Chapter 29 The Deal: Sleep with Me

She turned her back and focused her attention on eating.

She had just swallowed the last mouthful of bland vegetable soup, the rough porcelain bowl still in her hand, and the uncomfortably hot feeling had not completely subsided, when the door to the woodshed was creaked open and roughly pushed open.

The blinding light poured in, cutting through the dim space and instantly shattering the subtle, indescribable atmosphere that had just been there.

The burly henchman who stole her jewelry yesterday swaggered in, his gaze first giving Fangru a lewd look before finally settling on the empty wooden plate and two clean empty bowls on the floor.

"Heh, you ate quite cleanly!" the henchman chuckled, bending down to clear the dishes.

Opportunities are fleeting!

Fangru's heart clenched suddenly; that string of Buddhist prayer beads was her only hope!

She immediately stood up, deliberately softening her posture before the henchman could pick up the bowl, her voice trembling with sorrow: "This... big brother, please wait a moment!"

The henchman paused, looked up in surprise, and saw the beauty who had been prickly yesterday now looking at him with teary eyes and a pitiful expression. He immediately became interested, and a mocking smile spread across his chubby face: "Hmm? Little beauty, is there something else? Still hungry?"

Fangru lowered her head slightly, revealing a section of her fair and delicate neck. Her voice grew even softer, filled with helplessness and pleading: "Yesterday...yesterday you took a string of Buddhist prayer beads from me. It wasn't a valuable item, but it was my mother's only keepsake. She prayed for me before the Buddha for forty-nine days and nights to obtain it...To me, it's more important than my life. Please, have mercy, can you return it to me? I'm willing to exchange all my other jewelry for it, just please have mercy..."

She raised her eyes, tears welling up in them, her acting so convincing that even she almost believed it.

The burly man had never seen such a stunning beauty beg him so humbly before, and his vanity and lust swelled instantly.

He chuckled, straightened up, and his lewd gaze seemed to devour Fangru whole: "Mother's belongings? Sounds quite important..."

He abruptly changed the subject, bluntly stating his conditions, "However, I have no interest in those cold, hard jewelry pieces. Little beauty, if you really want them back, sleep with me, serve me well, and I'll give you more food than just those broken beads, hahaha!"

Fangru felt a churning in her stomach, but she forced a look of shyness and struggle onto her face, while inwardly she sneered: Fool! As soon as I get my hands on the prayer beads, I'll swallow them and reopen them. You won't even be able to touch a hem of my clothes!

As if she had gone through a fierce internal struggle, she finally nodded slightly, feeling both "humiliated" and "helpless," her voice barely audible: "...as long as you can return my Buddhist prayer bead bracelet...I, I promise you."

Upon hearing this, the big man was overjoyed, never expecting such an unexpected gain from collecting a bowl.

"Alright! Great! You wait here, I'll go get it for you right now! Hehe, just wait for me, my beauty!"

He was so engrossed in his work that he didn't even bother to pick up the empty bowl on the ground, and turned around impatiently to go out and retrieve the "token".

The door to the woodshed slammed shut again.

Fangru had just breathed a sigh of relief and hadn't even had time to calm her wildly beating heart when she heard a very soft, yet chilling, sneer behind her.

She turned around abruptly and met Zhou Ling's gaze.

He had stood up at some point, leaning against the mottled wall with his arms crossed.

Sunlight streamed through the cracks, slicing across his sharply defined profile, half in light and half in shadow. His eyes were as deep and unfathomable as an ancient, cold well, revealing no emotion. Yet, the oppressive aura emanating from him caused the temperature in the woodshed to drop several degrees.

“What a clever scheme.” He spoke, his voice eerily calm, yet each word icy. “An empty bowl in exchange for a promise? You’d agree to such a sordid condition just to string beads. I underestimated your… quick wit.”

This sarcastic tone instantly ignited Fangru's anger.

She straightened her back, meeting his icy gaze without fear, a highly sarcastic smile playing on her lips:

"Otherwise what? Rely on you? Zhou Ling, don't forget why we're imprisoned here! If you weren't so stubborn and unable to distinguish between loyalty and treachery, how could a villain like the Baiyang Society have grown so powerful? How could we have fallen to this point, where we have to depend on others for even food?!"

She took a step forward, her gaze intense, filled with resentment and disdain accumulated over generations:

"Yes, I agreed to that piece of trash! So what? To me..."

Fangru took a deep breath and spoke each word with crystal clarity:

"I would rather feign compliance with that kind of trash than fawn over you, let alone anything else!"

The moment the words left his mouth, the woodshed fell into a deathly silence.

Zhou Ling's aura suddenly became extremely dangerous.

He suddenly straightened up, his tall figure exuding a powerful sense of oppression, and walked step by step toward Fangru.

The shadows completely enveloped her petite figure, and in her unfathomable black eyes, a storm seemed to be gathering—cold, angry, yet mixed with an indescribable, dark fire born from being thoroughly pierced.

He reached out, not to touch her, but with a "bang," he braced himself against the wall beside her ear, trapping her in a very close distance between himself and the wall.

The cold wooden wall pressed against her back, while the scorching heat and biting cold emanating from him almost suffocated her.

He lowered his head, his thin lips almost touching the tip of her ear, his voice deep and resonant like an echo from an abyss, carrying a deadly pressure:

“Shen Fangru, provoking me will do you no good.”

"Also, take back what you just said."

“Otherwise,” he paused, his breath brushing against her skin, sending a shiver down her spine, “I wouldn’t mind letting you experience firsthand what a real 'tyrant' is like.”

Fangru's heart skipped a beat.

She cursed the Baiyang Society for its absurd actions, imprisoning a man and a woman together, which was simply... a sense of danger sent chills down her spine.

If Zhou Ling were to demand things anytime, anywhere, just like in her previous life... she simply dared not think about it.

When he saved his rations and offered them to her, that brief moment of relief, which almost took her by surprise, was like a pebble thrown into stagnant water. It did indeed stir a very faint sense of gratitude in her heart, a gratitude that she herself was unwilling to admit.

Perhaps, hardship can indeed smooth out some of the rough edges?

But as soon as the thought arose, the image of Gu Zhou in her first life, covered in blood and barely alive, crashed into her mind with unmistakable clarity. Those eyes, once bright but now filled only with pain and despair, instantly extinguished the warmth in her heart that should not have been there, a warmth that was almost a betrayal, leaving only a bone-chilling cold and a sharp pain.

Compared to the excruciating pain Gu Zhou endured, what did her current hunger and distress matter?

And isn't the source of all this tragedy precisely the suspicion and cold-heartedness of this man in front of us?

The complex emotions that had just arisen from his approach, a mixture of fear and a hint of indescribable trembling, were instantly replaced by an even more surging resentment.

She suddenly raised her head, her eyes slightly red from intense emotions.

"Take it back? Zhou Ling, which sentence do you want me to take back? Do you mean you're incompetent, or do you mean you're a tyrant?"

Instead of backing away, she tilted her head back, bringing herself even closer to his shadow, as if she were actively facing a sharp blade.

"You think you're exceptionally kind just because you saved a cornbread? Do you expect me to be grateful to you, to forget Gu Zhou's injustice, to forget how your fabricated charges crushed Gu Zhou's pride and turned him into a pile of mud?!"

Her gaze was fixed on his suddenly constricted pupils, every word filled with burning hatred.

"Begging for your mercy? Seeking your protection? Ha... Zhou Ling, tell me, in your eyes, am I always so stupid, so stupid that... I still think there can be any 'deal' between us?"

She practically squeezed the last few words out between her teeth, with a resolute, self-mocking coldness.

Buried within are the disappointments of her second life, when she tried to gain trust through prophecy but was instead exploited and nearly triggered a war; and the pain of her third life, when she poured her heart and soul into giving credit but ultimately implicated her friends.

The air seemed to freeze, as if her tearful words had been frozen into icicles, hanging between the two of them, sharp and fragile.

Zhou Ling's arm, which was braced against her ear, was taut with muscles like iron, and the veins on the back of his hand were bulging. Every breath he took carried a scorching heat that sprayed onto her upturned face. That heat formed a strange contrast with the icy storm in his eyes that seemed to be destroying the world.

Fangru could even clearly see his Adam's apple bob violently, as if he were forcibly suppressing some kind of ferocious beast about to break free of its cage.

"A deal?" he finally spoke, his voice low and terribly hoarse, each word seeming to be ground out from between his teeth.

He abruptly withdrew his hand from the wall, not as a sign of retreat, but as a more imposing stance, his shadow completely enveloping her.

Those unfathomable black eyes were locked on her, a terrifying storm churning within them. At the heart of that storm was a violent possessiveness, ignited by her words "no more deals," a desire he himself had never anticipated.

“So,” he asked slowly, almost through gritted teeth, “you and I have nothing more to do with each other, no more ‘deals’ to speak of. You can turn around and go off to negotiate with that trash outside the door with a clear conscience?”

Fangru's face turned pale, and she dug her fingertips deep into her palm.

However, before she could organize her thoughts to retaliate, Zhou Ling suddenly lowered his head even further, his nose almost touching hers, and his unfathomable black eyes locked onto her, churning with a thick, dark color that she couldn't understand.

“Gu Zhou…” he repeated the name, his tone strange, as if he were tasting some kind of deadly poison on his tongue, “You hate me to the bone for him, and you are willing to pretend to be nice to trash for him… Good, very good.”

He abruptly withdrew his hand from the wall, straightened his body, and his tall figure regained its domineering indifference, even more so than before, as if the momentary loss of control was merely an illusion.

But his words fell like a final verdict, cold and sharp:

"Since that's the case, Shen Fangru, remember your choice today."

“Your pride, your resentment, your 'innocence' for Gu Zhou…” He curled his lips into an extremely cruel smile, his gaze sweeping over the filthy woodshed with an ambiguous meaning, “I hope that the person in Baiyang who returns the Buddhist prayer bead bracelet to you can also appreciate your unyielding integrity.”

After saying that, he didn't look at her again, turned around and walked back to the pile of hay, sat down again, picked up a chess piece, and stared at the chessboard in the air. His profile was as cold and hard as an ice sculpture.

It was as if she, and the intense confrontation that had almost escalated into a gunfight, had never happened.

Fangru was left standing alone, chilled to the bone by the cold and cruel possibility implied in his last words.

The raging anger that had just sustained her seemed to have been suddenly drained of its fuel, leaving only the lingering warmth and boundless chill of ashes.

She won the verbal battle and seemed to have driven him away.

But why is it that a colder wind is blowing in that desolate place in my heart?

It was as if something between her and him had shattered completely, beyond repair.