Chapter 28 Do you like him? You're both male cultivators, it's impossible...
"Don't you like it?" Yu Zhu asked with a smile.
Ming felt that Xiao Bumian's gaze could burn a hole in him, so he forced himself to say, "...Not really."
"Oh." Yu Zhu nodded, her tone light and cheerful. "That means you like it."
Mingjian's feelings were somewhat complicated. He twitched his lips as if he wanted to say something, but then Yuzhu suddenly said, "It's no use liking someone. You're both male cultivators, so it's impossible for you to be together."
He looked up at the handsome face reflected in the bronze mirror, gently stroking it with the back of his hand. "All the vows of eternal love we made were just words uttered in the heat of the moment. Once the love is gone, he will soon abandon you."
"So, to prevent you from being so sad in the future and repeating the same mistakes," Yu Zhu said softly, a gentle smile playing on her lips, her eyes filled with pity, "would you like to die with me?"
? ? ?
What's wrong?
Mingjian doesn't want to die yet. Judging from the melodramatic novels he bought before, he must have suffered heartbreak to be able to say such things.
"Can I kill him? Do you want to kill him?" Xiao Bumian asked, turning his head slightly as he curved his lips into a smile.
The dim candlelight flickered on and off, and the room was quiet for a moment.
Mingjian was stunned for a moment before looking away, hooking the silk ribbon wrapped around Xiao Bumian's wrist, and shaking his head.
It means I don't want it anymore.
Xiao Bumian lowered his eyes and stared at Mingjian's hands with their distinct knuckles.
Seeing that Xiao Bumian didn't speak again, Ming Jian breathed a sigh of relief, ignored Xiao Bumian's clingy gesture of pulling his hand, looked at Yu Zhu, and refused him, "No."
Yu Zhu's face stiffened, then she asked gently, "Why? Wouldn't it be better to end the suffering sooner?"
“Not everyone will be like you and Prince Anling,” Mingjian said bluntly.
He roughly knew; he remembered that the name of the Prince of Anling contained the character "Ming," and the "Ming Lang" that Yu Zhu mentioned should be the Prince of Anling.
It's likely that Prince Anling did something to offend him, which is why Yuzhu said those things.
Sure enough, as soon as Ming finished speaking, Yu Zhu's originally handsome face twisted in pain, and he suddenly burst into laughter, "Hahaha... Interesting! Very interesting!"
His voice stopped abruptly, his smile laced with mockery. "But I didn't believe it before either. He was really good to me, saying he would marry me and redeem me from my servitude."
Yu Zhu's gaze softened, and his voice became very soft, as if he were lost in memories of the past.
“When he first came to Qin Shi Lou, he was wearing a moon-white brocade robe.” Yu Zhu’s ear fins trembled slightly. “He wanted to learn the zither, so my mother asked me to serve him. I didn’t like it. At that time, I didn’t have a gender yet, but because my appearance was too feminine, I was always touched inappropriately by the guests who came to Qin Shi Lou for pleasure.”
“I thought he was like that too. I was worried all day, but he never overstepped his bounds.”
A trace of nostalgia flashed in Yu Zhu's eyes. "He respected me a lot. Even though I was just a male prostitute in Qin Shi Lou, he never looked down on me. Sometimes he would go to great lengths to find rare musical scores for me. And when he saw that I liked pastries, he would cook for me himself."
"He gave me a coral hairpin and taught me how to write his name." Yu Zhu suddenly smiled childlike, revealing two sharp canine teeth. "Shen Mingqian... he said it means 'rising like the sun'..."
He paused, stopped talking, and fell silent.
Mingjian asked, "And then what happened?"
Yu Zhu smiled faintly, "Later, his family found out about us, and his father and the clan elders forbade him to see me again. At that time, I was still ignorant about love and only thought that I had lost a close friend. I was sad for a while, but I was able to get through it."
“It just so happened that I encountered the growth period of the merfolk, and I became a male merfolk.” Yu Zhu’s eyes gradually moistened. “But it was precisely at that time that I gradually realized my feelings for him. I regretted it and blamed myself for being so unfair to me, only realizing it after I chose to become a male merfolk.”
"But he doesn't care."
A breeze was blowing outside, causing the window to swing open halfway. The cool moonlight fell on the windowsill, along with a flurry of falling petals.
Yu Zhu reached out and caught a petal, her voice very soft, "He said that as long as it's me, he loves me. Whether I'm a male or female merman, he only loves me."
Mingjian sighed softly; in storybooks, such words never end well.
“I believed him.” Yu Zhu chuckled. “I was so naive back then. He told me he would redeem me from my servitude and ask the Mermaid King to grant us a marriage, and to bring me into his mansion in a grand sedan chair carried by eight men. But I knew perfectly well that with his family background, there was no way he would let me in.”
“As I indulged in it, I watched myself become more and more confused. One day, he told me that his father had backed down and said that as long as he had a wife with a respectable family background, he could take me as a concubine.”
“I secretly went to see him, and the man he was about to marry was also a male merman. The young man had a nice name, Zheng Wenlang. His family background was better than mine, he was eloquent, and he could also play the zither very well. I envied him and was jealous of him. But I could do nothing. I could only watch Minglang and that young man become more and more intimate, and watch the days between his visits to me grow longer and longer.”
“A few days ago, he finally came to see me. He was probably drunk, because he was talking nonsense. He said that someone more suitable to exchange lives than me had appeared. As long as he could form a pact with the Heart-Gouging Ghost on his wedding day, his beloved would be brought back to life.”
Yu Zhu's tears finally streamed down her face. "I became suspicious, but pretended not to know. But the madam was his woman, and I was afraid she would tell him. So I had no choice but to give myself to the merman who had been coveting my body for a long time."
Even after he finished speaking, he could still recall the disgust and stickiness of the mermaid servant clinging to him.
"I hate him so much." Yu Zhu trembled all over, her voice trembling with barely suppressed sobs. "I was finally able to leave Qin Shi Lou, only to discover that he had been raising a female mermaid all along. That female mermaid was about to die, and he wanted to use a mermaid with the most yin body to exchange for her life. And Zheng Wenlang and I were both used by him to exchange for that person's life."
"Girl, girl."
"Hahaha..." Yu Zhu adorned himself with a hairpin and carefully drew his eyebrows with snail-shell ink in front of the bronze mirror. His technique was skillful, and the tail of his eyebrow was drawn into a perfect arc, as if he had practiced it a thousand times. "If I were a girl, would he not have treated me like this?"
Xiao Bumian didn't quite understand, blinked and asked, "If he likes you, why would he change his mind because you're a woman or a man?"
Mingjian twitched the corner of his mouth.
If Xiao Bumian can't speak properly, then don't say anything; why stab someone in the heart like this?
Yu Zhu's comb fell to the ground with a "thud." He looked at Xiao Bumian as if he were looking at some monster. After a while, he suddenly laughed out loud, "That's just how the world is. You'll understand in the future."
Xiao Bumian's thick, long eyelashes drooped, casting a small shadow under his eyes, and he felt a strange restlessness in his heart.
Will he understand?
The thought flashed through his mind, but it made his chest feel tight. But soon, he gently curled the corners of his lips into a smile.
No, he won't be as pitiful as this mermaid.
Because he liked Mingjian, but Mingjian was just his cat. What this merman wanted was the kind of affection that Mingjian had previously described as a Daoist partner.
His smile deepened; he couldn't understand why this merman was so fixated on something so ephemeral.
Thinking of this, Xiao Bumian's irritation, which she hadn't quite figured out where it came from, completely dissipated, and a smile still lingered on her lips.
Mingjian was unaware of the complex thoughts swirling in Xiao Bumian's mind. Even if he had known, he would have simply told Xiao Bumian that he was absolutely right.
He went through it in his mind, sighed, and realized that it was probably because he loved her and sacrificed himself for her.
Mingjian: "So, was Zheng Wenlang's death caused by the Prince of Anling?"
"Yes." Yu Zhu opened a rouge box, dipped her fingertip in the bright red rouge, and gently dabbed it on her lips. The vibrant color made her face appear even paler. Yu Zhu pursed her lips in front of the mirror, then suddenly turned her head and asked, "Does it look good?"
“It looks good,” Mingjian nodded, then asked, “But he shouldn’t be able to kill him under the heavy security of the Zheng residence.”
Although they were to get married the next day, the newlyweds were not allowed to meet the day before the wedding, not to mention that the injury to Zheng Wenlang's chest was something that Prince Anling could not have done.
"Minglang and the wedding dress made a deal."
Yu Zhu smiled and said, "As long as he has anything belonging to Zheng Wenlang, he can make a deal with the Wedding Dress Demon on the wedding day. He will exchange Zheng Wenlang's life for the life of his beloved."
Wedding dress curse?
This must be the ghost the storyteller spoke of in the middle of the night, most likely Song Yao.
Mingjian always felt that he had forgotten something.
Suddenly, his gaze fell on the crooked "囍" character on the window, and in a flash, the eeriness became real.
Wait a minute, this room looks like a wedding room, even Yu Zhu is wearing... a wedding dress.
Mingjian's gaze slowly fell on Yuzhu. A breeze blew by, lifting the gauze curtains. The candlelight was still flickering. Only then did Mingjian notice that where Yuzhu's heart should have been, there was now only a dark hole with faint teeth marks on the edges, as if it had been torn apart by some wild beast.
The blood-red array patterns on the ground were winding and twisting. Mingjian pursed his lips, looked down at the patterns of the array on the ground, and asked, "Why won't the madam let us see you?"
Yu Zhu continued applying her makeup, softly saying, "Because Ming Lang discovered me. He doesn't need me anymore. Zheng Wenlang is there to save his beloved's life, so what's the point of keeping me around? He poisoned me, trying to kill me."
Yu Zhu laughed shrilly, "But am I the only one who has to die? I'm unwilling, I don't want to! I can't control myself, I'm consumed by lust..."
He turned to look at the two people behind the gauze curtain, the candlelight still burning. "Why did he ruin my life, but he can still live a good life? I don't want that. Hell is too cold. If I go down there, he has to stay with me. That's what he promised."
"So I asked my mermaid servants to buy me a wedding dress and decorate my bridal chamber."
Mingjian felt a chill run up his spine to the back of his neck. No wonder Yuzhu hated Prince Anling so much, no wonder the madam said Yuzhu was on leave, no wonder this room seemed strange when he entered.
"He has to be with me..." Yu Zhu said softly, holding up the wedding dress and touching her face, murmuring, "Today shall be our wedding day. Oh, wedding dress, please bring him to see me, okay?"
Mingjian understood.
Yu Zhu sacrificed himself in the same way, on the condition that he take the life of the King of Anling.
Mingjian turned around and grabbed Xiao Bumian's hand, "Let's go to the Prince of Anling's mansion now! Song Yao might be there!"
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Author's Note: My hand hurt so much from tenosynovitis yesterday that I had to be lazy for a while. I'll catch up slowly later [covering face and peeking]. Goodnight, everyone!
(Also, yesterday's chapter was revised, but not much. I originally wanted to have Yuzhu die and then write a flashback. But that would have required a lot of writing, so I'll show it through the dialogue instead. [Sprinkling flowers])
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