CH 51

The cousin lived in Wutong Courtyard, with its black roof tiles and white walls, its five or six wutong trees planted around the yard and its decorative rose bushes.

“You like summer,” Ye Zhao said. “This courtyard was built following a summery landscape. We’re already in the fifth month and summer will soon come. When the wutong trees give shade and the roses bloom, it will be beautiful.”

Liu Xiyin was walking and looking around the room. Her cousin’s words warmed her heart and added a smile to her lips. “So you do remember. It wasn’t you who arranged the furniture in this room, was it?”

Ye Zhao scratched her head, embarrassed. “Do you think I can play around with that girly stuff?”

“That’s right,” Liu Xiyin said, “you once said you’d bought something for me, and I thought it would be flower-scented hair oil, but you came back with a live fish, dripping wet and still flopping around. It scared me half to death.”

“But that was a quality tapertail anchovy!” Ye Zhao said. “And didn’t I secretly cook it for you in the end? You ate most of it.”

The two of them kept laughing, reminiscing about their childhood. Xia Yujin was too impatient to wait; expecting his wife would want to dine with her cousin, he ate by himself. Soon after, rain started falling in a drizzle, lasting without end deep into the night.

When she came back home, Xia Yujin had already finished getting ready for the night and was reading under the lamps with rapt attention. Ye Zhao wanted to praise him for his diligence, but when she walked over to peep, she saw the title: The Secret Book of Erotica. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, unable to say anything. In the end, she simply walked away in silence.

After training for more than a month and taking tonics every day, his body had grown stronger, his back didn’t hurt after climbing up a mountain, and his legs weren’t weak anymore. He estimated that exercising for half a shichen wasn’t a problem anymore, so he was careless with his prep work. In Xia Yujin’s mind, apart from porn, there was only porn.

As for Liu Xiyin, he wasn’t unaffected.

But most men, inside, had a line for the appreciation of the variety of women’s beauty. Those above that line were all beautiful; there wasn’t much of a difference between women who barely cleared the mark and the most beautiful ones. At most, it was the difference between how many peeks they’d have while crossing them on the street.

When choosing a good wife, specifically getting married to take a wife home, one would still pick a woman whose character, familial background, talents, etc., placed her above that line. A beautiful concubine was for pleasure, for nothing more than entertainment. It wasn’t that no man ever showed his concubine sincerity, but that concubine must assuredly be good-looking, her disposition and temper fit his taste, and it didn’t have much to do with whether she was stunningly beautiful or not.

Xia Yujin himself was very good-looking and had good foresight. He was used to the romantic scene, not a dumbstruck green young man looking at a woman for the first time, and he had strong principles: he never touched women from good families, rule-abiding women, friends’ wives and concubines, or hopelessly invested women, so he very rarely got into trouble. If Liu Xiyin was a prized courtesan in a brothel, he would simply rush to be the first to win the game for such a stunning goddess. But she was Ye Zhao’s cousin, a good girl from a respectable family, and so he wouldn’t mess around with her.

Shaking his head and letting out a long sigh, Xia Yujin steered his thoughts away from Liu Xiyin’s face to his own wife’s thighs. The memory of that night roused his senses even more — did he still think that a woman’s face was her best asset? Of course not, being good in bed was more important!

He saw that Ye Zhao had already gone to bed, so he hurriedly followed suit. He was holding back more than a month of repressed urges, having accumulated his energy and made the sufficient preparations, all to change himself into being able to be on top to satisfy his desire to take revenge for their first night together.

Outside, the patter of the rain grew stronger, mixed with lightning and thunder. The wind blew hard through the trees, their branches noisily whipping to and fro.

Xia Yujin tore off Ye Zhao’s clothes, sat astride her, moved aside her disordered hair, and then bent down to leave a deep lovebite on her neck, fiercely saying, “Tonight, you’ll learn how tough your lord can be!”

Ye Zhao looked up, then suddenly grabbed his waist, running her hands over it until her fingers slowly slid down. Her eyes half narrowed, she said, “I know it already.”

Xia Yujin immediately threw himself at those thighs he desperately craved for, pulling off her belt. The drums of war were thrumming in his over-boiling mind, standards flapping, with the rallying cry of: “I’ll make you understand what true ecstasy is!”

They suddenly heard the sound of the maid quickly knocking outside the door. “General… General…”

“Can’t they see we’re busy!” Xia Yujin was so worked up that he wished he could give that idiot who’d just interrupted their battle a kick. “If there’s nothing, get lost!”

Ye Zhao stopped him. “What’s the matter?”

Having figured out that the prince was in a bad mood, the maid grew nervous. She braced herself and murmured, “It’s Miss, she’s been crying, no matter what we say. Could please come over and see what it is?”

Ye Zhao slipped from underneath him and sat up, putting up on her socks and shoes. “I forgot. She’s always been anxious and scared of thunder.”

Xia Yujin couldn’t protest. “You want to go over?” he asked blankly.

“She’s a young girl after all,” Ye Zhao said, a little embarrassed. “Her nerves are delicate and she’s afraid of thunder and storms. Losing her parents in the Northern Desert massacre left some scars. She gets scared easily, and now she’s in a new place. She’s probably not used to it yet.”

After hearing this, Xia Yujin thought that such an exquisite, delicate, and lovely girl losing her parents so early was truly a tragedy. He was a man, but he had to sympathize and anyway, his wife couldn’t run away. When did he ever want to do something without being able to? So he shouldn’t fuss about this small incident. He took a deep breath, tried his best to push it all down, and waved his hand. “Go and come back quickly.”

“Mhm,” said Ye Zhao.

Holding onto his quilt, Xia Yujin kept on honing his strength for the main event, waiting.

During his wait, he didn’t quite wait for his wife to come back.

Ye Zhao sent someone to pass on a message: “Miss is shy with strangers and scared, and she kept crying, so she went to sleep with her.”

Xia Yujin sat blankly by the bed for a long time, then finally poured out the pot of cold water, slumped on the bed with his limbs spread, and went to sleep alone.

In Wutong Courtyard, Liu Xiyin wiped away her tears and smiled. With her reddened eyes and nose, she appeared as bashful and touching as a pear tree in bloom, pelted by the rain. She was wearing a white shift, its sleeves pulling back slightly when she raised her jade-white hand, and her fine black hair was loose. Then she blew out the light in the glass lamp. Each of her movements was incredibly delicate. She slowly climbed back into bed, leaning towards Ye Zhao, and whispered, “Ah-Zhao, I’m so scared. I had a nightmare as soon as I closed my eyes. In my dream, mom and dad were both dead, and you’d left me behind to do your own thing. No matter how much I shouted and cried in your back, you never looked back or stopped leaving.”

The Northern Desert tragedy was Ye Zhao’s biggest weakness. For many years, she had never shown any sign of impatience towards the cousin she’d grown up with, only tenderness and sympathy. She patted her shoulder and said, “I will never abandon you.”

“Yes. You never will. You’re the one who makes fun of me the most, but you’re also the one who looks after me the most. You tease me, but you also let me have good things.” Looking at the pitch-black ceiling, Liu Xiyin softly added, “When I broke that blue and white porcelain, you took the blame for me. When I lied to Uncle, you backed me up. In the end, no matter what I do wrong, you will always forgive me.”

And then what?

Ye Zhao, very tired, had already fallen asleep.

Liu Xiyin shifted on her side, listening to her shallow breathing. Two tears fell from her gentle eyes once again. Finally, something cold flashed in her eyes.

Ye Zhao, you shameless and despicable bastard.

I’ll take back everything you owe me.

I think I’m a day late? Sorry! I lost track of the days