The next day, there were still plenty of people coming to visit Fu Hui. Lan Xi watched them come and go and heard them quietly discussing the driver’s death.
“His death was very strange. The surveillance cameras didn’t catch anything.”
Lan Xi asked the bodyguard, “You didn’t catch the killer?”
The bodyguard shook his head. “This matter should be more or less over.”
“Why?” Lan Xi asked curiously.
The bodyguard smiled. “Because they all think the other side did it.”
Everyone’s first instinct would be that if they were cleaning up loose ends, they should clean them up completely.
Lan Xi only half understood. He knew little about all the twists and turns within these powerful families. But he did understand that probably no one would bother investigating what happened afterward.
The Wen brothers came to the hospital again.
They only went through the motions of asking after Fu Hui. In truth, they had come to check on Lan Xi.
Wen Yue walked in front. When he pushed open the door, Lan Xi was flipping through the list in his hands.
Seeing Lan Xi so absorbed, without any of yesterday’s gloom or sadness, Wen Yue relaxed a little. He immediately walked over and struck up a conversation. “What are you looking at?”
Lan Xi lifted his eyelids. “Bad people.”
Wen Yue froze. Who had bullied Lan Xi?
He instinctively lowered his head to look.
But Lan Xi snapped the list shut, stood, and said, “I’m going to see Fu Hui.”
Seeing him like this, Wen Yue naturally swallowed the words that Fu Hui might never wake up. That could very easily hit a nerve.
Whether Fu Hui woke or not, they could leave that to fate.
All they had to do was keep coming regularly to see Lan Xi.
At that moment, Wen Ming set the gifts he had brought to one side and said little else. Together with Wen Yue, he became a pair of silent ATMs.
Lan Xi shot them a sidelong glance.
No wings. Fucking useless.
Without looking back, Lan Xi followed the bodyguard out.
The room’s window was still wide open, stirring the curtains and the men’s hearts along with them… Wait. Wen Yue crouched down and picked up a black feather drifting through the air.
“What’s this?”
Wen Ming said, “A bird feather?”
The feather was extraordinarily exquisite. Even its shaft carried a dazzling dark-purple sheen.
Wen Yue held it in his palm and heard Wen Ming sigh, “Nature really is amazing.”
Wen Yue answered, “Mm,” and suddenly thought of the purple shining through Lan Xi’s hair.
＊
Fu Hui had been unconscious for a week.
By now even Lan Xi could sense the faint anxiety radiating from the people around him.
Amid the oppressive atmosphere, Zhou Lin found Lan Xi. “Hadn’t we only settled half the wedding details? Why don’t we keep going and decide the rest?”
Zhou Lin also wanted something to do, something that could relieve the pressure in her heart and give everyone the feeling that there was still hope.
“…Fine.” Lan Xi’s plans for killing people next had not been going particularly smoothly anyway.
He might as well settle the wedding setting first.
Fu Hui had already promised to make him a Hell-themed setting.
Lan Xi asked the bodyguard for paper and a pen, then tried to draw what Hell looked like.
But back at the little Western-style house, even drawing himself being chased by a dog for Fu Hui had nearly defeated him. Naturally, he was no better now.
The wedding planner could only stare blankly at his drawing.
“Why don’t you describe it, and I’ll generate an image for you?” the planner suggested.
Lan Xi pursed his lips. “Fine.”
He began describing it. “Mm, there should be lots of pointy mountains, with fire spraying out of them. In the middle there should be a huge pool, filled with lots of blood, bubbling and boiling…”
The planner: “…?”
The planner asked, “You want your… wedding venue to look like this?”
Lan Xi said, “Mm-hm.”
The planner helplessly turned toward Zhou Lin.
Zhou Lin was equally helpless. “Um… Lan Xi, did you discuss this with Fu Hui before?”
“We discussed it.”
The planner’s scalp tingled. If she really made Mr. Fu’s wedding look like this, could she still keep working in this industry afterward?
Could it be that Mr. Fu couldn’t persuade his little wife and was counting on them to step forward as brave advisers instead?
“This… might not look very auspicious,” the planner said tactfully.
Lan Xi asked back, “Why does it need to be auspicious?”
That genuinely stumped the planner.
Who didn’t want good fortune at a wedding?
Lan Xi was already getting impatient. “Forget it. I don’t want to explain it to you anymore.”
He turned and strode away.
Zhou Lin hurried after him and chased Lan Xi all the way into the ICU.
Lan Xi had never missed Fu Hui like this before. He sighed. “Nobody understands me.”
Zhou Lin was softhearted. Hearing that from behind him, her eyes immediately stung.
Thinking about it, someone with Fu Hui’s personality was already planning to marry a man. He must truly have taken this person to heart. In that case, no matter how Lan Xi wanted to decorate the wedding venue, Fu Hui would probably indulge him even if he wanted to turn it into Heaven.
Zhou Lin hurriedly coaxed him from behind. “We’ll make the wedding venue exactly the way you said. They’re just inexperienced, that’s why they were surprised.”
“Shall we go back and keep working on it?” Zhou Lin asked softly.
Imitating the way Fu Hui used to touch him, Lan Xi turned Fu Hui’s fingers over and over in his hands several times before standing. “Oh.”
Fu Hui’s fingers twitched violently.
He could feel Lan Xi touching him, and at the same time, Lan Xi’s aggrieved complaint reached his ears.
“What’s wrong with you?” The demon walking ahead stopped and turned around to look at him in confusion.
Without changing expression, Fu Hui lied, “I’m thinking about how Hell can launch a counterattack.”
The demon gave him a nasty smile. “You’re really strange.”
But it said nothing else.
They walked for several days before finally reaching Lan Xi’s home.
Lan Xi was somewhat well-known in Hell.
When the demon spoke of Lan Xi, its tone carried a hint of disdain. “A strange little succubus. He #%#￥%#, his brothers and sisters… %&%#@￥%, and only he still lives here…”
There were many words Fu Hui still could not understand, but he grasped the general meaning.
Fu Hui looked at the building in front of him.
It looked exactly like a little round-topped mud house from a fairy tale, with several poisonous mushrooms painted colorfully on the windows.
One glance was enough to tell that Lan Xi himself had been responsible for the aesthetic.
Fu Hui immediately imagined Lan Xi in his tiny demon form, flapping his wings as he flew in and out…
His breathing grew heavier.
He wanted so badly, so badly, to go back.
Fu Hui pushed open the door, bent slightly, and ducked inside.
The demon followed behind him and asked, “Why? You know him?”
Lan Xi was not here anyway. Fu Hui had wanted to say, He’s my wife.
But the words reached his lips and were swallowed again. Instead, he said, “He defeated me.”
The demon was stunned. “Impossible!”
The demons here also took Fu Hui for a “seraph.”
Fu Hui guessed it stemmed from the same reason Lan Xi had initially mistaken them for angels.
Fu Hui did not deny it. Instead, he took the opportunity to deceive the demon, claiming that he could lead Hell in a counterattack and overturn the oppression it had suffered for centuries.
To be fair, in modern society, a man like Fu Hui was restrained quite a bit by morality and law.
Here in Hell, he no longer had to care about so many rules.
Driving demons to do what he wanted was hardly difficult for him.
“Why would it be impossible?” Fu Hui asked as he wandered around the house.
It was a tiny two-room home with a living area: one room was for storage, one for sleeping, and the living area also served as the dining room and kitchen.
Although it was small, Lan Xi had hung strings of bone beads by the windows, painted blood-red patterns across the dining table, embedded many pretty stones into the headboard, and carved a long string of names into his eating bowl, carefully filling each one with colored ink.
That string of names was the same one Fu Hui had seen on the title page of Lan Xi’s diary.
Fu Hui let out a breath. He wanted, desperately wanted, to see Lan Xi.
＊
Lan Xi single-handedly decided what the wedding setting would be, what sort of guest favors they would use, where the wedding would be held…
He hated trouble, so in many ways he actually made decisions faster than Fu Hui did.
Now the wedding was almost entirely prepared, but when Zhou Lin looked at the date they had chosen before, her head began to ache.
She rubbed the date with her finger.
A shadow fell over her face. “Fu Hui still hasn’t woken up.”
Fu Hui had already been transferred out of the ICU. The doctors said his physical functions had clearly recovered, yet for some unknown reason, he simply could not wake up.
Those words left everyone despairing.
If an illness were causing it, at least they could treat the illness. But the words “we don’t know why” were what truly crushed every scrap of hope.
By then, Fu Hui had been unconscious for half a month.
The next time Lan Xi went to see him, he happened to catch someone massaging Fu Hui’s muscles.
Lan Xi immediately rushed over and demanded, “What are you doing?”
The bodyguard quickly explained, “If someone lies still for too long, their muscles atrophy. That’s why we specially hired two male caregivers.”
The bodyguard even placed extra emphasis on the word “male.”
But after saying it, he somehow felt that still wasn’t quite right.
The main problem was that if they hired two old men, those hands probably would not have enough strength either.
The bodyguard looked at Lan Xi’s expression.
No matter how he explained it, Lan Xi’s brows remained dark, his face clearly very unhappy.
In any case, Lan Xi was furious. Nobody could quite tell who he was furious with.
The driver was already thoroughly dead too… so there was no one left for him to vent his anger on.
Lan Xi sat beside them “swallowing his anger” for quite a while. Once the caregivers left, he went over and secretly pinched Fu Hui twice.
The pain made Fu Hui’s muscles twitch.
He heard Lan Xi complain again, “Fu Hui, you’re so annoying!”
Fu Hui could hear him. He could feel him. But he simply could not touch Lan Xi.
Is he annoyed with me? Or annoyed because I still won’t wake up?
Fu Hui’s throat tightened again and again.
Then, when he heard the very soft whimper Lan Xi was trying to suppress, his breathing stopped completely.
Fu Hui’s expression sank entirely, turning icy cold.
The demon opposite him was startled by the change.
Lan Xi was still talking. “Are you really never going to wake up, Fu Hui?”
“Fu Hui, are you just going to die like this?”
“Fu Hui, the wedding is all ready.”
“There are only three days left. Aunt said that’s the wedding date.”
“Fu Hui, I realized today that I’m shedding feathers.”
Lan Xi let out a long sigh and muttered to himself, “Should I save you, Fu Hui?”
Growing anxious enough to bite his fingernails, Lan Xi said, “If… I make a contract with you… would you wake up?”
A contract…?
Fu Hui could not ask him what that was.
But Lan Xi continued, “Then you would share my lifespan.”
Fu Hui froze.
Lan Xi viciously bit Fu Hui’s palm. “But… then you’d live for a very, very, very long time… And before you die, I wouldn’t be allowed to sleep with anyone else. What am I supposed to do?”
Fu Hui: “…”
Lan Xi began soothing himself. “A demon shouldn’t be too impulsive. Think again. Think again.”
He lifted his face. “Otherwise, maybe I should hurry and sleep with a few more people now while I still have time.”
Fu Hui: “…………”
Fu Hui felt that even if he really were dying, Lan Xi could probably anger him back to life.
“Forget it. There’s no one worth sleeping with anyway.” Lan Xi sighed heavily and let his head fall, pressing it tightly against Fu Hui’s lower abdomen.
“Your expression is very strange,” the demon said.
Fu Hui: “.”
Lan Xi unhappily patted Fu Hui’s chest. “I shed another feather.”
One moment Lan Xi had Fu Hui furious enough to choke, and the next he was so adorable that Fu Hui’s heart went completely soft.
He wanted desperately to open his eyes, sit up, touch Lan Xi’s wings, and help him groom his feathers.
Lan Xi sighed again. “Sigh…”
“If I sign a contract with you, you might end up hating me too. Because if one day in the future I suffer a fatal injury and I’m about to die, you’d be the one who dies in my place first…”
Naturally, a contract with a demon could not contain only benefits and no drawbacks.
That makes sense, Fu Hui thought.
“Lan Xi… the wedding clothes you ordered have arrived. Do you want to… try them on?” Zhou Lin came to the door and asked carefully.
Lan Xi stood with drooping brows. “Mm.”
Lan Xi left.
He went to try on the clothes, then secretly went to look at Wen Yue and Wen Ming again, repeatedly confirming that he truly no longer wanted to sleep with them. Wingless things.
Only then did he return to Fu Hui’s bedside.
He lifted the blanket, climbed onto the bed, and forcibly squeezed himself beside Fu Hui.
Rather unhappily, he ran his hands over Fu Hui’s arms and legs.
He hated other people touching Fu Hui.
And they kept touching him too. Fine, the bodyguards said it was called massage, but Lan Xi hated it anyway.
Lan Xi hugged Fu Hui’s body tightly and rubbed his head against him.
He knew animals used their scent to mark things that belonged to them.
“If only I could mark you… Anyone who touched you would be cursed.” Lan Xi happily imagined it, and before long, he imagined himself straight to sleep.
＊
Firelight fell before Fu Hui’s eyes.
Another battle had erupted, even larger than the ones before. The ground split apart with it, and Fu Hui was nearly thrown into one of the cracks.
No matter how careful he was, this place remained far too dangerous.
He heard the shrieks of angels and demons.
And he heard Lan Xi’s quiet voice too.
The door opened.
The bodyguard had brought the caregivers again.
Lan Xi could no longer stand it. “I don’t want them.”
The bodyguard was troubled. “But…”
After agonizing over it for three full days, Lan Xi gritted his teeth. “I’ll summon Fu Hui’s soul back! So I don’t want them!”
The bodyguard did not know whether to laugh or cry. “How could that work?”
“Out, out!” Lan Xi drove them away.
In the end, Song Qingming and Zhou Lin came over and persuaded them. “Just indulge him today.”
Zhou Lin’s expression was pained. “Today was supposed to be the wedding day.”
The bodyguard went dazed for a moment. “Time really passes quickly.”
They fell silent, then withdrew from the room.
The instant the door closed, Lan Xi turned and sat astride Fu Hui.
Another ball of fire crashed down.
Fu Hui staggered.
Lan Xi said, “Fine. I’m going to make a contract with you. If you don’t say anything, I’ll take that as agreement.”
He raised his voice slightly, as though using it to suppress the unease in his heart. “Mm… this is my first time doing this too. I don’t know whether I’m doing it right…”
He said, “A dead horse… mm, treat it like a living horse. That’s the saying, right?”
Elio’s Notes: “Treat a dead horse like a living one” is a Chinese idiom for making one last desperate attempt when nothing else is working. Lan Xi is checking whether he remembered the expression correctly.
Fu Hui: “…”
Lan Xi took a deep breath.
Then he rolled off Fu Hui again. “No! If I do this, you’ll be with me for hundreds of years… Won’t I get tired of looking at you?”
Very quickly, Lan Xi climbed back again. “Mm… but then Fu Hui will be mine. Mm. Even after hundreds of years, you’ll still be mine.”
He lowered his gaze to that face, still extraordinarily handsome even after more than half a month asleep.
If I get tired of Fu Hui’s face, I can just peel another demon’s face off and give it to him, right?
Lan Xi finally convinced himself completely.
His sharp fangs emerged, and he bit down on his fingertip.
The pain made him hiss. Then he quickly pulled open Fu Hui’s shirt and began using his own blood to draw the contract sigil across Fu Hui’s body.
“Did I draw this part wrong?”
Fu Hui: “…”
“Mm, I’ll try it first. If it’s wrong, I’ll change it.” Lan Xi almost lay flat against Fu Hui’s body.
Stroke by stroke, beads of blood seeped into the skin and sank deeper.
As though blood and bone were merging together.
Fu Hui leaped down from between the mountains that were splitting apart.
The violent wind poured into his ears, almost tearing him to pieces.
When both angels and demons turned their gazes toward him, his figure disappeared between black and white.
“Did it work?”
“No?”
Anxious, Lan Xi bit his hand again.
But the person beneath him suddenly opened his eyes, dark pupils locking completely onto him.
Lan Xi seemed to sense something and lowered his head.
Fu Hui was awake.
Had the contract worked?
Lan Xi’s eyes widened in delight. He hadn’t drawn it wrong! Haha!
But his face quickly fell again. “Fu Hui, my hand hurts…”
Fu Hui gripped his hand tightly, half pushed himself upright, and lowered his head. He kissed Lan Xi’s fingertip, then gently bit it.
“Lan Xi…”
Lan Xi had spent so much effort convincing himself.
The more effort it took, the more it showed just how enormous a decision he had made.
“Lan Xi, I love you.”
Fu Hui pulled Lan Xi into a crushing embrace, hard enough to annoy him a little. But Fu Hui had not been able to hold him for so long. Fine. Lan Xi wrapped an arm around Fu Hui’s waist in return.
Zhou Lin knocked and came inside, only to see exactly this scene.
“Fu Hui… he’s awake!” A delighted shriek squeezed out of her throat.
Fu Hui raised a hand and smoothed Lan Xi’s hair. “Today was a very well-chosen day.”
Lan Xi said, “Huh?”
＊
Who sends wedding invitations on the wedding day itself?
Fu Hui was the first.