Amid the layered shimmering shadows of the glass lamps, gold threads on his wedding robes traced patterns of intertwined double-lotus crabapple blossoms, while the right-overlapping collar subtly revealed skin as cold and white as a pale moon.
Looking upward, the Prince Jing before her possessed a slender, long neck. Higher still was a luxurious face paired with cool, refined features, gazing without focus toward the opened bed curtains. His thick, pitch-black eyelashes resembled the arcing shadow of a crane’s wing sweeping across the water’s surface—and that water surface was deep, calm, and without ripples, lacking even half a flicker of bright light.
Her older sister definitely had never truly seen Prince Jing.
He was far better-looking than that zither player named Liu.
Clutched in his palm was the red veil he had just lifted from her head. The “new bride” revealed her true countenance before the blind Prince Jing.
Because Prince Jing suffered an eye ailment, attending servants were indispensable in the room. When entering earlier, Prince Jing had handed his blind-walking cane to the attendant beside him. Right now, they still needed to drink the nuptial wine together. Nanny Han, an experienced senior maidservant, had been ordered to come. Leading the maidservants, she had entered long ago to preside over the wedding affairs in the room, fulfilling one by one the grand chamber rites that Shen Meizhuang had failed to complete that night.
Sharing the ritual meal of slaughtered livestock and drinking the nuptial wine, Nanny Han chanted her rhymes: “Nectar congeals into dew, and jade cups shine together. On the intertwined branches, a pair of birds roost; in harmonious harmony, peace reigns for a hundred generations!”
Next, according to the customs of Great Qi, the servant women and nannies tied the hems of their two garments together, cut a lock of hair from each, bound them into a concentric knot, and threaded them with five-colored silk to symbolize one heart and one virtue, growing old together side by side.
The nanny chanted again: “May the four quarters be filled, five generations flourish together, bringing harmony to the household, and prospering like sprawling vines.”
Throughout the entire process, Shen Lizhuang had secretly stolen several glances at Prince Jing. Following the arranged procedures, although he displayed no joy typical of a groom’s wedding day, he did not seem to reject it either.
Once all the ceremonial etiquette was concluded, only the final item remained. Nanny Han gratefully cleared away the ritual meal and offered another blessing: “Bound by the red string, forever together until grey hair. Joining two families in alliance, precious as gold and tin, forging a century-old covenant, pure as jade and scepter. In the gilded house, pipes and flutes echo as phoenixes fly together; within the bridal chamber, under flicking candles, dragon and bride rejoice.”
Having finished these words, Nanny Han led her people to extinguish the redundant lamps, leaving only a few brightly burning floral candles to cast dim reflections across the grand red and green wedding chamber before they withdrew one after another.
The bridal chamber, bustling with life moments ago, instantly turned so empty that only Shen Lizhuang and Prince Jing remained.
Unable to see with his eyes, standing amidst the dim lamps felt no different to him than usual; he was not even aware that Nanny Han had blown out several candles. When these eyes had first gone blind, he could still perceive a slight sense of light, but by now, even light perception was gradually slipping away.
Perhaps because of this, Ji Mu’s hearing had strengthened considerably over these past two years—not even the slightest movement could escape his ears.
His wife, whose garment hem was entangled with his, his newly wedded Princess Consort—her breathing rhythm was slightly erratic.
Ji Mu moved over because of this, probing to take the initiative and grasp her hand.
When her palm was held, the tension at the bottom of Shen Lizhuang’s heart was simply beyond words. The man looked cold as winter jade, yet his palm was warm. The moment it wrapped around the back of her hand, he had already gauged the posture of her hands, then took another step closer, enclosing her entire palm within his grasp.
She dared not speak, holding her breath and concentrating her mind. In the silent, tense atmosphere, Prince Jing spoke first.
“I am blind and sightless. Is there resentment in your heart?”
His voice was calm and his tone deep and magnetic. A true beauty possessed not only an exquisite physical frame but even a voice that plucked at one’s heartstrings like this.
Shen Lizhuang was about to open her mouth, but after thinking it over, she closed it again.
Ji Mu noticed the breath of her opening her mouth as if wanting to speak her mind, but strangely, after slightly parting her lips, she closed them again. He said nothing more, leading her by the hand as he turned and walked toward the large bed in the inner chamber.
His steps were extremely steady, showing no sign of a visual impairment. Shen Lizhuang was slightly astonished, then heard him say: “This is where I resided before the marriage. I have lived here for two years and have grown accustomed to it; there is no need to use a blind-walking cane.”
The servants would not easily alter the furnishings inside. Ji Mu remembered how many steps to take after entering the door, at which step to turn, and how many more steps inward to reach the bed. This room was the only place where he did not need to use a blind-walking cane.
Shen Lizhuang suppressed her curiosity, withdrawing her gaze from his unfocused eyes. Her heart was filled with endless sighs of regret; such a beauty was ultimately a pity.
Ji Mu brought himself and his Princess Consort into the bed curtains. Earlier, the nannies had swept the bed clean, leaving almost no trace of the wedding nuts and coins scattered on the mattress. Yet sleeping on it still made Shen Lizhuang’s skin feel numb and tingling, as if goosebumps were continuously rising.
Even though Shen Lizhuang had prepared herself, a fierce mental struggle still waged in her heart. One moment she secretly marveled at his fine physique with firm muscles beneath his collar, and the next moment she clearly recalled that the person lying here tonight should have been her older sister, and the man pressing down on her was her older brother-in-law, Prince Jing.
All the formal ceremonies of a proper marriage, though seemingly in accordance with propriety, should not have belonged to her.
Including what she had to endure right now, which was originally not hers to enjoy.
Prince Jing was beautiful, powerful, and built with a formidable physique—broad where he should be broad, narrow where he should be narrow. When his arms tightened, one could still glimpse the sharp, hidden muscular lines forged back when he served as a military general. By no standards should anyone be picky.
Yet Shen Lizhuang suddenly felt so wronged, so intensely wronged.
Having lost her birth mother since childhood, she received no care from her father. Her stepmother treated her like a non-person, and her older sister always maintained a cold indifference. She had only wanted to pass the exam to enter the female academy and stand on her own feet, no longer even craving to be entered into the Shen family genealogy. Yet why was she still walking into a tiger’s den today, delivering herself into her older sister’s bridal chamber to perform marital acts with her sister’s husband?
This sense of being wronged triggered a dark tide beneath her eyes that was hard to endure any longer. Faint sweat and thin tears intertwined into clusters in her eye sockets, gathering into streams.
He finally slowed his movements slightly. Ji Mu’s eyes could catch no light. Before acting, he inevitably had to use his fingers to probe the path. Feeling her intense trembling, a shudder akin to resistance, he finally paused for a few moments, his suppressed, deep voice saying, “Are you unwilling?”
Shen Lizhuang slowly shook her head against his other palm.
Unwilling? How would she dare.
Ji Mu increasingly felt the trembling of the woman in his arms, but since she did not say she was unwilling, perhaps it was merely that the bride was newly married and frightened by never having experienced such matters before. He, too, felt a touch of pity in his heart. The pad of his palm brushed away the teardrop beside his wife’s dark eyes as he comforted her, “Do not be afraid. A woman must go through this eventually. This Prince will be gentle.”
The small face in his palm moved slightly, appearing to nod three times.
She remained tight and tense, making it extraordinarily difficult for him to carve a path through. Both of them seeped a great deal of sweat, and even then, only half was accomplished.
However, what made Ji Mu feel slightly strange was that his wife remained completely silent tonight. From drinking the nuptial wine until this moment, she seemed not to have uttered a single sound. Even during the most difficult moments, when she wanted to let out a sound, she covered her lips tightly with both hands, swallowing it back down with absolute determination.
He thought to himself that perhaps his wife was merely shy and afraid of making noise. Tonight was indeed unfamiliar, and both of them were quite inexperienced. Her bashful inability to let go was within expectation.
Earlier, when feeling for the location of the cave entrance, a soft spring wind had brushed across the grass, and the soft mud seeped out a moist fragrance, as if a fine drizzle had just fallen. The jade blossoms breathed out secluded beauty, and the situation turned cheerfully warm.
In the next instant, a sudden heavy rain burst forth. Among the grass, the flowers and trees shuddered violently. A towering, giant tree with robust roots amidst the fierce wind and heavy rain brushed against the rain eaves countless times, knocking before the window frame and making terrifying sounds.
The half-open, half-closed small window shutter had completely folded into the inner bedchamber and could no longer be shut. Amidst the violent battering of wind and rain, it emitted a faint, suppressed, and broken sound of being unable to bear the attack.
Even at such a soul-stirring moment when her very spirit felt as if it were leaving her body, unable to find rest, a bizarre feeling strangely crossed the depths of Ji Mu’s heart.
He remembered that on the day they entered the bridal hut to bow and complete the wedding ceremony, his eyes could not see, causing him to lose his direction after standing up. At that time, his wife had clutched the other end of the red silk ribbon and carefully called out, “Your Highness.”
That vocal quality was crystal clear, like a string of fine glass beads falling into a crystal cup.
His wife’s voice seemed to have changed a great deal. Tonight, the sound emerging from beneath her fingers covering her mouth was broken, delicate, soft, and dense—yet like soft feathers landing on silk.
As his fingertips brushed past, his wife lowered her eyebrows in a tight furrow. The moisture in her eye sockets gathered more and more until it had clearly reached the absolute limit, so much so that she could no longer even cry out.
Although his eyes could not see, her broken, fractured sounds along the way made him lose control of himself, so he grabbed her waist ruthlessly.
Thunder boomed and silver serpents flashed with shock. Heaven and earth seemed to split open a deep, massive abyss, threatening to devour Shen Lizhuang whole. She was terrified to the extreme, thinking to herself that this was disastrous—she was afraid she would die here.
When all the wind subsided and the rain stopped, and the weather turned toward the sun, she slowly opened her eyes.
More than half of the brightly burning dragon and phoenix candles outside the curtains had burned down.
The most grueling storm had passed, leaving behind a ground full of moisture and the earthy smell of wet soil spreading everywhere.
The hands that had tightly covered her lips dropped limply, taken into his grip, and her entire person was drawn into his embrace once more.
Ji Mu held his wife—who had been shaken almost to pieces—tightly in his arms. Lowering his head, he kissed her forehead and lips, feeling her still trembling uneasily in the aftermath. The corners of his lips twitched slightly as he spat out two words: “Delicate.”
Earlier, when she had wept in his arms, Ji Mu’s mind had cleared of all other matters, leaving only a vague thought: this Shen family girl whose face he could not see, who acted and spoke with a bit of delicate frailty, was his now—thoroughly and completely his.
The palm of his hand slid inch by inch across her cheek, feeling the rises and falls of her bone structure and texture beneath the pad of his palm. Her outline took on a vague shape.
He had been good at painting in the past and was also skilled at gauging forms. From such contours, he could tell she was a beauty with well-proportioned features—a delicate face overlaying a strong bone structure, harmoniously blended.
“Does it still hurt now?”
The woman in his arms slowly nodded. The magnitude of her nod was not large, merely her cheek submissively brushing against his palm.
Ji Mu truly felt she was delicate, but that did not hinder him from enjoying her delicate nature while holding her at this moment. Embracing her much tighter between his arms, he tucked her into his chest and said softly: “Since the grand ceremony is complete, it is also time to pay the customary return visit to your maiden home. What is the Princess Consort’s view?”
Shen Lizhuang struggled with difficulty to free her face from Prince Jing’s suffocating chest. Although he smelled very nice, even the best-smelling man became unbearable after sweating.
At first glance of Prince Jing, his appearance was handsome and elegant, with the posture of a pine and the grace of a crane. Stripped of his clothes, he possessed broad shoulders, a narrow waist, long arms, and lean legs. Shen Lizhuang had yielded to him half-willingly and half-reluctantly, but who could have known that once on the bed, he completely shed his gentle demeanor? He was not at all the gentle and polite man she had imagined, but simply… simply wild, passionate, ruthless, and fierce! He was practically not human!
Right now, apart from regret, nothing else remained. Exhausted to the core, she wanted to close her eyes and rest for a moment. Once her body recovered a bit, she would find a way to track down Shen Meizhuang.
Having completed the grand ceremony, a new bride didn’t necessarily have to be confined to the inner quarters and unable to step out, right? She did not know the rules of the Prince’s estate, but she presumed there was room for flexibility.
Just as Shen Lizhuang was planning to go to sleep, a sudden thunderclap echoed in her ears.
He said they needed to pay a return visit to her maiden home.
Her older sister had fled to elope; how could she have dared to tell the family? This meant that her father and stepmother were completely unaware of this scheme of substitution until now. If she rashly returned home, especially if she ran into her stepmother, her stepmother would call out her trick without any preparation.
Amidst her thoughts, Shen Lizhuang’s body—which was not yet completely dry—broke out in another chill sweat. Within her trembling chest, her heart beat faster than a deer, completely beyond her control to keep quiet. After a long moment, giving up on her silence, she said: “This servant also has a request, and humbly begs Your Highness to agree.”
Ji Mu had coddled with her for a while and also felt sticky and uncomfortable on his body, calling outside for water.
He lowered his gaze: “What matter?”
Shen Lizhuang bit her lower lip, thinking that the pressing matter was to first alert her family. Only by sending an advance party home to deliver the news could everyone work together to smooth this matter over, and then combine forces to find Shen Meizhuang for a long-term plan.
Shen Lizhuang tried her best to smooth her rapid breathing and said in a small voice: “When this servant married into the Prince’s estate, an important item was left behind at the maiden Shen Estate. I wish to send the maid Yingluo back to retrieve it tomorrow morning.”
Ji Mu said fine, asking not what it was, agreeing quite readily. However, in the dark shadows of the lamp where she could not see, the man’s eyebrows knitted slightly, revealing a trace of suppressed, peculiar displeasure.
His wife’s speaking voice was like a strand of supple hair sliding through his palm—intentionally lowering her pitch, in an artificial and unnatural state of disguise, vastly different from that call of “Your Highness” during the wedding in the bridal hut that day.
Just now, during the fierce and urgent acts on the bed, her unbearable broken voice lacked any coherence, making it hard to pick up too many clues. Now that full, complete sentences were revealed, it left Ji Mu slightly surprised. But it was merely a little bit of surprise, nothing more.
When the nanny sent servants to bring water into the room, Ji Mu heard the sound of the door opening. With a dark and inscrutable expression, he pulled down the bed curtain and pressed the delicate, tender body in his arms tightly into his chest, unwilling to let outsiders catch even a fraction of a glimpse of her jade-like body with her clothes completely undone upon the bed.