Chapter 41

Chapter 41

Sheng Zhaoning stripped off her clothes and immersed her entire body in the medicinal bath.

Warmth wrapped around her, dense and seamless, enveloping every inch of her skin. Her limbs and bones sank into the water, relaxing of their own accord.

But in less than the time it took an incense stick to burn, that comfortable warmth suddenly turned sharp.

At first, it was only a faint pricking pain, fine and close as needlepoints. Then it gradually became an intense burning.

Sheng Zhaoning’s brows drew tight. Cold sweat kept beading on her forehead, the veins in her neck standing out. The pain pierced into every pore like tiny needles, and her body spasmed uncontrollably from the agony.

Zhou Lingsheng stood outside the door. Every so often, he would ask her a question to make sure she was still conscious. If anything went wrong, he would rush in at once to save her.

Fortunately, Sheng Zhaoning’s willpower was every bit as formidable as expected. From beginning to end, for three whole days, Zhou Lingsheng did not hear her cry out in pain even once.

Her skin was burned and torn open again and again, then forced to knit back together.

Sheng Zhaoning could no longer tell whether what flowed over her body was water or sweat.

The doors and windows had all been covered, leaving not the slightest trace of light inside the room. She could only rely on Zhou Lingsheng’s prompts from outside to tell what hour it was.

Until three days later, when the first light of dawn began to show.

“You can come out now!”

Outside the door, Zhou Lingsheng’s voice could not hide his delight.

Hearing him, Sheng Zhaoning slowly opened her eyes.

As if in response, the pain throughout her body faded away bit by bit. She climbed out of the tub, utterly drained, and forced herself to pull over a piece of clothing to wrap around herself.

The room was still dim.

She walked to the window and removed the cloth covering it. A brilliant halo of light struck her without warning. Sheng Zhaoning narrowed her eyes slightly, and only after a long while did she adjust again to the searing brightness.

In the morning light, Sheng Zhaoning lowered her head and looked at herself.

The uneven scars across her skin had vanished completely. Every mark left by those once-ghastly wounds was gone, replaced by smooth, unblemished expanses.

Sheng Zhaoning stared at herself like this, momentarily dazed. A trace of unfamiliarity flickered in her eyes.

She was used to the version of herself who had been covered in wounds since childhood.

There had been a scar on her arm that wound from her elbow down to her forearm, left by an iron spike back in the Shadow Guard Camp.

There had been several blade wounds across her chest and abdomen.

On her left shoulder, there had also been the mark Chen Shao had left not long ago when he brought his heavy saber down on her.

Now, all of them had disappeared.

This body now looked as if it had been raised in seclusion for years, carefully nurtured in the inner chambers of a noble household. The skin was fair, delicate, luminous, and translucent, like a flawless piece of fine white jade, without a single blemish to be found.

Sheng Zhaoning was not used to it at all.

It was as if all the years she had spent clawing her way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood had vanished like smoke along with the marks on her body.

When she stepped out of the room, sunlight she had not seen in ages spilled over her. The afternoon glare was dazzling.

Zhou Lingsheng quietly gazed at her, his eyes like a brush tracing over her brows, her eyes, her nose, and her lips. Her white clothes were like a scroll, wrapping around the most perfect work of art in the world.

He had never seen Sheng Zhaoning like this before.

She was clearly the same as before, yet somehow, something had changed.

It was as though a sudden quietness and gentleness had settled over her.

He watched Sheng Zhaoning walk up to him and look at him in silence. Under his soft gaze, she lowered her eyes and asked, “Is there food?”

Zhou Lingsheng: “…”

What on earth had he been expecting?

Zhou Lingsheng stormed off to the kitchen in indignation and brought out the meal that had been kept warm on the stove.

“Here.”

He handed the bowl over.

Sheng Zhaoning caught a familiar smell at the tip of her nose and lowered her head to look.

It was still that pitch-black medicinal meal.

Her head began to ache at once.

After soaking in the tub for three days without eating, she was indeed starving. The only edible thing in sight was this bowl, and besides, her own cooking was not much better than Zhou Lingsheng’s. In the end, she simply reached out, took it, and forced it down with a frown.

As he watched Sheng Zhaoning eat, he instinctively wanted to ask, “Is it good?”

Then he abruptly remembered the look on her face that day after he had asked-like she wanted to bite his head off-and gave up with a sheepish silence.

When Sheng Zhaoning finished eating, Zhou Lingsheng took the bowl away.

It was March, and the morning breeze carried a few threads of fresh sweetness.

She stood in the courtyard as the apricot blossoms stirred faintly.

Sheng Zhaoning’s gaze fell on a pink blossom hanging from a branch over the wall. Her eyes grew distant, and her memories suddenly flashed back to twelve years ago, to a spring day just like this one. Tree shadows swayed, and a young nobleman in brocade robes leaped down from the tree and gave her a branch of spring that had swayed in her heart for twelve years.

Beside her ear, the sound of hooves came to a stop.

At the courtyard gate, a figure hurriedly dismounted.

Sheng Zhaoning’s expression changed in an instant. She unconsciously clenched the hem of her clothes and looked up, crashing hard into a burning gaze.

“…”

“Chi Yu.”

In a low voice, she called his name.

The moment Chi Yu saw her, his eyes burned, and tears fought their way out.

He turned his head away in disarray to hide them, then forced out a smile before turning back to face Sheng Zhaoning. He nodded and answered, “It’s me.”

At that moment, Sheng Zhaoning could not describe what she felt.

Surprise. Gratitude. Disappointment.

She had not expected the person who came to be Chi Yu.

And the person she longed to see had not come.

Wei Chengjun’s horse stopped beside Chi Yu.

Once his men disabled the mechanism, Chi Yu rushed inside without a moment’s patience and pulled Sheng Zhaoning into his arms. His grip tightened beyond his control, as if he wanted to carve her deep into his very flesh and blood.

She had never seen such intense emotion surge through Chi Yu before. His sudden closeness made her instinctively want to pull away, but Chi Yu held her in his arms and refused to let go no matter what. Sheng Zhaoning could not break free, so she could only let him hold her.

“Why has Young General Chi come here?” Sheng Zhaoning asked.

Chi Yu felt as if a long gash had been torn open across his chest, leaving it hollow and desolate.

How could he not sense her distance?

But that was the truth.

Sheng Zhaoning did not like him.

All his longing that had festered into illness, all his defiance of convention, had been nothing more than his own one-sided willingness.

Perhaps liking someone was exactly this: silently tasting panic all alone.

He was like that, and so was Sheng Zhaoning.

“I came to find you,” Chi Yu said.

He released her, but his gaze could not bear to move away from her for even a moment.

Sheng Zhaoning looked back at him as well.

She could see that Chi Yu had grown terribly thin. His eyes were streaked with blood, dark shadows lay beneath them, his lips were pale, and his face was full of exhaustion.

Though doubt stirred in her heart, she did not ask.

She only said, “Thank you, Young General.”

Chi Yu smiled bitterly.

Sheng Zhaoning, you really do know exactly how to hurt someone.

Wei Chengjun had seen enough of the spectacle and cut in at an untimely moment. “Let’s talk inside.”

Then he entered the main hall first.

Sheng Zhaoning and Chi Yu followed one after the other.

By the time Zhou Lingsheng came over after hearing the commotion, the three of them had already taken their seats in the hall.

“Well now, we have guests?”

His gaze swept back and forth over Chi Yu.

Chi Yu instinctively sensed a trace of hostility.

He knew Zhou Lingsheng. Back when his father had been gravely injured, it was Wei Chengjun who invited Zhou Lingsheng to treat him, and only then had his father’s life been saved.

Chi Yu was grateful to him, but when he met the hostility in Zhou Lingsheng’s eyes, an absurd thought arose in his mind. Because of it, his own gaze could not help but turn dark and complicated.