Chapter 14.1

A Woman’s Fragrance (14) – Rambling Thoughts (1)

Thunder boomed and pea-sized raindrops hit the roof of the carriage, clattering like pearls falling all over the ground.

A silvery white bolt of lightning cut through the night sky and this intense light shone through the carriage windows illuminating the interior for a moment, reflecting two silent figures.

The carriage was not very wide and the two of them sat in the middle surrounded by the quilts, with seats around them, making it really difficult to turn around, but it was certainly warm.

Even though Li Ruo Shui’s hands and feet were still cold, it was a lot better than the bone-chilling chill she had felt before.

She leaned against Lu Zhi Yao’s arms, unable to sleep. The surrounding was pitch black, so she opened her mouth in a moment of boredom.

“Did you feel the same as me when you were poisoned? Also surrounded by quilts?”

Lu Zhi Yao held her quietly, with a smile on the corner of his mouth, his voice seemed ethereal in the darkness.

“The sky as the quilt, and the water as the bed.”

“What does that mean?”

Lu Zhi Yao chuckled and did not answer her question directly, but continued to stroke her hair and asked rhetorically, “Do you know how to relieve the cold poison?”

“Isn’t it like now? Using internal strength?”

Li Ruo Shui had just raised her head, but was gently pressed back down again as she listened to him narrating the story.

“A person who is poisoned will break his tendons and veins if he uses internal strength to resist. If you want to make yourself less uncomfortable, you can only draw heat from the outside. My master was a disabled person and had no internal strength, but even if she did, she couldn’t possibly help me.”

Li Ruo Shui let out a small sigh and reached out to pat his shoulder to express comfort.

“At that time, I was still young and didn’t understand that pain was also joy, so I cowered in the reeds to keep warm.”

Hearing this, Li Ruo Shui’s hand stopped patting his shoulder.

“But reeds are just reeds, they don’t dissipate heat, so I tried to walk out, but because I couldn’t see, I fell into the lake. It was the edge of the lake and the water line just reached my waist. If it had been deeper, I would have sinked in the lake and fed the fish. However, that was also how I discovered that the best way to relieve the cold poison was to soak in the water.”

At the end of the story, Lu Zhi Yao even laughed a few times, as if he was having fun recalling his own childhood anecdotes.

Li Ruo Shui listened to the story with mixed feelings, pity, speechlessness, horror and other emotions, which finally converged into one sentence.

“How about I teach you how to swim sometime?”

Raindrops clattered down, thunder boomed and a gust of wind blew the closed carriage door creaking as if it was about to break in the next second.

There was an eerie silence in the dark carriage, and Li Ruo Shui’s mind began to wonder if she had said the wrong thing.

“That is, in case you fall in the water next time, you won’t sink into the water to feed the fish……”

After explaining a few words, it seemed even more strange. Li Ruo Shui simply closed her mouth and began to count sheep in her heart, hoping to make herself fall asleep immediately, escaping this awkward and weird atmosphere.

When she counted to the eighteenth sheep, Lu Zhi Yao’s gentle voice echoed again in the darkness.

“Is this a second promise with me?”

“Not really.” Li Ruo Shui thought carefully, “This should be a discussion.”

“Are you asking for my permission?”

As if he had heard something new, his tone rose a little, no longer as soft and casual as before.

“I can’t possibly force you and throw you into the water, right?”

Li Ruo Shui imagined the image of herself forcing him and couldn’t help laughing, “Now all I can think of is you being forced to swim and yet you have to smile gently.”

She was leaning against Lu Zhi Yao’s left chest, but when she laughed, her laugh shook his heart along with her, a very strange feeling.

While laughing, Li Ruo Shui suddenly thought about the drifting boat ride in the cave back then.

“You don’t know how to swim, then how come you weren’t afraid at all when you were on the boat in the cave and you let go of your hand?”

“I don’t know how to swim, but that doesn’t mean I’m afraid of falling into the water.”

True enough, how could people who were not afraid of death be afraid of falling into the water.

Li Ruo Shui yawned, her eyes misting up, “I’m sleepy.”

She had always slept on time, so she was sleepy when the time came. It was the same when she was in the carriage previously, she was listening to the conversation between Lu Fei Yue and the two of them, and when she opened her eyes again, it was already dawn.

The rain outside the carriage had no tendency to subside, the leaves in the nearby forest were rustling and there were occasional roars of thunder, but all these became a lullaby to Li Ruo Shui’s ears.

The warmth of the quilt and the slightly higher body temperature gave her a great sense of security, and before Lu Zhi Yao could reply, she tilted her head and fell asleep.

The small carriage became silent for a moment.

As Lu Zhi Yao was blind, his five senses were naturally very sensitive, so the rainy night was too noisy for him.

The sound of rain hitting the forest leaves, beads falling on the carriage, and thunder tumbling into his ears, and the muddy smell of the road during the rain plunged into his nose unavoidably.

“Rain can be a real turn-off.”

A similar sigh escaped his lips as he ran his hands unconsciously along Li Ruo Shui’s black hair, then twitched his nose as if he smelled something.

It was that faint scent again.

He brought the tip of his nose closer to Li Ruo Shui, and the light fragrance lingered gently and softly, obscuring most of the earthy smell, and her shallow breathing drowned out the sound of the rain.

Lu Zhi Yao leaned his ears in to listen carefully for a moment, and surprisingly, he too felt a little sleepy, and he couldn’t help but chuckle.

“It’s really amazing.”

He moved his body slightly and let her lean against his neck, letting the breath spray over his ear. Listening to this soft rhythm, Lu Zhi Yao fell asleep.

A night without dreams.

The sun was high in the sky, and still-dry raindrops reflected the sunlight, creating a dazzling landscape.

The land was washed clean from the whole night rain, the leaves looked new, a faint smell of earth was in the air, and a moist breeze blew across the carriage and into the broken temple.