11

He seems to have been asleep for a long time.

In his dream, the peach tree was a scorching red, and the clothes on his body carried a heavy fragrance.

Is he dead?

Weiyang reached out for the falling petals.

There was a dazzling red in the palm of his hand; beautiful and brightly colored.

It looked like the color of her skirt.

This was good too.

The man closed his eyes, his consciousness gradually blurring.

"Weiyang!"

He suddenly woke up.

His line of sight had not yet cleared, but there was a head full of soft hair attached to him, and warm tears were running down the person's neck.

"You fool, why would you follow— I thought you would never wake up again..."

She was crying as she spoke.

Because I was reluctant, reluctant to let you go alone.

He opened his mouth and found that his throat was too sore, so he mustered the strength to tug up the corner of his mouth, signaling that he was all right and that she didn't need to worry.

After earning a new lease of life, he suddenly felt that everything had become less important.

Only the person in front of him could make his heart ache.

Fortunately, she was fine.

He hugged Linlang tightly and was extremely grateful to the person who rescued her that night.

After recovering from the shocking incident, Weiyang wrapped up half of the belongings he brought as a reward and expressed his gratitude to the point that the sturdy blacksmith blushed from his repeated praises.

He has always regarded lives to be as worthless as a stalk of mustard. He never cared about the life and death of others, but at this moment, he dearly cherished this fragile life.

Weiyang began to restrain his fangs.

In front of outsiders, he was a gentle and reliable husband who took care of the trivial matters on the road. Linlang only needed to follow him.

In private, he prefers to act like a spoiled child to his wife, often arguing for her to rub his head and hug him in her arms.

This man who cut men down as one cuts hempen stalks confessed to Linlang in his own clumsy way.

Over the past six months, they have traveled to many famous mountains and great rivers.

The smile on Linlang's face had also increased.

She now looked at the scenery.

And he was always looking at her.

"Can you stop eyeing at me like a lecher?"

At times, Linlang was frustrated and covered up his eyes.

The man's slender eyelashes quivered like cicada wings and his lips, as though painted with vermilion, were extremely beautiful.

His chest shook as he laughed. His eyebrows which flew to his temples carried the temperament of a gentleman from troubled times, along with the frivolous air of a rascal. "A lecher? What an interesting identity."

"Since furen says this, weifu need not be polite."

He grabbed her slender arms, bent down to make a posture of kissing her, and blatantly behaved like a hooligan from the streets.

She was more bashful than he imagined. In a shrieking tone, she called out his full name.

"Zhu Weiyang, do you no longer want your face1?"

The fuming Linlang heavily pinched the handsome man's face.

En, she openly attacks his face.

Isn't it obvious she's more of the hoodlum here?

But the man was unperturbed by this. In fact, he even gave her a hand.

"What is the face? If it's possible to get closer to furen, let alone face, weifu can even offer up his life."

"You certainly are a shamelessly eloquent villain." Linlang glanced at him from the side and used her embroidered shoes to stomp on his foot.

"Thank you for the compliment." His expression remained unchanged. He smiled as his said, "Furen, don't worry, although Weifu may be a villain, but these sincere feelings still pleases furen."

Linlang was caught off guard when he took another bite.

This person enjoying grabbing Linlang's face and carefully watch her reactions.

His hands which specialized in harming people with the sword, his hands which were often stained with blood and whose chill caused people to tremble in fear until they could tremble no more, were now used to perform all kinds of gentleness.

Drawing her eyebrows, combing her hair, and dressing her—these feminine actions were things he always looked down on, however, to please her heart, visiting jewelry and rouge shops were now a must whenever he went out. Before long, he became an expert.

"This is a brand new rouge. Its scarlet banana shade is more distinct and also carries the sweet scent of gardenias." He used the tip of his finger to gently rub it on her lips. Linlang's lip shape was thin and when lined with florid colors, it was especially attractive, like cyprus vines.

The man could not help but feel a desire when he saw them.

He leaned over and acted no differently from a philandering man.

"Aiyah, how did this color come off? I'll paint it one more time for you."

He said so hypocritically.

Linlang pushed him away,

"Stop making trouble. We're home." As she said this, the carriage stopped.

Weiyang jumped down first.

Linlang bent down. She thought he would help her down and so offered his hand, but the man straightforwardly grabbed her entire body. Linlang had to grab his lapels to stabilize herself.

He revealed a smile of having gotten his way.

This person who showed off his affection to everyone at any time was childish to the extreme.

Linlang rolled her eyes in her heart.

But this was good, it can also provoke her little butler's jealousy.

The butler lowered his eyebrows, and without any emotional fluctuations, he said, "The kitchen has already made preparations. Would Master care to have a meal in the antehall?"

Maybe it was because the butler's servitude over the years put Weiyang too much at ease, but he didn't even sense that the man's mood was too indifferent. He answered casually then focused on amusing his little lady.

He told Linlang a joke.Please read this at onemachineshow.blogspot.com

The woman in his arms trembled with laughter, her eyes swimming with tears was charming and attractive.

The butler faintly squeezed his fists.

During one afternoon a few days later, Weiyang went out to do errands, and Linlang was pruning the flower branches in the greenhouse. The servant girl knew she had this habit and so waited outside in the passageway where she occasionally nodded off whenever she was sleepy.

Suddenly, someone covered her mouth from behind.

Linlang knew who had come, but she still had to pretend to panic and struggle. She was rudely dragged away.

He led the person to a secluded corner and pressed her shoulders against the gray wall as though she was a prisoner. A pair of dark eyes stared fixedly at her, and within them were a myriad of complicated emotions, but they ultimately gave way to a cold attitude.

"Why, after spending half a year away, have you and Zhu Wuyang come to be on good terms again?"

There were still traces of another man on her earlobe.

Did a fake drama really have to go this far?

"I don't know what you are talking about." Her eyes flickered and thought to push him away. "He's coming back soon. He'll worry if he doesn't see me. If you have anything to say it some other time."

"Some other time? What other time? Isn't this an indefinite postponement?" He scoffed and grabbed her slender hand, forcing her to stick to his palm. He wanted to clearly see whether this person still had a heart.

"He's clearly moved your heart, yet you still want to lie to me?"

The beautiful eyes in front of him were breathtaking, but right now they were deceiving him!

"I—I didn't..."

She bit her lip.

This look of a guilty conscience angered the butler, and his blood boiled to breaking point. Suddenly, he yanked the jade pendant on her neck.

"What are you trying to do?" The person was terrified. She tried to pull the string back, but how could she be stronger than a man who practiced martial arts?

"What am I trying to do?"

His expression was frigid and with his hair spread across his shoulders, he looked like a terrifying demon, "Furen, don't you understand? Adultery."

With a token present, it was impossible to renege on this debt.

"You're absurd! We will die!"

"That would be good. At least we'll be together." Linlang thought to herself, this baby is still too innocent. Just a little bit of ambiguity was enough to drive him mad.

On the surface, she had to make an unbearable expression, from shock at the beginning to despair at the end.

Her body was trembling, looking ever so feeble.

He was silent.

"Do you think that man is truly fond of you? Marrying you was only a means to extend his sister's life!"

Linlang stared at him, dumbfounded. "What—what did you say? What do you mean extend his sister's life?"

The butler explained faintly, "As you know, his sister's body is frail. She nearly died during childbirth but this person suddenly had a full recovery six months ago, looking no different from a normal person. Isn't that strange?"

She stammered out, "What does that have to do with Weiyang?"

"Ha, don't you understand? That pair of siblings turned our child into a medicinal supplement!"

The woman was stunned for a long time.

Then suddenly, she broke down all at once.

"Child? Medicinal supplement? What can this mean?! The child, what happened to our child? Didn't he die from an illness?" She clung to his collar. Her eyes were flushed as she looked at him in utter disbelief.

"You're lying to me, aren't you? Weiyang he—, how could he..."

She was struck hard and her body staggered.

The butler held her up, his face expressionless as he said, "Since you do not believe it, I will take you to meet someone."

A bastard who knew the entire truth.

He had always arranged manpower to watch over mother and son, but he never guarded against Weiyang. Tigers, though cruel, do not devour their cubs. He never thought that he would deceive Linlang to the very end.

This was all a cold-blooded trap!

He originally wanted to tell Linlang about this, but after losing Fu'er, her body steadily deteriorated and she wasn't expected to survive more than a few years. If she knew that had husband schemed against her all along and even used her child as a drug inducer, how could she bear it?

The butler took Linlang to meet a Taoist priest. He had a pale face and a somewhat pudgy body. He was currently tied to a chair with his hands behind his back. His expression was one of slight terror.

The man rudely tore off the white cloth covering his mouth and said indifferently, "Say everything you know, otherwise, you know the consequences."

Taoist's entire body trembled. "Two years ago, I—I occasionally saw Miss Zhu on the street... To make a fortune, I told the city lord that the heart of a close kin can cure...Miss Zhu was unwilling and the two quarreled over this...Later I learned that the city lord had a pure yang body, so I changed my hypothesis and said as long as he used the heart of a kin born from a woman whose horoscope was of pure yin..."

Before he could finish his words, he heard the beautiful woman standing before him laugh in a low voice.

There were waves of sorrow and resentment in that laughter.

"So that was how it was, that was how it was...

"I was fooled. I was completely fooled..."

The butler gently placated her.

Then he heard her say in a feathery-light voice, "I want him... to pay a life for my child..."

She turned her body and raising her face, she asked, "Will you help me?"

"...very well."

He gently wiped away her tears.

Linlang buried her face in his arms. From the light coming from the window, one could see the springtime landscape.

She was like a dry seed floating across the sky; passive, innocent, and fated to fall.

No one would ever think she was the hidden hand behind the scenes.