerned about your health for my own sake, I'm genuinely, purely concerned about you!"
Xia Jian was so mortified by her own words that her scalp tingled.
She lowered her gaze, and after a long moment, she cautiously glanced up.
Only to meet Pei Guanzhu's gentle eyes.
"Oh," Pei Guanzhu said, whether he believed her or not, "I see."
Pei Guanzhu smiled, "I never imagined Miss Xia's affection for me could be so pure."
Xia Jian: …
Xia Jian opened her mouth to salvage the situation, but suddenly, a step appeared before her. The mountain wind howled in the deep night, chilling her to the bone.
Only then did she notice that, without her realizing, they had arrived at the extremely long corridor of Pei Fu.
In the deep night, not a single lamp was lit inside the corridor, making it appear bottomless. Red silk ribbons on either side swayed and fluttered gently in the night breeze. Pei Guanzhu stood beside her, his pale hand holding the gilded palace lantern, and said gently to Xia Jian, "Let's go, Miss Xia."
The suggestive atmosphere, the deserted corridor, and the handsome young man beside her who treated her so tenderly—and with whom she was betrothed—would surely make any young maiden's heart race and her imagination run wild.
Xia Jian's heart raced too.
Her fingertips grew cold and trembled; no matter how tightly she clenched them, she couldn't stop the shaking.
How had she ended up following this murderer to such a dark place without even noticing?
His tone remained gentle and polite, giving the impression of a warm spring breeze.
But Xia Jian couldn't help but recall the contents of the book.
In the original Pei Fu case, Pei Guanzhu had actually left few clues.
The rumors of hauntings in Pei Fu had spread like wildfire, and in her desperation, Madam Chen had resorted to hiring martial artists to protect her day and night. Those who took on the Bounty Order were the female lead, Liu Ruoteng, and the male lead, Xu Zhi.
Yet, the mission of the two protagonists still ended in failure.
Because the outcome of the Pei Fu case was that the original "Xia Jian" and Madam Chen met their ends—one locked to death in a well, the other hanging herself. In the original story, the culprit uncovered was not Pei Guanzhu but a servant of Pei Fu.
In contrast, Pei Guanzhu, due to the deaths of his cousin and stepmother, found himself sleepless night after night, wasting away to skin and bones. He voluntarily requested to travel to the distant Nanshan Temple to pray and recite sutras for his cousin and stepmother.
The main characters, feeling guilty over their failed mission, spontaneously decided to escort Pei Guanzhu and accompany him to the far-off Nanshan Temple…
Pei Guanzhu's various behaviors in the early stages led readers to believe he would turn dark in the later parts.
Yet Xia Jian inexplicably felt otherwise.
Because there was a scene in the story where the female lead Liu Ruoteng and the male lead Xu Zhi were separated while capturing a city's wanted serial killer, leading to a two-person interaction between Liu Ruoteng and Pei Guanzhu.
A sudden downpour forced the two of them to take shelter in a pitch-black cave. Liu Ruoteng sighed, "I don't know why, but it feels like this killer is somehow connected to us. Wherever we go, the killer seems to follow."
Unaware that the killer was right before her eyes, Liu Ruoteng was startled awake in the middle of the night by the strange sound of something heavy being dragged. When she looked up, she saw Pei Guanzhu standing before her.
The young man's dark hair was half-tied, and he stood rigidly in front of her. Liu Ruoteng's gaze drifted downward, only then noticing the gleaming axe Pei Guanzhu was dragging in his hand…
How could someone with such a fondness for dragging an axe around to kill people possibly "turn dark"?
He was clearly dark from the very roots! He was never white to begin with!
Thinking of this, Xia Jian broke out in a cold sweat down her back.
Hearing no reply from Xia Jian for a while, Pei Guanzhu stopped at the steps, tilting his head to the side, his eyes as dark as a deep well.
"Miss Xia?"
Xia Jian jolted, snapping back to reality, her smile stiff as she tried hard to suppress the tremor in her voice. "Young Master Pei, I'm truly afraid of the dark. Perhaps we could take a main road instead, alright?"
Pei Guanzhu said nothing.
He stepped forward, lifting the gilded palace lantern and holding it up to Xia Jian's face, getting a clear look at her features for the first time.
Her complexion was as fair as jade, her almond-shaped eyes reminiscent of a startled deer in the forest. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and both hands hanging at her sides were clenched tightly.
Even her tense strands of hair seemed to spell out the word "fear."
Pei Guanzhu leaned closer and saw this cousin who claimed to be afraid of the dark shrink her shoulders abruptly.
He paused slightly, his thumb unconsciously rubbing the wooden handle of the palace lantern a couple of times.
Xia Jian stood rigidly, letting him examine her by the lantern light, and also raised her eyes to look directly at him.
"Miss Xia is that afraid?" Pei Guanzhu asked. "Even with me accompanying you, you're still scared?"
In her heart, Xia Jian nearly roared, It's precisely because it's you accompanying me that I'm scared, damn it!!!
Though her heart screamed this, Xia Jian let out a soft breath, turned her head slightly as if shy, and avoided his gaze. "With Young Master Pei by my side, naturally I'm not afraid. It's just that the two of us walking alone in this deserted place at night… it's really improper."
After speaking, Xia Jian secretly glanced up, peeking past the hair at her temples, only to unexpectedly meet Pei Guanzhu's gaze staring right back at her.
"It's alright, I don't mind such things," Pei Guanzhu said, his wrist held high as he carried the palace lantern. His face was as handsome as carved jade, his features as if outlined with a fine brush. His dark, deep eyes reflected a hint of clear, watery light, and the corners of his lips lifted slightly. "It's just that my stamina is lacking, and I'd like to take a shortcut. Could Miss Xia please accommodate me?"
As he spoke, his breathing was almost imperceptible.
Xia Jian felt suspicious, but she also feared Pei Guanzhu might genuinely be unwell. After all, in the original story, his health truly wasn't very good.
Looking at the dark, seemingly endless path ahead, Xia Jian wrestled with her thoughts internally but ultimately gritted her teeth and agreed.
Pei Guanzhu's life came first.
He must stay alive for her to return home; she couldn't afford even the slightest mishap befalling this living ancestor.