The moment Xiao Jiu heard this, his face collapsed. Looking as though he were about to cry, he said, “A misunderstanding, this is all a misunderstanding! We were just joking around. We didn’t mean anything else, truly!”
Mo Yan remained silent for a long while, merely looking at him. Clearly, Mo Yan was the one wearing the thinnest clothes, yet he did not seem to feel cold at all, while Xiao Jiu kept trembling nonstop.
“Go back to your posts and do your own duties. If I catch you again—”
“We won’t, we won’t!” Before Mo Yan could finish, Xiao Jiu swore it with complete conviction.
“If you feel so idle that you have time to sit around in the snow, then sit here.” Leaving behind that sentence, Mo Yan turned and left, unwilling to remain even a moment longer.
If Ning Xuan could not understand that Mo Yan had clearly come only to help him out of this situation, then he truly deserved to be trampled on by others. But knowing was one thing; understanding it in his heart was another. There was no such thing as a free lunch in this world. If he had once believed that while still inevitably clinging to a faint illusion that human nature was good at the beginning, then now he believed it without a shred of doubt, especially in this era where everyone kept aloof from matters that did not concern them. Not to mention that there had once been something of a grudge between them.
Ning Xuan was not some unforgivably wicked villain, but neither was he some saintly figure who would endure everything and let himself suffer losses. To put it simply, he was someone who remembered grudges clearly and repaid them whenever possible. His memories of first arriving at the Prince’s Manor were still vivid. Back then, when the human trafficker had made his deal with the “buyer,” Ning Xuan still remembered the scene clearly. Although most of the details had already blurred, the strange, sarcastic sentence that man had spoken remained branded in Ning Xuan’s mind, clear down to every word:
“…This boy looks so seductive and strange. Put him somewhere farther away. Don’t let these fox-like temptresses keep dangling around in front of the master…”
Although Ning Xuan had not understood the meaning behind those words at the time, and had never imagined they would truly come true, he still could not accept being described with that word “seductive.” So once, when Feng Xuanyi happened not to be in the residence and Mo Yan had been ordered to bring Ning Xuan his breakfast, Ning Xuan had strutted arrogantly right up to Mo Yan, deliberately shoving the face Mo Yan disliked and considered bewitching almost directly in front of his expressionless face. The distance had been extremely close, and Ning Xuan had smiled in a way that practically begged to be punched. “So what if I’m fox-like and seductive? So what if I look bewitching and strange?”
After saying that, he had raised a piece of hibiscus cake to his mouth and taken a huge bite. Then he had swaggered away with an exaggerated bounce in his steps, narrowing his eyes and smacking his lips in complete enjoyment. Without the slightest regard for appearances, he had plopped himself heavily onto a chair and begun devouring the meal like a starving man.
And now, the person who had come to help him out was someone he had once gone out of his way to provoke for half a day. How ironic.
In a daze, Ning Xuan did not know how he returned to the servant’s room in the main courtyard. Naturally, a servant’s living quarters could not compare to a master’s, but they should not have been this bleak either. In the dead of winter, not only was there no floor heating, there was not even a charcoal brazier in the entire room. It was as cold as an icehouse. At least outside the door one could still see the sun, but inside the room it felt especially cold and damp. Still, none of that mattered. When the heart had already gone cold, what did it matter whether the room was warm or not?
Sitting on the chair beside the table, Ning Xuan casually braced one hand on the tabletop, only for the sharp pain of torn flesh to pierce straight into him. Only then did he realize that earlier, an entire kettle of boiling water had indeed poured all over his hand. He had not noticed it at the time. His whole wet sleeve had wrapped around his arm and frozen stiff, and when he shook it, one or two bits of ice could even fall off. The exposed part of the back of his hand was bright red, with faint purplish-blue veins barely visible beneath the skin. White blisters clustered around his wrist, half-hidden beneath the sleeve, and seemed to be spreading and worsening. At least the back of his hand had been exposed and could release some heat. Who knew what kind of miserable state the part wrapped inside his sleeve was in? At the end of his wrist, one spot had broken open, exposing fresh red flesh beneath, covered by a dark red scab. He supposed it must have been when he lost his footing while getting up in Liu Xiang Pavilion and scraped the blister open.
When he had not thought about it, it had not hurt. But now that he had looked at it, it truly began to hurt, burning hot, itching in waves, and throbbing like needles stabbing into him.
This hand was more or less useless now. Every movement brought a searing pain that drilled into his bones. But he could not simply leave the burn on his arm like this. It would definitely become infected.
With one hand, he tried to undo the clothing knots that were not especially complicated but still enough to give Ning Xuan a headache. He thought back to before. Compared to Feng Xuanyi, he had been more like the master who stretched out his hands to be dressed and opened his mouth to be fed. Feng Xuanyi had specifically ordered the kitchen to prepare dishes and pastries he liked, and as for the “hard labor” of dressing and undressing him from those tangled clothes, Feng Xuanyi had always been happy to help. To be served by Feng Xuanyi, a prince, had been such an honor in Ning Xuan’s life. But now, the clothing knots he had once never been able to tie properly or untie no matter what he did, though he was clumsy and his posture was somewhat awkward, could actually be undone with one hand.
Ning Xuan could not help laughing bitterly. Wasn’t this simply being cheap? Had his clumsiness looked like some sort of hint in Feng Xuanyi’s eyes? Had it looked like Ning Xuan was throwing himself at him, something freely offered that would be foolish not to take? So from the very beginning, had Feng Xuanyi only held the thought of playing around? Indulging himself, acting wantonly, as long as he had his fill of pleasure? No wonder Liu Xiaoyun had said those were low, vulgar tricks and methods. Looking at it now, wasn’t that exactly what they were?
Didn’t everyone keep living no matter who left whom? Look at him—even with one injured hand, he could still move about freely and take care of himself. What obstacle could possibly be impossible to get over? In modern times, this would not even count as anything serious. How many people only fell in love once in their entire lives? How many people were each other’s first love and stayed together until old age? How many people married and divorced? How many people abandoned their wives and children for a mistress? Even the law did not say second marriages were shameful, so what did it matter if he had stumbled and fallen during his first attempt? Besides, he was not a woman. As Xiao Jiu had said, he would not produce some burdensome child after these months of indulgence and madness. Moreover, he had enjoyed it at the time too, and no one had forced him. Being with Feng Xuanyi, no matter what Feng Xuanyi’s purpose or thoughts had been, Ning Xuan himself had been willing because he liked him. Now it was nothing more than the other party finding someone new and growing tired of him. Who had never fallen out of love? Who could go through life without a few failed relationships? Who did not fall in love with a few bastards in their lifetime?
Thinking this, Ning Xuan slapped himself hard across the face, not knowing whether it was to wake himself up or to use physical pain to replace the pain in his heart.
With a creak, the door opened in response.
Seeing Ning Xuan with a fierce expression and his clothes in disarray, Yi Xuan stood frozen at the doorway, not daring to come in. Instinctively shrinking his neck, he showed a look of alarm. “What are you trying to do?”
Ning Xuan raised his hand, which was red as if it had nearly been boiled through, and waved it at Yi Xuan. The simple movement scraped the torn flesh and pulled at the wound, making Ning Xuan bare his teeth in pain. Yet what he said was terribly poetic: “Healing my wounds.”
Yi Xuan stared at Ning Xuan suspiciously for a long while. Just a moment ago, this man had been stubbornly clinging to a dead end, refusing to come out no matter what. Yet now he seemed so carefree and natural, not only full of expression but even in the mood to joke. Could it be that the kettle of boiling water had scalded his hand, but somehow burned his brain instead?
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