“Don’t leave…” Liang Ye painfully rolled over, rose to his feet, and staggered toward Wang Dian. His gaze was sinister as he said, “Has Zhen given you permission to leave?”
Wang Dian tilted his head slightly and licked the traces of Liang Ye’s blood on his canine teeth with lingering satisfaction. He patiently waited for him to approach, then lowered his eyes with a smile and extended his hand.
Liang Ye reached out to grab him without hesitation. The gesture actually looked more like an embrace to pull the other person into his arms. At the moment his fingers were about to touch Wang Dian’s fingertips, the youth with the blurred face instantly vanished into dust.
His arm, following its momentum, embraced nothing but air.
Liang Ye stared blankly at the dark forest around him and the distant flickering lights, then collapsed to the ground.
“Rongming! Rongming!?” Shen Yueli’s voice came from afar. “Someone, quick, go in and search!”
His eyelids gradually grew heavy. In a place where no one could see, the purple energy around the young emperor, which had almost faded away, gradually intensified again, while his complexion rapidly deteriorated, taking on the appearance of someone with a terminal illness.
Shen Yueli looked at the youth emanating a cold aura and, without any hesitation, helped him up. “Rongming? Rongming?”
The youth had already lost consciousness with his eyes closed. His recently changed clothes were torn and tattered as if clawed by something sharp. Especially at his chest, the clothes were mostly ripped away, revealing black-purple bite marks. His neck was also covered with blue-black wounds. The splint on his shoulder was shattered to pieces, and both his wrists hung limply at his sides. He presented a pitiful sight of someone who seemed to be breathing his last.
“Someone! Quick! Physician—” Shen Yueli checked his breathing and shouted loudly. Soon people arrived with torches and carried the youth, who was as cold as ice, back to the camp.
As Shen Yueli followed, she accidentally stepped on something. Bending down to pick it up, she found it was a jade pendant. She glanced at the unconscious Liang Ye. “Hey, is this yours?”
Liang Ye showed no response.
“No answer means I can keep it, right?” Shen Yueli poked his bluish cheek, grinning. “I’ll take it as a token of affection or something. If you don’t object, I’ll assume you agree.”
Xiao Yutang beside her couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Princess, you are a young lady after all. Show some restraint. The tokens of affection you’ve snatched could almost fill a room.”
“Doesn’t matter. What I find becomes mine.” Shen Yueli snorted lightly, tossed the jade pendant in her hand, and tucked it into her sleeve. “Who knows, it might be useful someday. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Hmph.” Xiao Yutang coldly sneered and swept away.
Wang Dian stared with displeasure at the people clumsily touching Liang Ye’s body, but he had no intention of appearing again.
He lowered his eyes to look at his own body, which was like pieced-together corpse fragments. With his current abilities, he could completely pass for a living person, but because his soul had been shattered so severely, even after all these years he could only achieve this level of manifestation.
Hideous.
He twisted his neck and touched it, only to feel a handful of blood—filthy, dark, and bluish, mixed with a strong smell of blood.
Not pleasant either.
The black mist of resentment around him rose again. He raised his hand and licked Liang Ye’s fresh blood on his fingers, narrowing his eyes with satisfaction.
Just two days of haunting him, and he was already half-dead. Too weak.
Or perhaps… turn into a human again in the next life?
Inconvenient, and he would forget everything. Wang Dian’s crimson eyes flashed with impatience. Humans were truly too fragile.
He just wanted to properly play with Liang Ye.
Become human again, play with Liang Ye until he’d had enough, then kill him and take his place. Then skin him and hang it on the bedpost to look at every day.
Wang Dian was quite satisfied with this idea. Better to wait until Liang Ye grew a little older, which would surely be more fun.
Excited and eager, he floated up and tightly circled the unconscious Liang Ye twice before reluctantly dissipating completely.
“Princess! He’s stopped breathing!”
“Physician—”
As for what happened after Liang Ye woke up, that was beyond his concern.
At that time, Wang Dian hadn’t yet realized that because he had latched onto Liang Ye during a Maple Frost Fall attack, Liang Ye had developed a chronic condition. Whenever the poison flared up, the residual negative energy Wang Dian had left would also be triggered, making his entire body cold as ice. Even less could he imagine that he would have to endure humiliation and serve as a warming device…
Cause and effect, perhaps it was all karmic retribution.
****
The bright chandelier illuminated Wang Dian’s eyelashes distinctly. Liang Ye, pressing down on him, couldn’t resist licking him once. “Speak quickly.”
Wang Dian pushed a palm against his cheek and blinked his moist eyelashes forcefully. “Are you a dog or something, licking everything?”
“Tell me! How exactly did Zhen’s jade pendant get lost?” Liang Ye held him tightly, refusing to let go, baring his teeth as if to bite his neck.
“I’ll tell you.” Wang Dian gripped his jaw and recalled, “Before my rebirth, I went back once and briefly greeted you. You lost it while playing around with me, and then Shen Yueli picked it up. That’s it.”
“Really?” Liang Ye stared at him suspiciously. “Why doesn’t Zhen remember anything about it?”
“The Maple Frost Fall poison is potent. It would be strange if you did remember.” Wang Dian said cheerfully, “It’s enough that I remember.”
“You’re lying.” Liang Ye narrowed his eyes. “You just said you wanted to crush this little brat to death. You would play around with me?”
“…Haha.” Wang Dian, pinned down and somewhat breathless, laughed dryly. “Did I say that? I never said that. Your Majesty, be reasonable.”
Liang Ye bit his neck.
Wang Dian loosened his long hair and ran his fingers through the soft strands, coaxing, “How about cutting your hair? If you cut it, you’ll look just like me. Cut it, please.”
Liang Ye licked the smooth bite mark on his neck, grinned, and said, “I won’t cut it unless you tell Zhen the truth.”
“Tsk.” Wang Dian twined his hair around his fingers and pulled it a couple of times.
Liang Ye leaned down and stared at him meaningfully, his hair falling onto Wang Dian’s face. “Although Zhen has forgotten what happened during the Maple Frost Fall attack, Zhen still remembers what happened afterward.”
Wang Dian’s eyebrows twitched as he took the strand of hair by his lips into his mouth. “Oh?”
“Master… spent many days saving my life, and was so angry his face turned black.” Liang Ye recalled with lingering fear, his expression twisted as he remembered, “Master scolded me for being so young yet so improper, with my vital energy completely depleted—”
Liang Ye’s face contorted slightly. “At the time, Zhen didn’t understand and just dutifully knelt for three days to reflect on my mistakes.”
In fact, he couldn’t remember what he had done at all, but during that period, he did feel lethargic no matter what he did. Even when practicing martial arts, his steps were unsteady. Xiao Chunhe had smiled mysteriously at the time, asking if he had been entangled with some female ghost that drained vital energy.
He was half-believing, half-doubting, because at that time his neck and body indeed had many blue-black bite marks. However, after drinking too much White Jade Soup, this small incident had been quickly forgotten. Had Wang Dian not mentioned it now, he would never have thought of it again.
“Playing with Zhen ended up like this?” Liang Ye pinned his wrists above his head. “Master said Zhen’s wrists were broken completely, and the bone in my right shoulder was almost shattered to pieces.”
Wang Dian looked indignant. “Perhaps you encountered something else afterward. How could I bear to treat you like that?”
Liang Ye narrowed his eyes.
“Besides, it’s all ancient history now, long forgotten.” Wang Dian glared at him righteously. “Get off me. Don’t you know how heavy you are?”
Liang Ye lowered his head to nuzzle the tip of his nose, and stated firmly, “You definitely bullied Zhen.”
“I did not.” Wang Dian said with a straight face, “Don’t listen to your Martial Uncle’s nonsense.”
At most, he just felt it would be a waste not to make the most of his visit… and absorbed some vital energy.
Wang Dian reached out to touch his chest and smiled, “Liang Ye, give me a small copper coin.”
“No.” Liang Ye snorted lightly. “You don’t even give me allowance money.”
“…I gave you a card,” Wang Dian said.
“I don’t know how to use it.” Liang Ye would sometimes show his stubbornness as a person from ancient times in ways Wang Dian couldn’t anticipate. “Zhen wants gold, silver, and paper money to fill the underground chamber, and throw away all those broken bones of yours.”
“I can give you another underground chamber,” Wang Dian tried to reason with him.
“No, Zhen’s bones are much prettier than those.” Liang Ye refused imperiously. “Fill it with money for Zhen.”
Wang Dian hesitated for a moment. Compared to Liang Ye, those specimens and bones did seem rather dull. “Alright, I’ll fill it for you.”
Only then was Liang Ye reluctantly satisfied. He got up from on top of him and returned to the bedroom. Wang Dian initially wanted to follow but felt somewhat inexplicably guilty. He cleared his throat, picked up the laptop from the floor, and continued handling company matters.
Just as he had begun reading again, the laptop was forcefully closed once more.
“…” Wang Dian raised his head with a wooden expression, saying grimly, “If you dare to slam my laptop again, I’ll—what’s this?”
“A small copper coin.” Liang Ye tossed the annoying laptop to the ground, kicking it under the sofa, and sat cross-legged on the sofa. He enthusiastically waved it in front of Wang Dian’s eyes. “Didn’t you just ask Zhen for one?”
The shiny copper coin looked somewhat familiar. Wang Dian took it and examined it carefully. “Did you bring both coins with you?”
“Not the two we wore.” Liang Ye said proudly, “Remember when I took you to play in the palace before? I borrowed a copper coin from Master to buy a lantern. Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember.” Wang Dian straightened up, holding the copper coin. “Three copper coins for one lantern, ridiculously expensive, yet you insisted on buying it.”
“Zhen was happy to.” Liang Ye said smugly, “You were clearly happy too.”
“It was alright, I suppose.” Wang Dian turned the copper coin over and over. “You also said it was given by Master for learning divination, yet not a single word out of your mouth is true.”
Thinking about it carefully, the copper coin he had once coveted had eventually been used by Liang Ye to buy him a lantern. It was… a different path to the same destination.
“How did it end up back in your hands?” Wang Dian was curious.
“Remember when we met the Feng family’s young master in the city while he was burning incense when we returned to the capital?” Liang Ye asked him.
Wang Dian certainly remembered. Even now, he frowned at the memory of that arrogant behavior—bumping into a peddler and then scattering silver and copper coins over his head as an insult.
“Xiang Meng went to help collect the things and came back with a package of steamed buns,” Wang Dian said. “They were red bean paste.”
“Yes.” Liang Ye flicked the copper coin. “The three copper coins Master gave me all had marks. Xiang Meng recognized it and exchanged it with the peddler, then later gave it to Zhen. I put it in your sleeve pocket, and you never noticed.”
“…I was wondering why it kept getting heavier.” Wang Dian said seriously, “You were always secretly putting things in my sleeve pocket.”
Liang Ye smiled brightly and pressed the copper coin into his palm, interlacing their fingers.
“Here’s your small copper coin.”
Among the thousands of coincidences in the world that please the heart, to chance upon just one is to be blessed in three lifetimes.
