The lantern paper soaked through at the edges, and the candles in the center gradually extinguished. The lotus lantern tilted and sank into the lake.
Xin Yi opened her eyes. “…”
Before she could speak, a slender, pale hand extended before her, offering another lotus lantern.
The youth gazed down at her quietly and gestured expressionlessly, “It sank. Release another.”
Xin Yi held back this time.
She did not bother arguing with Xie Shuo. After thinking it over, she said, “Then I hope all my wishes come true and I get what I desire.”
She hoped to complete the strategy task soon.
And go home.
Perhaps because the spot was too remote and unappealing to ordinary tourists, slick moss covered the lakeside stone steps.
With the sky so dark besides, after Xin Yi released her lotus lantern and stood, intending to lift her skirt and step aside, she lost her balance. Her foot slipped, and she tumbled straight into the lake.
“Xin Yi!”
In that instant, she seemed to hear Xie Shuo’s voice, panicked and raw, clear and cold like jade striking a chime. She was certain it was not Xiang Lan’s timbre.
Fortunately, the water by the lake was shallow, so she merely soaked the lower half of her skirt.
But when the youth reached out to pull her up, Xin Yi stared at him in a daze, unresponsive for a long while.
Until he scooped her up by the waist from the water.
He carried her across the moss-slick, wet stone steps and set her steadily on dry ground.
After putting her down, the youth bent over and silently wrung the water from her skirt.
Xin Yi let him tend to her. Moments later, she fixed him with a stare, took a deep breath, and said, “You just called me Xin Yi, didn’t you?”
The youth’s hands paused slightly. He said nothing.
Xin Yi caught the hesitation, her tone growing more certain. “You’ve been able to speak for ages, haven’t you?”
“So you’ve been deceiving me these past days, wanting to watch me worry over you on purpose!”
Seeing his tacit admission,
Xin Yi was furious enough to kick him away. She had even confronted the system over this, nearly convinced her twenty thousand points had been wasted—only to learn Xie Shuo had tricked her!
Xin Yi was livid. On the carriage ride back, she neither looked at him nor spoke to him.
He loved playing mute? Fine, let him keep playing. If he had the guts, he could stay silent for life.
Back at the residence, Xin Yi still had no intention of acknowledging him.
Yet he blocked her at the diamond-patterned window in the chamber. The vermilion lacquer framed her angry, beautiful face, making it hard for the youth to lower his lashes.
“It wasn’t deliberate,” he said, his tone laced with grievance.
“Because I just regained my voice… it’s still a bit hoarse. I was afraid it would sound bad and you wouldn’t like it.”
He hugged her slender waist, his breath buried in her neck, and repeated through his embarrassment, “Sorry, sorry, Xin Yi…”
“It really wasn’t deliberate.”
Xin Yi had only been angry at first, but his words now filled her heart with an aching, sour swell she could not name.
He was always like this—insecure, as if he had finally obtained some precious treasure and feared losing it at any moment.
Perhaps because she had not spoken for a long time, the youth called out to her hesitantly again, his tone very soft. “Xin Yi?”
She responded sullenly. “Mm.”
She had heard it, had heard it long ago.
Xie Shuo’s embrace finally loosened a little around her, and his dark eyes fixed on her.
On his handsome face, his vermilion thin lips parted lightly, and he spoke the words he had rehearsed in his heart many times. “I cherish and love you, thus you are my dear.”
“If not you as my dear, who then?”
Xin Yi suddenly froze, and the words she had once used to tease and flirt with him flashed through her mind.
“I like you so much, I want to kiss you so badly, I love you to my very bones, and I dream of you every night.”
“I super want you to be my wife.”
The youth gazed at her as he spoke, his jade-white earlobes tinged with specks of red, and his crow-black lashes trembled uncontrollably. “I like you so much, I want to kiss you so badly…”
“I super want you to be my wife.”
Xin Yi looked at that earnest and stunningly beautiful face, and felt her heartbeat slow by a beat, then pound even more fiercely.
She wanted to say something and parted her lips, but nothing came out.
“You… unwilling?”
“No.”
She stood on tiptoe and took the initiative to kiss his lips.
Several days passed in the blink of an eye.
Amid red walls and green tiles, a courtyard door was pushed open, and a graceful and alluring figure stepped out from inside.
A carriage had been waiting in advance at the mansion gate. The woman wore a soft gauze curtain hat, revealing only a pair of charming and indifferent eyes, then boarded the carriage, lifted the curtain, and sat inside.
The coachman looked puzzled toward the direction behind her, confirming that this time there was no maid accompanying her, nor that gloomy and refined youth.
Suddenly, the woman’s voice came from the carriage. “Let’s go.”
Upon receiving the order, the coachman drove the carriage forward. The four heavy wooden wheels rumbled over the bluestone slabs and disappeared at the end of the narrow alley.
The Melodramatic Transmigration System endured for a moment before finally asking her, “Host, are you really going?”
Xin Yi nodded, utterly justified. “Of course I’m going. How can I decline the Eldest Princess’s invitation?”
Thinking about it carefully, although she had already gone through two small worlds, because she had kept herself too pure, she had never visited a brothel.
Strategy was already so exhausting.
And as the vicious cannon fodder in the original plotline, she could allow herself a little moral flaw.
The Melodramatic Transmigration System said coolly, “Is that keeping yourself pure? You’ve just never thought of it. I’m too lazy to expose you.”
With a chilly tone, it kindly reminded her, “You’d better not get caught by the villain, or your favorability will really be in danger.”
“Don’t worry. I already found a good excuse to come out.”
She had some confidence in her ability to lie and coax people. “A Shuo won’t suspect anything, and besides, I have no plans to stay out overnight, so no big problem.”
The horse hooves kicked up dust as it traveled through the bustling market.
Xin Yi sat in the carriage listening to the vendors’ calls on both sides of the street, and the more she listened, the stranger and redder her face became. Her mind uncontrollably conjured up many lascivious memories.
Two days earlier, she had gone with Xie Shuo to a teahouse to buy pastries.
She encountered an enthusiastic waiter who chatted a bit more and mistook the purple-clad youth at her side for her younger brother.
It was normal, actually.
Because Xie Shuo looked too refined and boyish, unlike the original host’s seductive allure, so when they went out, they were easily mistaken for siblings.
Xin Yi laughed uncontrollably after hearing it and did not explain.
She even directly ignored the youth’s suddenly darkened handsome face and followed the waiter’s words with nonsense, saying that the family was planning to arrange a marriage for little brother, but after looking around, they hadn’t found a suitable one yet.
At that point, she even threw a flirtatious glance at the waiter.
After getting the pastries and leaving the teahouse, she couldn’t help but burst out laughing again with a “puchi,” even making the step shaker and silk flowers in her dark hair tremble.
The result was that she completely offended Xie Shuo. Before entering the carriage, he calmly instructed the coachman.
To circle around the Capital City’s bustling markets, saying the weather was nice today and he wanted to shop for two hours before returning to the mansion.
Xin Yi had no idea what he was planning then, so she did not stop him.
By the time her petal-like skirt was lifted and she was pressed onto the pillow behind her, it was too late. With her knees pinned by the youth, she directly and arduously accepted him just like that.
Even though her mind had gone completely blank, she bit her lip tightly and did not dare make a sound. By the end, her skirt was soaked beyond recognition.
Afterward, Xie Shuo found it couldn’t be wiped clean, so he simply bought her a new skirt from a nearby clothing shop.
Thinking of her previous life, where she had also been forced to do it in a carriage, Xin Yi couldn’t help but ask the system, “The villains of these two small worlds, they’re really not the same person?”
Even if it was model data recombination, some aspects of them were too similar.
The Melodramatic Transmigration System seemed stumped and fell into a strange silence for two seconds.
Then it gave a slightly vague conclusion. “If you want to think that way, you can. Since they’re both villains, there are bound to be similarities.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, Host.”
Moments later, the carriage stopped under a large willow tree.
Xin Yi lifted the curtain from the carriage and leaned out, seeing the three large characters “Bright Moon Brothel” on the building in front of her.
She adjusted her curtain hat and walked inside, arriving at the deluxe top-floor private room that Princess Zhaohua had prepared in advance.
A qin player was already inside playing the qin. Beside the Eldest Princess were two beautiful young attendants serving her, considerately pouring wine into the golden goblet.
Xin Yi felt somewhat novel and stood in place, stunned for two seconds.
By the time she walked over, the green-clad youth attending to Princess Zhaohua had already poured wine for her too, and said sweetly, “Sister, please drink.”
Princess Zhaohua saw her like this, as if she had never seen the world, and couldn’t help but laugh. “You might not be used to it at first, but you’ll get familiar soon enough.”
An idea popped into her head, and she asked with interest, “If you like them, my mansion has even better ones. I can give you two.”
Xin Yi did not refuse immediately. She even fell silent for a long time before asking, “Really possible?”
Of course, if she had known that Xie Shuo would hear these words.
She would never have asked, not even if beaten to death.