Shi Yue’s heart skipped a beat. “Pei Xuan, ah!”
Before he could finish, a sharp pain flared at his neck.
Pei Xuan had actually bitten down directly on Shi Yue’s throat.
“Ugh.”
Shi Yue shivered all over from the pain, a wave of dizziness from having his blood drained washing over him instantly.
He could clearly feel his skin being pierced by sharp teeth, the warm blood flowing straight down into Pei Xuan’s throat.
Shi Yue pushed weakly against Pei Xuan with both hands, but the weight pressing down on him was astonishingly heavy. Eight fox tails locked tightly around him, leaving him nowhere to run and forcing him to endure Pei Xuan’s tearing bite.
“Let me go, Pei Xuan it hurts.” Anxious and terrified, Shi Yue felt dark spots dance before his eyes. “Damn it, you lunatic. Even if you have to bite, could you lighten up?”
I don’t know how long it had been by the time Shi Yue went numb, no longer struggling as he lay weakly amid Pei Xuan’s eight large tails.
The scent of blood gradually dissipated. Pei Xuan’s tense body suddenly relaxed, and clarity slowly returned to his eyes. He released his teeth from Shi Yue’s shoulder, a smear of blood still clinging to his sharp tips as they pulled away.
Sensing that the force pinning him down had lessened, Shi Yue scrambled away in a panic, hiding to the side and gasping for breath. His neck burned with pain, and he didn’t need to guess how terrifying the wound looked.
Pei Xuan blankly raised his face. His crimson eyes slowly calmed down, deepening into an inky black.
Pei Xuan looked at the bite marks on Shi Yue’s neck, the bruises on his wrists, and the way Shi Yue cowered in the distance, his eyes instantly filled with panic and confusion. Even the eight aggressive tails he had brandished moments ago now hung limply and tremblingly against the floor.
“I, I’m sorry.” Pei Xuan opened his mouth, his voice hoarse. Before he could finish the sentence, his body swayed, and he collapsed to the ground, losing consciousness entirely.
His fox ears and tails quickly vanished, reverting once more to the ordinary “Guard Pei.”
Shi Yue’s tightly wound heart finally began to loosen. He sat slumped on the floor to recover his strength, the stinging on the side of his neck slowly subsiding.
Shi Yue touched the wound; it had finally stopped bleeding.
He caught his breath and cast his gaze toward Pei Xuan, who was sprawled out on the floor.
With his demonic form shed, his complexion was as pale as a sheet of thin paper, his stray locks dampened by cold sweat. Gone was half of his daytime sarcasm and his madness from just moments ago, instead, he looked rather fragile.
“I must really owe you in a past life.”
Gritting his teeth, Shi Yue stood up and exerted a great deal of effort to drag Pei Xuan from the floor onto the bed.
Though Pei Xuan looked lean, he was actually quite tall and solidly built, pressing down on Shi Yue until his arms trembled.
Once he had him settled, Shi Yue sat by the edge of the couch, panting heavily for a long while.
Looking at that face, a wave of fury welled up inside Shi Yue. Who knew why he had gone mad for half the night, only to pass out looking so harmless and pitiful now? And of course, he was the one left to clean up the mess.
And he bit him! It hurt like hell!
In neither his past life nor this one did this guy have a clue what gentleness meant!
The more he thought about it, the angrier he grew, until Shi Yue couldn’t help slamming a palm against his face.
Slap. The sound was exceptionally crisp.
However, Pei Xuan didn’t wake up; a patch of red slowly bloomed across his right cheek instead.
Only then did Shi Yue vent a bit of anger and feel somewhat better. He stared at him blankly for a moment, let out a silent sigh of resignation, and tucked the quilt around him.
After all, Pei Xuan had accompanied him into danger and was poisoned because of him.
Noticing that Pei Xuan was covered in sweat, with damp strands of hair plastered against his face, Shi Yue frowned. He found a clean cloth and soaked it thoroughly in cool water.
With gentle movements, as he wiped Pei Xuan’s sweat-slicked brow, the other man’s eyelashes fluttered lightly, though he remained asleep.
Shi Yue watched him quietly, inevitably thinking of A-Yao.
Was he truly saving him again and again merely to keep tabs on him and win him over?
Clearly, Pei Xuan spoke with such caustic words and behaved with such unbridled defiance, yet he time and again accommodated him.
Deep down, Shi Yue knew very well: it was simply because of that face, which bore such a striking resemblance to A-Yao.
It always made him feel that having Pei Xuan by his side produced an illusion that A-Yao was still around.
Even though their personalities were worlds apart.
Having tossed and turned for the better part of the night, Shi Yue was physically and mentally exhausted, his eyelids fighting a losing battle against sleep. He had intended to return to his own room, but seeing Pei Xuan on the bed, he couldn’t shake his unease, fearing something else might happen to him in the middle of the night.
Hesitating for a moment, Shi Yue simply slumped down right beside Pei Xuan’s bed, propping his arms on the edge, and drifted slowly to sleep.
Before long, Shi Yue was jolted awake by a commotion of fighting, a chaotic clatter as noisy as New Year’s Day.
Robbed of his sleep, a belly full of anger flared within him.
He stood up, intending to check what was happening outside, only to hear a succession of roars and the cracking of splintered wood echoing from the hallway. The entire inn was boiling like a pot of hot oil.
Before Shi Yue’s hand could even touch the door, it was violently slammed inward from the outside. Two men with flushed faces and vacant eyes stumbled into the room, grappling with one another.
One of them casually grabbed a stool and smashed it down toward the other’s head. With a resounding crash, wood splinters rained all over the floor.
Wait. What on earth was going on?
Shi Yue’s sleepiness vanished in an instant.
He shrank back into a corner, watching the two brawling brawny men, terrified of being caught in the crossfire.
At that moment, the inn’s usually indifferent desk clerk also rushed in brandishing a knife, plunging right into the melee.
The clerk, who had been cold and silent all morning, now looked like a fierce night-demon. His hair fell in disarray around his cheeks, his eyes glinted with murderous intent, and he slashed blindly with his blade, making no distinction between friend and foe.
Following the clerk, more and more people poured in one after another, evidently the guests who had been dining in the main hall earlier that morning.
Yet every last one of them was now brutally savage, a pack of people tearing into each other inside the room with terrifying cruelty.
They looked entirely unhinged, consumed by a manic frenzy, attacking anyone they laid eyes on.
Shi Yue hid off to the side, terrified of drawing their attention. Pei Xuan was still unconscious; if any of them suddenly turned to attack him, he would be completely finished.
But as the saying went, whatever you fear most comes to pass.
The clerk, caught up in the brawl, was heavily kicked by a burly man. He flew through the air like a broken kite, landing by sheer coincidence right at Shi Yue’s feet.
The two of them locked eyes.
“I’m done for.”
That was the only thought running through Shi Yue’s mind.
The clerk’s eyes were bloodshot as he stared fixedly at Shi Yue.
Shi Yue’s heart raced faster and faster. This gaze was far more terrifying than Pei Xuan’s had been earlier!
The clerk lunged fiercely at Shi Yue. Pulling his composure together, Shi Yue calmly raised his arm and triggered the mechanism on his sleeve arrow. A tiny bolt pierced the air, striking the clerk squarely in the left chest.
The clerk collapsed instantly. His body twitched a few times before he drew his final breath.
Inwardly, Shi Yue gave Pei Xuan a mental thumbs-up. Thank goodness he had been gifted a self-defense weapon back then, or he would be in serious trouble right now.
The commotion on Shi Yue’s side startled the others brawling nearby. They all turned their heads to stare at him in a daze, and then charged at him all at once.
Panicking, Shi Yue dodged their attacks while firing his sleeve arrows one after another.
Soon enough, several of the maniacs collapsed to the ground, dead.
However, one of the men managed to evade the bolts, raised his fist, and threw a direct punch at Shi Yue’s face. Shi Yue dodged to the side, but his lower back slammed hard against a bedpost, drawing a muffled groan of pain.
Seeing the man’s second blow about to land with no time left to parry, he raised his arm once more to fire the sleeve arrow, only to realize with a sinking heart:
He was out of bolts.
Heaven is trying to destroy me!
Watching that vicious fist hurtle toward his face, Shi Yue could only panic and shout, “Pei Xuan!”
He squeezed his eyes shut, convinced that this punch would shatter his high bridge of a nose and leave him completely disfigured!
No, please!
Yet the anticipated pain never came. Instead, the heavy thuds of several bodies crashing to the floor rang out, followed by silence a few seconds later.
“Open your eyes.”
Shi Yue slowly opened his eyes to see Pei Xuan standing before him with a calm expression. The tight knot in Shi Yue’s chest finally loosened completely.
As for the raging, frenzied men, every single one of their throats had been slit in an instant.
“You’re finally awake!” Shi Yue blurted out. “What on earth is wrong with you? I heard the commotion, ran in, and found you passed out on the floor, and then you even bit—”
His voice cut off abruptly. Realizing how embarrassing it sounded to admit that Pei Xuan had pinned him down and bitten him, Shi Yue clamped his mouth shut.
Pei Xuan looked at the bite marks on Shi Yue’s neck, his expression dark and inscrutable. Lowering his gaze, his dark eyelashes drooped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect something like this to happen today.”
In truth, even Pei Xuan didn’t understand why he had reacted with such a complete lack of control upon sensing Shi Yue’s blood. While all demons were drawn to blood, Pei Xuan had never experienced such a reaction to anyone else’s; he usually even found blood filthy.
Except for Shi Yue’s.
His blood held a fatal attraction for him.
When Shi Yue’s blood had dripped onto him earlier, he had felt his entire body boil and burn with heat.
Shi Yue felt like this night had been overwhelmingly eventful. Exhausted, he pulled up the sole stool that had escaped damage during the brawl and sat down.
“Care to explain what’s going on with you? Was the poison not completely cleared out? Do you need to see a physician?”
Head bowed, standing right before Shi Yue, Pei Xuan answered in a muffled voice, “Past injuries caused my demonic energy to fall into disarray. Every five months, my demonic power goes berserk. This time, the poison probably triggered it and made it happen sooner.”