Just a Wet Nurse, Just a Plaything? Everyone Wept After My Death - Chapter 71
Chapter 71
The inferno raged for a full two hours before it finally began to die down.
The dilapidated woodshed had been reduced to a charred ruin. Broken walls smoldered amid the wind and snow, filling the air with the acrid stench of burned wood, straw, and perhaps even flesh.
“General…”
The commander of the personal guards overseeing the cleanup approached with his saber in hand, his expression grave. Dropping to one knee, he reported, “The fire was too intense. Everything inside was burned to ash. I led the men in searching through the ruins, but aside from… aside from a pile of unrecognizable charcoal, there was nothing left.”
No bones had been found.
Or rather, in a blaze that fierce, a child barely over a year old would have been burned until not even a trace remained.
Huo Xiao stood before the ruins, listening to his subordinate’s report. His tall frame swayed ever so slightly.
As he stared at the mound of black ash still radiating heat, an image of the little girl named Nuannuan suddenly flashed through his mind.
He had despised the child because of what his mother had told him. He had even ordered that she be sent away and left to fend for herself.
But he had never imagined ending that tiny life like this, by burning her alive.
She had been Shen Yingyue’s entire world.
Huo Xiao slowly turned toward the snow-covered ground nearby.
Shen Yingyue was still sitting there.
She was no longer laughing or crying. Like a clay statue stripped of its soul, she stared blankly at the ruins. Her bloodshot eyes were utterly lifeless, without the faintest glimmer of light.
The wounds covering her body, her soot-stained and battered appearance, and those eyes that looked as though they had already died…
For some inexplicable reason, Huo Xiao felt a sharp pang in his heart.
An overwhelming guilt unlike anything he had ever experienced surged over him like a tidal wave, swallowing him whole.
He was the one who had driven that child to her death.
And he was the one who had reduced this woman to such a wretched, half-dead state.
“…Yingyue.”
Huo Xiao swallowed, his voice hoarse.
He forced his heavy legs forward and walked toward Shen Yingyue one step at a time.
The woman was curled into a tiny ball in the snow, trembling in the bitter wind, yet stubbornly refusing to let out so much as a whimper.
Huo Xiao bent down and reached out with both hands, intending to lift her from the freezing ground.
“The child is gone… Don’t grieve too deeply.”
He tried to console her in a magnanimous, almost charitable tone, as if he could soothe his own troubled conscience at the same time.
“Since this was Heaven’s will, let it end here.
“Your crime can be considered atoned for as well.
“Come back to Tingfeng Courtyard with me. I’ll have the manor physician use the finest medicine to treat your injuries. You… are still my Yingyue.”
In his eyes, this was an extraordinary act of mercy.
She had made a mistake. She had even “killed” someone. Yet not only was he willing to let bygones be bygones, he was also offering to bring her back to the main residence and restore her to his favor. She should have been overwhelmed with gratitude. She should have thrown herself into his arms and wept, then gone back to relying on him as she once had.
And yet…
Just as Huo Xiao’s hand was about to touch Shen Yingyue’s shoulder, she suddenly recoiled as if struck by lightning.
There was no coyness in the gesture, no pretense of resistance. There was only a visceral revulsion and rejection that came from the depths of her heart.
Huo Xiao’s hand froze in midair.
“You…”
Shen Yingyue slowly raised her head.
Her dirt-smeared face held a chillingly indifferent expression. She looked at Huo Xiao as though he were a complete stranger, or worse, a pile of revolting filth.
“General.”
She spoke, her voice hoarse and rasping, yet cold enough to chill one to the bone.
“Don’t touch me.”
Huo Xiao frowned, a flicker of displeasure crossing his eyes. “What are you sulking about? Look at your wounds. If they aren’t treated soon, they’ll fester! I’m doing this for your own good!”
“For my own good?”
Shen Yingyue’s lips curled into a bitter, mocking smile.
She stared at Huo Xiao’s outstretched hands. They were hands that wielded a sword, hands that commanded immense power, and hands that had just thrust her into hell and driven her daughter to her death.
And now, those same hands were reaching out to embrace her in a shameless display of false concern?
It made her sick.
“I am unworthy of the General’s great kindness.”
Bracing herself against the ground, Shen Yingyue laboriously shuffled backward, deliberately widening the distance between them. Then she lowered her head and said coldly, “I am a condemned woman who has just crawled out from a pile of corpses. I’m covered in soot, blood, and… my daughter’s ashes.”
“I’m filthy.”
She raised her eyes, her icy gaze piercing Huo Xiao like a spike as she enunciated each word.
“The General is far too noble and precious.
You wouldn’t want me dirtying your hands.”
Boom-
Those words scorched worse than the raging fire had.
Huo Xiao’s expression instantly turned livid.
He was the mighty Grand General, yet he had lowered himself to coax her, and she dared speak to him like this? What did she mean by “dirtying your hands”? She was clearly expressing her disgust with him!
“Shen Yingyue!”
The guilt in Huo Xiao’s heart was instantly displaced by anger, and his domineering pride once again took over.
“Don’t push your luck!
If I truly thought you were filthy, I would have had you thrown into a mass grave long ago!
Since you’re alive, you belong to me! As long as I refuse to let you go, even if you turn into a vengeful ghost, you will remain in the General’s Manor!”
With that, he ignored Shen Yingyue’s resistance, bent down, and forcibly swept the bloodstained woman into his arms.
“Let me go… Huo Xiao, let me go!”
Shen Yingyue thrashed violently in his arms, straining the wounds on her back and sending cold sweat pouring down her face from the pain. Even so, she continued pushing against his chest with all her strength.
“Be quiet!”
Huo Xiao tightened his hold on her, heedless of the blackened soot smearing his expensive fox-fur cloak.
Carrying her, he strode through the ruins toward Tingfeng Courtyard.
His steps through the wind and snow were firm and imperious.
But only he knew how light the woman in his arms was, as weightless as a feather.
The Shen Yingyue who had once smiled and cried for him, who had been so warm and alive, seemed to have truly vanished in that fire.
What he held now was nothing more than a cold, hate-filled shell.
But so what?
Huo Xiao tightened his arms, an obsessive glint flashing in his eyes.
As long as she was still here, he could warm her heart again sooner or later.
He refused to believe there was any woman in Yanzhou whom he, Huo Xiao, could not tame.
Yet as Shen Yingyue lay nestled in his arms, feeling the warmth she had once longed for, there was nothing but desolation in her heart.
She closed her eyes and stopped struggling.
Because she knew she had to live if she wanted revenge.
Since you’re so determined to keep an empty shell, I’ll let you discover whether it holds a heart you can truly “warm”… or a sharpened blade that will one day pierce yours.
