The apricot grove had a secret passage leading to the underground palace. Curved and narrow stone steps extended downward. Because it was close to the burial pit, they would encounter those translucent, sorrowful ghosts from time to time along the way.
The steps of the secret passage were covered with moss, slippery underfoot. Xin Mei had just gone down two levels when she saw a male ghost pass through the wall and jump in front of her, yanking off his own head and laughing loudly: “Beauty, look, I have no head! Wahahahaha!”
A female ghost nearby sneered disdainfully: “How inelegant! Look, look, I have no feet!”
She floated back and forth in the narrow passage, and indeed there were no feet beneath her blood-stained skirt hem.
(Si Lan’s inner thoughts: Are they really sorrowful?)
Xin Mei hesitated, looking at the male ghost, then at the female ghost. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, a hand covered it from behind, and Lu Qianqiao’s low voice sounded in her ear: “You’d better not speak. These vengeful ghosts are quite troublesome.”
He understood Xin Mei’s speaking style all too well. If she angered these vengeful ghosts who had been massacred, there would be no peace in the underground palace.
She nodded, her lips brushing against his slightly rough palm. Lu Qianqiao couldn’t help but tremble slightly—his body during the transformation period was more like a bundle of dry grass; a single spark would be enough to start a prairie fire. He quickly lowered his hand, but as if unwilling to be defeated by the war ghost blood, he grasped her hand and gently pulled. She involuntarily followed his pace.
“…The ground is slippery. Follow me.”
Xin Mei couldn’t help but look up at his face. In the dim light, his blood-colored eyes glowed brilliantly like those of a wild beast—this really wasn’t a beautiful sight, even causing a bone-chilling fear.
She looked for a long time, so long that Lu Qianqiao quietly asked: “Are the eyes very ugly?”
She shook her head: “Not at all. Red with light, distinctive.”
He lowered his head and smiled with a hint of shyness, tightening his grip on her hand, then said nothing more.
Along this path full of ghosts and demons, damp and eerie, with the man holding her hand having eyes more terrifying than ghosts, Xin Mei suddenly felt as if she were walking on a sunny avenue blooming with fresh flowers. The falling pale green ghost fires became dancing petals in the sky, and the frightening vengeful ghosts floating around became passersby applauding on the roadside. His glowing eyes became the eternal lamp illuminating the path ahead…
She was almost falling in love with this dark ghostly realm.
The fluttering peach blossoms danced for about a meal’s time before the secret passage finally came to an end, opening up suddenly before them. The imperial tomb’s underground palace was extremely magnificent and spacious. Eternal lamps that never extinguished illuminated the dark underground as bright as snow. Well, these weren’t the important points. The important point was—in the northeast corner, several tables had been set up with some very familiar demons, such as Scholar Zhao, Yinglian, Tao Guoguo, and others, all gathered together playing mahjong with great enthusiasm.
“You’ve all moved to live in the underground palace?” Xin Mei walked over curiously to ask.
Scholar Zhao lifted his face, green from losing badly. When he saw her tattered wedding dress, his eyes immediately lit up. Turning to see Lu Qianqiao’s chest with a large tear in his clothing, two beautifully curved collarbones impossible to hide, he became excited.
“Come, come…” He secretly beckoned to Xin Mei. “Tell me, have you two already secretly consummated your marriage? Looking so disheveled—was the General’s performance wild?”
Xin Mei thought about the exciting scene in the apricot grove earlier and shook her head: “No, I was the wild one.”
“Oh!” Scholar Zhao covered his nosebleed, dizzy and seeing stars. “Miss, you truly are a heroine among women!”
Si Lan walked over and glared at him fiercely, then counted the number of people present, his expression becoming uglier: “More demons left the Imperial Tomb without permission?”
Tao Guoguo said with a bitter face: “Brother Si Lan, they won’t listen to us. They say… they say Brother Qianqiao is going to die anyway, and they were only forced to be locked in the Imperial Tomb before… Now that Brother Qianqiao can’t even maintain the Yunwu Array, so… so…”
After all, he was still quite young. Unable to hold back any longer, he burst into tears with a “wah.” Seeing his brother crying, the dumpling-like bird demon younger brother also started wailing loudly, turning to throw himself into Lu Qianqiao’s arms, calling in a childish voice: “Brother Qianqiao, don’t die!”
Lu Qianqiao lifted him up a bit, sitting him on his arm, patting his back awkwardly but comfortingly.
“Oh my, what’s there to cry about?” Scholar Zhao sighed. “It only makes the General feel worse. Come, come to my side. Let’s play another round.”
He pulled away several emotionally unstable little demons, and gradually their crying could no longer be heard.
Si Lan’s expression was extremely poor: “General… should I leave the Imperial Tomb to bring back those demons who escaped…”
Of the over three hundred demons in the Imperial Tomb, many had been forcibly trapped within the Yunwu Array after the General was demoted, prevented from going out to harm people. Now that he was experiencing the transformation tribulation and couldn’t control his internal power to maintain the array, their escape was only natural.
Lu Qianqiao shook his head: “Just watch them and make sure they don’t harm people.”
Si Lan left with several powerful demons. Soon only Xin Mei and Lu Qianqiao remained in the underground palace. He deliberately turned his back to avoid looking at her, took a step forward, then said quietly: “There are many rooms here. Find one to rest in.”
…That’s it? The peach blossoms had been dancing for so long, and he just gave her this sentence?
“Lu Qianqiao.” She called to him from behind, grabbing her hair, somewhat distressed. “You… shouldn’t you say something to me?”
He paused, finally turned around, blood-red eyes meeting black eyes. They only made contact for an instant before quickly looking away.
“Say what?” His voice was very low, hoarse, as he asked.
“I… I don’t know.” She wasn’t clear what he should say either. Shouldn’t this kind of thing be his own decision?
He was silent for a moment, then spoke again: “Actually… I still don’t want you to stay in the Imperial Tomb. You should return to Xinxie Manor immediately.”
The illusion of dancing peach blossoms before her eyes disappeared with a “poof.”
“You’re at it again?” Her eyes were glaring again.
“However, since you’re staying, then find a room to rest. Don’t worry about anything.”
Uh, back to square one again.
Xin Mei lowered her head and thought for a while, suddenly feeling somewhat timid, not quite daring to ask that question, but she asked anyway: “Lu Qianqiao, marrying me—is it really troubling you so much? Do you… do you really not want to marry me?”
He had said he didn’t dislike her, but also hadn’t liked her enough to want to marry her regardless of life and death. Whether true or false, this statement had dealt her a greater blow than anything about transformation or burial sacrifice. When he made figurines for her and always secretly cared for her, surely she hadn’t misunderstood?
She looked at his red eyes with worry.
He was silent for a very long time before raising his eyes again, meeting her gaze without avoidance: “…False.”
Xin Mei blinked, as if trying to discern the truth of his words. Unexpectedly, he took something from his storage bag and tossed it over. She caught it with one hand and looked carefully—it was a completed figurine in golden armor and silver helmet, holding a long sword, majestically pointing forward.
Her General.
“A gift.” After saying this, he turned and walked away, his ears red as agate.
She smiled at once, running lightly to his side like a rabbit, looking up to try to see his face. He stubbornly turned his face away, not letting her see. Xin Mei pressed down on his shoulder, stretching her neck like a goose, forcibly bringing her face close to his, staring with wide eyes curiously at his expression.
…He seemed to have been beaten quite badly by her. The left corner of his mouth was broken and slightly swollen, the right corner still bleeding, plus the suspicious blush on his face—well… very disheveled.
Seeing her staring at the wounds, Lu Qianqiao raised his hand to cover the right side of his face, glancing at her coolly: “…Go rest.”
“I’m not tired. Sorry for breaking one of your teeth earlier. Does it still hurt? Open your mouth and let me see the wound.”
“No need.”
She took out a small bottle of golden wound medicine from her bosom and shook it: “Then let me apply medicine to the broken skin on your mouth.”
…If you come any closer, I don’t know what I might do.
He held his breath, feeling his whole body stiffen, as she pushed him to sit on a stone chair and handed him tea water to rinse his mouth and clean the wound. This body experiencing the transformation tribulation, due to the awakening of power, reacted extremely quickly to all external stimuli. As soon as her fingertip with the medicinal paste touched his skin, he trembled.
Her soft fingers slowly spread the medicinal paste over the wound. Her snow-white porcelain face was right before his eyes, her eyelashes clearly countable.
Happy, yet painful. He wanted to push her away, yet couldn’t bear to.
The war ghost’s frenzied blood began to surge and flow wildly. He even felt a sharp and unfamiliar pain under his skin. His ten fingers gripped the stone chair’s armrests tightly. With a “crack,” he crushed the small beast’s horn carved on the armrest.
Xin Mei jumped in fright: “Does it hurt that much?”
She quickly finished applying the golden wound medicine and cut a piece of gauze to stick over it, lest it accidentally get rubbed off.
“Are you all living in the underground palace because you’re afraid of being discovered?” She began cleaning the wound on his other cheek while asking.
Lu Qianqiao’s ears were buzzing with noise. He couldn’t hear clearly what she was saying, only vaguely humming an “mm.”
Endure, endure, endure… The character for “endure” has a knife over the heart. Besides facial paralysis, Lord Face-Paralysis was most skilled at endurance.
His heart felt like it was being tightly grasped by something. That suffocating painful feeling came again, the same as that night when his eyes suddenly changed color. His blood was wildly agitated, and he trembled slightly. He must not move—he seemed to sense that if he moved even the slightest bit, things would become uncontrollable.
Xin Mei finished treating the wound and noticed his hair was somewhat messy with a thin grass blade hanging in it. She smoothed his hair and pinched off the grass blade, laughing: “Lu Qianqiao, I’m not an executioner. You don’t need to be so nervous.”
His eyelashes were trembling violently, the color of his pupils shifting back and forth between red and deep black, the light flickering on and off.
Xin Mei waved her hand in front of his eyes, somewhat panicked: “Hey, something’s wrong with you. I’ll go call Si Lan…”
He suddenly closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the vivid blood-red color had receded, both pupils becoming ink-black.
The prey is right in front of you—catch her! A cold voice spoke from the depths of his heart.
He obeyed the war ghost’s powerful and irresistible instinct, his five fingers like hooks, silently grasping her shoulders and gently pulling. The soft prey fell into his arms.
He lowered his head and fiercely bit her lips.
What a sweet fragrance, her scent.
He wished he could throw his whole being into it… He spread his arms and held her tightly in his embrace, crudely yet fervently rubbing her lips with his. The bitter golden wound medicine mixed into his mouth, and the gauze stuck to the wound was also rubbed off and fell.
He felt himself trembling, or perhaps she was the one trembling. The endlessly entangled lips went deeper and deeper. Between the skin that touched and pressed close, tiny points of fire flowed, and his tongue couldn’t help but tangle with hers in friction, crude and panicked and intense.
…The golden wound medicine mixed in the mouth was so bitter; having her lips sucked and bitten was so painful; being unable to breathe was so agonizing.
Xin Mei thought about many unimportant things in confusion until his burning lips fell on her neck, rolling and sucking and lightly biting. A strange feeling arose from deep within her body.
She instinctively wanted to struggle, but unexpectedly he suddenly pushed her away, covering his heart and curling up on the stone chair, trembling violently. Thin streams of fresh blood flowed from his seven orifices, instantly dyeing large areas of his clothing red.
Xin Mei scrambled up from the ground. Not caring about her weak legs, she first chopped at the side of his neck with her hand, then picked up the unconscious Lu Qianqiao and ran while shouting: “Si Lan! Scholar Zhao! Lu Qianqiao is bleeding from all seven orifices!”
The new bride whose “first kiss” had been inexplicably taken didn’t even have time to savor it before having to busy herself saving her sickly new groom.