Qin Shu did not ask what Pei Zhao had done. He simply smiled and said, “I remember.”
It was New Year’s Eve. Questions that might bring bad luck did not need to be asked. Pei Zhao would never hurt him anyway. Everything else was irrelevant.
At the supermarket, Qin Shu chose the largest cart available and, listening to the familiar background music, moved quickly through the crowd as it gradually thickened, sweeping through the New Year goods on both floors of the store.
He moved with practiced ease. Ever since starting high school, Qin Shu had no longer needed adults to help prepare for New Year, nor did he need Aunt Su to drag two noisy little brats around everywhere… He already knew perfectly well what gifts to give, whom to visit for New Year greetings, and whose visits he needed to wait for at home.
Fortunately, Qin Shu had few family members and even fewer relatives living in the same city, so there was not much fuss. His parents had never dragged him off to participate in ancestral rites either… after all, the two of them usually did not have time to attend themselves.
After sweeping up the New Year goods, they packed some of them for Xu Qian and let the white dragon carry her and several large boxes of Jiangcheng specialties and holiday goods back to the village in grand style.
In the past, the white dragon would definitely have complained, accusing Qin Shu of using it as a cargo truck. But this time was different. This time it had been dressed beautifully, had already shown itself off to all the various uncles and elders once, and had nowhere near gotten it out of its system. It was desperately looking for more places to parade around.
Dragons loved beauty. Even the most stubbornly mouthy white dragon could not hide that trait. Naturally, Pei Zhao liked buying new clothes too.
Some styles did not look all that different at first glance, but only after living with Pei Zhao did Qin Shu finally get the chance to discover… they were actually completely different clothes!
So after handing things over to the white dragon, the two of them stopped to buy new clothes as well. They also picked out trench coats, hats, light silk scarves, and newly released seasonal handbags for Su Ting Lian and Ms. Qin.
Qin Shu did not understand much about such things. He relied entirely on memorization and strictly demanded that both women give him precise style preferences, preferably by sending screenshots of the exact things they wanted.
Aunt Su was still a little embarrassed to trouble him too often, but Ms. Qin had sent him on plenty of shopping errands. Over time, Qin Shu had become quite skilled at it.
They ate while shopping. Whenever they could no longer carry everything, they brought the bags home, piled them up, and went out again. The entire morning passed in an extraordinarily full and busy way. By the time they had finished fooling around and lunchtime arrived, they could simply take Su Ting Lian’s gifts straight to her house and eat there.
Compared with the slight unfamiliarity on New Year’s Day, Su Ting Lian was much warmer toward Pei Zhao this time.
After all, when Qin Shu announced he was dating someone, the enormous news had practically spread through every household in their residential compound. Every neighbor who had ever crossed paths with Qin Shu knew about it. Even Dahuang, the police dog at the gate, had heard something.
Back then, stories about a few heartbroken boys had even circulated among the neighbors. Su Ting Lian heard about them while chatting with friends, but for the sake of harmony between the young couple, she did not breathe a single word.
She had secretly been on Pei Zhao’s side for a long time. Before, Qin Shu simply did not have that particular wire installed in his brain, so Su Ting Lian could not openly show too much preference… But now that the two were openly dating and had come to eat together, she finally had the chance to treat Pei Zhao like the child of her best friend. Smiling, she pulled him upstairs and whispered privately with him for quite a while.
Qin Shu resisted the urge to eavesdrop and forcibly pretended nothing was happening. He tilted his head to check whether any evil aura still clung to Tang Rui Cheng, then chatted with him about the New Year gifts they had picked for each other: game blind boxes.
Tang Rui Cheng had given him a big-budget horror game costing a few hundred yuan, supposedly a spectacular visual feast. Qin Shu, with absolutely no consideration for his feelings, gave him the newest football league simulator… After all, Tang Rui Cheng would not be able to play football in real life for quite a long time. At best, he could satisfy the craving on a computer.
Tang Rui Cheng liked games like that, but the wonderfully thoughtful symbolism still made him laugh in exasperation.
The two mocked each other for ages before Su Ting Lian finally came downstairs smiling with Pei Zhao. Tang Rui Cheng did not sense any change in the atmosphere at all, but Qin Shu noticed with a single glance that Pei Zhao’s expression looked slightly unnatural.
“What were you two talking about? Why so secretive?”
He tilted his head and asked with forced casualness. Pei Zhao gave him a helpless look, while Su Ting Lian wore a meaningful expression. “Talk about it when you get home. You two can take your time talking then.”
“…Mm. We’ll talk about it at home.” Pei Zhao nodded too, agreeing in a strangely gloomy tone.
“What? What?!”
Tang Rui Cheng looked back and forth and only then realized something seemed a little strange. A terrible premonition instantly rose in his heart. He glared at Su Ting Lian. “Mom, can you have some boundaries?”
“Hey, you brat. You’ve been freakishly sharp about this kind of thing since you were little, so how come you never learned to bring me a partner?” Su Ting Lian instantly and skillfully turned the accusation around, raising an eyebrow and planting her hands on her hips. “Look at Little Qin. Usually he seems so silly, but the moment he decided to find someone, he found one. And such an outstanding, suitable one too. He went and found the best kid possible in one shot… What about you?”
Tang Rui Cheng choked. “…What does this have to do with me?!”
“Little Qin, you tell me. Are our standards for a daughter-in-law really that high? Honestly, I’ve told you already, as long as they’re alive, look human, and have a kind heart, that’s enough. If you can’t find someone good while you’re still a student, where are you going to find some beautiful first love after entering society? Be careful or you’ll get scammed until you don’t even have your underpants left.”
Su Ting Lian sighed as she spoke, looking thoroughly disappointed in him. “Even if you wanted to become somebody else’s daughter-in-law, when have I ever said no? If you could find someone even more handsome than Little Qin, I could die smiling on the spot. But how come there hasn’t been a single sign of anything since you were little? So strange. Every day all you know how to do is hide those anime posters in your drawers…”
Qin Shu struggled hard not to laugh, but by the end he finally burst out and hurriedly came to Tang Rui Cheng’s defense. “Aunt Su, spare him. Right now he only likes fictional characters. Living people aren’t under consideration. There’s nothing wrong with that. Anime characters are prettier than real people anyway, and at least they won’t scam him out of his money.”
“Old Qin is right!” Tang Rui Cheng immediately followed up. “I’m not going to get scammed until I lose my underpants!”
Su Ting Lian raised an eyebrow. “Then which pretty fictional character scammed you into buying that whole string of 648-yuan packs last month?”
Tang Rui Cheng: …
Qin Shu: …
Qin Shu gave a light cough and decided to withdraw from their war. He swiftly dragged Pei Zhao to the living-room sofa for shelter, picked up a mandarin orange, and began peeling it, pretending he had suddenly become extremely busy.
While mother and son were still bickering as usual, their attention completely elsewhere, Qin Shu casually stuffed an orange segment into Pei Zhao’s mouth, secretly poked his arm, and asked by voice transmission, “What did Aunt Su talk to you about earlier?”
Pei Zhao’s arm stiffened. After a long silence, he took Qin Shu’s hand and slowly slipped it into his coat pocket.
Qin Shu felt a cold little square box. It was unopened, but judging by the size and shape…
He stiffened too. After a moment, he carefully withdrew his hand, shoved the rest of the orange into his mouth, then devoted himself wholeheartedly to breaking apart the large golden pomelo on the table by hand. Segment after segment, until he had produced a perfectly clean full plate.
People always pretended to be busy when they were embarrassed.
After keeping busy all morning, he had almost managed to push the matter temporarily out of his mind. But the thoughtful little gift Su Ting Lian had given them… was like a lit match landing directly on a fuse at the worst possible time, accompanied by a convenient gust of wind that made it burn even faster.
The nervousness buried deep inside Qin Shu finally became impossible to control. He nearly dismantled every thick-skinned fruit in Su Ting Lian’s house before barely steadying himself enough to whisper, “We’re leaving. Aunt Su definitely prepared more than just this. If we don’t go now, she’ll catch us and make us stay for New Year’s Eve dinner.”
“…Mm. Let’s go.”
When they announced they were leaving, Su Ting Lian indeed appeared carrying food boxes. She had packed several neat, ready-made hard dishes for Qin Shu: red-braised pork, roasted ribs, an entire squirrel-shaped mandarin fish… all beautiful dishes that only needed simple reheating before they could go on the table.
Even if they were not eating at her house, Su Ting Lian had to make sure Qin Shu’s New Year’s Eve dinner had at least some festive atmosphere. He could also take pictures and show Ms. Qin overseas so she would worry less.
This arrangement had gone on for many years, and Qin Shu was used to it. He did not stand on ceremony with Su Ting Lian at all. Accepting the food boxes, he said with a smile, “Aunt Su, remember to open my New Year gift tonight.”
“It’s not something expensive again, is it?” Su Ting Lian raised an eyebrow. “Buying things for me and for your mother too. Where do you get all this money, kid?”
Qin Shu hummed smugly and tightened his hold on Pei Zhao’s hand. “I don’t act polite with you, so you’re not allowed to act polite with me either. We’re going. We’ll come back tomorrow.”
They made a show of leaving with easy confidence, but once outside, both fell silent at the same time and quickened their pace toward home.
The white dragon had already returned from delivering the goods. Full and satisfied, it lounged on the roof and looked smugly down at them. A huge wreath sat atop its head, vivid and brilliantly colored, almost as though it had been forged from flame.
One glance was enough to tell it was a traditional Phoenix Village specialty.
“Wow, pretty. The red gemstones and flame flowers look great together.” Qin Shu praised it sincerely, then immediately continued without mercy, “Don’t stay at my house today. Hurry back to your Dragon Palace. Come back when I call you.”
The white dragon froze. “Why?!”
Qin Shu took a deep breath and shook Pei Zhao’s hand. “Why do you think?”
The white dragon went silent. After dredging up a nearly forgotten conversation from its memory, realization dawned. “You two are ridiculous. What’s there to be embarrassed about?! Fine, fine, I’ll leave right now… Where exactly are we eating New Year’s Eve dinner? Give me a straight answer.”
“At my house, obviously. I’ll call you when it’s time.”
As Qin Shu spoke, he opened the courtyard gate and tossed glittering Yuanbao and Coalball to the white dragon. “Take them with you.”
Then he turned toward the hen strolling leisurely across the lawn, his tone softening. “Great General, how about going to the Dragon Palace for a while too? Try some of their river seafood.”
Great General flapped its wings and, interested, flew straight toward the river without needing the white dragon to guide it. The white dragon clicked its tongue impatiently, obediently tucked the two little creatures into its mouth, and turned to leave as well.
Qin Shu watched them disappear, locked the courtyard gate again, and drew a deep breath. “All right. Now it’s just the two of us…”
“The house is so quiet.” Pei Zhao pushed open the door and walked through the entryway, sounding unusually reflective. “I can’t believe I’m not used to it either.”
“Don’t worry. It won’t be quiet for long.” Qin Shu coughed lightly, caught up in a few quick strides, then simply picked Pei Zhao up and carried him upstairs without hesitation.
Only after drawing the curtains tight, turning on the bedside lamp, and closing the bedroom door did Qin Shu finally put him down, settling him steadily on the edge of the bed.
Pei Zhao was right. The house had suddenly become extraordinarily quiet. Their breaths, moving at different rhythms, intertwined in the silence and gradually fell into sync.
Pei Zhao sat at the edge of the bed and looked up at him. His amber-gold eyes glimmered in the dim light. His pupils, normally round, had been darkened by shadow and seemed to sharpen almost imperceptibly into the narrow vertical shape characteristic of a cold-blooded creature, though the hazy molten gold softened the harsh edges.
Qin Shu could tell at once that this was not nervousness. It was the bloodthirsty excitement of a predator just before its prey finally fell into reach.
They already knew each other very well. They knew what every part of the other looked like, what their skin felt like, and what kissing each other was like.
But Qin Shu had to admit that he was not familiar with this savage expression on Pei Zhao’s face. Pei Zhao never liked showing him this side of himself.
Perhaps it was not because he was afraid of frightening Qin Shu, but because… one careless slip would make everything impossible to rein back in.
After all, Qin Shu loved the way Pei Zhao was looking at him now. Merely being examined by that gaze sent his heartbeat pounding in his ears like an obnoxious, frantic rhythm.
Start with a kiss, Qin Shu told himself. Behave properly. Begin with something that could not go wrong.
He bent down and kissed Pei Zhao’s cool lips, one hand naturally braced against the slightly sinking mattress while the other slid behind Pei Zhao’s head, his soft, cool hair winding quietly around Qin Shu’s fingers.
With a faint muffled sound, Pei Zhao’s back met the mattress, while Qin Shu’s hand had already slipped lower to rest lightly around the back of his neck.
Warm kisses moved from the corner of his mouth to the side of his neck, covering the cold artery and its imitation heartbeat, until a faint flush spread across his skin like wildfire, staining him completely with a vitality that did not belong to Pei Zhao himself.
Qin Shu did not ask whether Pei Zhao was ready, because Pei Zhao whispered beside his ear, his breath turning to ice, sounding half like a declaration of love and half like a sinister death threat. “Look up, Qin Shu. I want to keep watching you.”
So Qin Shu obediently raised his eyes and looked quietly at Pei Zhao, at the misty flush gathering at the corners of his eyes, at lips warmed by kissing. Reflected in those glowing pupils, Qin Shu saw his own eyes.
A savage darkness like a surging sea of blood. Something nearly primal, an ancient hunger, was quietly hatching inside him.
He was no better than Pei Zhao.
He desperately needed to taste blood. Qin Shu thought it, and then immediately acted on it.
Without warning, he lowered his head and bit through the trembling skin at the side of Pei Zhao’s neck. At the involuntary sound that escaped him, Qin Shu leaned closer in silence, his bloodstained lips instantly swallowing the noise. He brushed Pei Zhao’s mouth with the lightest of kisses. “Shh.”
The bedside lamp went out.
The rest of the story continued in darkness.
＊
“Huh? The river’s rising? It’s barely drizzling. This tiny broken river can suddenly swell for no reason all by itself?”
The white dragon sat on the throne, busy dealing with Dragon Mother’s “corpse.” In the rear hall, the Yellow Dragon, King Yingde, had opened a temporary ritual space and was working with it to render harmless the divine body that had still not completely fallen.
New Year’s Eve had arrived, and the Nian beast was coming. Although that thing rarely caused trouble in Jiangcheng, the white dragon could always smell its irritating presence quietly spreading everywhere across the Nine Provinces, slipping into every gap.
For yao like them, New Year was actually rather annoying. Animal instincts were easily stirred at this time, then agitated further by the danger of the approaching Nian beast, unleashing unreasonable bursts of strength and provoking conflicts that should never have happened… The same applied to Dragon Mother, who could not move.
She was not truly and completely dead. If the New Year atmosphere stimulated her and she inexplicably came back to life, things would become extremely troublesome.
The white dragon was not afraid of Dragon Mother attacking it. It was only afraid that if it truly could not win, it would have no choice but to run out of the Dragon Palace and call for reinforcements.
Because right now was an exceptionally bad time. Truly, an extremely bad time. Qin Shu had warned it over and over not to go within a single step of his house.
If it had no choice… if it was forced to make Qin Shu and Pei Zhao come running out with no clothes on to save its life…
The white dragon thought that after the crisis was resolved, its future fate would probably not differ much from being killed by Dragon Mother. It might die even more miserably, beaten into festive-colored minced meat.
At a time like this, the last thing it wanted was an accident, and the last thing it wanted to hear was an emergency report. Then Lady Ma came racing inside and dropped to one knee with a bang, tensely reporting an extremely abnormal rise in the river…
The river had begun rising without warning right under its nose, and a subordinate had needed to report it before the white dragon even noticed. That was genuinely bizarre. What kind of terrifying deity had come knocking this time?
The white dragon’s skin tightened as it listened, chills running down its back.
After confirming Lady Ma’s report was true, it painfully flicked its tail, the little pearls hanging from it chiming crisply. “All right. Don’t go outside, and don’t let the other patrol teams move around either. Until the water stops rising, if anyone sees anything strange, nobody is allowed to attack without permission! I’ll go up and check it myself.”
“Yes!”
Lady Ma straightened with renewed energy, lowered her head in acknowledgment, and only stood after the white dragon left. Her emotionless gaze slowly swept across the enormous “cocoon” glowing faintly inside the hall, then returned to the swirling trail the white dragon had left while rapidly ascending.
The Yellow Dragon’s eyes materialized in the rippling water and met hers.
Lady Ma immediately cupped her fists in salute. “Greetings, King Yingde. Your Majesty, why aren’t you going to investigate?”
“No need to be nervous. Nothing serious happened in the first place.” The Yellow Dragon chuckled. “That child Ao Wang is a little stupid… but you’re different. Lady Ma, was it? Your loyalty still remains there?”
“My loyalty exists only to serve the master of Jiangcheng Dragon Palace,” Lady Ma replied without changing expression. “At present it cannot yet be considered the true master. A little more time is required. Everything this subject does is for the Dragon Palace.”
“Is that so? Playing a prank on the Dragon Palace’s future ruler counts as service too?” The amusement in the Yellow Dragon’s voice deepened. “Don’t scare the child too badly. It owes Jiangcheng nothing.”
“…I am ashamed. Testing is unavoidable. Testing the depth of a future ruler’s temperament is also part of this subject’s duty.”
Lady Ma did not deny it. She was indeed playing a prank, because aside from the white dragon, many of Jiangcheng’s native yao cultivators had long since become extremely familiar with Pei Zhao’s aura.
Not merely Lord Zhaoyuan’s aura, but Pei Zhao’s.
They might not know exactly who Pei Zhao was, but they all understood one thing: somewhere in the shadows of this enormous city lived a super-yao who had never shown himself. He carried dragon aura, an even stronger death aura, and some strange quality no one could identify.
Whenever Pei Zhao’s exceptionally unusual aura leaked outward, it would occasionally cause brief disturbances in the weather and the river.
In the past, the area around the Dragon Palace had been less affected. Dragon Mother’s divine power had been there to stabilize and control it. But now Dragon Mother belonged to the past, so responsibility for handling those disturbances naturally fell to the white dragon.
Yet throughout the entire Dragon Palace, only the white dragon did not know… strange aura leaking through the city did not mean the apocalypse was arriving at all. It simply meant “that person” was experiencing a relatively strong emotional fluctuation.
Judging solely by how much the river had risen today, that emotional fluctuation was probably extremely strong. Unprecedented, even… Lady Ma held it in and held it in, but finally could not stop herself from laughing.
“Haha.”
Meanwhile, the white dragon had already surfaced. Its glossy snow-jade scales dried almost instantly under the baking glow of the evening sunset.
It nervously inspected the rising water. The moment it turned, it heard the thunderous roar of churning waves, and then an enormous swell came crashing straight toward its face.
It instinctively cast a spell to repel the water… and failed. Completely.
River water wrapped in unknown power roared forward and drenched it from head to tail with bone-chilling cold. It was freezing, miserable, and nearly drowned it on the spot, giving it the terrifying illusion that one careless moment might actually get it killed.
Not many beings in the world had the ability to make the white dragon experience an illusion that frightening. It suddenly realized something and ground its teeth.
At that exact moment, a dozen or so idle Jiangcheng fishermen were sitting on the riverbank far across the water. Firecrackers had scared away the fish for New Year, leaving them with nothing to do, so they had come over with their phones to watch the rising tide from a safe distance. Now they pointed at the white dragon in astonishment.
“Holy shit! Is that a dragon?!”
“No way. Maybe it’s a water snake?”
“No, look at those huge horns! Damn, it’s beautiful! That absolutely has to be a dragon!”
The white dragon fell silent. Finally, it too gradually recognized the peculiar aura surging through the river. It whipped around, sank back into the water, and roared at the empty river, “You damn gay couple! Are you two having sex or fighting a world war?!”
That one giant wave had even knocked out its concealment spell!