Her heart suddenly lurched upward, her brow furrowing tightly as she looked up and asked: “You’re injured? Where are you hurt? Let me see…”
Xiao Rongyan looked at Bai Qingyan’s worried expression, his heart feeling sweet as honey. He leaned forward, his arms encircling her entire person in his embrace…
“Don’t fool around!” She dared not touch Xiao Rongyan’s chest, only pressing against his shoulders. She had just stood up when Xiao Rongyan pulled her back, causing her to stumble and fall, sitting in Xiao Rongyan’s embrace.
Beneath her were the man’s solid, burning hot thighs, the heat penetrating through the fabric. Startled by this somewhat awkward position, she hurriedly apologized and tried to rise, but Xiao Rongyan held her waist with one hand and pressed her leg with the other, firmly fixing her on his leg, level with his gaze.
Xiao Rongyan’s gaze was deep and tranquil, clearly calm as a mirror, yet she understood the flames hidden beneath his peaceful eyes that seemed ready to devour her.
Noticing Xiao Rongyan’s gaze fall on the corner of her lips, his head lowering with the intent to kiss her, she tightened her palms. Gazing at the man’s distinctly lined facial contours, she did not forcibly insist on seeing his wound, but stepped back and asked in a low voice: “What kind of injury do you have?”
“A minor wound, nothing serious…” Xiao Rongyan’s prominent nose had already touched her nose tip as he spoke.
She held her breath. Her hands pressing on Xiao Rongyan’s shoulders had somehow hooked around his neck. The moment those burning lips pressed down unexpectedly, her heart fluttered as she carefully and restrainedly lifted her head to respond.
While she was distracted, worried about touching Xiao Rongyan’s wound, her teeth had already been pried apart.
She pushed the man away somewhat, only to be pulled even more forcefully into his embrace. He pressed against her lips, Xiao Rongyan’s breath dominantly invading her heart and lungs, making her heartbeat grow faster and faster. Her fingers curled up, gripping the collar at the back of Xiao Rongyan’s neck. Her thoughts were in complete chaos, and even her arms were developing goosebumps.
A spark in the brazier suddenly crackled with a faint explosive sound, startling Bai Qingyan into pushing apart their distance.
Xiao Rongyan did not force her. He only gazed quietly at Bai Qingyan, watching the shy blush between her brows and eyes by the flickering flames. His movements gentle and composed, he tucked the stray hair by her temples behind her ear, lightly caressing her beautifully contoured jaw. His thumb gently stroked the corner of her lips before kissing her lightly once more.
She turned her head away, her hand already pressing against Xiao Rongyan’s chest: “Your wound…”
Before she could finish speaking, the man sealed her lips once again.
Beneath her palm was the man’s firm and powerful heartbeat. She had reservations and dared not use force, but Xiao Rongyan pressed his advantage, kissing even more forcefully. She felt unable to resist, the heat on her face about to burn up. As her palm tightened, she heard the heavily breathing man grunt in pain.
She quickly turned her head away, interrupting the kiss. Seeing the bright red on her palm, she restrained her heavy breathing and asked: “Is your injury very serious?”
Xiao Rongyan grasped Bai Qingyan’s hand, lowered his head to smell it, adjusted his breathing, and said in a low voice: “It’s nothing serious. I was stabbed by an assassin sent by the Wei Kingdom’s former emperor’s elder brother.”
Hearing this, she stood up: “I’ll send someone to call Physician Hong!”
“A’Bao!” Xiao Rongyan grasped her wrist, his brows and eyes containing a smile, his fingers caressing her slender wrist as he gazed at her and said in a low voice: “It’s just a minor wound. How could it require Physician Hong? This is worry leading to chaos. It is just a minor injury.”
“I have wound medicine here. Let me rebandage your wound.”
Xiao Rongyan sat steadily on the soft couch covered with fox fur, watching Bai Qingyan’s busy figure as she searched through the trunks for the medicine box. The smile in his eyes grew deeper as he raised his hand to unfasten the black cloak on his body, casually draping it over the soft couch’s hidden compartment.
Finding the medicine box, Bai Qingyan opened it to look inside. The fine cotton cloth and wound medicine inside had all been freshly replaced. She placed the medicine on the small table beside the soft couch, looking up at Xiao Rongyan: “You… take off your clothes.”
Xiao Rongyan’s thin lips curved in an extremely shallow arc. He lowered his eyes, quietly gazing at Bai Qingyan, who was kneeling before him in a posture ready to apply medicine to his wounds. His deep, dark eyes held a smile with extremely rich ambiguity: “A’Bao, we are not yet married.”
She was made to feel hot at the ears by Xiao Rongyan’s question, asking with feigned composure: “Do you need me to cover my eyes? Or… can you change the medicine yourself?”
Xiao Rongyan lifted Bai Qingyan’s hand and pressed it against the plate buttons on his garment’s diagonal front. Grasping her hand, he undid the first plate button, then moved to the second plate button. Leaning forward close to her ear, his thin lips against her ear bone, he said in a low voice: “After taking off the clothes and being seen, I hope A’Bao will not abandon me after leading me astray!”
Wave after wave of warm breath, accompanied by that mellow voice, tunneled into her ear.
The second plate button was undone, and her face also flushed with heat.
She steeled herself and withdrew her hand from Xiao Rongyan’s grasp, unfastening Xiao Rongyan’s garment buttons. The padded clothing had already been soaked with fresh blood. Looking at the fine cotton cloth wrapped around Xiao Rongyan’s chest that had been dyed red, her hands trembled almost imperceptibly. Her ice-cool, jade-like fingers gently touched the man’s burning hot chest, and she heard Xiao Rongyan take a light breath, his body stiffening.
“I haven’t started removing the cotton cloth yet. Does it hurt very much?” Bai Qingyan asked in a low voice while gently and slowly unwrapping the fine cotton cloth.
Xiao Rongyan looked at Bai Qingyan and smiled: “Men can endure the pain of wounds. What truly makes a man unable to bear… is the touch of his beloved.”
She lowered her eyes, ignoring Xiao Rongyan, concentrating on removing the gauze…
The man’s firm shoulders and back were taut, appearing especially well-defined under this lamplight. His honey-colored chest and waist and abdomen were strong and powerful, without an ounce of excess.
Under the golden yellow candlelight, the beauty with skin like ice and bones like jade had ears red as pigeon’s blood.
When the gauze was unwrapped, Bai Qingyan discovered that Xiao Rongyan’s wound had torn open again before it had healed. She used fine cotton cloth dipped in hot water to wipe away the fresh blood around the edges of Xiao Rongyan’s wound, applied Physician Hong’s hemostatic medicine to Xiao Rongyan’s wound, then applied medicinal paste to the fine cotton cloth… carefully placing it over Xiao Rongyan’s wound.
When bandaging Xiao Rongyan’s wound, Bai Qingyan was extremely careful.
“How did you come to be assassinated by an assassin sent by the Wei Kingdom’s former emperor’s elder brother?”
She asked Xiao Rongyan, who was putting on his clothes, while organizing the medicine box.
Xiao Rongyan, who had not yet fastened his clothes properly, saw Bai Qingyan finishing organizing the medicine box and rising to put it back in place. He reached out to grasp her slender wrist, gently pulling her to sit in his embrace: “Do you know about the matter of the Wei Kingdom’s former emperor’s elder brother once sending people to poison the current young Wei Emperor?”
She did not pretentiously struggle to get out of Xiao Rongyan’s embrace, nodding her head.
“Then… do you also know about the Nanrong’s Ghost-faced General pacifying the Rongdi and capturing Yan army prisoners?”
“Although I haven’t received definite news, when I heard that Nanrong had pacified the Rongdi and ended the Rongdi civil war, I guessed that… the Yan army had either been driven out of Rongdi territory or captured by the Rongdi. But if the Yan army had been driven out of Rongdi, Jin would certainly have received news…”