Ancient Playboy 05 – Rivers and Mountains Like a Painting, Wrapped Around the Body
Lin Jiujiu scurried all the way back to Tingzhou Courtyard. Seeing that his little master had returned soaking wet, Cao Xing let out two cries of “Oh my,” and hurriedly told Zhuiyi and Li Du to prepare a hot bath.
As Lin Jiujiu soaked in the tub, Li Du wanted to sprinkle in some medicinal herbs to ward off the cold, but Lin Jiujiu wouldn’t allow it.
He said he wanted it to smell nice, to be fragrant, and no medicinal scent whatsoever.
Zhuiyi had no choice but to instruct the medicine boy to brew a cup of ginger tea, and immediately brought out various scented soaps for the little master to choose from.
Lin Jiujiu looked at the blocks of soap, even lowering his head to sniff them slowly. He wanted to find the scent belonging to Eldest Brother, but there was none.
Eldest Brother had a faint, natural fragrance. Lin Jiujiu couldn’t quite describe what kind of scent it was, very light, very subtle, teasing one into burying themselves in his embrace to sniff deeply, making you want to kiss him the longer you smelled it.
It was a bit like a spring suddenly welling up in a distant, dense forest, bubbling and gurgling, making one so thirsty.
He only wanted to prostrate himself, touching that moistness with his cheeks and holding that cool softness with his lips.
Nursing. No! Lin Jiujiu resolutely denied this unfamiliar emotion.
Eldest Brother wasn’t sweet at all; he was so crystal-clear and refreshing that he felt a bit cold.
Cold like the earth and grass creeping up, burying a person, and calling it a new birth rather than a grave, playing deer for a horse.
Yet Eldest Brother was bad, and Lin Jiujiu didn’t want to think about Eldest Brother anymore. As the heat spread, Lin Jiujiu asked Li Du whether he could sniff him.
The little master raised his moist, pink-cheeked face, his seductively dark eyes filled with curiosity.
Before he knew it, Li Du lowered his head, brushing his hair to the other side to leave a clean, unobstructed stretch of neck for the little master to sniff.
The little master buried his face right against it. Li Du was thankful he had bathed last night and washed himself so thoroughly.
The little master said he hadn’t smelled anything at all, only heat, and that it was just his own breath.
The side of Li Du’s neck was so ticklish, the little master’s breath was teasing him, and the tip of the little master’s nose accidentally brushed against him.
Li Du shrank back slightly.
Zhuiyi couldn’t stand the sight of him and roughly pushed him aside.
Zhuiyi said, “Lower, crude servants like us don’t even have the mud washed off our legs. The little master shouldn’t be sniffing.”
Zhuiyi’s jealousy arrived so fast that Li Du had to touch his own neck, displaying a just-right expression of sorrow.
The little master was indeed displeased.
“Don’t say that,” the little master said. “I think both of you are clean and smell very nice.”
“I smell nice too,” the little master added, not wanting to lag behind. “I want to smell very fragrant, put some flower petals in for me.”
Lin Jiujiu was determined to surpass Eldest Brother so that whenever he smelled himself from then on, he would never crave Eldest Brother’s scent again.
In the gap while fetching hot water, Zhuiyi bumped his shoulder against Li Du’s. “Don’t think that just because you are a ger, you can daydream about warming the little master’s bed.”
“You don’t have that qualification,” Zhuiyi said, his voice dropping low while his anger was hardly shallow.
Li Du didn’t feel that he lacked qualification; he had a younger sister who was adopted out to a distant relative and was living poorly. If he could bear a son or a daughter for the little master, he could obtain gold and silver, acquire resources, rescue his sister, and settle her in an independent room, it didn’t need to be big, just enough so that his sister would no longer face cold looks from others.
Lin Jiujiu washed for a long time until his fingers began to wrinkle. Li Du advised him not to bathe too long, so Lin Jiujiu climbed out of the tub, felt a bit dizzy, and almost fell.
Li Du caught him.
Zhuiyi, who was holding a towel, saw this and made to rush over, causing Li Du’s hand to instinctively tighten his support even more.
Lin Jiujiu apologized, “I’m sorry.”
Dizzy and disoriented, he casually pulled the jade pendant off the brocade robe nearby and shoved it into Li Du’s hand. “I’m dizzy, want to throw up.”
“It’s all because you made the little master stink!” Zhuiyi glared angrily.
Lin Jiujiu felt even dizzier.
Ignoring Zhuiyi’s outburst, Li Du swiftly helped the little master lie down on the couch, dried his body, wrapped him tightly in a quilt, and shouted to the attendants outside to fetch the estate physician quickly.
Li Du’s heart was split in two. Half of it worried for the little master, while the other half looked at the jade pendant in his hand…
A jade with such luster was worth a thousand pieces of gold, yet the little master handed it to him as if it were nothing.
With a wave of his hand, Lin Jiujiu told Zhuiyi to get out and stop making a fuss.
Zhuiyi’s face turned instantly pale. He finally realized that jealousy had distorted him, and that this ugly, bizarre appearance had been caught right in the act by the little master.
Zhuiyi bowed and quietly, submissively retreated.
Once outside the door, he slapped himself across the face.
Yes, he was jealous. Jealous of Eldest Brother, jealous of Li Du, jealous of everyone who could get close to the little master.
He was someone the little master had picked up along the way, someone whose life the little master had saved on a whim. But the little master didn’t care.
It was just like picking up a blade of grass or plucking a handful of dirt, bringing it home, and throwing it to the back of one’s mind.
The little master’s home was always Eldest Brother, and the little master never came back to Tingzhou Courtyard.
Year after year, Zhuiyi grew more and more striking, yet the little master never looked back to see how brilliantly the seed he had picked up on a whim had sprouted and bloomed.
The estate physician said this was caused by getting caught in the rain followed by a prolonged bath, and ordered all the doors and windows to be thrown wide open to let the air circulate.
Lin Jiujiu lay there listlessly. Li Du was drying his hair. The medicine was brewed, but Lin Jiujiu refused to drink it.
He thought that someone would definitely tell Eldest Brother.
He wanted Eldest Brother to coax him into drinking it.
However, the imperial decree arrived instead, and Xiao Jinglian received it.
The auspicious date for the wedding was set for early spring.
The chief eunuch shivered uncontrollably while forcing out a few auspicious platitudes.
Xiao Jinglian did not make things difficult for the bearer of the imperial decree; he gave them gold and silver and sent them all away.
At a time like this, who would dare mention to the Eldest Brother that the little master was sick?
Lin Jiujiu waited and waited, stubbornly refusing to drink the medicine, but Eldest Brother simply wouldn’t come.
A sourness pricked at the tip of Lin Jiujiu’s nose, and tears came unbidden. He turned onto his side, wiped away the tears he had shed in secret, and stubbornly refused to cry.
Panicked, Cao Xing ran off to report to the Prince. Back during the urgent military intelligence reports, he had run just as fast.
Vigorous in his old age, he was no less swift than in his prime.
Accompanied by the sound of rain.
Were these human footsteps?
So heavy. Like a wild beast.
This was the Prince’s Mansion, not a mountain forest; where did such a fierce…
Lin Jiujiu raised his head.
The Regent was clad from head to toe in black-gold armor, with a tiger’s back and a panther’s waist. The room was so small it seemed incapable of holding him.
Lin Jiujiu felt as though all the air had been stolen from him.
The next instant, he was stolen away as well.
Shi Henzhen hoisted him up like lifting a small cat.
The Regent extended his other large hand, and an attendant with sharp observational skills promptly handed over a bowl of medicine.
He said, “Drink.”
With just that single word, the bowl of medicine was pushed right against Lin Jiujiu’s lips.
Such an intense, bitter smell.
Lin Jiujiu kicked his legs wildly, but Shi Henzhen held him far too tightly for him to escape.
“If it spills on you, then your hour-long bath will have been for nothing.”
Hearing this, Lin Jiujiu was mortified enough to wish he could dig a hole in the ground to bury himself, deep beneath the heavy earth where no one could ever dig him up.
The bowl of medicine threatened to tilt further.
Lin Jiujiu had no choice but to gulp it down.
It was so bitter, but Lin Jiujiu had lost all inclination to wail.
Seeing that the brat had obediently drunk his medicine, Shi Henzhen set the bowl aside, sat down on the bed, and held him alone.
His hand brushed across the boy’s forehead, considering it fortunate that the brat wasn’t running a fever.
Lin Jiujiu was wearing only an undergarment. The armor was cold and slick.
He pouted.
Shi Henzhen rubbed his head, wrapped him in a quilt, and pulled him into an embrace once more.
Being delicate and spoiled, Lin Jiujiu muttered softly, “Still hard.”
Shi Henzhen said, “Who raised you to have such lazy skin and flesh?” Even with the thick quilt separating them, it still poked and ached the brat.
Lin Jiujiu said, “Raised me to get married. Raised me to bear children. Now I’m useless.”
Since Shi Henzhen had hurried back, naturally he hadn’t had the leisure to strip off his suit of armor, yet the brat was unreasonable and unforgiving.
“In the entire estate,” Shi Henzhen said, “who dares to bypass me and give you grief?”
Lin Jiujiu wiped his face and stayed silent.
Shi Henzhen said, “I reckon you took a beating over at your Eldest Brother’s place and are taking it out on the whole household.”
“I did not,” Lin Jiujiu said. “I didn’t make you come back, I didn’t call for you. I did it secretly, very quietly, without telling anyone. I’m not angry.”
Shi Henzhen laughed, tugging at his forehead. Unable to get a grip on it, he just gave it a rub.
“A belly the size of a bowl, you should eat, drink, and relieve yourself properly, instead of carrying a whole ship’s crew in your head.”
What kind of terrible phrasing was that? Lin Jiujiu corrected him: “A prime minister’s abdomen can hold a boat!” Foster father lacked culture.
Foster father was not nearly as scholarly as Eldest Brother.
Yet foster father hadn’t had the conditions; almost all his literacy was self-taught in military camps on the battlefield.
Shi Henzhen said, “You really want to be prime minister?”
You got the wrong point, foster father!
Yet looking into foster father’s non-mocking gaze, Lin Jiujiu lowered his head and thought quietly for a moment.
“Forget it, I can’t endure hardship. A prime minister has to pack the suffering of the whole world into his heart and puzzle out how to solve it piece by piece.”
Foster father patted his head: “Little princess.”
Foster father laughed, and seeing Lin Jiujiu’s angry expression, he laughed even louder.
His laughter was free-spirited and bold, and he roared with laughter, “Then you can be Shi Henzhen’s little princess for the rest of your life.”
Laughing heartily, he hoisted Lin Jiujiu onto his shoulder. As Lin Jiujiu shouted for him to put him down, he declared, “The estate physician said you need some fresh air, I’m here to accompany you!”
As bold and unrestrained as drawing a sword to effortlessly sever an enemy army’s banner.
No! The physician said ventilation, not a joyride. Will someone please come cure my foster father?
Lanting Pavilion had three stories.
All three floors had their doors and windows flung wide open, and the wind poured in.
The imperial decree bestowing the position of Empress was laid out on a long table while Xiao Jinglian poured and drank by himself.
The lingering wind lifted his long hair, scattering it into disarray, the ends slightly damp.
The rain was outside the hall, yet he was enveloped in moisture. The wine wasn’t strong enough, the wind wasn’t wild enough; Xiao Jinglian could only drink with absolute sobriety.
Lanting Pavilion was high, high enough for him to gaze out past the capital city toward the distant, winding river.
Crossing countless rooftops, crossing commoners taking shelter from the rain and children playing, crossing one straw raincoat after another and clusters of withered grass and wood, he looked upon that river flowing across the land.
Winter rivers flowed sluggishly, occasionally freezing over.
Abruptly, Xiao Jinglian pushed aside the imperial decree and knocked over his wine cup.
With the guqin before him, he plucked the strings and played, and a startling wind arose.
The sweeping servants couldn’t help but pause; patrolling soldiers turned their ears to listen… The Eldest Brother renowned throughout the capital, even scions of noble families held themselves inferior to him.
At the springtime gathering once crowded together for the sake of elegance, noble scions had secretly mocked Shi Henzhen’s adopted sons as a bunch of unrefined ruffians. With wine cups floating down a winding stream, a tiny wine cup stopped right before the Eldest Brother.
The crowd egged him on, fetching a guqin to make a spectacle of the Eldest Brother.
When the Eldest Brother finished playing a single tune, the entire gathering remained spellbound for a long time, and even the birds on the branches forgot to fly away.
Breaking the trance, the Eldest Brother said, “My skills are merely trivial tricks, far inferior to the might of soldiers protecting their country and spilling blood on the battlefield.”
The Eldest Brother’s guqin strings resumed, but shifted from ethereal elegance into a fierce battle-rousing tune. Birds flew off in fright, insects and beasts fled in panic, and the noble scions felt their hearts thumping with dread, as if blood-soaked blades had severed thousands of heads.
The song ended. The Eldest Brother brushed his sleeves and rose.
“Looking at all of you, you are nothing much.” The Eldest Brother laughed and departed.
The noble scions scrambled in panic to give chase, and some even fell right into the river.
“Eldest Brother,” someone said, “the finest guqin under heaven deserves to be owned by none other than the Eldest Brother.”
Countless gifts poured into Shi Henzhen’s Grand General Estate, all begging for another audience with the Eldest Brother. Innumerable invitations flooded in, and countless poems fluttered about…
That year, the Eldest Brother was fifteen, and his renown filled the capital.
From then on, the Grand General Estate was never again synonymous with vulgarity. The capital city chased after the Eldest Brother’s graceful bearing to almost the point of losing their own identity.
Yet the Eldest Brother rarely attended those banquets anymore, holled up in Lanting Pavilion raising a child instead.
Foster father had already left, and Lin Jiujiu was preparing to fall asleep.
Suddenly, he heard the faint sound of a guqin wrapping around the beams. Originally, he hadn’t planned to go; he ought to stay mad at Eldest Brother.
Yet he was afraid Eldest Brother would be sad.
This guqin melody, clearly not a sorrowful tune, yet it made the listener yearn to weep on the player’s behalf.
Lin Jiujiu covered himself with a pillow, telling himself to ignore Eldest Brother, to not want Eldest Brother.
Yet after only a short while, he tossed the pillow aside, threw on a heavy cloak, and ignoring the attendants’ warnings, sprinted out like a flying arrow.
He wanted to see Eldest Brother.
Climbing the stairs step by step, he reached the third floor.
The melody drew to a close, and a guqin string snapped.
Blood dripped down. Lin Jiujiu lunged forward onto his knees, collapsing right into Eldest Brother’s lap. As his fiery red cloak pooled around him, he lifted his head to look at Eldest Brother’s expression.
Eldest Brother’s expression remained as usual; he was not crying.
Yet the guqin string had wounded his fingertip.
It should hurt.
Lin Jiujiu’s eyelashes fluttered, and suddenly hardening his heart, he took Eldest Brother’s fingertip into his mouth.
Eldest Brother had done this before too.
Lin Jiujiu would learn, he could learn, and he knew what needed to be done.
To stop the bleeding for Eldest Brother, the blood mustn’t drip, and he mustn’t let tears fall on Eldest Brother’s behalf.
“A-Jiu,” Xiao Jinglian said, “I only have you, and I only want you.”
Everything else didn’t matter.
But to have you, he had to seize everything else into his hands. With rivers and mountains like a painting wrapped around his body, only then could he catch Jiujiu.
Xiao Jinglian pulled Lin Jiujiu tightly into his embrace.
He was practically demanding: Why couldn’t Lin Jiujiu fuse with him, becoming a two-headed snake, a lotus blooming on a single stalk?
Flying wing to wing, growing old together.
Whichever of them tried to leave the other, there was only the road to the Yellow Springs left to tread together.
Not even the Yellow Springs could separate them; becoming mother and child, I giving birth to you, you conceiving me, intertwined and strangled to death even before birth.