Wu Lang froze for a moment. He carefully lifted his face to meet those calm, clear eyes. His lips moved as he stammered, “N-No.”
It wouldn’t matter even if he was hurt, Wu Lang thought.
He had grown accustomed to bleeding and enduring pain. He was nothing more than a toy for venting frustrations—no one cared about his feelings.
Yet the Eldest Princess before him, seated atop her horse with her brows furrowed as she gazed down at him, revealed a look of genuine concern in her eyes.
“You’re feverish.”
The young man’s eyes were tinged with an unnatural flush of red at the corners. His pale, refined features were suffused with a rosy hue, and his thin lips were parched and dry. It was clear he was ill.
Wu Lang stared blankly for a moment before realization dawned, sending him into a panic. He hastily wiped the cold sweat from his temples with his sleeve and pleaded in a small voice, “This Base Slave is not ill. Please, Your Highness, do not tell the Second Princess about this.”
A lowly slave like him had no right to fall sick.
Being ill meant he could not serve Xue Qingzhi, could not please or fawn over her. It meant he had lost the only value that kept him alive.
When he had first arrived at the palace, Wu Lang had fallen ill once. The punishment chamber was dank and frigid, crawling with venomous insects. He had been bitten on the face, the wound swelling badly until even opening his mouth was agony.
Xue Qingzhi had taken one look at his ruined face, her eyes filled with disgust. She tossed him a jar of ointment and locked him in a pitch-black chamber, complaining that the sight of him soured her mood.
Wu Lang had been confined there for a full ten days. His face burned with excruciating pain, his head swam in a fog, and in the suffocating darkness, the jar had rolled away somewhere. He groped around blindly for ages but could not find it, forced to endure raw and untreated.
He had never craved sunlight so desperately, nor anything that could pierce the gloom. The darkness felt like a python lurking in the depths, silently watching his every move. It seemed that if he so much as faltered, it would slither forth without a sound, its scarlet tongue flicking as it devoured him whole.
When the chamber door finally creaked open, Wu Lang broke completely. He crawled out sobbing, clutching at Xue Qingzhi’s hem with trembling hands. He begged her that he would do anything, anything at all, if only she would never shut him in such a place again.
Xue Qingzhi glanced down at the tear-streaked boy groveling at her feet and patted his head in condescending indulgence.
“Tell This Palace what you are.”
“I-I’m Your Base Slave.”
Tears welled in the corners of his eyes, hovering but not falling, until Xue Qingzhi leisurely brushed them away.
Then a heavy Dark Iron Chain was fastened around his neck—a custom piece she had ordered forged long before. Where the keyhole should have been was instead a neatly inscribed character: “Lang.”
She led him by it, deliberately pulling the chain taut, teasing him like a pet dog as she sauntered toward the bedchamber.
“You owe This Palace. It’s time to pay up.”
Every time these memories resurfaced, Wu Lang shuddered from head to toe. If Xue Qingzhi learned he was sick, she would surely find his sickly stench repulsive, tainting her chambers. She would probably banish him back to the dark chamber until he recovered.
Xue Yunyi could not fathom why a simple expression of concern had terrified Wu Lang so. She was about to offer some reassurance when Xue Qingzhi rode up beside her, casting a cold glance at Wu Lang.
Xue Qingzhi was too far away to see how he had fallen or shattered the crystal vial in his hand. She only saw him craning his neck to speak with Xue Yunyi, his dark eyes glistening with moisture.
Sensing her displeasure, Wu Lang silently bowed his head.
Xue Qingzhi turned to Ah Xiao at her side. “Has a winner been decided?”
Ah Xiao answered truthfully, “The Eldest Princess did not hit the target. It is a draw.”
Xue Qingzhi laughed then. She looked at Wu Lang with exaggerated pity and tsked. “What a shame. It seems what’s mine will always be mine—no one can take it away.”
Wu Lang belonged to her. And so did the position of Crown Princess.
Xue Yunyi was a cripple now, unable to even save herself, yet she harbored this laughable mercy, foolishly dreaming of freeing Wu Lang.
Xue Yunyi lowered her gaze and said flatly, “I’m tired. I won’t keep you company today, little sister.”
She could hear the barbs in Xue Qingzhi’s words all too well but had no patience to humor them.
Regret gnawed at her heart. Without that mishap just now, her feathered arrow should have pierced the white butterfly’s fragile wings cleanly. Or if her legs had not been crippled, she would not have panicked. She would have loosed a flawless shot with cool precision, and Wu Lang would have been free—never to suffer in this place again.
Xue Yunyi’s eyes dimmed.
Freedom…
Would returning to the Wu Family truly mean freedom for him?
Wu Hanyu treated him with such cruelty, and Old Master Wu had handed him over as a mere gift to curry favor.
“Is Imperial Sister leaving already? Little sister still wants to spar a few more rounds,” Xue Qingzhi said with a smile, interrupting Xue Yunyi’s reverie.
She came back to herself, her gaze drifting unbidden to Wu Lang once more. The youth knelt there quietly with his head bowed, his cheeks flushed, his thin lips parted as his heavy breaths warmed the cool breeze.
“Another day,” she said at last, tearing her eyes away. She urged Flowing Snow onward and departed at a leisurely pace.
Xue Qingzhi would give him medicine, wouldn’t she?
Her methods of tormenting Wu Lang were harsh, but surely she wouldn’t deny him treatment and let the fever ravage his mind into delirium.
Xue Yunyi dropped her eyes to her numb legs.
Recalling the panic from that moment atop the horse, a profound despair washed over her. The fragile calm she had mustered these past days crumbled entirely.
This body was no longer the same as before.
She could no longer control a horse at will, no longer ride with effortless confidence. She could not save herself, let alone anyone else.
“Help me down,” Xue Yunyi said softly, handing the bow and arrow to Mo Ying.
Sensing her despondency, Mo Ying’s heart ached in sympathy. Flowing Snow knelt obediently. Mo Ying pressed her lips together and carefully lifted Xue Yunyi from the saddle, settling her back into the wheelchair.
A faint scent of herbal fragrance wafted through the air as the snow-white saddle cloth fluttered lightly. Wu Lang caught it—the fragrance of the Eldest Princess.
A plain white silk flower tumbled past his eyes, caught by the wind and landing lightly on his knee. Wu Lang paused, instinctively lifting his face to seek its owner.
The surroundings burst with vivid colors—greens, reds, yellows—assaulting the eyes.
Only the Eldest Princess in her wheelchair embodied a serene winter pallor. A fragile silk flower trembled on the pale green sash at her waist.
Wu Lang realized then: she must be in mourning for someone.
He reached to pick up the silk flower, but his fingertips jerked back the instant they brushed the soft silk. He meticulously wiped the grime from his hands with his sleeve before daring to touch that flawless white.
By then, the wheelchair had already rolled far away.
Wu Lang opened his mouth, longing to return the silk flower to Xue Yunyi. But he could not speak without permission—without Xue Qingzhi’s leave, he had no right to even make a sound. He could only be an obedient mute.
Xue Qingzhi dismounted and planted herself before him.
Wu Lang clenched his fist tightly and dropped his eyes in panic. Fortunately, Xue Qingzhi did not notice the item he had pocketed. She leisurely tugged at the Iron Chain around his neck, winding it around her finger as she toyed with it. “Look at that. Even Imperial Sister dared to challenge This Palace for your sake.”
Wu Lang’s lashes trembled.
Xue Qingzhi chuckled and leaned down, murmuring considerately into his ear.
“You didn’t hear it, did you? Imperial Sister said that if she beat This Palace, I would have to set you free.”
Wu Lang went rigid, lifting his face in disbelief.
The Eldest Princess… The Eldest Princess had done it for him…
“How ridiculous,” Xue Qingzhi whispered against his ear with a sneer. “A cripple, daring to vie with This Palace.”
She straightened and slowly cradled his fever-hot cheeks, gazing at that handsome face still marked by palm prints.
Wu Lang clutched the silk flower in his fist, a sense of dread rising within him. He trembled and instinctively squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the familiar slap, for Xue Qingzhi to curse him as she once had—a seductive vixen, brazen enough to entice the Eldest Princess into helping him time and again.
But how could he ever dare to entice the Eldest Princess?
With this wretched, broken body of his, he did not deserve to catch her eye. It was only her compassionate heart that bestowed upon him a scrap of precious pity.
Unexpectedly, Xue Qingzhi did not punish him this time. She was in high spirits—perhaps because Xue Yunyi had missed the white butterfly. She had no desire to quibble with the shivering slave before her. Even her gaze softened, her words laced with lazy amusement.
“Go wash yourself clean, then come serve me.”
“Yes.”
Wu Lang assented without daring to mention his fever. He obediently trailed after Xue Qingzhi on his knees all the way back to the stables.
Once Xue Qingzhi had gone, he endured the pain to stand, limping toward the dilapidated stall in the corner.
Crude planks served as makeshift doors and windows around the shack—that was Wu Lang’s quarters.
He drew a bucket of water from the courtyard well, stripped off his bloodstained gauze robe, closed his eyes, and poured it silently over himself.
The well water was icy and biting as it cascaded over his burning cheeks, rinsing his battered body again and again.
Shivering violently, Wu Lang heaved hot breaths but did not dare stop. By the time the bucket emptied, his lips had drained to a ghostly white, his entire frame quaking.
So cold.
He wanted nothing more than to sleep.
But he could not. Instead, he knelt before the bed, pried open the chest beneath the bedding, and pulled out one of the sheer, inadequate gauze garments at random before slipping it on.
A breeze slipped through the crack in the door, fluttering the petals of the snow-white silk flower that he had carefully placed on the bedding. Wu Lang gently lifted it with his hands, worn pale from washing, and tucked it tenderly beneath the pillow. He stared at the pillow reluctantly for a long moment before dragging his weary body out of the stable.
A fresh stick of incense had just been lit in the bedchamber.
The fragrance was cloyingly sweet, subtly seeping into his lungs. Wu Lang’s headache intensified, and he dragged his limp body in a daze toward Xue Qingzhi, who sat on the couch.
Xue Qingzhi took no notice of the youth’s flushed cheeks or his dazed, misty black eyes. She stirred a bowl of freshly brewed medicine with a silver spoon and held it out to Wu Lang with a beaming smile. “Drink it,” she commanded.
Steam rose from the medicinal broth, and its familiar scent made Wu Lang shrink back in fear.
—It was an aphrodisiac.