I closed my eyes.
The floor was clean, and the air held nothing but the scent of flowers.
Nothing had happened.
As if hypnotizing myself, I repeated the words in my mind three times.
The two Gray-Robed Maids withdrew on their knees. From the moment they entered until they left, their faces remained turned downward.
The door closed with barely a sound.
“Come in.”
The boy’s voice drifted from the inner room, lazy and languid.
I glanced at the curtain before me. It was embroidered with bird motifs and cloud-and-thunder patterns, and warm yellow candlelight shone through from behind it.
The inner room was much smaller than I’d expected. A bronze lamp stand sat to one side, with only its top three lamps lit; the light was dim. Utensils I couldn’t identify were arranged on the low table.
The furnishings throughout the room were clean and simple.
It was completely different from the outer room, with its walls covered in curtains and flowers filling the air. The outer room was for others to see; this was where he actually lived.
It looked like Qin Dynasty style.
I was a third-year history student at Yunnan University.
I didn’t know what history students at other schools liked to read, but nearly everyone around me was a fan of tomb-raiding novels.
That summer, I’d made plans with a few classmates to go to Yunnan. Once we reached the rainforest, we couldn’t sit still, excitedly discussing the contents of 《Ghost Blows Out the Light》Yunnan Insect Valley.
Someone egged us on, saying we should try looking for the Heavenly Spirit treasures mentioned in Ghost Blows Out the Light.
In the end, we found no treasure. I was bitten by a venomous snake.
It was a spear-scaled ironhead snake. The guide recognized it and scolded us for not sticking to the cliffside plank road while he administered the antivenom.
They gave me the antivenom, but they still couldn’t save me.
My last thought as I died was: wasn’t I supposed to survive if I got antivenom right after being bitten?
When I opened my eyes again, I was kneeling in this blood-soaked room.
—There was no point thinking about that.
I cut off the memory and brought my attention back to the present.
The boy sat sideways on the edge of the low couch, one hand braced on his knee as the other untied the leather belt at his waist.
He didn’t look at me. His movements were as casual as if he were taking off his coat in his own room—which, in fact, this was.
The candlelight clearly illuminated his profile.
I’d been so terrified earlier that I hadn’t dared to really look at his face.
His skin was unnaturally white—not sickly pale, but white like porcelain. He had a high brow ridge, deep-set eyes, very light irises, a straight nose, thin lips, and a faint crimson tint to them.
His whole face was so exquisite it looked painted. He was beautiful, but unsettling.
Too perfect. He didn’t look alive.
A living person’s face always had some flaw—a mole, a scar, a few pores, anything.
He had none.
That feeling that he looked only sixteen or seventeen came over me again. Was he really only sixteen or seventeen?
The leather belt fell to the floor.
A hand reached out from the side of the gauze canopy, seized my wrist, and yanked me forward.
His strength was absurd.
I pitched forward, my knees striking the edge of the couch. Before I could brace myself, he grabbed me by the back of the collar and flipped me over like a small animal.
He looked down at me and reached to untie my sash.
I knew what was going to happen.
I was afraid, but I understood that brave resistance and earning someone’s respect were absurd plotlines from novels.
Before those in power, refusing to cooperate meant death.
Shen Ying, you’re an adult. Don’t be dramatic. Which matters more, your chastity or your life? It wasn’t a hard question.
Besides, I looked at his far-too-handsome face.
Objectively speaking, if he hadn’t beheaded someone just two hours ago, then judged on appearance alone, his face really was beautiful.
It was just the fact that he looked underage that made me uncomfortable.
He undid my sash and pulled my outer robe down to my shoulders. When his hand touched my collarbone, I shuddered.
I wasn’t being dramatic. His fingers were unbelievably cold.
He noticed, glanced down at me, then paid it no mind.
No kisses, no caresses, no foreplay that could be called “intimate.”
Pure, one-sided taking.
Like eating when hungry or drinking when thirsty, this was his need. I was just a tool.
I turned my head and watched the flames flicker on the lamp stand, counting one, two, three.
It hurt.
I was too thin, with hardly any flesh on me. He didn’t look big, but he was incredibly heavy; when he pressed down on me, my ribs ached.
His breath brushed the side of my face.
I bit my lower lip to keep quiet.
I wasn’t deliberately putting on an act. I genuinely didn’t know what sounds I should make. He probably wouldn’t care if I cried out in pain, and anything else would sound too fake.
His palm was braced beside my ear. When he was close, I caught a peculiar scent coming from him.
A faint medicinal fragrance.
His skin gleamed coldly in the lamplight, without color or a bead of sweat. Even when his movements grew vigorous, it never flushed.
What about his heartbeat?
He pinned my hands above my head, and my wrist happened to rest against the inside of his.
I concentrated and felt for several seconds.
There was a pulse, but it was very slow—abnormally slow, with a beat only after a long pause.
—Was this human?
The moment the thought surfaced, I desperately forced it back down.
Don’t think about it.
Without changing expression, he withdrew and lay flat on the inside of the low couch. He even reached for the thin blanket and pulled it over himself. His breathing soon became steady.
I lay where I was, not daring to move, sticky and cold all over. My clothes were scattered across the couch, and the bedding rubbed against my skin, making it itch.
After waiting a long time, once I was sure his breathing had completely evened out, I slowly turned onto my side and drew my outer robe over myself as lightly as I could.
The flames on the lamp stand burned quietly.
The oil in the bronze lamp was almost gone. Its flame dimmed, and shadows swayed wildly on the wall.
I stared at his back for a long time.
There wasn’t an ounce of excess flesh beneath his skin. His muscles were taut but lean, and he had the frame of a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy. This body really was that of a boy.
But the strength he’d shown when pressing down on me just now was not something a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy should have had.
I rolled over, turned my back to him, and buried my face in my arm.
There was too much to take in today. Transmigration, being chosen as a consort, murder. I needed time to process it.
I closed my eyes and, for no reason at all, fell asleep in a room that wasn’t mine, beside someone who could kill me at any moment.
—Maybe this body was just too tired.
When I woke, it was still dark.
The space beside me was empty.
When I sat up, my whole body ached, and my waist felt as if it had been snapped in two. I looked down and saw several red marks on my collarbone, left by fingernails digging into me.
His nails were hard, and he had no idea how much force he was using.
I slowly straightened my clothes, tied my sash, and sat on the couch in a daze for a while.
There were no windows in the inner room, so I couldn’t see what the sky outside looked like.
A faint gray-blue light came through the gap in the door curtain.
Dawn was near.
I tried to get off the couch.
The curtain was lifted from outside. A Gray-Robed Maid knelt beyond the threshold, holding a copper basin and a cloth. She didn’t enter; she pushed the basin over the threshold, then lowered her head and withdrew.
The water was warm, with some unknown herb in it. It was pale green and smelled bitter.
I wrung out the cloth and wiped myself. A faint pink layer rose to the surface of the water—blood seeping from abraded skin.
After wiping myself down, I changed into a clean under-robe. Then another maid came in carrying a food tray.
It was rice porridge again, a little thicker than the bowl from last night, with two pieces of cake made from something I couldn’t identify.