Su Qingluan didn't understand the look in those eyes for a moment. She just felt embarrassed and guilty for being caught in the act of peeking.
"Just... my sister's acupuncture hasn't healed yet?" The change of subject was like doing a split, and it was so unnatural and obvious that as soon as the words came out, Su Qingluan became a quail with her neck shrank, and Mu Xingzhi snorted with an ambiguous laugh.
"You have to wait for about an incense stick of time. I also need to prescribe another decoction. Starting tomorrow, you have to take it decocted in water three times a day." As he said this, Mu Xingzhi turned around and found paper and pen, and in the flickering candlelight of the dim candle, he began to prescribe a prescription for Su Xueyan.
During this time, Su Qingluan peeked at her sister again. Although she was still in a coma, she was much calmer, and her little face was rosy. She didn't sneeze or shiver. Su Qingluan didn't think too much about it, she just thought it was the child's own internal heat.
Seeing that her sister had escaped the most dangerous situation and was fine, Su Qingluan's tense nerves relaxed. At this moment, she felt that the surroundings were surprisingly quiet. Except for the sound of Mu Xingzhi's brush moving on the paper, it seemed that all sounds had quieted down.
Precisely because of the dim light and quiet environment, people's perception of space and surrounding conditions will be greatly reduced, thus creating an illusion that only themselves and the object that can detect the source of the sound exist.
This illusion can magnify things that were previously overlooked due to external factors—like the embarrassment of being caught repeatedly peeking at others. Su Qingluan felt like her toes were getting restless again, ready to do some infrastructure work.
At this moment, Mu Xingzhi, who seemed to be concentrating on writing the recipe in front of him, suddenly asked without warning: "So what are you looking at?"
Su Qingluan: ...How can this come back like this?! Hasn't this topic already been turned over?! Su Qingluan was frantic.
However, the first time, she could use her sister's illness to change the subject, but if she used her sister as a scapegoat every time, Su Qingluan felt that this little girl was really being "caught in the crossfire."
"Um..." Su Qingluan felt that her peeking behavior was a bit strange, and a bad explanation would easily lead to misunderstandings, so she simply explained it in a more "academic" way: "You know that my painting skills are actually quite good, right?"
Mu Xingzhi had never thought she would mention this, so he smiled slightly and said, "Indeed, it is the most lifelike thing I have ever seen."
Su Qingluan looked at the man in the candlelight, and silently sighed in her heart: It's this angle, it's this expression! How on earth can the change of light make those handsome features and gentle smile become so... so...
After a while, she couldn't find any appropriate adjectives. Mu Xingzhi was still waiting for her explanation, so Su Qingluan gestured in front of Mu Xingzhi's face: "Your appearance... the lines of your facial features... give me a different feeling than before."
Mu Xingzhi raised his eyebrows and asked with interest: "Oh? What's different?"
"It's hard to explain." Since it had been pointed out, Su Qingluan simply looked at it openly. The more she looked, the more she frowned. "Well, it turns out that the brightness and darkness of the light can modify the lines like a plastic surgery. It seems that the lines of your face in this dim light are completely different from the plain face in the daytime."
"Noodles in plain water?" Mu Xingzhi was stunned. "How can this be described? Could it be that Qingluan is hungry at this moment, so she is thinking and speaking about something?"
Su Qingluan waved her hand: "I was so scared by that little girl that I didn't even feel hungry. I was just describing the feeling your appearance gave people."
As she spoke, she scanned Mu Xingzhi's face again, "I should have said before that although your facial features appear rather ordinary in terms of appearance, your eyes alone are truly remarkable."
Mu Xingzhi recalled some conversations they had had with each other before: "That's true." Su Qingluan had said this more than once, and it was a pity.
"But now, with this kind of light, I feel like the lines between your eyes and face aren't so abrupt anymore—in other words, your face and eyes seem more harmonious."
At this moment, Su Qingluan suddenly thought of a very vivid metaphor, so she smiled and said, "What kind of feeling did your appearance give me before... It was like one person's eyes placed on another person's face... It's indeed a bit scary and a bit weird to describe it this way, but it does give me that feeling."
If this happened in modern society, Su Qingluan would have suspected that this person had deliberately had plastic surgery on his eyes, after all, his eyes were the only thing that was so outstanding. But in this era...
"You guys here... shouldn't have any weird skills like face-changing, right? For example, peeling off human skin and putting it on your own face..." The more Su Qingluan described, the colder she felt on her back. In the end, she scared herself so much that she couldn't continue.
Mu Xingzhi's expression when he looked at Su Qingluan was calm and unpredictable. But as she spoke, her words became increasingly off-topic and her expression became increasingly strange. Finally, he said with a mixture of laughter and tears, "What kind of weird picture book have you been looking at? I'm not some man-eating monster. Why would I peel off people's skin?"
Su Qingluan patted her head and said, "Just treat it as nonsense. I'm not thinking straight this late at night, and it's also because my sister is sick and my mind is all over the place... By the way, how is my sister?"
Mu Xingzhi checked the acupuncture points on Su Xueyan's body, took her pulse, and removed the long needles one by one, which made Su Qingluan's heart skip a beat. However, the little girl didn't know whether she was really sleeping soundly or not in pain, but she didn't move even a little.
Mu Xingzhi pulled Su Xueyan's clothes back to their original state, then turned to Su Qingluan and said softly, "You can put the cloak on her now."
Huh? "But she didn't feel cold when she exposed her arms during the acupuncture treatment?"
Mu Xingzhi smiled with an ambiguous meaning: "Maybe it's cold now." As if to confirm his words, the little girl turned over on the Arhat couch, curled up into a ball like a small, fat animal, looking a little pitiful.
Su Qingluan wanted to pick her up and take her home, but she was afraid of waking her sister up, so she gently covered her sister's small body with the cloak, praying in her heart that her sister would wake up once in the middle of the journey.
Therefore, she realized something belatedly: Song Bo, who was supposed to serve Mu Xingzhi, was nowhere to be seen tonight.
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