In the courtyard, just a wall away, Aunt Zhao was crouched beneath the window ledge. Hearing no sounds of argument or any other commotion from inside, she was starting to feel a bit puzzled.
Xie Wu and Xie Qi, who had just stepped out, saw this scene, silently retracted their feet, and even closed the door to their room.
Zhao Mu Jiang stood under the eaves and coughed twice to get Aunt Zhao’s attention before he, too, went inside.
Aunt Zhao glanced back at the main house, which was still utterly silent, then tiptoed back to her room. As she shut the door, she shot Zhao Mu Jiang a glare. “You think I was eavesdropping? I was just worried about that young couple. They seemed a bit off, and I was afraid they’d fight.”
Zhao Mu Jiang didn't know what was going on with Fan Changyu and Xie Zheng either. He only said, “When Changyu was taken away to repair the dam, she found me and told me that she and that boy Yan Zheng had already divorced.”
This news startled Aunt Zhao. “What nonsense are you talking about!” she blurted out.
Forgetting to lower her voice in her agitation, she quickly glanced outside before sitting on the edge of the bed. “When Yan Zheng was conscripted, Changyu was so dejected for days. She even prepared so many things for him, packing them in bags big and small. How does that look like they’ve divorced? Besides, when I went to persuade them, didn’t they end up sleeping in the same room?”
Zhao Mu Jiang then relayed what Fan Changyu had told him.
Aunt Zhao was first shocked to hear that their marriage had initially been a sham. But on second thought, considering Yan Zheng was literate, educated, and handsome, his willingness to marry into the family did seem to fit Zhao Mu Jiang’s explanation.
She sat worriedly on the bed for a while, then said, “Even if it wasn’t a love match when they married before the new year, they properly bowed to the heavens and earth. How are they not husband and wife? A single man and a single woman under the same roof day after day, not to mention they’re both exceptionally good-looking—how could they not develop feelings for each other? Look, back when Yan Zheng was so injured he couldn’t even get out of bed, Changyu was afraid his medicine would be too bitter. Even when her own life was so hard, she still bought him candy! You can’t fake that kind of bond forged through hardship!”
Zhao Mu Jiang glanced at Changning, who was listening with her ears pricked up, and sighed. “Alright, alright. The two of them have probably made up. Ning Niang is still here, let’s not talk about this.”
Changning blinked her big, bright black eyes.
Aunt Zhao helped her take the silk flower off her topknot and pinched her chubby little face with a smile. “Our Ning Niang is a lucky one. Your big sister is on duty in the army now, in charge of a whole group of people. In the future, Ning Niang’s husband won’t dare to bully her.”
Changning grinned, revealing a mouthful of small white teeth. After a moment’s thought, she held up her thumb and added, “Brother-in-law is amazing, Little Uncle Qi is amazing, and Falcon is amazing too! No one will bully Ning Niang!”
Aunt Zhao was amused by her. “What a clever little imp.”
After coaxing Changning to sleep, Aunt Zhao lay in bed, but another matter came to mind.
According to the Old Man, that young couple probably hadn't even consummated their marriage yet?
On one hand, Aunt Zhao hoped the two of them would live a good life together. On the other, thinking about Fan Changyu’s position in the army, she knew that if she were to get pregnant, it would be extremely troublesome. This thought made her worry endlessly, and she tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep. Several times, she even felt the urge to get up and eavesdrop on the house next door.
The next day, Fan Changyu had just woken up when Aunt Zhao pulled her into a secluded corner.
She had slept well, but for some reason, Aunt Zhao’s eyes, which already had bags under them, were now frighteningly dark and bruised-looking.
Fan Changyu asked in confusion, “Auntie, did you not sleep at all last night?”
Aunt Zhao glanced around before lowering her voice. “Changyu, ah, your mother passed away early, and you don’t have any elders to guide you, so there are some things no one has taught you. I see you as my own child, so I’ll be direct. You’re in the army now. If you were to have a child, it would be inconvenient. Do you want me to find a doctor to prescribe you a contraceptive decoction?”
Fan Changyu hadn’t expected Aunt Zhao to be worried about this. Her face instantly flushed red to the roots of her neck. She shook her head. “There’s no need.”
Hearing this answer, Aunt Zhao was momentarily unsure whether to be relieved or to continue worrying about the young couple.
While she was still conflicted, Fan Changyu had already gone to the courtyard to draw water and wash her face.
Now that it was summer, the well water was still a bit chilly in the morning.
Seeing her wash her face with cold water, Aunt Zhao couldn’t help but nag, saying she was afraid the cold would accumulate in her body and telling her to get hot water from the kitchen.
Fan Changyu had a strong constitution and didn’t take Aunt Zhao’s words to heart. But when Changning put her hands in the basin, looking like she was about to join her in using the cold water, Fan Changyu wouldn’t allow it. She made Changning take her hands out and obediently go to the kitchen for hot water.
After washing Changning’s face, Fan Changyu yawned and tied Changning’s hair into topknots by feel.
The child, who used to accept whatever hairstyle she gave her, now looked at her reflection in the basin of water and mumbled aggrievedly, “I want Little Uncle Qi to do it.”
Fan Changyu glanced at the frizzy topknots she had tied and felt a pang of guilt.
The child was growing up and now knew the difference between pretty and ugly. She wasn't as easy to fool as before.
“Alright then,” she said. “Go find your Little Uncle Qi to do it.”
Changning took the comb herself and trotted over the threshold on her short legs to find Xie Qi. She checked each room but couldn’t find him. Hearing faint voices from the main house, she pattered over. But the moment she pushed the door open, she let out a terrified wail and burst into tears.
Inside the room, Xie Zheng stood with his back to the door, his upper body bare. Blood-stained white cloths were scattered at his feet. A knife wound, scarlet and gruesome, stretched across most of his back. Xie Qi was applying medicine to it.
The moment he heard Changning’s cry, Xie Qi knew things had gone wrong. The master had specifically waited until the mistress was out before having him come in to help with the medicine. Now, it seemed the secret was out.
Sure enough, although Xie Zheng had managed to wrap a thin robe around himself in time, Fan Changyu, drawn by Changning’s cries, had already arrived at the door.
When she saw the circle of bloody white cloths on the floor, Fan Changyu’s expression changed. She lifted her gaze and looked straight at Xie Zheng. “You’re injured?”
Xie Zheng tied the sash of his robe. “A small injury,” he replied.
Fan Changyu’s brows furrowed tightly. Looking at the pile of cloths on the floor, she knew the wound on his body was likely not small. No wonder when he sparred with her last night, he had almost entirely avoided heavy attacks, relying on clever techniques instead.
She crouched down, patting Changning’s shoulder and comforting her for a moment. Then she said to Xie Qi, “Brother Xie Qi, please take my sister out first. She was frightened once before and is a bit afraid of blood.”
Xie Qi coaxed Changning and led her out of the room.
Fan Changyu closed the door. When she turned around, her face was still expressionless. She just looked at Xie Zheng and said, “Let me see the wound on your back.”
Xie Zheng’s handsome brows knitted slightly. He hadn’t expected Fan Changyu to stumble upon this. He answered evasively, “The medicine has already been applied.”
Fan Changyu stared at him, enunciating each word. “I said, let me see.”
The two of them were at a standstill for a moment. When Xie Zheng still didn’t move, Fan Changyu stepped forward and went to untie his sash herself.
When he caught her hand, she was afraid of tearing open the wound on his back and didn’t dare to struggle forcefully, but her expression was extremely unpleasant.
Her pair of apricot eyes were cold and sharp, her tone uncharacteristically forceful. “Either take off your clothes, or you leave right now and never appear before me again.”
Xie Zheng’s hand, gripping her wrist, did not let go. His long, narrow phoenix eyes were half-lowered, his long lashes casting a beautiful arc. In the morning light filtering through the window screen, his jawline looked somewhat pale. He asked with a lazy smile, “Your tone… it’s as if you’re forcing an innocent man into prostitution.”
Fan Changyu’s lips tightened into a thin line. “I am forcing you.”
Xie Zheng met her gaze. It was the first time he had ever seen Fan Changyu look so forceful. Her apricot eyes had lost their usual clear, harmless quality; her gaze was sharp and aggressive.
It was as if a lazy cat had suddenly transformed into a tiger or leopard that could easily tear its prey to shreds.
And yet, that very gaze seemed to have hooks that snagged right onto Xie Zheng’s heartstrings.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. He lowered his lashes, suppressing the impulse to seize her jaw and kiss her deeply. He obediently untied his sash again. As he slightly raised his eyes, the inky black of his pupils lightened in the dawn, making them look exceptionally beautiful. His profile was even coated in a layer of soft light.
The long fingers pulling at the sash had faint, small scars. The body hidden beneath the robe was not as elegantly handsome as his face suggested, but rather lean, powerful, and solid, even exuding a sense of pressure.
It wasn’t the first time Fan Changyu had seen Xie Zheng bare-chested, but before, he had either been lying down injured or seen vaguely in the moonlight. Never had she seen him so clearly.
When her eyes met Xie Zheng’s intensely aggressive gaze, the imposing aura she had built up instantly deflated. She couldn’t help but press her lips together, shifting her line of sight from his firm waist and abdomen to circle behind him and look at the wound on his back.
Upon seeing the long, diagonal wound amidst a crisscross of old scars, Fan Changyu’s voice was hoarse for a long moment before she asked, “How did you get this?”
Xie Zheng didn’t answer, only saying, “It doesn’t hurt.”
Fan Changyu glared at him, her eyes red. “I asked how you got it.”
He still wouldn’t speak. Fan Changyu stared at him and voiced her suspicion. “Was it that bastard surnamed Sui who hurt you?”
She could have said anything else, but the mistaken assumption that he had been injured by Sui Yuanqing finally made Xie Zheng speak. “I cut it myself.”
Seeing the look she gave him, as if he were a madman, he couldn’t quite explain what he was thinking at that moment. He only locked his dark eyes on her. “To draw blood as an offering for your knife.”
Fan Changyu truly did curse him. “Madman!”
But the redness in her eyes only deepened. She pushed him down to sit, picked up the half-used medicine bottle on the table, and began to apply it for him. Forcing her voice to remain steady, she said coldly, “If there’s a next time, I won’t care if you die from the pain! And I don’t want that stupid knife anymore!”
The trauma medicine was potent, stinging like salt and fire when sprinkled on the wound. Listening to Fan Changyu’s scolding, Xie Zheng rested his hands on the arms of the chair but couldn’t stop a smile from spreading across his lips.
His dark, obsessive, and abnormal thoughts hadn’t made her afraid or disgusted; they had only earned him her pity.
He was scarred and mottled like moss in a dark alley, damp, cold, and sticky, yet his sun was still willing to shine on him.
The gloomy haze that had been weighing on his heart seemed to dissipate in an instant.
Fan Changyu finished applying the medicine and was re-bandaging him. Seeing that he still had the mind to smile, she didn’t spare him with her words. “Did the pain make you stupid?”
Taking advantage of the way her arms had to reach around his back to wrap the gauze, Xie Zheng raised his hands and hugged her, resting his chin in the crook of her shoulder. His tone carried a trace of laziness. “I was thinking of the doll you’re going to give me, and it made my heart happy.”
Fan Changyu tied the knot and shot him a glare.
As for what kind of doll to give Xie Zheng, Fan Changyu had actually been pondering it for quite some time.
She had originally planned to just mold a pair of clay figurines, but when she thought of how much he was looking forward to it, and how easily clay dolls could break, she saw Zhao Mu Jiang doing woodwork and decided it would be better to carve him a pair of wooden puppets.
Zhao Mu Jiang could not only build all sorts of furniture and tools, but the carvings on the chests and cabinets he made were also incredibly lifelike.
However, Fan Changyu had no foundation in woodworking and couldn’t carve a finished product in a short time. The good thing was that she had used a knife for years, so her hand was extremely steady.
She only had one day of leave from the army. She had returned yesterday afternoon and had to go back this afternoon, leaving her with only half a day to learn woodcarving from Zhao Mu Jiang.
As Fan Changyu sat in her room practicing with a pile of scrap wood left over from Zhao Mu Jiang’s furniture making, Xie Zheng frowned at the stack of white paper on the table. His knuckles tapped lightly on the desk as he asked, somewhat uncertainly, “You want me to help you copy a book?”
Fan Changyu didn’t even look up. “Last time, my adoptive father tested me on the Zhuangzi. I misquoted a line, so he punished me by making me copy that chapter ten times.”
Xie Zheng’s fingertips fiddled with the new sheets of paper. Discovering that only the top sheet had a few lines written on it, he slowly raised his eyes to look at Fan Changyu. “So you haven’t even finished copying it once?”
Even before their eyes met, Fan Changyu felt a wave of guilt. She kept her head down, whittling the wood, and tried to make her voice sound firm. “I’ve already memorized it. It’s just that my adoptive father said my handwriting is ugly and that I have to copy it neatly ten times. That’s why it’s taking so long.”
Xie Zheng held the top sheet of paper with one hand, studied it for a moment, and said, “Your handwriting is, indeed, a bit ugly.”
Fan Changyu said, annoyed, “Are you going to help me or not?”
Xie Zheng said, “My handwriting is different from yours. It would be difficult to imitate your script.”
Fan Changyu understood his underlying meaning—he couldn’t write that ugly.
Her hand tightened on the knife handle. After taking a deep breath, she said as if accepting reality, “Forget it, I’ll copy it myself. This woodcarving won’t be done anytime soon anyway. I’ll just practice slowly when I have time.”
She put down the piece of wood and the boning knife and reached out as if to take the stack of paper from in front of Xie Zheng, but a few well-defined fingers pressed down on the edge of the paper.
Fan Changyu looked up and, not surprisingly, saw Xie Zheng’s dark, handsome face.
He pressed his temple, looking as if he was at his wit’s end with her. “Fine. Your handwriting won’t improve in a day or two. I’ll copy it for you.”
Her scheme successful, Fan Changyu’s eyes narrowed and the corners of her mouth curled up. She smiled like a cat that had stolen the cream, picked up her boning knife, and continued to practice her carving, hugging the piece of wood.
Xie Zheng dipped his brush in thick ink and glanced at the person sitting cross-legged across from him, engrossed in her carving. Sunlight shone through the screen window, seeming to cast a halo on her hair. On the paper before him, the few columns of characters were… a stark contrast to their owner’s appearance.
He gave a helpless tug at the corner of his lips and began to write on the paper, imitating her script, a gentleness in his eyes that he himself was unaware of.
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