Chapter 23

The richly seductive floral nectar stained the corner of his lips, its thick fragrance so heady it made one’s head swim. Warm lips and tongue licked and suckled the flower juice, leaving imprints on that snow-white skin.

Scattered kisses fell upon her chest. Su Jiao’s mind went suddenly and completely blank. Her hands instinctively moved to push him away, but instead he caught both her hands and pinned them to the edge of the bed.

With her eyes unable to see, everything else became all the more sensitive. She heard the heavy, ragged breathing, felt the hands that lingered at her waist, and then there were those… densely scattered kisses below her collarbone.

“Xie Yan… Xie Yan…”

Having been long removed from such intimacies, her responses were exceptionally innocent and naive — yet precisely because she knew what those responses and movements signified, a scorching fire burned its way from her body all the way to her heart, nearly scalding her to the core.

Even calling out his name in that hoarse, warm, soft voice sounded utterly like seduction. Xie Yan, whose head had been buried against her, lifted it. His pair of eyes fell upon her parting red lips, and he lowered himself to kiss her.

The flower juice stuck at the corners of both their lips, sweet and cloying to the point she couldn’t bear it. She repeatedly tried to curl her body away to retreat, but instead he held her firmly in his embrace, the tip of his tongue pressing against her lips, seeking to press its way inside.

Those two hands, at a loss for where to go, finally came to rest on his neck. She was forced to arch her body as they both tasted the sweet fragrance of the flower juice together. Her soft hands couldn’t maintain their hold around his neck, and slipped away, then were lifted up by him once more. In her flustered state, she accidentally brushed against his ear.

In an instant, the scorching heat jolted Su Jiao back to some semblance of awareness. She opened her hazy eyes and looked ahead. The habitually cold and stern brow and eyes of Xie Yan had softened, suffused with a hint of spring. Fine beads of sweat glistened on his flushed face, and his eyes, crimson red and intensely focused, were fixed upon her.

Yet even redder than his face was the ear she had just touched — ear and neck flushed into a single expanse of red, so vivid that even the brilliant red flower juice became a mere backdrop by comparison. Su Jiao stared at it for a moment, struck dumb, and then he parted her lips and teeth and entwined them together.

The sash tied at her waist came loose, and a large hand reached inside.

“Reporting to Master…”

The voice from outside the room abruptly shattered the tender atmosphere within. Su Jiao pulled herself free from the haze and heard Xie Yan’s hoarse voice pressing down upon something savage and violent.

“Get lost.”

The person outside did not move.

“Reporting to Master — His Majesty summons you.”

Xie Yan appeared not to have heard. One hand slipped her inner garment aside and reached upward. Wherever his fingertips passed, a trail of trembling was left in their wake. Su Jiao, however, had fully sobered.

She looked at Xie Yan’s crimson eyes and immediately began to push him away.

“Don’t… Xie Yan…”

They’d had so many such encounters in their past life. She knew all too well that he was by now in earnest.

The panic in her voice was already quite apparent, yet Xie Yan held steady, pressing down upon her. She could not push him away. Watching as his hand reached further upward, Su Jiao steeled herself and sank her teeth into his forearm.

The smell of blood instantly spread through the air, yet he didn’t flinch in the slightest. On the contrary, his eyes carried a few shades more of intrigue, and his arms encircling her body tightened further.

Su Jiao’s complexion went suddenly ashen.

Delicate kisses traced their way downward from her lips — from the neck, reaching the collarbone —

Xie Yan felt something wet and salty against his tongue.

He lifted his head in a daze and looked. Su Jiao’s small palm-sized face was completely white, and a few teardrops were sliding down her cheeks.

Her body was trembling — she had clearly been frightened.

In a flash, the earlier impulse receded by more than half.

The night wind blew in through the window, and Chang Lin’s voice sounded outside once more, anxious and urgent.

“The palace eunuch is waiting at the door.”

Xie Yan was silent for a moment, then withdrew from her. Without a word, he gathered her clothing and straightened it for her.

Su Jiao moved slightly away from his touch and lowered her head to tie the sash herself.

Watching him walk away from her, she finally let out a breath of relief from her heart, and raised a hand to wipe away her tears.

It wasn’t that she truly feared him — it was that in the few intimate encounters they’d shared in their past life, he had left her with a decidedly poor impression.

This Imperial Majesty of theirs — handsome in appearance, possessed of seemingly boundless stamina, and yet… his skills were genuinely dreadful.

Every single time he had left her covered from head to toe in marks, and could make her cry out countless times in a single night.

Just now, the whole display had thoroughly frightened her, so she had taken the opportunity to let out a few sobs — yet she had never expected it would actually drive him away.

Left alone in the room, Su Jiao straightened her clothing and slowly wrung out her hair. Outside, Xie Yan stepped over the threshold, his expression darker than the pitch-black night.

That night, Su Jiao had slept until the middle of the night before she sensed someone lie back down beside her. He had deliberately kept a distance. She too quietly scooted further inward, and the night passed without incident.

Early the next morning, breakfast was sent to the door.

Perhaps what had happened the previous evening had given them a whiff of something different between them — for today, at long last, it was no longer plain congee and salted vegetables. The husband and wife finished their morning meal. Su Jiao shifted herself closer to Xie Yan across half the width of the table.

Someone gently tugged at his sleeve. Xie Yan gave no sign of noticing.

“Your Highness.”

She at least had a favor to ask of him, so Su Jiao opened with politeness and courtesy.

The person beside her tipped back the porcelain bowl and drained the congee in one go, as though he hadn’t heard her at all.

She waited a little, then tugged at him again.

“Xie Yan.”

He still gave no reply. His sleeve was pulled free from her hand, and he looked as though he was about to head out.

She was immediately anxious and chased after him by two steps.

“Surely you can’t intend to simply ignore me because of what happened last night?”

Xie Yan raised his brow and looked at her, then turned back his sleeve to reveal the forearm she had bitten bloody.

“Is that what you mean?”

The mark on it had not yet faded. It immediately brought the scene from the previous night rushing back to her, and her face flushed red.

Xie Yan watched her quietly, as if waiting for her reaction.

Su Jiao’s eyes darted about. She immediately clasped his arm and gave an ingratiating smile.

“How did it get so badly hurt? We mustn’t let Your Highness be in pain — I’ll go fetch some medicine right away.”

Saying so, she stepped back two paces as though about to leave, but kept a corner of her eye on Xie Yan’s reaction the entire time.

He didn’t move a muscle and simply let her go. Su Jiao walked two steps, then turned back and sighed.

Such a small wound hardly needed medicine.

She blinked and shook his arm back and forth.

“Let’s just say I got carried away last night for a moment — Husband, don’t hold it against me.”

Catching the not-quite-perceptible flicker of unease in her eyes, Xie Yan let out a cold snort.

Last night she’d bitten him without the slightest mercy. When she’d gone to sleep she’d practically pressed herself against the wall to stay as far away as possible. And now she knew to get close to him?

“What for?”

At least he was no longer keeping a cold face. Su Jiao smiled sweetly and leaned against him.

“I want to leave the palace.”

“Go to Fengyi Palace and report to the Emperor…”

“I want to sneak out of the palace tonight.”

Su Jiao cut off his words and said with a straight face.

…..

It was her first outing in many days, and even Su Jiao’s footsteps felt considerably lighter. Xie Yan walked beside her at an unhurried pace, and for a moment the two of them, husband and wife, were walking in a remarkably synchronized rhythm.

It was already evening. Yongning Hall was the closest to the Cold Palace. When they reached the base of the wall, Su Jiao obediently trotted into Xie Yan’s arms, letting him hold her as they swept over the tall walls under cover of night.

Mother Su’s tomb was not close to the palace. It took nearly half a shichen before the two of them arrived at the burial ground.

The pitch-black night concealed the faintest sounds. She paid her respects to Mother Su by the light of the moon, then crouched down in front of the tombstone.

Rain had only just fallen, masking the traces of the disturbed earth. Chang Lin spoke from behind her.

“In Great Zhao, when relatives were laid to rest, most would build the tombstone quite tall — for it was said this demonstrated the status of the deceased and the abundance of burial goods. On the day Madam Su was interred, the tomb was also built very high. When this subordinate came to inspect the site again afterward, I happened to catch sight of Young Master Su and a group of men carrying something away from here. When I came back inside, I saw that the earth had been disturbed.”

Su Jiao hadn’t yet had a chance to speak when her gaze fell on the area before the tomb and abruptly stopped short.

The ground in front of the tomb was burning hot to the touch, and a few sheets of yellow spirit paper were still drifting through the air — this was…

Su Jiao suddenly stood up and looked all around.

The surrounding area was perfectly quiet. The Su family burial grounds were always tended by a caretaker, and the first seven days of mourning had not yet passed — there should be no one here.

“You — ”

A faint stirring of the air reached her ear. Xie Yan’s hand suddenly snapped a willow branch from nearby and sent it slicing outward as a palm strike, his eyes cold and sharp.

“Come out!”

The willow branch shot toward a shadow in the darkness. There was the sound of someone letting out a pained, muffled grunt. Su Jiao immediately ran in that direction.

“Come here.”

Xie Yan moved swiftly and pulled her behind him. Chang Lin had already raised his sword and advanced to investigate first.

In a thicket behind the tomb, paper from an as-yet-unfinished fire was lifted by the wind. A person was curled up to one side, a pair of terrified eyes exposed.

The person was disheveled and filthy, arms lying limp and weak on the ground. The moment they caught sight of Su Jiao, the terror in those eyes transformed into agitation. Their tongue let out incoherent wailing sounds as they lurched toward her.

“How dare — ”

“Auntie Gui?”

Su Jiao blocked Chang Lin’s thrusting sword and reached out to support her in disbelief.

The person before her — neither fully human nor ghost in appearance, reeking of blood — was none other than the personal nursemaid who had served her mother.

“Auntie Gui? It’s really you?”

After Mother Su’s death, Su Wei had beaten the other servants to death to accompany their mistress in death — yet he had told Su Jiao that Auntie Gui had willingly gone to accompany her mother. She had always believed Auntie Gui was dead, never imagining she would see her here today.

“What happened to you, Auntie Gui? How did you end up like this? Say something…”

Auntie Gui opened her mouth and let out a few inarticulate sounds. Only then did Su Jiao discover that her tongue had been cut out — nothing remained but an empty, hollow mouth. A cold sweat immediately broke out all over her body.

“You… who did this to you…”

Su Jiao’s complexion went pale. Auntie Gui huddled in her arms, tears spilling from her eyes.

Xie Yan took the opportunity to steady Su Jiao.

“Let’s go first.”

She couldn’t speak. There was no use asking more.

The group left the tomb under cover of night and found a quiet inn. Chang Lin procured paper and a writing brush.

But only when the vermilion brush was spread out before her did they discover that Auntie Gui’s hand tendons had also been severed — she couldn’t even hold a brush.

Yet she stared at Su Jiao urgently, sobbing without words. Seeing that writing was impossible, she directly removed her shoes and socks and, gripping the vermilion brush with her foot, drew a few shaky, crooked characters on the paper.

“The Eldest Young Master deliberately harmed Madam. He killed me.”

Those few short words struck Su Jiao’s heart like a blow.

“What do you know?”

Hot tears welled up in Auntie Gui’s eyes. She wrote urgently on the paper once more.

Her pace was very slow, her characters crooked and uneven, and many words she didn’t know could only be drawn as crude shapes. Su Jiao read for a long while before she could piece together what she was saying.

“On the day before she descended the mountain, Madam went to the Eldest Young Master’s courtyard and told me to wait outside the door. I don’t know what she argued with the Eldest Young Master about inside, but when I heard a sound of struggle, I rushed in — before I had even stepped over the threshold, I saw the Young Master gripping Madam by the jaw and pouring some medicinal decoction into her mouth, after which Madam collapsed to the ground unconscious.

Afterward, the Young Master discovered me as well. He severed my hand tendons, cut out my tongue, and had someone run me through with a blade. I escaped from the very jaws of death…”

Su Jiao had never in the slightest imagined that every wound on Auntie Gui’s body had been inflicted by Su Wei. This account further confirmed the suspicions she had harbored for days — Mother Su’s death had indeed been entirely orchestrated by Su Wei.

The instant she grasped this truth, it was as though a basin of cold water had been poured over her from head to toe. Her entire body went cold. Her eyes brimmed with grief, anguish, and rage, and she was on the verge of tears.

“Why did he harm my mother?”

This was something she simply could not fathom, no matter how she tried. Her mother had been genuinely far too good to Su Wei.

Auntie Gui shook her head, then looked toward her and took up the brush once more.

“On that day, the Young Master fed the decoction to Madam and she lost consciousness — he did not throw Madam off the cliff.”

This sentence was entirely beyond her expectations.

Su Wei had claimed that her mother had suffered a heart spasm and fallen from the cliff. It was now known that the heart spasm had been his doing — so why had the fall from the cliff not occurred?

If it was to make the death seem more convincing, with a character as cold-blooded as his, wouldn’t he want all the more to throw her over the edge to make the matter airtight?

Yet after her mother’s death, Su Wei had not only refrained from throwing her off the cliff — he had even rushed to bury and inter her, and a mere two days after her death had opened the coffin and taken away her remains.

And even more than that…

“He had my mother’s clothing taken to the Imperial Mausoleum!”

After her grief and outrage, Su Jiao found herself growing calmer instead. Laying it all out before her, piece by piece, her heart suddenly began to race. She grabbed hold of Xie Yan’s hand without warning.

“Is it possible that he…”

Su Wei’s nature would never lead him to go through all this trouble doing something not worth doing — whether opening the coffin to retrieve the remains or taking her mother’s clothing.

Her grip around Xie Yan’s hand grew tighter and tighter. In the lamplight, her reddened eyes became suddenly, brilliantly clear.

A fake-death drug that worked once could work a second time…

‘He had gone to such lengths — feeding her the drug yet claiming she had fallen from a cliff, even having that First Prince bring her mother’s bracelet — ‘

“Is it possible that my mother never died at all?”

He had hidden Mother in the Imperial Mausoleum — together with that First Prince!

The tears in her eyes spilled over in an instant and fell onto Xie Yan’s palm. He looked at Su Jiao, whose expression was overcome with agitation.

“I’ll have people investigate.”

He clasped Su Jiao’s trembling hand and repeated once more.

“I’ll have people investigate.”

Once the tears began to fall they could no longer be stopped. She wept for the brother she had lived with for over ten years, whose heart had proven so ruthless and merciless; she wept even more for her mother, who had suffered such torment through Su Jiao’s own negligence.

“If only I had discovered it sooner, I…”

She sobbed, her heart feeling as though it were being cut to pieces.

“If Mother is at the Imperial Mausoleum — if she is alive — would Su Wei…”

The moment this possibility struck her, she became frantic again. Those eyes that ordinarily gleamed bright were at this moment filled with nothing but anguish and desolation. Xie Yan covered her eyes with his hand and wiped away her tears.

“He won’t.”

His voice was low and absolute, brooking no doubt.

“While you are here, he will not kill your mother.”

Su Jiao cried for quite a long while in the inn before she finally steadied her emotions. She had Chang Lin make proper arrangements for Auntie Gui, then set out with Xie Yan on the road back to the palace.

The Imperial Mausoleum could not easily be disturbed — they couldn’t afford to startle the snake by rustling the grass. No matter how desperately anxious she felt, she had no choice but to return with him and wait for news.

The entire way back she could not stop crying, the sound of her quiet sobs like something scratching at the very tip of one’s heart.

Xie Yan walked alongside her for a stretch, then suddenly came to a stop.

“The Su family residence is just ahead.”

Su Jiao lifted a pair of crimson eyes.

“If you keep crying, I’ll go cut him down right now.”

Xie Yan’s brow and eyes had turned even cooler, carrying a few shades of impatience within that brooding darkness.

His gaze met Su Jiao’s eyes.

“Tell me — shall it be the slow-burning lantern, or severing tendons and cutting out the tongue? Or perhaps you’d like him flayed alive and then have his blood drained to feed the fish in the city moat — any of those would be fine.”

With each sentence he spoke, Su Jiao’s expression grew a shade more ill. By the time the final words fell, she recalled the methods he had used to torment people in their past life and abruptly clapped a hand over her chest, nearly retching.

She hunched over and dry-heaved for a stretch. Even the tears were gone. She stared at Xie Yan blankly, at a loss for words.

He hooked his fingers around hers and walked forward.

In the night, Su Jiao lowered her head and looked at their shadows on the ground.

In her previous life, when her mother had died, it was he who had kept her company through countless days and nights at Yongning Hall.

In this life, outside of Yongning Hall — the elder brother she held dearest had turned out to be the very one who had raised a hand against her mother. And yet it was still he, who had accompanied her as together they glimpsed the truth.

The two shadows on the ground shifted — now apart, now close. She looked for a moment, then picked up her pace to catch up with Xie Yan’s footsteps.

In an instant, two shadows drew close together.