Chapter 12: Home-style Tofu (Part 12)
This was Leng Yue’s first time performing an autopsy on fish. Afraid of making any mistakes, she deliberately drew a jar of pond water, collected two dead fish, instructed the guards to keep the fishpond secure, and then made a trip to An Wang’s residence.
By the time she returned from An Wang’s residence, the sun was already setting in the west. Leng Yue tiptoed into the bedroom, only to find the bed empty and the bedding neatly arranged. Jing Yi was not in the room.
Leng Yue’s heart sank.
A person who had always been timid, after suffering such a shock, now displayed unusual calmness and had inexplicably gone missing. Putting these clues together, several bloody old cases flashed through her mind all at once. Her heart raced so fiercely that her hands and feet turned cold.
Leng Yue cursed inwardly. She should have realized earlier that this was no good omen.
She hurried to the fishpond, but the guards stationed there said they hadn’t seen Jing Yi. She rushed to the gatehouse, and the gatekeeper claimed Jing Yi hadn’t left the estate. When she asked Uncle Qi, he too said he hadn’t seen Jing Yi since he returned home. Just as Leng Yue was about to mobilize the servants to search the entire estate for Jing Yi, she passed by the courtyard in front of the study for the third time and accidentally noticed something unusual moving near the study window. She stopped to take a closer look and froze completely.
The moving object…
Was Jing Yi, leaning halfway out of the study window, waving at her.
He waved while beaming brightly.
"I saw someone pacing back and forth in the courtyard earlier and had a feeling it was you—and it really is you! I forgot where I put the study key. Come in through the window!"
Leng Yue stood rigidly in the courtyard before the study, frozen from the tips of her hair down to her toenails. It took her a long time to suppress the urge to draw her sword and slash him.
On their wedding day, Madam Jing had held her hand and spoken about Jing Yi. Before mentioning that Jing Yi "remembered food but not beatings," she had said four words. At the time, the commotion outside was so loud that Leng Yue only caught the general sounds, thinking Madam Jing had said Jing Yi was "quite kind." But she always felt these two phrases didn’t quite fit together. Now, watching Jing Yi leaning out the window, smiling like a peony, Leng Yue felt as if she had been enlightened and suddenly understood.
She had misheard. Those four words from Madam Jing were not "quite kind."
They were "thick-skinned and big-hearted."
Thick-skinned and big-hearted, remembered food but not beatings.
Yes, now it all made sense.
Leng Yue raised her hand to wipe the sweat that had broken out on her forehead from sheer anxiety. With a dark expression, she walked to the window and raised an eyebrow disdainfully at Jing Yi.
Jing Yi had changed out of his official robes and was back in snow-white attire, standing by the window and smiling at her with radiant charm.
While searching for him frantically in the courtyard, she had kept thinking that if Jing Yi could appear before her, alive and kicking with a beaming smile, she would immediately pin him to the ground and kiss him for a full day and night.
Now, she just wanted to pin him to the ground.
And strangle him.
"What are you holed up in here for?"
"Copying texts," Jing Yi’s smile made Leng Yue feel that he was brimming with a sense of spontaneous pride. "I’ve already copied it four times. I should be able to finish before dinner."
Leng Yue was taken aback.
Never mind where his motivation for copying texts came from…
Although Leng Yue had never read Biographies of Exemplary Women, she had handled it a few times while investigating crime scenes. She didn’t know the content, but the book felt quite hefty in her hands.
It had only been half an afternoon. How could he have copied it four times?
Unless…
She had remembered the wrong book title?Leng Yue leaped into the room through the window, walked over to the desk, and picked up the neatly stacked copied pages Jing Yi had placed to the side. With a single glance, she was utterly baffled.
"Is this what you copied..." Leng Yue paused, "...a book?"
She hesitated because she wasn't sure if she should call this a book, and the reason she wasn't sure was that she couldn't recognize a single character on the pages.
Though she hadn't read many books, she knew enough characters to handle ordinary official documents and case files. She refused to believe there existed any book in the world where she wouldn't recognize even one character.
Unwilling to give up, Leng Yue stared intently at the characters on the pages for a long while. Jing Yi couldn't hold back any longer. "Madam... you're holding the paper upside down."
"..."
Leng Yue, her face darkening, flipped the paper over. Still, she couldn't understand a single word.
She then turned it sideways. Still incomprehensible.
Jing Yi couldn't resist again. "Madam... you can't read it, can you?"
"..."
"It's perfectly normal not to understand. This is Sanskrit. Right now, in the capital, probably only a few senior monks and my third brother can read it."
Leng Yue's wrist stiffened slightly, and the urge to pin him to the ground grew even stronger.
This time, she wanted to press him down and shave his head bald.
"Who told you to copy it in Sanskrit?"
Jing Yi blinked innocently. "You didn't say I couldn't... Sanskrit has fewer strokes, so it's faster to write."
True, she hadn't specified, because until now, she had no idea there was such a thing as Sanskrit in this world...
Clutching the sheet of divine script, Leng Yue felt a headache coming on.
And as her head throbbed, she remembered that the one with the headache shouldn't be her right now.
Wasn't this person burning with fever when she left?
Leng Yue reached out and touched his forehead. It was still just as scorching hot.
Frowning, she looked at the person before her, who seemed entirely unbothered. "Aren't you feeling unwell?"
"At first, it was a bit uncomfortable to write, but I got used to it."
Leng Yue choked back a retort, sighed silently, placed the divine script back on the table, and tapped Jing Yi's feverish forehead with a curled finger. "I meant, with such a high fever... aren't you feeling physically unwell?"
Jing Yi neither nodded nor shook his head. Instead, he took half a step back, leaning casually against the edge of the desk, and looked up at Leng Yue. "Have you figured out how those koi fish in the pond died?"
Leng Yue's brow furrowed slightly. After a moment's hesitation, she nodded and told the truth. "Arsenic."
Jing Yi breathed a sigh of relief, though his face grew a shade paler.
He was right—red really did make his complexion look better. Dressed all in white like this, when his face turned pale, it only made him appear even more pallid.
Jing Yi smiled faintly. "Good, that's not too hard to handle. After it's dealt with, we can use that pond to..."
What Jing Yi intended to do with that pond, Leng Yue didn't know, because before he could finish, his vision suddenly darkened. He swayed, bracing one hand against the desk and pressing the other to his forehead.
Watching him struggle, Leng Yue couldn't bear it any longer. In a moment of impulse, she scooped him up horizontally into her arms.
The moment their eyes met, Leng Yue felt a twinge of regret. Her sudden action had turned Jing Yi's previously somewhat unwell expression into one of sheer shock.
"Xiao Yue..."Since she had already picked him up, Leng Yue felt that putting him down now would only make things worse. So, steeling herself, she shot Jing Yi a fierce glare, effectively silencing the flood of thoughts he was about to voice.
"Shut up and hold onto my neck tighter."
Jing Yi hesitated for a moment but complied, as he couldn't think of anything else to do in that situation.
Acting as if nothing were amiss, Leng Yue leaped out of the window while carrying Jing Yi horizontally in her arms. She landed lightly on the courtyard wall between the study and the bedroom, then gracefully descended into the bedroom courtyard.
A maid was trimming the begonia bushes in the courtyard. Startled by the sight of the newlywed mistress descending from the sky while holding her master in her arms, the maid’s hand trembled, and she accidentally snipped a begonia plant clean off at the root.
Leng Yue and the maid locked eyes. Seeing the maid’s stunned expression, Leng Yue decided that, for the sake of domestic peace, she needed to say something before entering the room.
"Well... the master has fainted."
Jing Yi cooperated perfectly by tilting his head and burying his face into Leng Yue’s full chest, even rubbing against it a few times, whether intentionally or not.
Leng Yue took a sharp breath to keep herself from going weak in the arms and dropping him to the ground.
The maid stared blankly, processing the scene for a while before timidly asking, "M-Mistress, should we call for a physician?"
"Go ahead."
By the time she carried Jing Yi into the room and laid him on the bed, Leng Yue’s face had darkened considerably. Jing Yi, with his eyes tightly shut, refused to let go of her neck. Leng Yue stood awkwardly bent over the bedside, her expression growing even stormier.
"Stop pretending. Let go."
"I’ll count to three. Let go."
"One, two, three..."
"If you don’t let go, I’ll take action."
"Believe me, I’ll slap you."
"Are you done yet?"
"..."
Left with no other choice, Leng Yue lay down beside Jing Yi.
Jing Yi was holding her so tightly that Leng Yue had to share the same pillow with him, their faces so close she could count his eyelashes.
His lashes were as fine and dense as if meticulously painted with a delicate brush, resting motionless against his slightly fever-flushed skin, creating an indescribable tranquility.
Jing Yi’s breathing was steady, as if he were truly asleep. Though Leng Yue was irritated by his tight grip and the heat radiating from his feverish body, she couldn’t bring herself to be harsh. She reached out, pulled the quilt over, and wrapped them both inside.
Leng Yue thought to herself that once he fell into a deep sleep, he would naturally loosen his grip, and she could slip away then. So she lay there, waiting for him to fall asleep and release her.
But as she lay there, Jing Yi still hadn’t let go, and Leng Yue began to grow drowsy. After yawning twice in a row, her eyelids grew heavy.
Just as she was drifting off to sleep, the door was abruptly knocked twice in haste.
"Master!"
Leng Yue jolted awake and tried to sit up, momentarily forgetting that Jing Yi was still holding her neck and that she was lying right at the edge of the bed. As a result...
Outside the door, Uncle Qi clearly heard a dull thud, as if something heavy had hit the floor. Startled, he pushed the door open to find Jing Yi and Leng Yue tangled together in the quilt, rolling on the ground. Jing Yi was on top, Leng Yue beneath him, and the two stared at each other in silent disbelief. At a glance, they looked like a savory pancake wrapped around two fried dough sticks.
Uncle Qi stood at the doorway, unsure whether to step in or retreat.This was a scene that had never been witnessed before in the Jing family mansion—at the very least, not in broad daylight, and certainly not in a room with an unlatched door.
He didn’t know whether to lament his own aging or the changing times.
“Master, Madam…” Uncle Qi steadied himself at the doorway, wisely keeping his gaze fixed on his own toes. “I heard the master had fainted and was worried something might be wrong, so I took the liberty of sending for Second Master.”
“I just… cough… caught a slight chill. There’s no need to trouble Second Master to come all the way here.”
Jing Yi’s voice carried not a trace of drowsiness, and his fox-like eyes showed no sign of the haze that follows a sudden awakening. Especially since he showed no intention of moving off of her, Leng Yue felt a strong urge to throttle him.
“Understood…” Uncle Qi responded, hesitating briefly before adding, “Master, Madam, there’s another matter… A woman with a prominent belly has arrived at the residence. The gatekeeper says he’s never seen her before, and she refuses to identify herself. She only insists on speaking with the master and madam…”
Uncle Qi paused, hesitated once more, then continued, “…about the child in her womb.”
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