Chapter 45: He Is Jealous
Xiao Li asked, "Does it hurt badly?"
Wen Yu shook her head gently. Her face was pale and bloodless, only her eye sockets still tinged with red. Her collar had been pulled down slightly for easier application of medicine, revealing collarbones that glowed warm white under the firelight, covered by only a thin layer of skin and flesh—a kind of strikingly beautiful fragility.
And her most vulnerable snow-white neck, due to her slightly tilted head, was completely exposed to the gaze of the person before her.
Xiao Li looked at the inch-long wound on the side of her neck, his hand on her shoulder tightening slightly. He then put away the medicine, tore a strip of cloth from the sleeve of Wen Yu's inner garment, and wrapped it around her neck.
His clothes, both inside and out, were soaked with blood and terribly dirty, so he could only use Wen Yu's own.
His rough fingertips touched the delicate skin of her neck. Wen Yu was still trembling slightly from enduring the pain. The fire roasted their soaked clothes, and in this interplay of cold and heat, when Xiao Li looked down at her, their breaths nearly intertwined.
Those emotions that had surged wildly in his heart but had always been suppressed, after tonight's life-and-death experience, were like underground springs filled by a heavy rain—no matter how hard he tried to restrain them, they would seep out from collapsed corners.
Xiao Li said, "Don't do such things again in the future. Don't you still want revenge? If you die, you won't be able to avenge anything."
Wen Yu's every breath was filled with the heavy scent of blood from him. The soaked clothes wrapped around her body felt cold, but whether it was because she was enveloped by his presence or because of the fire's warmth, she also felt faintly feverish.
Those feelings he had never spoken aloud had already been laid bare before her tonight in those few words: "I care."
Wen Yu couldn't pretend to be deaf and dumb. When she raised her eyes to meet Xiao Li's gaze, she felt her vision become entangled.
Her eye sockets still ached dully. Her eyes, still thinly red from crying, could make people surrender their defenses just by looking at them.
Perhaps life-and-death situations most easily destroy the defenses of reason in one's mind. Enveloped completely by the other's presence, for a moment Wen Yu also wanted to forget who she was.
But such thoughts only surfaced briefly before she sobered up.
Wen Yu averted her eyes and spoke weakly while looking at the fire: "Even though Wen Shi has fallen to such a state, I'm fortunate to still have you, Cen An, Tong Que, and others risking your lives to protect me."
"My life isn't much more valuable than yours. When Tong Que was injured that day, I threatened the officers with my life to not harm her. Today, when you were trapped because of me, how could I just watch you die before my eyes?"
She again brought up Cen An and Tong Que, framing tonight's neck-cutting act to save him as no different from saving Tong Que that day.
The sticky web that had enveloped the two of them vanished completely.
Xiao Li looked at her lowered long eyelashes. After finishing bandaging her wound, he withdrew his hand and only said, "It seems my judgment isn't bad—I've followed a good master."
Wen Yu felt a slight sting in her heart at his words and said, "I've never regarded you as a servant. You and your mother have both shown me kindness. When I reach Southern Chen someday, I will only treat you as an honored guest."
Xiao Li used a thin branch to stir the ashes in the fire. The flames outlined the contours of his profile. He seemed to smile and said, "I'm just a rough man, not fit to be an honored guest. Being a foot soldier is good enough for me."After speaking, he glanced at his robe still dripping with blood and said, "I've rolled in the mud several times and am quite filthy. I noticed a stone pit outside collecting rainwater—I'll go wash up."
Wen Yu watched his retreating figure, her clear yet broken eyes swirling with complex emotions. After several internal struggles, they finally settled into a deathly stillness.
National hatred and familial vengeance had long since shattered everything about her.
Her life no longer belonged to herself—she lived only for revenge.
Once outside the cave, Xiao Li spat out the stagnant blood he'd been suppressing in his throat.
Only when the tension in his mind eased did he realize how much his entire body ached, particularly his chest, where every breath felt like tearing at the flesh inside.
He estimated his ribs had been broken when the assassins pinned him to the ground and kicked him.
Wiping the blood from his lips with the back of his hand, he thought: At least it's just ribs. If it were limbs, he and Wen Yu might truly have died there tonight.
Leaning against the stone wall to catch his breath, Xiao Li finally approached the bathtub-sized water hole. He scooped handfuls of water to wash the blood from his face, rinsed his mouth, and cleaned his blood-caked wounds before wringing out his clothes that had been filtering most bloodstains in the water. He tore his inner garment into strips.
The blade wounds inflicted by the assassins were extremely long with flesh torn open—the golden wound medicine hidden in his sword scabbard was far from sufficient.
By the faint firelight filtering through the vines at the cave entrance, Xiao Li applied the remaining medicine to the most severe wounds before wrapping them with the torn cloth strips.
After hastily tying his outer robe, he took his sword and explored both ends of the stone crevice, searching for alternative exits.
But the heavy rain had left the night sky pitch black, with broken cliffs and overgrown shrubs limiting visibility. He only discovered a groundwater spring emerging from a depression in the mountain rock, its flow trickling along gravel into the mountain stream.
Xiao Li breathed slightly easier—the spring water was clean and drinkable.
Removing the dented copper water flask from his waist, he initially intended to fetch water for Wen Yu, but found it unexpectedly heavy. He then remembered it contained cold medicine prepared for her.
Back at the inn, he'd meant to warm it in the kitchen when they encountered their pursuers, so he'd carried it ever since.
Fortunately, the medicine hadn't been lost. Having been drenched in the heavy rain tonight, Wen Yu's cold would certainly worsen. With this flask of medicine, she should be able to pull through.
Placing the flask by the spring, Xiao Li drank two handfuls of cold spring water himself.
When mountain wind whistled through the stone crevice, something struck near his feet.
Xiao Li took out his tinder for a closer look, finding a wild hawthorn berry. Many such wind-blown fruits lay scattered on the ground, though numerous had rotted—too dark to notice earlier.
In the darkness, he couldn't discern where the hawthorn tree grew, making a mental note to search for it at daybreak.
Using the tinder's glow, he gathered some freshly fallen hawthorn berries, washed them at the spring, and brought them back.
As Xiao Li parted the vines at the cave entrance, Wen Yu—leaning weakly against the stone wall—opened her eyes and asked, "Where have you been? Why were you gone so long?"Xiao Li placed the hawthorn berries cushioned on leaves picked from vines beside her and said, "I washed off the bloodstains outside as best I could. After bandaging my wounds, I looked around. It's too dark to see properly, so I haven't found a way out yet. But at the far left end of the stone crevice, there's a spring from an underground water source. There should be a hawthorn tree growing on the cliff wall nearby. I gathered some that had been blown down by the wind. Make do with these for now. I'll go out again tomorrow to look around."
Wen Yu's gaze fell on the cuts torn by blades in his outer robe. "You have several wounds on your back too. How did you bandage them yourself?"
She raised her eyes to look at him, her gaze as sharp as the lightning outside the cave, tinged with sorrow. "Has the wound medicine run out? Did you not apply any at all?"
Hearing this, Xiao Li seemed both amused and resigned as he pulled open his collar to reveal his muscular chest wrapped in bandages. "Why would I lie to you? If you don't believe me, you can unwrap them and bandage them again yourself."
Water dripped from his hair tips as his dark eyes watched Wen Yu, half-jokingly adding, "I'd be more than willing."
A flicker of irritation rose in Wen Yu's heart. She turned her face away, no longer looking at him, but her suspicion that he hadn't applied medicine was dispelled.
This sudden frivolous demeanor of his felt somewhat unfamiliar to her.
Yet she vaguely understood why he was acting this way.
His growing affection had been firmly rejected when she equated saving his life with saving Tong Que's under threat of death.
If he continued as before, the guilt in her heart might only accumulate further.
Perhaps by putting on this careless front, he wanted to show her that he understood her rejection, would withdraw his feelings, and wouldn't cause her any more distress.
She should have been relieved, yet an indescribable ache lingered in her chest.
Lost in thought, she noticed Xiao Li placing the water pouch beside her. "This is the medicine the pharmacy apprentice decocted for you yesterday afternoon. It's come in handy now. Drink it later, and your wet clothes... you should take them off too. I'll dry them by the fire, or your cold will only get worse."
Wen Yu clutched the woolen cape draped over her shoulders but didn't respond immediately.
Xiao Li seemed to understand her concern. "I'll wait outside. Call me when you've changed."
Although the heavy rain hadn't poured directly into the stone crevice outside the cave, water still dripped through the leaves, not to mention the strong wind outside. With his injuries more severe than hers, he was only holding up due to his robust physique.
Trapped here as they were, if he fell ill too, they would truly be waiting for death.
As he stood up, Wen Yu said, "No need to go outside. Just turn your back."
Xiao Li looked back at her with a faint smile. "So trusting of me?"
Wen Yu was silent for a moment before replying, "Why shouldn't I trust someone who has entrusted his life to me?"
The deliberately flippant smile on Xiao Li's face suddenly became difficult to maintain.
He walked toward the cave entrance, saying only, "Call me when you're done changing."
A cold wind swept into the cave as he pushed aside the vines at the entrance, making the firelight flicker.
Wen Yu looked down at the water stains her soaked skirt had left on the ground, understanding that he didn't wish to overstep propriety even slightly. She was briefly lost in thought before removing her cape and wet clothes.
Xiao Li leaned against the stone wall outside the cave, his arms crossed over his sword, letting the cold wind fill his robes.Every wound on his body ached, yet the pulsating flesh in his chest remained as scorching as molten lava, screaming with unwillingness, churning with ambition and desire so intense they could sear his skin and bones.
Through this pitch-black night that seemed to stretch into infinity, he turned his gaze toward Southern Chen beyond countless towering mountain ranges.
He knew exactly what that hatred was—the kind that twisted his entire heart into something monstrous.
He was jealous.
Jealous of that King Chen whom he had never met.
Author's Note: Red envelopes for the dear readers who've been waiting patiently in the comments section! (Wasteful pigeon banging head on floor.jpg)
Thank you to the little angels who voted for me or irrigated with nutrient solutions between 2024-01-05 06:22:54 and 2024-01-06 23:39:05~
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