In ancient times, when a hunter returned from the hunt, the first thing he did was hand over the spoils to his wife.
Hares, wild boars, yellow muntjacs…
The wife would save the hare furs and make an exquisite hat. She would wear it when going to market, her heart filled with thoughts of her husband.
If the hunter brought down a wild boar, that was even more remarkable. Within days, who in the neighboring town wouldn’t know of her husband’s hunting prowess?
That wife was Xiao Zhi’s grandmother.
Yun Yi saw Xiao Zhi lift his eyes and study the chocolate box.
“Are you wondering what this black, stone-like thing is?” Yun Yi observed the relaxed corners of his eyes and thought to herself, Bingo. “It’s a type of snack. Extraordinarily, extraordinarily delicious.”
“I’d like to try it,” he said. He was curious to taste this “stone.”
Yun Yi put on a mock-serious face. “Aren’t you afraid it’s poisonous?”
Xiao Zhi paused for a moment. Since arriving in this world, it had never once crossed his mind to worry whether food might be poisoned.
Then suddenly, the image of the Northern Di envoy who had been poisoned surfaced in his mind. He wondered how the man was doing, staying at Cen Ni’s residence.
Yun Yi noticed that Xiao Zhi’s interest had waned compared to when she’d been giving him the chocolates. She asked why.
After hearing about the Northern Di envoy, Yun Yi asked about his symptoms and quickly messaged the details to Yun Xi.
“My brother studies traditional Chinese medicine,” she explained. “But he knows a lot of Western doctors too. I’ll have him ask around.”
They had barely gotten home when Yun Xi’s reply arrived.
It was the middle of the night in America, but Yun Xi had still woken up his classmate and gotten the names of a few antidotes.
[Yun Xi: The symptoms you gave are too vague. Medicinal charcoal and sodium dimercaptopropanesulfonate—those two should probably work. Did you run into some kind of trouble? Tell me the truth.]
Sure enough, the interrogation begins.
[Yun Xi: If you don’t ‘fess up, I’m telling Dad.]
[Yun Yi: My best friend’s writing a novel and needs expert advice. Don’t worry, she’ll give you a special shout-out in the author’s notes.]
A few days later, Yun Xi caught up on Yun Yi’s best friend’s novel. The author’s notes were just things like “Hahaha such a cute trope I’m a genius” and “Today I’m a powerhouse typing at 2500 words per hour.”
Aside from the self-praise, there wasn’t a single word of thanks. Nor did the novel even include the poisoning plot Yun Yi had claimed.
Yun Xi began to suspect that his sister might actually be in some kind of trouble.
Yun Yi didn’t care what her brother was thinking. She prepared the medications according to the list, put them in a crossbody bag, and instructed Xiao Zhi to keep the bag on him at all times.
The broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted man wore the small bag slanted across his chest. He looked like an adult carrying a little kid’s tiny backpack.
Xiao Zhi tugged at the strap. “Do I have to wear it?”
The girl tinkering in the kitchen responded by crossing a spatula and a pair of chopsticks into a giant X: Yes, you do.
As if he were about to disappear at any moment.
Except… three days had already passed. Was he truly not going back?
Xiao Zhi absentmindedly flipped through History Meow, a book full of pictures and few words that he’d found on the bookshelf. Despite being well-read in classical texts, he was stumped by simplified Chinese characters.
Naturally, the insufferable woman noticed his difficulty from his furrowed brow. She smugly pulled out a book in traditional characters and announced proudly, “Admitting you’re not highly literate isn’t such a big deal. See how smoothly I switch from simplified to traditional?”
She then read aloud a passage: “The walnut of union is truly worthy of love, for within it there is another kernel…”
Xiao Zhi snapped History Meow shut and snatched the book from Yun Yi’s hand.
On the cover were three large characters—
The Plum in the Golden Vase.
His gaze landed on a passage where Ximen Qing, having sweet-talked a woman and succeeded in seducing her, whipped her body with a whip.
“…Where did this book come from?”
Yun Yi hadn’t expected that the book she’d grabbed at random was The Plum in the Golden Vase. She answered honestly, “It’s my dad’s.”
The anger Xiao Zhi had been bottling up for days finally erupted. His fury blazing, Yun Yi watched as he assumed the full imperial bearing and said, word by word, “Utterly disgraceful!”
Yun Guoqiang had no sense of how to run a household. He didn’t work hard to earn money and support his family, and the result was a broken home—his wife gone, his family scattered. His only precious daughter had no personal maid to attend to her. A perfectly respectable young lady was forced to do everything herself.
Changing lightbulbs, watering plants, weeding, cleaning—even washing her own car.
Was Yun Guoqiang even a man?!
Just as Xiao Zhi was about to enumerate Yun Guoqiang’s seven deadly sins, the sound of someone entering the house drifted up from downstairs.
Yun Guoqiang’s voice floated up, along with Xiao Liu’s. “Plant the bulbs a bit closer together. Last year they were too sparse, and my daughter didn’t like it.”
Then Yun Guoqiang called up to the third floor: “Yun Bao? Daddy’s having Xiao Liu plant tulips for you. Yun Bao?”
Panicking, Yun Yi had no time to think. She pushed Xiao Zhi toward the bathroom.
No, no—the bathroom’s too obvious.
Her eyes darted around and quickly locked onto the wardrobe.
The tall man was shoved into the closet. The space was cramped and narrow. Even during his house arrest, Xiao Zhi had never suffered such discomfort—until now.
Yun Yi whispered soothingly, “I’ll go deal with my dad. He won’t be staying here overnight anytime soon. Don’t be afraid.”
Xiao Zhi shifted the sliding wardrobe door open a crack and saw Yun Yi looking back at him from the doorway with a worried expression. Her almond-shaped eyes went wide in an instant.
“Be good. Close the door,” she mouthed.
Darkness closed in around him.
Yun Guoqiang’s blustering voice grew closer and closer.
“What are you doing in your brother’s room?”
“Cleaning it for him.”
Yun Guoqiang walked into Yun Xi’s room. The sound of his footsteps stopped about two meters from the wardrobe.
That single second stretched into an eternity. Then Yun Guoqiang scolded, “You’re reading this kind of book?”
It was The Plum in the Golden Vase.
Never had Xiao Zhi felt such agony. His heart pounded, out of control. If Yun Yi’s father discovered him hiding in the wardrobe and used that erotic tale to accuse him of sneaking around with his daughter, there would be no way to defend himself.
Maybe I should kill him. This man is terrible to the Yun family, to his wife, to his daughter. All he does is bluster and yell at her and blame her.
“Dad, that book is yours,” Yun Yi said with a cold laugh. “I found it in your study.”
“Nonsense!” Yun Guoqiang denied it flatly. “How could your father read something like that? Your brother must have read it, and that brat put it in my study. Disgraceful! A son framing his own father.”
“Hey—why is the wardrobe open?”
The sliding door slid open another few millimeters.
Yun Yi’s heart leaped into her throat. “Dad!”
“What?” Yun Guoqiang turned to look at her. “You’re so nervous, Daddy might think you’re hiding someone in here.”
The wardrobe door slid open wider and wider. Yun Yi’s heart nearly stopped.
Xiao Zhi. Xiao Zhi…
Instinctively, she lunged toward it.
Yun Guoqiang watched his daughter’s movements with a strange look, then chuckled. “Are you actually hiding someone?”
“Hiding someone?” The smile on the old father’s face began to fade. “Well, won’t they come out and say hello? Where are their manners?”
He pulled the wardrobe door all the way open.
The clear sky turned overcast. The moment Yun Yi looked back at the wardrobe, thick clouds blotted out the sun.
It felt like a very long time passed. When her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, she confirmed one thing.
Xiao Zhi had vanished.
Seeing his daughter frantically searching through the wardrobe, ignoring everything he said, Yun Guoqiang reflected on whether his words had been too harsh.
So what if she’s reading The Plum in the Golden Vase? What’s the big deal?
“You want to keep it?” Yun Guoqiang smoothed out a non-existent wrinkle on the book cover.
Yun Yi couldn’t bring herself to smile.
Xiao Liu called from the backyard: “Mr. Yun, I’ve arranged the bulbs. Could you take a look and see if this works?”
Yun Yi followed Yun Guoqiang to the backyard in a daze.
Yun Guoqiang nearly tripped over a pile of wooden logs.
A camphor tree in the neighborhood had died. Yun Yi had seen the landscaping company cutting it down, and she’d paid them 200 yuan to cut her a few extra sections.
She’d gotten them for Xiao Zhi to practice his stance training on.
Instinct told Yun Guoqiang that something was wrong. His daughter was just standing there, holding one of the wooden logs in a daze.
Since when does a perfectly good arm turn into a piece of wood?
.
Xiao Zhi woke up on a bed.
He looked around and confirmed that he was in his duty room.
This bed was the one he’d previously set aside for Yun Yi to sleep on. He instinctively touched the blanket—his fingertips met lingering warmth. The heat of the bedding was still there.
But she was gone.
He had traveled back again.
Silently, Xiao Zhi walked out of the duty room.
The Yongsui Hall was filled with an irritating incense smell—not the one he usually preferred. Have these servants been treated too well by me?
“Someone come.”
“…”
Only echoes answered him.
The purple sandalwood gilded screen, the coiled dragon throne, the jade mountain ornaments on the treasure shelves—Yun Yi had secretly taken them to play with, arranging them in the order she liked. He had instructed Wang Delan to leave them exactly as she arranged them.
But now, the order of the jade mountains had been disrupted.
Xiao Zhi frowned. No—someone has been in my bedchamber.
He reached back and pulled a sword from the rack, gripping it in his hand.
.
The drowsy “emperor” was jolted awake by a sudden palpitation.
“Little Lan, do we have any calming soup—”
Wang Delan hurried forward. “Your Majesty, shall I summon the imperial physician?”
“That won’t be necessary,” the emperor said, pressing his fingers to his brow as if talking to himself. “My left eye keeps twitching. That’s not a bad omen, is it?”
“Your Majesty, I’ll have the imperial kitchen prepare a soup right away.”
“Ah, never mind, never mind. I—ahem—I’ll just sleep for a while.”
The emperor didn’t lie down on the dragon bed. Instead, he went to the soft couch on the other side, stretched his long legs out diagonally, and collapsed bonelessly into a lounging posture that looked thoroughly disreputable.
“Disreputable” was a word Xiao Zhi had learned from Yun Yi.
“Little Lan, go bring that dragon throne over.”
Several eunuchs worked together to carry the imperial throne over next to the soft couch.
The emperor propped those two eyesore legs onto the throne, sending both shoes flying. Wang Delan dashed after them like a golden retriever.
“Golden retriever” was also something Xiao Zhi had learned from Yun Yi. When her mother divorced her father, she’d taken the family’s golden retriever with her.
“Ahhh—” The emperor on the couch let out a huge yawn and launched into a litany of complaints. “Three months without a full night’s sleep. It’s destroying my spirit, my soul, my heart…”
He gazed toward the window lattice and, under the bright, clear moonlight, sighed. “Father, so you deposed me for my own good! I’ve been wronging you all this time. Little Lan, spread the word—prepare more offerings for the late emperor.”
“Your Majesty, everything has been prepared as you instructed.”
“Also, burn some comely maidservants to send down and attend to him. Let the late emperor enjoy himself in the underworld. Ah, and some handsome male attendants too—in case Father seeks variety. Men have better stamina.”
“…”
What filial piety.
The palace attendants tiptoed out of the bedchamber.
The incense grew thicker. The “emperor” began to snore loudly.
A flash of sword light appeared, pausing briefly at the “emperor’s” neck. The blade tilted slightly, reflecting his peaceful sleeping face.
The wound at the corner of his brow had healed to a faint, flesh-colored scar. Healing so fast—thanks to those thousand-years-advanced bandages, no doubt.
Xiao Zhi’s anger surged. He gripped the sword and made two swift strikes—
Xiao Qian, who had been deep in pleasant conversation with the Duke of Zhou, felt a chill on his brow, as if a gust of wind had howled past.
The “emperor” slowly woke up and found himself face to face with a pair of eyes like those of a vengeful god.
“!”
The King of Hell is back!
Guards!
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