“Zhen was just searching casually.” Having his browsing history flipped through, Liang Ye didn’t feel embarrassed at all, nor did he think anything was wrong. “I was afraid you’d find it annoying if I asked.”
For that brief moment, Wang Dian almost felt that Liang Ye was somewhat lonely and helpless, which led him to further reflect on whether he had been too harsh with him, but he quickly came to his senses.
It was problematic enough to hear the word “afraid” come out of Liang Ye’s mouth.
What was he afraid of? He could encounter fierce ghosts and still get excited about keeping them as pets.
This guy had every strand of hair screaming “Zhen did it, what can you do about it” with rebelliousness and defiance.
Wang Dian immediately felt like turning the car around to go home and using all those things he had hidden away and was reluctant to use on Liang Ye, things that would leave him unable to get out of bed, chains without easy-to-open locks that he had prepared a stack of… anyway, this bastard didn’t seem to mind much anyway.
Dark turbulence surged in Wang Dian’s eyes, his anger nearly crushing the steering wheel in his grip, with hundreds and thousands of vicious and sinister methods flashing through his mind. “You really don’t know what’s good for you—mmph.”
Liang Ye stuffed a piece of gum into his mouth, his eyes bright as he said, “Zhen wants to buy clothes.”
The cool mint immediately spread throughout his mouth. Wang Dian viciously pushed the gum against his cheek a couple of times, restarted the car, and drove toward the mall. “What kind do you like?”
The two men were exactly the same height. Since Liang Ye had come to this era, he had been wearing Wang Dian’s clothes from head to toe. Most of Wang Dian’s wardrobe consisted of shirts, suits, and leather shoes, and Liang Ye had been wearing the same. But probably because he found them uncomfortable, at home he mostly fought with him for the softest loungewear. Wang Dian, harboring certain unmentionable malicious intentions, had stubbornly refused to buy him any new clothes.
He liked having Liang Ye covered inside and out with his scent.
Even now, he wasn’t very keen on buying him anything.
“Casual and loose.” Liang Ye was quite precise, complaining, “They always criticize Zhen for wearing suits and leather shoes every day, saying Zhen looks too reserved.”
Wang Dian clenched his back teeth, flashing a cold smile. “Is that so?”
“But Zhen is not reserved at all.” Liang Ye stroked his thigh, saying smugly, “You cling to Zhen every day.”
“They?” Wang Dian glanced at him casually, “Men or women?”
“Both, naturally. Zhen thinks your era is quite good, women can also go out to work, create wealth and value, and even join the military.” Liang Ye’s hand had already reached the inside of his thigh, yet his expression remained entirely serious. “If the Great Liang Dynasty could be like this too, the treasury would have been filled long ago.”
Wang Dian drove in silence.
Liang Ye imperceptibly hooked the corner of his mouth, staring at his cold profile. “Wang Dian, are you jealous?”
“How could that be?” Wang Dian smiled warmly. “I’m more than happy that you’re making friends here. It’s just that the environment here is much more complex than in the Great Liang Dynasty. I originally wanted you to become familiar with the environment before interacting with others. As your lover, I’m very happy that you’ve made friends.”
That wasn’t true at all. He was already so jealous and angry that he was about to go mad.
Liang Ye didn’t need friends, nor did he need family. Wang Dian was enough for Liang Ye.
Liang Ye laughed loudly, patting his thigh, pulling his meticulously ironed shirt out from his trousers and rumpling it into a mess. “Why does Zhen think you look like you want to kill someone?”
“In a society governed by law, murder is illegal.” Wang Dian smiled kindly as he drove the car into the parking lot.
Liang Ye was used to wearing loose robes with large sleeves, so he naturally found form-fitting clothes restrictive. He dragged Wang Dian straight to the casual sportswear section. The two looked identical and both had strong presences, attracting numerous glances along the way, which made Wang Dian slightly annoyed.
Liang Ye, now changed into sweatpants and a hoodie, looked several years younger, like a newly graduated college student. He stared at himself in the mirror for a while, nodding with satisfaction. “These clothes, though ugly, are comfortable.”
“Come here, let me see.” Wang Dian, who had been sitting on the sofa replying to messages, put down his phone and looked over.
Although Liang Ye’s aesthetic sense was questionable, due to the store’s conventional black, white, and gray color palette, it was hard to go too wrong, and it looked passable.
He just looked a bit too young.
Wang Dian ignored the somewhat curious glances from the shop assistants and tugged at his sleeve. “Aren’t you hot?”
Liang Ye, relying on his internal energy, would only wear a thin shirt even in the dead of winter, and had once complained that the room’s air conditioning was too high, parading shirtless in front of him.
“Not hot. If I wear too little, people will call me an idiot,” Liang Ye said expressionlessly. “And you won’t let me kill people at will.”
It seemed he had been insulted before.
Wang Dian recalled the series of browsing records in Liang Ye’s phone such as ‘how many years in prison for murder,’ ‘how difficult is it to escape from prison here,’ ‘do prison guards know qinggong,’ ‘what material are prison cages made of,’ ‘what is DNA,’ ‘common methods for destroying a corpse and evidence,’ and fell into an eerie silence.
“You can curse back at them,” Wang Dian suggested a feasible option.
“That’s crude,” Liang Ye said disdainfully. “Zhen won’t stoop to their level.”
Having finished buying clothes, His Imperial Majesty was in a good mood. Although Wang Dian was a bit stingy in this regard, only buying him a few clothes and a pair of shoes, because Wang Dian bought them for him, it made him particularly happy.
“Although Zhen gets new dragon robes every year, they all look pretty much the same,” Liang Ye said, sitting in the passenger seat holding the shopping bags and licking his ice cream. “Really quite boring.”
Wang Dian glanced at his lips, slightly reddened from the cold, and cleared his throat. “Eat properly.”
Liang Ye gave him a puzzled look, then belatedly realized what he meant. Deliberately, he slowly licked it a couple of times, teasing. “Isn’t this how everyone eats ice cream, Mr. Wang? What are you thinking about?”
Wang Dian’s throat tightened as he stared at the road ahead, asking in a low voice, “What did you call me?”
“Mr. Wang, Zhen heard the little people in the video call you that the other day,” Liang Ye said. “Bai Gaoyang even called Zhen Mr. Liang.”
“That’s what subordinates call their boss,” Wang Dian said in a hoarse voice. “You don’t need to call me that.”
Liang Ye crunched on the remaining crispy waffle cone, his cool fingertips touching Wang Dian’s burning ear, saying in a low voice, “Why does Zhen feel like you quite enjoy it?”
“I don’t,” Wang Dian said with a tense expression, stopping the car at a red light ahead.
Liang Ye suddenly leaned over and licked his burning ear. “But you like it most when Zhen calls you big brother. Every time Zhen calls you that, you get especially—”
“Sit properly,” Wang Dian pushed him back into his seat.
Liang Ye continued to crunch on the cone, mumbling indistinctly, “Tight.”
Wang Dian wanted to kick him out of the car. “Don’t talk while eating, you might choke to death.”
Liang Ye finished crunching the cone, licking his lips with lingering satisfaction. “Barely edible. Buy another one when we get back.”
“Next time,” Wang Dian placated him without even lifting his eyelids.
“Will there be a next time?” Liang Ye smiled at him. “Why does Zhen think this route doesn’t look like the way home? Have you finally decided to lock Zhen up?”
“Could I lock you up?” Wang Dian glanced at him.
He naturally had hundreds of vicious methods to deal with Liang Ye, but just thinking about using these methods on Liang Ye made him feel irritable. Even if he was jealous and angry to the point of madness, he didn’t want to use such low-end and boring things to humiliate his lover.
He preferred to constrain people with his mind, rather than actually locking them up with chains.
“You could definitely lock Zhen up,” Liang Ye enthusiastically offered suggestions. “You could use a belt or handcuffs to tie Zhen to the bedpost. Zhen is so fragile and helpless, completely unable to resist, and then you could do whatever you want with Zhen.”
“…Stop looking at all sorts of messy things on your phone,” Wang Dian felt slightly displeased. “If you want to play something, I’ll teach you.”
Liang Ye smiled and narrowed his eyes, admiring his apparently reserved and aloof profile. “A cultured degenerate is exactly what you are. Zhen likes it.”
Wang Dian gave him a cold look.
Who knows who he learned all this from, or perhaps from his seven or eight phones—even though only four or five phones had been found, Liang Ye must have hidden many more.
The car drove into the residential area. Liang Ye looked at the towering buildings and clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction. “Living in little boxes again.”
Compared to manors and villas, he really disliked these small cubic blocks that looked like they housed little ants. Although they appeared tall from the outside, once inside, he always felt cramped and stifled. Square, low, and small, just like that square patch of sky behind the imperial bedchamber that he found so irritating.
“I live here most of the time; it’s very close to the company,” Wang Dian led him into the elevator.
Liang Ye watched the numbers jumping on the screen. “Then why didn’t you bring Zhen here earlier?”
“It’s… a bit messy here,” Wang Dian watched him eagerly use his fingerprint to open the door, then finished his sentence. “I also don’t like letting others come in to clean.”
The large 400-500 square meter flat was decorated in a gloomy gray-black color scheme, without a hint of white or warm colors. Even the bravest person would feel a ghostly chill upon entering. He still remembered the expressions on his parents’ faces when they first came to visit. After hiring a housekeeper who nearly had a heart attack while cleaning, Wang Dian never let anyone set foot in the place again.
“Barely spacious enough,” Liang Ye complained as usual, but quickly found the good points, exclaiming excitedly, “The decoration is not bad though, shows some aesthetic taste.”
Obviously, Liang Ye’s aesthetic sense was terrible. Having once been the same person, the two shared some overlapping preferences.
A person’s long-term living space inevitably reflects the owner’s personality. Liang Ye leisurely surveyed the blackish furniture and the weird knives hanging on an entire wall, along with a half-finished wolf head specimen. Several pieces of pale-white bones were scattered beside the sofa, and four or five human skeleton specimens stood by the large floor-to-ceiling window, mischievously decorated with festive little colored lights. The wide sofa was filled with soft blankets, leaving only a space large enough for one person…
But the most bizarre thing was the large piece of mirror pieced together on the ceiling of the living room, reflecting everything below in full view.
Liang Ye could almost imagine Wang Dian lazily curled up on the sofa, staring directly at the ceiling with a manic, obsessive look… quite beautiful, really.
He picked up a butterfly knife from the blanket and flipped it a couple of times, nearly slicing his hand with the agile blade, but barely avoiding it thanks to his excellent reflexes. “Not bad.”
Wang Dian took it from him, demonstrated once, and then threw it back to him. “Be careful when playing with it.”
“No wonder you handled Zhen’s willow leaf knife so skillfully,” Liang Ye commented, playing with the knife while surveying his surroundings, finally resting his gaze on Wang Dian, who was half-kneeling to tidy up his tools. Suddenly, he asked, “Wang Dian, have you been very lonely all these years?”
Wang Dian’s hand holding the tools paused slightly, and he smiled with lowered eyes.
“It’s been alright.”
