Chapter 085
Chapter 85: High-level game, all three stay
The heart demon Tuan Tuan turned into a black cat and followed a thick, dangerous aura to the private residence of Third Princess Xuan Ji.
Tsk. This place.
With a light leap, its pads landed silently on the old pagoda tree by the wall. Using the gnarled trunk for strength, it drew a neat black arc in the air and slipped into the estate.
The air inside felt even wronger. It was sweet and rotten, mixed with despair and hatred. Tuan Tuan twitched its nose, gold cat eyes shining with excitement. It loved places like this.
After a few turns, it stopped on the carved window lattice of the main room. The scene inside was truly something, a high-level game. Tuan Tuan licked its paw, its tail tip twitching with barely controlled glee.
Third Princess Xuan Ji was reclining on a gilded soft couch. Gauze as thin as a cicada’s wing sagged loosely on her body, and her pale skin glowed under candlelight. Pinching a peeled grape between two fingers, she curled her red lips and lazily looked over the three men kneeling with bowed heads in the room.
Each one was prime.
On the left, in a plain blue robe with a cool air and fine features, knelt Xie Yu Shu, the Capital City’s famous cold scholar. A master of the four arts, he had won the hearts of many noble ladies, but here he was only a toy for others.
In the middle, tall and powerful even under his clothes, with bronze skin and bulging muscle, knelt Han Zhao, a guard from the Princess Manor. Silent and tough, he was the most strong.
The last leaned half against a brazier, his robe lazy and open at the collar to show a delicate collarbone. He was the new musician, Liu Mian, with a natural hint of charm at his eyes.
[Heh, she really knows how to play,] Tuan Tuan thought, watching with delight. This beat the clean, dull dreams of Buddha’s Chosen and that brat Xiao Man by a mile. It loved the ugly side of mortals lost in desire most of all.
A thread of thin black mist seeped from the cat’s paw and slid into the kirin-shaped incense burner. Ambergris incense was already burning there. The mist mixed in, making the scent sweeter and even more bewitching.
Xuan Ji lounged on the couch, rolling that grape between her fingers, not yet putting it in her mouth. She had just come back stuffed full of anger from the Imperial Palace. Every word from her mother made her ears ring. Go back to the palace? Do sutra copying? What a joke. Xuan Ji did not live a life where others told her what to do.
Her sweet laugh rippled through the warm room as she finally tossed the grape into her mouth and drew the last drop of juice with her tongue. She said, calm but full of command: “I have to go back to the palace tomorrow and be confined, so tonight I need to have my fill.”
Her gaze flowed over the three in front of the couch, and each one pleased her. Xie Yu Shu, in plain blue and cool as bamboo, was focusing hard as he drew her small portrait. The white paper already held the outline of a beauty, seven or eight parts like her. But across the collar of the painted dress ran a harsh line of vermilion that cut through the back of the paper. Last night, when she thought he had not served her well enough, he fought back hard, and her sharp nails raked his hand. His blood had spattered the page.
He kept his eyes down. His long lashes hid all feeling, and only the clear joints of his fingers, tight on the brush, showed a hard strain.
Han Zhao’s close-fitting clothes could not hide the explosive lines of his body. He knelt on one knee at the couch and, with big rough hands, massaged her jade-white feet. The heavy calluses from long years holding a blade scraped her tender skin, making a strange mix of sting and numbness, leaving strips of hot red. He held his head so low that thick black hair covered his face. No one could see his expression. He was a loyal, silent tool that obeyed without question.
The new one, Liu Mian, half leaned by the brazier. He was best at playing cute and pleasing people. Just now, his collar was open, showing his pretty collarbone, and on it sat a few fresh, cruel bite marks. His fingers idly brushed the pipa strings. The loose, unsteady notes wound with the thicker ambergris incense until even the air felt sticky.
“Mm…” Xuan Ji suddenly let out a low sound. Her fingers slipped, and the grape she had just picked up rolled down the couch and dropped onto the rich carpet.
A sudden heat rushed through her body. It shot up from the soles of her feet and burned her limbs and bones in an instant. A mist rose in her eyes, and her breaths turned quick and sweet. What was this? Was there something wrong with the incense? Or was it the wine coming back?
She had no time to think. Her body overrode her mind. She licked her dry red lips, her voice lazy and husky, each word hooked with a tease: “Tonight…”
She paused, enjoying the way all three stiffened at her voice, then finished: “All three of you, stay.”
The air froze. Even the loose tune under Liu Mian’s fingers snapped off with a sharp twang. His smile went stiff at the corners of his mouth. He clutched his open collar without thinking, panic flashing in his eyes.
Han Zhao’s big hand around her ankle turned to stone. Every muscle went tight like iron. His knuckles went white with the force, and his Adam’s apple bobbed hard.
Xie Yu Shu’s brush paused without a sound. Slowly he lifted his eyes. Those eyes, always calm and cool, slid over Xuan Ji’s face, now flushed with a strange, desire-born red, then dropped back to the portrait he had drawn, the one cut by vermilion. Deep beneath the ice of his gaze, something dark boiled.
He set down the brush dipped in paint. His long fingers moved along the purple sandalwood brush rack, passing over the fine wolf-hair, goat-hair, and purple brushes. At last he picked a plain, clean wolf-hair brush. Moving with the same quiet grace, he dipped the tip into a jade brush washer until it was heavy with cold, clear water. Then he held the wet brush above the paper. Cold beads fell one by one, landing exactly on the vermilion slash across the painted collar. The water spread fast, turning that harsh red into a blur, then into something muddy and dirty. His motions stayed elegant, but his gaze focused with an almost cruel calm. He was not painting now; he was doing a silent, icy flaying.
Han Zhao felt a crushing pressure from above. Accepting his fate, he bowed lower. His hot breath washed over Xuan Ji’s reddened foot, burning. Then he stuck out his tongue. It was a soldier’s tongue, rough and bearing a shameful submission. Slowly, carefully, with forced control, he licked the red marks he himself had pressed into her skin.
“Ah…!” Xuan Ji’s body jerked hard. The new, fierce shock made her slender waist arch at once, her lovely back curving into a startling line. The flush raced from her cheeks to her neck and spread to her chest. Dazed, she bit her lower lip and dug all ten fingers into the soft brocade under her, squeezing so hard her knuckles went pale.
Liu Mian stared, fingers digging at the smooth back of his pipa until he almost left dents in the precious wood. He took a deep breath and tried to strum again, but his fingertips had gone stiff. The fake, flowery tune would not come back. In the air, there was only Xuan Ji’s broken breaths she could not hold back, Han Zhao’s rough, shamed breathing, and the cold, wet tracks left by Xie Yu Shu’s water-soaked brush as it slid again and again over the torn paper.
On the window lattice, the black cat Tuan Tuan gaped. [Whoa… playing this big?] It blinked, then thought, [Brilliant. What a scene.] The desire here was mixed with violence, shame, stubbornness, and surrender. It was as thick as aged wine, and just breathing it in made its heart demon body feel tipsy. This Third Princess was terrifying.
Worse, the estate was not only filled with bright, heavy desire thick enough to touch. Deeper inside lurked a mass of death qi, black as ink. Outside, countless wraiths circled and wailed. Only a last, thin thread of an Imperial Aura Ward still clung to the Third Princess, keeping the wraiths from getting close. They could only wheel around the estate day and night, making the air more eerie.
No. Something was wrong here. If this went on, fed by endless desire and hate, it might breed some even more terrible demon beast.
It had to rush back and tell Lin Qing Xuan. [This is big.]