In the narrow room, only the sound of swallowing and labored breath could be heard.

It was quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

The heat was scalding, like molten metal being boiled.

No one answered Zhang Xingjian’s question.

This was, after all, a battle between drug and reason. Zhang Xingjian didn’t believe he would lose, but his opponent—impatient, urgent, clumsy, yet stubborn.

His tongue bled where he’d bitten it, his breath caught in his chest.

The drug “Gusu” was such that the longer one endured it, the harder it was to control once it broke free.

His breathing came ragged and difficult, as helpless as a bird startled by a bowstring, yet as lingering as one who has finally met long-awaited rain.

He tried to resist this instinct, but sweat had already soaked through most of his clothes.

He tried to open his eyes, but the white cloth covering them blocked his sight.

Something was very wrong…

His throat bobbed faintly, a blood-red flush spreading beneath the pale skin of his slender neck, making it all the more striking.

Shen Qingwu watched him in the darkness, admiring him.

She wanted to look down on this fallen moon from above, but when he tilted his face up to endure the torment, that helpless abandon after so much restraint was like a blood-red plum blossoming on snow—it scorched not only him, but froze her own cold, vengeful expression as well.

So sacred and pure, and yet so open to being plucked.

Suddenly, Shen Qingwu’s heart felt struck by a great hammer, her ears ringing like gongs and drums.

In a daze, half her soul seemed to have left her body.

Shen Qingwu pressed her face to his, trying to force herself upon him. The feeling, how could she describe it—it was like finally waiting on the battlefield for the enemy general who had arrived so late, like she could finally swing her blade and cut him down from his horse.

Her eyes gradually reddened.

Crimson and bloodlust flickered within them.

Shen Qingwu braced one hand against the wall, and as she pursued his breath and lips, she grew even more reckless, even less able to control her strength.

Such intoxicating abandon, it was like—

She truly wanted to kill him!

Zhang Xingjian let out the faintest murmur, then felt a sudden sharp pain in his shoulder, the hand pressed there nearly crushing his shoulder bone.

Even with the drug in control, Zhang Xingjian never lost his reason.

In that instant, he determined that the person before him could not be Princess Ande.

Even if that princess wanted to play a blindfold game with him, she would never be this clumsy yet urgent, this reckless yet forceful. That princess didn’t have this kind of strength.

A certain person surfaced in Zhang Xingjian’s mind…

His heart tightened, and at that moment his tongue was scraped raw against his teeth, pulling his drifting emotions back.

He grew still for a moment.

He would test this.

Zhang Xingjian closed his eyes and slowly raised his arm, wrapping it around the person before him. His movements were gentle; he turned his face to search out the other’s scent, behaving as though lost in indulgence, as though he had forgotten himself entirely.

He gently curved his hand around the woman’s nape, drawing her close.

Shen Qingwu paused for a moment.

She didn’t have time to think further, because this time, it was he who turned his face to kiss her.

Somehow this sensation soothed her restlessness more easily than one-sided conquest had. She found herself growing absorbed in this intimate game between man and woman.

She felt as though she were falling into a boundless deep sea.

But this sensation of falling was entirely unlike the suffocating hopelessness she usually felt—there was something in the depths that drew her in; she wasn’t simply falling endlessly into nothing.

Shen Qingwu’s lashes trembled.

She lowered her head to look at the disheveled hair across his face, the white cloth over his eyes, the fine beads of sweat on his brow…

In truth, she found herself savoring this feeling somewhat.

But in her heart she told herself, it was nothing more than this.

She thought she had claimed the moon now. She wouldn’t linger. She could cast the moon aside and walk away without a backward glance.

Intimacy in one moment, contempt in the next. Arrogant one instant, resolute the next.

Amid the tangled breath in the darkness, wound together again and again, reluctant to part, Shen Qingwu finally forced herself upright, determined that it was time to leave.

Amid the crossing of breath, Zhang Xingjian held her, murmuring softly, as if savoring every word: “What does Your Highness take me for?”

He held her, his hand curved around the collar at her nape. He noticed that her clothing wasn’t the elaborate court dress of the palace, and his touch told him her hair wasn’t styled in elaborate cloud-like coils either. He tried to touch her face, to trace her brow and eyes, but she caught his hand in hers, refusing to let him move freely.

Zhang Xingjian smiled faintly.

Even as he smiled, the pulse beneath his throat raced violently.

Shen Qingwu glanced down at him indifferently: she could tell he could barely endure it any longer, yet he was still spouting this nonsense. If she weren’t the one in control of him, his display of composure might have deceived even her.

Shen Qingwu couldn’t help but grow curious: had Zhang Yuelu always been like this?

Shen Qingwu couldn’t help but think, rather maliciously—why not just let the moon suffer alone.

Would he resolve it himself?

Just as Shen Qingwu moved to pull away, she heard Zhang Xingjian say, “If Your Highness wanted me as a lover, why go about it this way? I’ve always been agreeable to whatever is asked of me—I’m an exceedingly easy man to please.”

His voice, naturally refined and elegant, now carried a hoarse edge from the drug, and it drifted low against her ear.

Shen Qingwu’s heart lurched.

Her ears had flushed red from his breath brushing against them.

But she wouldn’t admit it.

Shen Qingwu drifted into thought.

Zhang Xingjian kept calling her “Your Highness,” but that meant nothing to her. What caught her attention in his words was the phrase “easy to please.”

Zhang Xingjian waited in the darkness. The woman holding his wrist gripped his palm and began tracing characters onto it. The drug urged sweat to pour from every part of him, each passing moment agonizing, yet he patiently worked out what she was writing.

What she wrote left him somewhat surprised—”Easy?”

For a moment, Zhang Xingjian didn’t know how to respond.

He’d used “Your Highness” to provoke her, and all she’d noticed was his self-deprecating “easy”?

The woman holding his hand traced out another question: “Whoever treats you like this, you’d accept it from anyone?”

Thoughts shifted rapidly through Zhang Xingjian’s mind.

He answered with a smile in his voice: “Yes. Does that displease you?”

Shen Qingwu wasn’t displeased.

She continued writing: “A royal princess, a noble lady—you’d accept either?”

Zhang Xingjian raised an eyebrow.

Shen Qingwu continued: “A peddler, a common laborer—you wouldn’t care either?”

Her fingers toyed against his palm as she wrote… Zhang Xingjian shuddered, the vein at his neck jumping.

He gasped, leaning back against the wall, in obvious distress. The other person seemed to want an answer, and leaned in with careless indifference to kiss him again, as if that might ease his suffering and coax him to keep talking.

Fine sweat soaked through his limbs.

His body felt as though ants were crawling beneath his skin, yet his heart curved into a smile in that instant: fool.

He tilted his neck back, his thoughts in chaos, and only the other person’s breath, flowing like a gentle stream, soothed him. Pressed to the point of nearly laughing, not understanding what she was truly asking after, he finally murmured honestly:

“I don’t care.”

Shen Qingwu wrote: “What about a beggar? A fisherwoman? Someone who carries manure for a living? You wouldn’t mind any of it?”

Zhang Xingjian closed his eyes and murmured, “I wouldn’t mind.”

Shen Qingwu: “Don’t you think, that if I treat you this way, I must be a terrible person?”

Zhang Xingjian’s murmured reply came like a mutter in his sleep, so soft she had to press close to his lips to hear it: “A willful, reckless temperament always has its reasons. I’ve likely displeased Your Highness somewhere…”

A faint light flickered in Shen Qingwu’s eyes, a burning fire stirring within them.

She stared at him without blinking, wanting to ask him more—did he not feel that, given his standing, being treated this way by others was a humiliation?

Did he not care whether the person embracing him intimately was a princess of the realm, or a nameless, rankless wanderer off the street?

Was it that he didn’t care about status and position, or that he didn’t care what kind of character or appearance the other person had?

Then did that mean he truly didn’t think… that Shen Qingwu fell short of others in every way?

“Shen Qingwu is terrible.”

“Shen Qingwu is inferior to others.”

“Even though Shen Qingwu is inferior to others, I’m still willing to be good to her.”

This had been, for years upon years, everyone around her’s judgment of Shen Qingwu.

Some with contempt, some offering kindness. But always with the same premise—they all believed she wasn’t good enough.

But…

In this moment, in this darkness, Shen Qingwu forgot about tormenting the young man, forgot about savoring Zhang Xingjian’s suffering. Her thoughts scattered, drifting back many years, to when her brother Shen Zhuo had told her that someday, someone would appreciate her, would cross narrow prejudice to choose her.

Later, Shen Qingwu had come to understand, dimly, that Shen Zhuo had probably only been joking.

Shen Zhuo hadn’t truly believed Zhang Xingjian would choose her.

Back then, the person her brother had been joking about was Zhang Xingjian.

So why was it, today, that the words stirring her heart had once again come from Zhang Xingjian?

Shen Qingwu lowered her face, a cold gleam surfacing in her eyes once more—she truly despised Zhang Yuelu.

Shen Qingwu decided at once, straightening to her full height, turning to abandon this moon and walk away. Zhang Xingjian’s arms suddenly felt empty; he seemed unwilling to let her go, reaching out to catch her: “Don’t go.”

Startled, Shen Qingwu found herself pulled around the waist by his arm. Shocked, her body went rigid as he pulled her down, pressing her against him. He turned his face to seek out her scent, the flushed, alluring color on his face enough to make anyone lose themselves.

Shen Qingwu found herself once again wrapped in his embrace.

Reluctant to part, forgetting everything else.

The pleasure her body offered overwhelmed her reason.

Shen Qingwu sneered inwardly: Zhang Xingjian, controlled by the drug—a fool, pitiful.

A part of her felt smug, a part delighted, a part contemptuous. His reluctance to let her go gave her a sense of triumphant pleasure, and Shen Qingwu, clumsy yet fervent, continued learning with him how to be intimate…

Suddenly her eyes narrowed.

A dagger had appeared in Zhang Xingjian’s hand without her noticing. His eyes still covered by the cloth, a smile still curved at the corners of his mouth, his lips brushed against hers even as the hand resting on her nape gripped the dagger and drove it downward.

At such close range, an ordinary person could never have dodged.

But Shen Qingwu was no ordinary person.

Her instinctive reaction was far faster than conscious thought.

The struggle for control lasted only an instant. Shen Qingwu blocked the strike, though her sleeve was slashed. Her expression turned cold, and without hesitation she struck out with a palm at the young man who had just been so entangled with her, using thirty percent of her internal strength.

The young man, as if he’d anticipated it, turned the dagger in his hand while his other hand formed a palm strike, stepping back two or three paces.

Shen Qingwu kicked out.

He leaned against the wall, dodging her fury. His skin was pale and clear, his damp hair flying wild from the force of her sharp strike, but the strength in his hands showed he truly hadn’t been overwhelmed by her.

But in the next instant, Shen Qingwu leaned in and pressed toward him again.

The corner of his mouth still curved in a smile, the dagger rising once more. Shen Qingwu’s arm pressed against the blade, and the scent of blood grew thicker in the dim room.

Zhang Xingjian smiled: “Isn’t Your Highness going to tend to her wound?”

Suppressing her fury, Shen Qingwu gripped his hand, forcing him to drop the dagger, and wrote: “You know martial arts?”

Zhang Xingjian raised an eyebrow: “A gentleman masters the six arts, cultivates the five virtues and four disciplines. Do I look like a man without learning or skill?”

Shen Qingwu: “Then why pretend to be so delicate and weak?”

He kindly reminded her: “Your Highness’s wound…”

Shen Qingwu: “You don’t want this?”

She provoked him maliciously, touching him where he shouldn’t be touched. His expression did indeed shift, his breath breaking as he tilted his neck back. He was already thoroughly undone, yet still so stubborn with his words.

Shen Qingwu wrote coldly: “Weren’t you willing to be my lover?”

Between ragged breaths, Zhang Xingjian let out a low laugh, the white cloth over his eyes, his dark hair damp with sweat, striking and alluring: “Hm? Isn’t this simply a lovers’ game? Doesn’t Your Highness enjoy it?”

—It was only a bit of swordplay, after all.

He really was an easy man to please.

Shen Qingwu stared at him unblinking, the fire of interest in her eyes burning brighter still.

…What a difficult moon to deal with!