After Li Shan finished speaking, he suddenly noticed Deng Ying watching him and found himself momentarily stunned, unable to clearly describe the feeling of being gazed upon by those eyes.

To say he pitied Deng Ying—he didn’t seem to have such a soft heart, but to say he despised him—there wasn’t a proper reason either. After all, during those three years when Deng Yi had corrupted the cabinet with his power-grabbing and official killing, Deng Ying had replaced his teacher Zhang Chunzhan, immersing himself in designing and supervising the construction of the three main halls of the Imperial City. Until the moment the Ministry of Justice came to arrest him, he had still been on the roof of the Shouhuang Hall with craftsmen, correcting the slope of the eaves.

So no matter how one calculated it, Deng Ying had nothing to do with his father’s crimes.

But as Deng Yi’s eldest son, Deng Ying was still imprisoned. The Three Judicial Offices of the court were truly troubled when deciding his punishment. The Imperial City’s construction was not yet complete, and Zhang Chunzhan, who initially led the project, was now elderly and confused, no longer capable of the task. Deng Ying was Zhang Chunzhan’s only student, having passed the imperial examinations the same year as Vice Minister Yang Lun of the Ministry of Revenue. He was one of the few practical-minded officials among the younger generation, not only well-versed in poetry and literature but also an expert in the classics and engineering. If he were to be executed along with the other Deng clan males, the Ministry of Works truly couldn’t find someone to replace him at such short notice. Thus, the Three Judicial Offices and the Sili Jian repeatedly debated his case, unable to decide how to handle him.

Finally, He Yixian, the seal-holding eunuch of the Sili Jian, suggested a solution.

“His Majesty executed Deng Yi’s entire family because after years of being deceived by Deng Yi, once everything came to light, His anger and hatred accumulated, leading to this fury. However, the Imperial City is the royal residence, and its construction concerns the foundation of the state—it cannot be abandoned. To appease His Majesty’s anger, besides execution…”

He put down the memorial that the Three Judicial Offices had drafted several times but was still in rough form, saying with a smile, “Isn’t there still the punishment of castration?”

This solution, hard to say whether cruel or merciful, gave Deng Ying a path to survival while ending his originally upright life. This was why Yang Wan wrote in the opening of “The Biography of Deng Ying”: It’s hard to say whether Deng Ying’s life ended or began this year.

Of course, people like Li Shan didn’t have Yang Wan’s god-like perspective.

They simply didn’t know how to treat this relatively innocent descendant of a treacherous official.

“Looking at me won’t help.”

Li Shan could no longer maintain eye contact with Deng Ying. Walking to his side, unconsciously flicking at the dry skin on his fingers, he continued speaking: “Though I also think it’s somewhat regrettable you’ve ended up in this situation, your father truly committed heinous crimes. Now you’re like a crippled rat in the street—whoever touches you meets misfortune. No one dares sympathize with you. You might as well accept it, consider it bearing your father’s sins, fulfilling some filial duty, earning him some karmic merit.”

His words weren’t wrong.

If Deng Ying had died, that would have been the end of it, but alive he became a political symbol, his life constantly used by the court to test people’s stance and loyalty.

Although Deng Ying himself had never made enemies before, his current situation was truly miserable.

His former close friends remained silent about his fate, while those who held grudges against the Deng family couldn’t wait to step on him further.

From his imprisonment to his transfer to Nanhaizi, more than a month had passed. Counting it up, only Yang Lun had secretly given Li Shan a silver ingot, asking him to look after Deng Ying.

After speaking those boundless words, Li Shan thought of that silver ingot and looked at Deng Ying’s wounds all over his body. Feeling some pity, he coughed a few times and was about to say something conciliatory when he suddenly noticed the pile of medicinal herbs beside Deng Ying’s leg, which looked strikingly familiar.

“Hey…”

Li Shan lifted his robe to crouch down and grabbed a handful, “Which castrated rat brought these here?”

The eunuchs in the storehouse trembled and lowered their heads, none daring to speak. Several sitting near Deng Ying even feared Li Shan’s attention and quietly moved to sit elsewhere.

Li Shan swept his gaze across these terrified faces, dropped the herbs, and stood up, clapping his hands as he looked at Deng Ying. Somehow, he suddenly laughed, “Looks like I was wrong—people are thinking of you after all.” He kicked at the pile of herbs and continued, “Stealing medicines from my yard to treat your wounds.”

As he spoke, he turned around, pointing at the eunuchs in the storehouse, “Among you lot, there’s someone who’s not afraid of death. I admire your guts—I’ll let these herbs slide today, but if I find out about this happening again, forget about leaving Nanhaizi.”

Having said this, he truly didn’t pursue the matter further. He cleaned his hands and strode out with his men.

Yang Wan waited until the footsteps were far away before crawling out from behind the haystack. She cautiously peered out the window, when suddenly she heard the sound of the door being locked behind her. She couldn’t help but roll her eyes, her face falling as she self-mockingly said, “Oh great, can’t get out tonight.”

Unexpectedly after she said this, the way the people around looked at her and Deng Ying suddenly became particularly complex.

Yang Wan turned around, looking at the people in the storehouse in surprise, then looked down at Deng Ying, suddenly recalled Li Shan’s earlier words, and immediately understood.

At this moment, the room contained three types of people: one man, one woman, and a group of eunuchs.

Of course, according to Li Shan, after tonight this man would no longer be a man.

So, should something happen tonight?

If she were merely an observer, Yang Wan would probably sit down and thoroughly analyze this extreme environment from both literary and sociological perspectives. However, at this moment, she was genuinely unsettled by the gazes of those around her. She still didn’t know whose body she was in, nor whether this body’s original owner had someone they liked. Although Yang Wan believed she was just a consciousness from the 21st century, transmigrated here to observe history and record events related to Deng Ying, since she had taken over someone else’s body, she felt somewhat responsible for protecting the vessel supporting her consciousness.

Thus, she fell into a seemingly logical loop, imagining all sorts of inner dramas, unconsciously covering her chest, completely forgetting that before her was a man who wouldn’t even let her touch him.

Deng Ying, seeing her somewhat anxious face, straightened his back and sat up, supporting himself with his hands on the ground.

Yang Wan, seeing him move, quickly stepped back again.

“What are you going to do now?”

‘Do what?’ The tonal inflection made it sound questionable!

After hearing these words, Deng Ying gently pinched the ground, and Yang Wan instantly retreated into embarrassed silence.

She was from Sichuan, and when nervous, she had a habit of verbal slips.

In an era where homophone jokes could cost you money, this might have been the only remaining cute contrast to her otherwise perfectly fitted doctoral persona, but the people before her, including Deng Ying, couldn’t understand such sophisticated humor.

“I mean…”

“Ahem.”

Deng Ying coughed, seemingly deliberately. However, after interrupting Yang Wan’s words, he made no other response, instead withdrawing any hint of “offensive” intent from his actions. He stopped looking at Yang Wan, bent down to pick up the herbs from the ground, and casually braided them on his knee.

After Zhang Chunzhan’s retirement, this man was considered the pinnacle of engineering expertise in the early Ming Dynasty.

So even something as simple as weaving grass was done with precise efficiency.

However, Yang Wan thought Deng Ying’s hands weren’t particularly beautiful—the skin was somewhat rough from years of handling wood and tiles, but they had well-defined joints and appropriately placed tendons. They weren’t particularly fierce-looking, yet different from a youth’s hands. There was a small reddish old scar on the back of his hand, shaped like a crescent moon.

Yang Wan watched him weave the herbs she had brought into a grass pillow, and only then realized she had been overthinking earlier. From their interactions these past few days, Deng Ying was a proper gentleman; she was the one with impure thoughts, always wanting to touch him like some female hooligan. Thinking this made her feel somewhat affected, and she awkwardly scratched her head.

Deng Ying was still coughing slightly, raising his shackled wrist to his chest, obviously trying to suppress it.

After calming down, he moved aside a bit, sitting on the ground where there was no dry grass, and placed the grass pillow beside himself. He straightened up and clasped his hands together again. Yang Wan crouched beside Deng Ying, hugging her knees, “For me?”

Deng Ying nodded.

“Then what about your leg?”

Deng Ying looked down at his ankle wound that was almost to the bone, his Adam’s apple moving slightly.

Since his imprisonment, he had refused to speak, partly fearing to bring trouble to others, and partly needing quiet to process the reality of his father’s execution and his clan’s punishment. Gradually, he had accepted his situation as Li Shan described—a crippled rat in the street, everyone wanting to beat him—so now he felt unaccustomed to having someone inquire about his comfort and pain.

“How about this—I won’t touch you, I’ll just crush the herbs, and you can apply them yourself.”

Yang Wan rolled up her sleeves as she spoke.

Deng Ying glanced at the jade pendant she was using to crush the herbs—it was high-quality lotus jade, something ordinary families could never possess, yet she had two pieces tied at her waist.

“Take it.”

Seeing Deng Ying not accepting, she took off her hair tie from behind.

“Use this to wrap it.”

Deng Ying still didn’t move.

Yang Wan’s arm was getting tired from holding it out. She bent down to lay her hand on the ground, looking up at Deng Ying, “You’re quite a good person, making me a pillow even in this situation. I’m not a bad person either. If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine, but don’t be hard on yourself. You don’t want to be unable to walk in the future, right?”

He still refused with silence.

For Yang Wan, this matter was neither particularly significant nor trivial.

Historically, his leg ailment was caused during this period, but even though Yang Wan knew this and tried to help him rewrite this small part of his fate, she still couldn’t succeed. However, she wasn’t sad about it. She wiped her hands on her sleeves and good-naturedly gave up trying to persuade Deng Ying.

The people in the storehouse, seeing that Deng Ying and Yang Wan weren’t going to act as they had imagined, gradually lost patience. The cold made people drowsy, and before long, they had all curled up to sleep.

Yang Wan sat opposite Deng Ying, waiting until he closed his eyes before carefully moving to his side and lying down on the grass pillow. The storehouse now only had snoring and occasional sounds of people turning over. Yang Wan settled down, took out the notebook from her sleeve, and opened it in the only bit of lamplight from the window. She pressed her finger under her chin and muttered to herself, “Tomorrow will be the thirteenth day of the first month of the twelfth year of Zhenning… The ‘History of Ming’ records it as March, so there seems to be a time discrepancy…”

As she spoke, she grew drowsy. She turned toward the wall, hugging her knees and curling up like everyone else.

“Deng Ying, I heard you’ve never been married before, so… have you ever had a woman of your own?”

Deng Ying shook his head behind Yang Wan.

Yang Wan seemed to have seen it somehow, and said somewhat hazily, “If this body were my own…”

What then?

She fell asleep before finishing her sentence.

Deng Ying hadn’t fully understood this logically inconsistent statement from his perspective. After waiting a while without hearing the rest of her words, he simply closed his eyes as well.

Unexpectedly, she murmured in her dream: “Anyway… Yang Wan’s life in this lifetime… is lived for Deng Ying…”

Along with these words fell the first heavy snow of the twelfth year of Zhenning.