He must look so ugly and twisted right now; he couldn’t bear for A-Ci to witness such a wretched side of him.
Believing the pain had returned, Gu Ci helped him back onto the bed and then lay down right behind him, wrapping his arms gently around his waist. “Lie down and sleep, Your Highness; the pain will pass. I’ll stay right here with you.” As he spoke, he slightly tightened his hold, though he was careful not to apply too much pressure, knowing Jun Yichen’s body must be covered in injuries.
Jun Yichen froze slightly. A warm, stinging moisture blurred his vision. He hadn’t shed a single tear through the agonizing agony and self-mutilation of the previous night’s relapse, but resting now within this warm embrace, the bottled-up ache in his chest finally broke past his defenses.
A-Ci, you were the one who drew me in first.
Having spent the entire previous night on edge and exhausted, Gu Ci quickly drifted off to sleep once the tension melted away.
Listening to his steady, rhythmic breathing, Jun Yichen smiled and gently took hold of his hand, an irrepressible warmth blooming at the corners of his lips. Though the residual pain of the poison’s flare-up still lingered, he drifted peacefully into sleep.
When Gu Ci finally opened his eyes, evening had already fallen. Out of sheer habit, he went to stretch, only to find Jun Yichen fast asleep beside him, his dark hair cascading loose across the pillow.
Gu Ci blinked in surprise, a faint flush creeping up his cheeks as he took in their intimate posture.
Although they had shared quarters during their investigation in Kang County for the sake of convenience, this was the first time they had slept entwined so closely.
A strange, unfamiliar fluttering stirred deep within Gu Ci’s chest.
Carefully sliding his arm free, he rolled up the sleeve of Jun Yichen’s undergarment to inspect his forearms. They were densely covered with fresh and fading scars of varying sizes. Though he had already guessed the truth, seeing the physical reality up close made him involuntarily catch his breath.
Just as he was about to check if the rest of his body was injured, he caught Jun Yichen watching him with a pair of smiling eyes.
Embarrassed, Gu Ci made to scramble out of bed, but a sudden, steady pull from the prince caught him off balance, sending him tumbling right back down beside him.
Deciding to abandon the effort of getting up, he simply settled back in place.
Lying flat beside Jun Yichen, Gu Ci forced his tone to remain as steady and gentle as possible. “Your Highness, may I ask when all of this started?”
Jun Yichen had no intention of keeping secrets from him; when it came to anything Gu Ci wished to know, he would conceal nothing.
As it turned out, when Jun Yichen was six years old, his birth mother, Consort An, inadvertently offended the Emperor with an inappropriate remark, resulting in both her and the young prince being cast into the cold palace.
On the surface, the Empress maintained a gentle, virtuous facade, but behind closed doors, she viewed the imperial offspring as thorns in her side.
Even though mother and son were banished to the cold palace with strict imperial orders barring them from stepping outside, the Empress’s anxieties remained unallayed. She dispatched agents to poison six-year-old Jun Yichen with a substance known as the “Soul-Snatching Shadow.”
The Soul-Snatching Shadow was a deadly venom originating from the southern borders. Victims afflicted with this poison were strictly prohibited from experiencing extreme joy, overwhelming sorrow, or volatile emotional spikes, as any such turbulence would trigger a premature relapse.
The most lethal aspect of the toxin was that if the afflicted individual attempted to suppress it forcibly using internal energy, any miscalculation would cause the venom to surge uncontrollably through their meridians, inducing an immediate and violent attack.
The poison naturally relapsed precisely once a month, on the thirtieth day.
“Was it because of yesterday? Because I asked Miss Su to check your pulse?” Knowing that over-exerting internal energy would trigger the venom, yet choosing to do so anyway to hide his condition, the sudden surge of internal energy he had sensed the day before had been no illusion.
Fearing that Gu Ci was angry, Jun Yichen hastily turned toward him. “No, A-Ci, it’s not.”
Interrupting him, Gu Ci spoke with solemn earnestness, “Your Highness, if there is ever something you do not wish to do, you can simply refuse. There is no need to indulge my whims.”
Knowing full well it wasn’t the prince’s fault, Gu Ci still felt a wave of frustration bubble over. “Your Highness, by pushing yourself to this state, do you intend to break the hearts of everyone who cares about you?”
The moment the words left his mouth, Gu Ci felt his tone had been far too harsh. He awkwardly turned his back, refusing to look at Jun Yichen any longer.
Jun Yichen stared fixedly at the back of Gu Ci’s head, saying nothing.
After a long silence.
Unable to maintain his stubbornness any longer, Gu Ci flipped back around to face him, only to find the prince still looking at him with that same gentle, smiling expression.
A pang of profound heartache tugged at his chest. Sighing softly, he reached out to pat Jun Yichen’s shoulder, fixing him with a steady, serious gaze. “Your Highness, you don’t actually have to force yourself to smile all the time, you know. No one can be happy every single day.” It was hard to fathom how a six-year-old child, having just lost his mother and suffering from a fatal poison, had managed to survive the horrors of the cold palace.
Jun Yichen’s body stiffened slightly. It brought back memories of his mother telling him, “You must smile every single day so that your father the Emperor will come to visit us.” It was only now, hearing these words, that he realized people were allowed to laugh when they were genuinely happy, and that forced smiles weren’t a mandatory requirement for existence.
Yet, for so many years, smiling had long since become his default armor to mask the turbulence within.
Overcome by a sudden, irresistible impulse, he reached out and pulled Gu Ci tightly into his arms, burying his face against his shoulder as if trying to melt the boy directly into his own blood and bone.
The sudden tackle left Gu Ci completely rigid.
Awkwardly enduring the embrace, he felt an unfamiliar, erratic rhythm thumping against his ribs, a strange, fluttering current quietly taking root deep within his heart.
When Mebai entered the chamber shortly after, he found Gu Ci sitting beside Jun Yichen, meticulously applying fresh ointment to the prince’s scarred arms. Noticing the visibly improved complexion and stabilized condition of his master, Mebai looked toward Gu Ci with a renewed sense of profound respect.
In the past, whenever the master suffered a relapse, recovery took at least three or four days. Moreover, far from allowing anyone to apply medicine, the prince wouldn’t even permit a soul to approach him during those dark hours.
Once Gu Ci finished treating the arms, he gently parted the edges of Jun Yichen’s half-open undergarment to inspect his back. What he saw made his breath catch: across the smooth skin of the prince’s back lay a sprawling web of deep purplish bruises, overlapping so densely they looked as though they had been violently crushed beneath an iron fist.
They were the lingering testimony of the frantic thrashing and impacts the prince had endured behind closed doors while fighting off the agony of the poison the night before.
Every bruised patch seemed to silently recount the unbearable torment of the relapse.
Even Mebai, a battle-hardened veteran born from blood and steel, couldn’t help drawing a sharp breath at the sight.
Suppressing the thick knot of sorrow tightening in his throat, Gu Ci realized anew just how much agony a person had to endure to be driven to the brink of madness.
The system might constantly hound him about preventing the villainous boss from turning dark, but none of them truly understood the sheer mountain of suffering and torture the boy had walked through. If someone could emerge from such an abyssal trial with their inner kindness and sincerity entirely intact, they wouldn’t be human, they would be a living saint.
Heavy-hearted, Gu Ci scooped up a dollop of medicinal salve on his fingertip, gently smoothing it over the bruised skin. The light friction of his fingertips sent faint, involuntary shudders rippling through Jun Yichen’s frame.
By the time the application was complete, a sheen of cold sweat coated Jun Yichen’s forehead, and his body trembled faintly from exhaustion.
Blushing slightly, Jun Yichen reached for a clean set of garments handed over by Mebai and retreated behind the privacy screen to change.
Pausing in bewilderment, Gu Ci briefly wondered if he had been too heavy-handed. Full of self-reproach, he called out, “Your Highness, are you alright? I’m rather clumsy with these things, did I hurt you?”
Receiving no response from behind the screen, and noticing that the night sky outside had already darkened completely, Gu Ci grew anxious. “Your Highness, if you’re feeling well enough, I should head back now. If I stay out past curfew, my old man will greet me with family military law!” Without waiting for a reply from the inner room, he bolted out the door in a hasty retreat.