As expected, it still had to do with the poison. But what was this about demonic power going berserk?
“Then how did you get through it every three months before?” Shi Yue asked.
“I just gritted my teeth and fought through it.”
In the past, whenever his berserk state struck every three months, Pei Xuan would lock himself inside his room to prevent his demonic form from terrifying others and getting him captured by the imperial court.
Recalling how Pei Xuan had curled up on the floor shivering when they first entered the room, a pang of sorrow tugged at Shi Yue.
With it being that agonizing, had he really just endured it all on his own every single time?
Shi Yue muttered, “Then my blood.”
Pei Xuan’s throat bobbed, his voice low and raspy, “I have no idea what happened. There was never anything like this before.”
Shi Yue sighed. “Well, alright. Next time your berserk state comes on, give me a heads-up beforehand so I can stay far away from you.”
Pei Xuan knew this was the most sensible course of action, but hearing him say it aloud like that, so eager to distance himself, left a strange, bitter ache in his chest, as if someone had given his heart a tight squeeze.
“You really should stay away, and avoid getting too tangled up with a monster like me.” Unhappy all of a sudden, Pei Xuan resorted to his usual habit of snapping at everyone and everything.
The little madman started up again the moment he recovered.
He hadn’t meant it like that, had he?
Shi Yue looked at Pei Xuan in bewilderment, but Pei Xuan had already turned away, his retreating figure inexplicably giving off a pitiful sense of abandonment.
Truly bizarre.
Surveying the corpses littering the floor, Shi Yue knew sleep was completely out of the question for the rest of the night.
He frowned in deep thought. Why had these people suddenly turned manic and lost their minds, possessing such superhuman strength during the fight? And why did these symptoms look somewhat familiar?
“Pei Xuan, do you think they look like they were poisoned by those vines?”
“They do.”
Mo San and his men had shown very similar signs after being poisoned, losing consciousness and exhibiting unnatural strength, though they had perished shortly after the toxin invaded their bodies.
Yet these people had been perfectly fine during the day. Could there be vines around here? Had they only just been poisoned?
Yet those vines were clearly strange entities unique to Mount Lutai; how could they appear here?
It seemed Qingzhou held many secrets of its own…
This trip was unlikely to be a peaceful one.
Suddenly, Pei Xuan reached out to touch his face and asked, “Did you hit me while I wasn’t in my right mind? Why does my face hurt so much?”
He caught on pretty fast.
Slapping him back then to vent his frustration had felt quite satisfying, though.
With a dry smile, Shi Yue looked at the distinctly reddish patch on Pei Xuan’s right cheek and said with complete sincerity, “How could I ever do something like that? You must have accidentally bumped into something.”
Though he had no proof, Pei Xuan had a lingering hunch that this guy’s expression was rather suspicious.
The next morning, Shi Yue and Pei Xuan departed from the inexplicable inn.
They prepared to head straight for the Mu estate, but upon passing the city gates, they caught sight of Uncle Zhong.
“Ah, we’ve finally been looking forward to your arrival, Second Young Master!”
Turning his head, Shi Yue broke into a smile the moment he recognized the newcomer. “Uncle Zhong.”
Uncle Zhong was the steward of the Mu estate, and whenever Shi Yue visited as a child, it was always Uncle Zhong who greeted him.
The Mu estate had calculated roughly when Shi Yue would arrive a few days prior and had kept people stationed at the city gates until they finally caught sight of him today.
Shi Yue’s mother was named Mu Jin, and her ancestral home was Qingzhou. According to familial relations, Shi Yue was Mu Jin’s nephew, and the purpose of this visit was to attend a wedding.
However, since Mu Jin had passed away many years ago, compounded by the vast distance between Qingzhou and the capital, the ties between the two families had grown exceedingly distant.
Uncle Zhong had anticipated that Shi Yue would arrive with a grand entourage, but he never expected him to bring only a single personal guard, looking rather travel-worn and battered as if he had weathered a major storm.
“Second Young Master, you look, did something happen along the way?” Uncle Zhong asked.
Gently, Shi Yue replied, “We did run into a few minor hiccups. We passed by Mount Lutai on our way here.”
Pondering for a moment, Uncle Zhong said, “There is indeed a mountain outside the city, but it’s utterly desolate and rarely visited. I’ve heard it’s crawling with venomous insects and miasma. Could it be that the Second Young Master ran into danger up there?”
“There are vine spirits on the mountain whose sap is extremely toxic,” Shi Yue explained. “We ran into them when we arrived.”
Uncle Zhong looked puzzled. “We’ve never heard of any such poison on the mountain!”
That wasn’t particularly strange. After all, if it weren’t for a powerful demon like Pei Xuan, ordinary people wandering in would likely have perished without a trace. With no survivors to tell the tale, the existence of spirits within would never get out.
Suspecting this matter might be connected to the chaos at the inn and wary of alerting the enemy, Shi Yue simply smiled. “We must have just had terrible luck. It was nothing major, though, so please don’t worry about it.”
The Mu estate was located not far from the city gates, and after walking just a short distance, they reached the front entrance.
Standing outside the gates were several men and women dressed in refined attire. At the head of them was a woman with slightly graying temples yet a remarkably well-preserved appearance. She was Mu Jin’s paternal cousin, Mu Rong, and this wedding was being held for her son.
“Ah, this must be Yue’er! It’s been a few years, and you’ve grown into such a handsome young man!” Seeing Shi Yue finally arrive, Mu Rong immediately beamed with warm hospitality.
The two young people standing behind Mu Rong hurried forward to pay their respects. The young man was Wen Ming, the protagonist of this upcoming wedding, and he cupped his fists, saying, “Welcome, Cousin, for enduring such a long and tiring journey. This is my wife.”
The young woman standing beside him smiled and curtsied.
Pulling Shi Yue’s hand, Mu Rong introduced, “And this is the new bride who is marrying into the family, Su Lianyue.”
Shi Yue nodded in greeting to each of them in turn, wearing a perfectly measured, gentle smile.
Watching his outwardly polite yet utterly fake demeanor, Pei Xuan let out a cold, soft scoff. He certainly knew how to act well-behaved when it suited him.
Noticing that Pei Xuan stood with an upright posture and possessed striking, handsome features and despite his simple guard attire, his demeanor was impossible to overlook, the family dared not treat him lightly.
As a result, they extended a warm and gracious attitude toward Pei Xuan as well.
Mu Rong led Shi Yue by the hand into the estate, chattering all the while about conditions in the capital and complaining about how sparse the communication between the two families had become after his mother’s early death, her tone full of seniorly affection.
Among his very limited experiences visiting Qingzhou, Shi Yue held a great fondness for Mu Rong. Perhaps because she was his mother’s only cousin and shared a remarkably similar face, Shi Yue felt a deep sense of closeness toward this aunt.
“Aunt, if you ever miss me, just send a letter to the capital. I’ll come visit whenever I have time.”
“What a good child.” Mu Rong looked at Shi Yue with affectionate eyes.
Shi Yue’s mother had passed away when he was young, and his father spent every year fighting on the border without returning. Mu Rong felt deeply for him, always feeling that the boy had missed out on a lot of the love and care he deserved growing up.
The Mu estate was adorned with festive red lanterns and silk ribbons. The blue-brick pathways were impeccably clean, and the red lanterns hanging under the corridors were embroidered with vibrant characters for double happiness, radiating a celebratory wedding atmosphere everywhere.
Noticing a rather startling bite mark on Shi Yue’s neck, along with various tears and rips in his clothes, Mu Rong frowned and asked, “Yue’er, did you run into danger on the road? How did you end up in such a state?”
Hearing this, Pei Xuan, the culprit behind the bite mark, glanced at Shi Yue’s neck as well.
The wound had stopped bleeding, leaving a bright red mark against Shi Yue’s fair, slender throat.
It looked like a blossoming peach flower bud painted upon pristine white Xuan paper.
Pei Xuan thought it actually looked rather nice—he had done a fine job biting him, and his dental work was top-notch.
Yet, remembering that he had actually bitten a man’s neck, he felt a strange awkwardness wash over him.
What was wrong with him lately? Pinching his face one day, biting his neck the next…
Smiling, Shi Yue placated Mu Rong. “It’s nothing, Aunt. I just ran into a stray dog on the road and accidentally got nipped while trying to feed it.”
The “stray dog” Pei Xuan: “?”
Mu Rong scolded indignantly, “That beast has no manners at all!”
Hearing this, Shi Yue nodded vehemently and even cast a sideways glare at Pei Xuan. “Exactly! Completely lacking manners! Ungrateful and heartless!”
The ungrateful and heartless Pei Xuan: “?”
Mu Rong continued, “Creatures like that can never be truly tamed. Don’t go petting them in the future, or you’ll just keep getting bitten.”
Shi Yue nodded. “I understand, Aunt.”
Mu Rong summoned a servant and instructed, “Take these two to the guest quarters, treat them well, and bring over some healing ointment.”
With that, she turned back to Shi Yue. “You’ve had a tiring journey. Go back and wash up first, and put some medicine on that wound, or it might get worse.”
After bowing to Mu Rong, Shi Yue left with the servant.
The moment Mu Rong walked away, Pei Xuan stepped up beside Shi Yue and let out a chilly, low huff. “A stray dog?”
Shi Yue decided to pretend he didn’t hear a thing.
“Ungrateful and heartless?”
Shi Yue continued playing the ostrich with his head tucked in.
“Second Young Master really knows how to be unreasonable.” Putting on a mournful expression with drooping brows, Pei Xuan spoke in an offhand tone, “I got hurt specifically to protect you, only to end up being scolded as a dog.”
Shi Yue shot him a glare. “I didn’t ask you to bite me.”
Pei Xuan’s dark phoenix eyes locked onto him for a long moment before he finally murmured, “It won’t happen again.”
“Better not.”
Following the servant one after the other through the courtyards, they caught sight of a group of servants struggling heavily as they carried large water vats.
Pausing in his steps out of curiosity, Shi Yue asked the servant, “What’s inside those vats?”
“Replying to the Second Young Master, it’s water,” the servant answered.
“Water?” Shi Yue narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Doesn’t Qingzhou have mountains and rivers all around? Doesn’t the estate have its own wells or cisterns? Why spend money to buy water?”
There was a river running right through Qingzhou City. Shi Yue remembered from his childhood visits that most households there either dug wells or channeled water directly into their homes, leaving no reason to purchase water externally.
The servant scratched his head and explained, “The estate’s cisterns haven’t been usable for a while. For the past few years, for reasons unknown, the river running through the city has turned extremely muddy, and even when boiled, it carries a heavy earthy stench, completely undrinkable. Later on, a merchant named Boss Shen came to the city with a method to purify the water at a fair price, so most people in town buy his water now.”
Shi Yue nodded thoughtfully.
The water had been perfectly fine when he was a child; why had it suddenly turned foul in recent years?
Moreover, that river consisted of flowing water. Even if it grew murky for a period, it should naturally clear up again after rainfall and rising tides.
Lost in these thoughts, the group slowly arrived at their sleeping quarters.
It was an exceptionally spacious courtyard. Expecting Shi Yue to bring a large retinue of guards, the hosts had arranged for them to stay together for his convenience, though they hadn’t anticipated that Pei Xuan would be his sole guard.
Shi Yue was quite satisfied. The rooms were large and free of other disturbances, allowing him to enjoy peace and quiet.
The servant said, “Second Young Master, please rest. I’ll go get the medicine for you.”
Smiling, Shi Yue replied, “Thank you for the trouble.”