Xue Yao: “……?”
He was slightly stunned, not quite understanding for a moment. “What?”
What was he pretending for?
Seeing him actually put on such a completely baffled expression, the grief and indignation in Lu Dantao’s heart instantly boiled down to pure anger.
If it were like before, when both of them were dirty, that would have been one thing.
But now, she was the only one, still in that disgusting water, encountering something so revolting.
Who knew how long that corpse had been soaking in the water. No wonder there were no fish in it, not even a single snake.
And him—
She wiped away her tears with one swipe and sized Xue Yao up from head to toe.
He looked perfectly presentable, his face still as clean and fair as ever, unlike her, who was covered in grime and dust.
After a day and a night of fleeing for their lives, his hair was somewhat messy, with a few loose strands falling over his forehead, yet it instead gave him a kind of unruly youthful air.
Not like her.
She must look like a madwoman right now.
The moment Xue Yao saw her expression, his body had already taken a step back before his mind could react.
Although he had only known her for a few days, he had more or less grasped this fool’s patterns.
Whenever something did not go her way, she would start acting spoiled and throwing a tantrum, just like in the apothecary the day before yesterday, and again today in the depths of the forest.
How exactly had this temperament of hers been nurtured?
Had Pei Di always tolerated her spoiled nature like this before?
The instant Lu Dantao saw him take another step back, the fire in her heart burned even fiercer, directly consuming what little reason she had left.
At this moment, she was like a fire-spitting little demon.
So he thought she was dirty, did he?
And he was the clean one, was he?
She narrowed her eyes, like a completely enraged calf. Taking a short running start, she lowered her head and charged straight into Xue Yao—
At the instant their bodies collided, before Xue Yao could fully react, Lu Dantao seized the opportunity and pressed her soaking-wet self against him.
Let him get filthy. Let him dodge. Let him act disgusted!
Xue Yao had indeed been fully prepared for everything, except for this kind of move from her.
He instinctively tried to push her away, but what his palm touched was the small patch of exposed skin at her shoulder and neck, cool and slick. It was as if he had been scalded. His hand snapped back, leaving him at a complete loss, and he could only raise both hands in surrender while his body frantically retreated.
He tried desperately to dodge, while Lu Dantao stubbornly pressed closer.
The two of them fell into a situation where he fled, she pursued, and he had no way to escape.
In the end, unable to bear it any longer, he pressed a hand against Lu Dantao’s forehead and, using his height and long reach, kept her firmly about a foot away from him.
In what way did she resemble a proper young lady of the inner chambers!
The vein at Xue Yao’s temple throbbed wildly. He shifted his stance and practically forced the words out through clenched teeth, “Have you gone mad?”
Lu Dantao’s forehead was held in place, her hands still flailing wildly in circles, but she could not overcome Xue Yao’s height and long reach. No matter how she struggled, she could not even touch the edge of his clothes, so she could only resort to verbal attacks:
“I am crazy! Driven crazy by you!”
“Driven crazy by me?” Xue Yao was almost angered into laughter. What had he done to her?
“Why are you dodging?” Lu Dantao ignored his question and continued her accusation. “Am I poisonous? Am I that dirty?”
“I just soaked in the river for a while. It’s not like I got bitten by a corpse. Was it really necessary for you to react like that? Just pushing me away like that!” The more she spoke, the more wronged she felt, and her voice began to carry a sobbing tone again.
It was rare for Xue Yao’s mind to short-circuit a little.
From the barrage of accusations she hurled at him, he barely managed to pick out what he thought was the root of it all. “Did I ever say you were dirty?”
He repeated it, his tone carrying a kind of almost absurd confusion. “Why did I push you away? Don’t you know?”
“Of course I know!”
Lu Dantao trembled with anger and slapped away Xue Yao’s hand from her forehead.
So annoying. This made it seem as if she were really some kind of corpse.
“Isn’t it just that you think I’m dirty, that I’m clinging to you shamelessly?”
“From the very beginning until now, haven’t you always thought that?” By the end, her voice was completely swallowed by sobs, no longer able to form a full sentence.
Lu Dantao lowered her head, as if all her strength had been drained in an instant. Even her shoulders slumped as she murmured, “You’ve always disliked me, looked down on me, haven’t you?”
After the surging anger came an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and grievance.
Her tears were no longer under control. Large drops rolled down one after another, dripping onto the ground beneath her feet, a mix of withered grass and dirt.
Her feet, which she had just washed clean, had become dirty again in the chaos just now.
Just like her life ever since she came to this cursed place, disheveled, chaotic, and humiliating.
“If you really dislike me, you could have just told me directly.” She sniffed, her voice muffled and thick with nasal congestion. “There was no need to bully me like this.”
Xue Yao froze for a moment. He slowly lowered his head, a little unable to believe what he had just heard. “I bullied… you?”
“Mm.” The person in front of him responded in a muffled voice.
Her tone was weak, yet her conviction was unusually firm.
He bent down slightly and tilted his head, doing his best to ignore that patch of collarbone which had become even more noticeable from her struggling, and fixed his gaze on her face—
Her small face was tense, brows tightly furrowed, eyelids red and swollen. The grievance and indignation were utterly genuine, without a trace of pretense.
For a moment, Xue Yao was truly bewildered.
He was dazed for a brief instant, almost subconsciously trying to trace back through the short yet chaotic memories between the two of them, attempting to find whether he had really done something that could be considered “bullying” her.
However, after searching through it all, what surfaced instead were scenes of himself being so angered that smoke seemed to rise from all seven orifices, nearly causing his inner energy to run in reverse.
Thinking of the earlier incident where she had misunderstood him, the frustration in his chest surged up again. He suppressed the urge to strangle her and said, “How exactly did I bully you?”
Lu Dantao raised her hand and wiped her face haphazardly with her sleeve, which was soaked through from the river. Puffing out her cheeks, she tried to steady her breathing, doing her best to keep the sobbing out of her voice:
“Along the way, you’ve been neither warm nor cold toward me.” She began to list her grievances. “I’ve been running behind you the whole time. When I talk to you, you barely respond.”
“Just like now, I’m standing right in front of you, and you won’t even look at me.”
“This is cold violence, you know?”
She lifted her head, her reddened eyes staring straight at him, and softly voiced the confusion that had been lingering in her heart all along. “Are you treating me like this because you really dislike me?”
Xue Yao suppressed the urge to laugh out of sheer anger and clenched his back teeth.
“How am I supposed to look at you?”
Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed the loose garment on her body, which had been hanging slack from all the running and pulling earlier. With an unquestionable force, he pulled it tight, wrapping her up completely without leaving the slightest gap.
Then, only then did those phoenix eyes slowly fall upon her. His voice was cold as he said, “You are an unmarried young woman, improperly dressed, with disheveled hair.”
“I am a man unrelated to you. How am I supposed to look at you? How do you expect me to look at you? Mm?”
His gaze lingered on her face for a couple of moments. Seeing her expression shift from aggrieved to sudden realization, he finally withdrew his gaze. He grabbed her hand and placed it against her collar.
Unmarried…
Lu Dantao blinked, her body moving along with Xue Yao’s actions. The tear that had been clinging to her lashes fell with a soft pat due to the sudden closeness and his reprimand.
Right. This was ancient times.
The people here were all old-fashioned.
She lowered her head to look at her clothes. Everything that should be covered was more or less covered, only the collar was slightly open, revealing a bit of her collarbone.
Was that why he had pushed her away?
Her fingers tightened around her collar as she stiffened her neck. “But even if men and women shouldn’t touch, there’s no need to push me away so hard.”
“And I’m not just talking about this one incident.” She added in a low voice, her tone still full of grievance.
She was talking about everything along the way.
When they first met, he had held a dagger to kill her. At that time, he did not know her and was highly guarded. She could understand that.
But what about later?
Even afterward, he had still been trying every possible way to shake her off, showing her a cold face every day, never giving her a proper look. Even when she asked for help, he would push her away in disgust.
It felt as though she had always been chasing after his back, always speaking words that never received a response.
To him, she seemed to be nothing more than a burden, a hanger-on, a troublemaker.
That truly hurt her.
She did not want to seem useless, nor did she want to become someone else’s burden.
The thoughts of the young girl were softly and steadily spoken in the forest, drifting into the ears of the young man leaning against the tree trunk.
Xue Yao fell silent for a moment.
The wind passed through the branches, rustling softly, making that brief silence feel unusually long.
He looked at her reddened eyes, at the lips she still stubbornly kept pressed together, and at the clothes wrapped tightly around her, which only made her look thinner and more disheveled.
Suddenly, he let out an extremely faint sigh, so light it was almost imperceptible.
“What do you want, then?” he asked. His voice still carried little warmth, but the coldness in his tone seemed to have eased slightly.
“What do I want?” Lu Dantao raised her eyes.
Leaning against the trunk of an old tree nearby, Xue Yao lowered his gaze and looked at her quietly. The sparse light filtering through the forest fell upon him, flickering between light and shadow.
“Then how do you want me to treat you?” he said.
Xue Yao did not think there was anything wrong with what she said. In the Xue family teachings, one should live like a soldier. If there were thoughts or grievances, they should be expressed promptly.
Of course, what she said was not wrong. He had indeed treated her as a burden before.
Part of it was his own aloofness, but more precisely, she really was a burden.
His gaze swept over her reddened eyelids.
Forget it. She had finally calmed down with difficulty.
“How do you want me to treat you?” he asked again, snapping her out of her daze.
Lu Dantao first confirmed, “We’re allies, right?”
Xue Yao responded indifferently, “Mm.”
For now, that could count. Though it was something he had been forced to acknowledge.
Lu Dantao instantly perked up. “Then we have to interact like allies.”
Xue Yao raised a brow.
Then he heard Lu Dantao say:
“From now on, you have to speak to me properly. If I ask you something, you have to answer.”
“You can’t walk too fast by yourself, and you’re not allowed to deliberately leave me behind. You have to wait for me.”
“You’re not allowed to lose your temper at me either…”
Xue Yao frowned. “When have I ever lost my temper at you?”
Lu Dantao waved her hand. “That’s not important. These are the rules. It means you have to follow them.”
Xue Yao: “……”
She ignored his expression and began counting on her fingers, listing them one by one, speaking more and more smoothly as she went on. “Next, you’re not allowed to mock me either.”
“…If I’m in danger, you have to come protect me immediately. You can’t be like just now, not responding even after I called several times.”
Xue Yao: “……”
He should not have asked.
He silently straightened up, suddenly feeling that the brief moment of guilt and patience he had just felt was completely unnecessary.
Fixing his gaze on Lu Dantao’s mouth, he suddenly reached out. His movement was as fast as lightning as he grabbed both sides of her cheeks.
His fingers were long, carrying the slight roughness and strength unique to someone trained in martial arts. He squeezed her cheeks until the flesh puffed up, and her lips were forced into a pout, leaving her only able to make muffled “mmph mmph” sounds: “Let go of me.”
“If you quiet down a bit,” Xue Yao looked at her, his gaze deep, carrying a trace of barely perceptible compromise and helplessness, “in a while, I will take you upstream to find a safe and secluded place, and let you wash yourself thoroughly and safely. How about that?”
Lu Dantao pressed one hand firmly against the back of his hand and pushed him away, while she slowly rubbed her cheeks that had been pinched sore. She eyed him suspiciously. “Why not go now? Why do we have to wait?”
Seeing that he fell silent again, as if about to lift his foot and leave, she immediately accused, “You’re ignoring me again. What about what you just promised me?”
Xue Yao let out a cold scoff. Had he agreed? What exactly had he agreed to?
However, catching sight of her eyes instantly brimming with moisture, clearly spelling out ‘you’re lying to me again’, he ultimately spoke in a stiff tone, “Because I still have an urgent matter that must be dealt with first.”
After saying that, he no longer looked at her. He turned around directly, his gaze falling upon the shimmering river, the very one that had just soaked an unknown corpse.
Following his line of sight, Lu Dantao looked over as well. Her stomach churned, and she had a bad premonition. “What are you planning to do to it?”
The wind in the forest swept past, carrying Xue Yao’s quiet question:
“Have you ever thought about why, in such a desolate and uninhabited place, there would be a corpse like this?”