Chapter 27 "I did not mistreat your lover..."
Leng Cuizhu had never been served like this before.
She had to admit that dodder was exceptionally gifted in this regard; in a daze, she even thought she had entered a brothel, otherwise how could someone be so...shameless?
He's really no person; he's a prostitute.
The usual rules and constraints between people don't apply to him at all.
"No...please don't make those sounds, okay?"
"Why?" He raised his misty eyes. "But it makes me so happy when Mom is like this. Kittens purr when they're happy, so why can't I?"
"You're happy too, aren't you? Even though you don't say much... I can taste it."
"Then you should keep your voice down, in case Zhenzhen gets woken up..."
"He was the one who mocked me for needing someone to breastfeed me, so it's understandable that I'm asking his mother for water now."
"If we were to breastfeed... perhaps the commotion wouldn't be as big as it is now, but would you be willing, Mom? I, for one, don't mind."
He laughed wickedly and recklessly, water dripping from his nose down to his chin, looking like a cat that had plunged headfirst into a basin of water, its whole face soaking wet.
Her chest heaved, and she bit her lip as she collapsed onto the couch: "You... sigh, never mind."
After several rounds, she was already so weak that she had no strength left.
The dodder crawled up to her and asked for a kiss, but she slapped it away, getting her hand covered in dripping liquid.
"I'm going to sleep."
"Waaaah... Okay..."
When she woke up the next day, no one was beside her.
There were no chickens either.
The dodder must have been starving, so it went home to find something to eat.
After she finished tidying up, she went outside and saw Leng Zhen returning with a bunch of wild berries.
"Mother is going back first. You should stay here for the next few days to avoid trouble."
"I'll come over this afternoon and bring you some clothes, food, and bedding..."
Leng Zhen interrupted her: "Where's Xiao Du?"
"Xiao Du went home too."
"...Our home?"
Leng Cuizhu was stunned for a moment.
She did indeed go back to their kitchen and rice bin, but if she really answered like that, wouldn't she give herself away?
Before she could answer, Leng Zhen put on an understanding expression.
“Mother,” he said, lowering his head to touch the green and yellow berries in his arms, “I heard Father ask you earlier if you wanted to have a new child.”
Can you?
She pursed her lips and said, "Zhenzhen... I will never have a child with him again."
"Given his current physical condition, it's impossible for him to have children."
"And what about the other men?"
Will you always only have me as your child?
“…” Leng Cuizhu took a deep breath.
"Zhenzhen, um...aren't you being a bit nosy? Why didn't you think of this when you were cursing?"
"You keep calling for your mother all the time. Will you still need her when you're eighty? When will you be able to walk independently? At least stop acting like a spoiled child."
"Let me tell you the truth again. I didn't want you in the first place, because I didn't want to be anyone's mother, and it wasn't about you as a person. But things didn't go as planned, and I gave birth to you and raised you to adulthood."
"I don't want to regret it later."
Upon hearing this, Leng Zhen's eyes reddened: "Mother, it rained last night, and there was thunder."
“When I was little, you often told me that children who disobeyed their mothers and made them angry would be taken away by the Thunder God.”
“I was so scared back then, afraid of leaving my mother. I felt uneasy every time it rained, and I still feel subconsciously terrified to this day. Why don’t you care about me now? Do you really want to go your separate ways with me?”
"Why do you always bring up the past..." she rambled on, "Can you only live in the past?"
"If we're talking about the past, you weren't like this before. You're not the only one who's disappointed with the present."
"Your mouth is injured, so try to talk less."
Leng Cuizhu felt depressed and resentful.
She couldn't quite describe the exact feeling, but she felt restricted and trapped in a wooden box. When she turned her head, she saw Yin Yuan's expressionless face, while Leng Zhen was still crying hysterically in her ear.
When a person breaks down too many times, they become unaware of their own despondency and become so numb that they can no longer speak.
She didn't return to the Yin residence, in case Yin Yuan hadn't discovered she had left. With a gamble in mind, she went home, intending to check on things and do some cleaning.
As soon as she stepped through the gate, her gaze fell on a magnolia tree in the bushes to the side.
The magnolias had not yet bloomed, their white petals frosted, yet bright red blood dripped from their withered branches, falling drop by drop into the bushes.
Even more strangely, several pieces of clothing were hanging on the tree. Leng Cuizhu approached and recognized them as her short jacket.
Leng Cuizhu was stunned for a moment, then reached out and pulled off the few short jackets, carefully folded them, and hugged them to her chest.
A few steps forward, she caught sight of her jewelry displayed on the stone steps.
"...A thief broke in?"
She had originally intended to take another route to the kitchen to check on the dodder, but now she turned and walked up the stone steps, bending down to pick up jewelry with each step.
After collecting all the jewelry along the way, I looked up and arrived at the attic where Leng Zhen lived.
The door was wide open.
She didn't go in directly, but stood at the door and peeked around for a long time. Unfortunately, it was too dark in the attic, and she couldn't see what was inside.
“Zhenzhen…” she closed her lips.
Leng Zhen is definitely not home; it's highly likely that a thief broke into her house.
She put down the clothes and jewelry she was carrying, took down the sickle hanging on the wall, and went straight into the room.
The room was filled with a strong smell of medicine and earth. She felt dizzy after smelling it for a while, so she raised her hand to cover her lips, and suddenly her waist was wrapped around her.
A weight pressed down on her from behind, the man's chest pressed against her back, his disordered breath spraying behind her ear.
The sickle in his hand clattered to the ground.
“How could you…” Leng Cuizhu was speechless for a moment.
The man seemed familiar to her, so he shouldn't be a thief. But she couldn't tell which man she knew was him.
Eun?
Dodder?
Yin Yuan shouldn't be that free...
"Stop fooling around."
She secretly chose the easiest one to identify: "It's not like we haven't seen each other for that long..."
If the person behind me were Dodder, I would definitely recognize them as soon as they opened their mouth.
"...Haven't we been apart for a long time?"
"Not long?"
She shuddered, turned her head to meet those lifeless eyes, and tried to break free from the man's embrace, but he held her tighter and tighter.
If his arms had been around her neck, she would have been strangled to death long ago.
To make matters worse, her hands were grabbed in the blink of an eye, and the man pulled off the belt around her waist, tying her hands behind her back.
Leng Cuizhu gritted her teeth: "Yin Yuan, don't you have anything better to do?"
"I have something to do."
Her hands were bound even tighter, squeezed together, and her wrists ached.
“You also have things to do, a lot of things to do.”
"Yeah?"
A barrage of kisses landed on the back of her neck, making her tremble all over. She could only helplessly let her hair be brushed against her chest, while her collar was pulled open wider and wider.
"Turn around and look at me, okay?"
"Where did you go?"
The cold green candle remained completely still.
It seemed that she hadn't been back to the Yin residence for too long, so Madam Yin directly reported her. But she didn't expect that Yin Yuan would be lying in wait here, waiting for her return.
Has he completely ignored matters of officialdom...? If she doesn't come back, is he supposed to keep waiting forever?
“I didn’t mistreat your lover,” the man buried his face in her neck, inhaling her disheveled hair. “The day he came, I gave him some money and told him to leave you.”
"During the days you've been away from me, has he come looking for you?"
Leng Cuizhu: "..."
These days? It's clearly only been one day.
"No?"
His thick eyelashes brushed against Leng Cuizhu's cheek as he stared intently at her tightly pursed lips: "No?"
"Um."
"You've hooked up with another man again?"
"My lord, if you are making up such baseless accusations against me, I don't know what to say."
"slander?"
The man lowered his eyes, picked up a strand of hair from her chest, and held it up in front of her.
Even in the darkness, that single strand of hair gleamed with a golden light.
Leng Cuizhu has a full head of black hair that she takes good care of; she would never grow such dry and yellow hair.
Judging from the appearance, it was left by dodder last night. His hair wasn't completely black; there was a tuft of yellowish bangs on his forehead, like chicken feathers.
"Once is enough."
"It's boring no matter how many times you do it."
She was speechless and unable to refute him.
After all, this wasn't a slander; she did indeed have some kind of relationship with Cuscuta, but it was nowhere near as serious as Yin Yuan imagined.
They simply held the child's head down and made him bury his head in the essence of the dodder for several hours.
If a man goes to a brothel to seek pleasure, it doesn't count as betraying his wife, so how can she be considered to have an affair?
She was simply seeking out thrills she couldn't normally get.
The hand that was covering her chest slowly moved down, reaching into her open collar, finding a warm and soft place to rest.
"Come back to the manor with me, and don't wander off anymore. Let bygones be bygones."
She couldn't resist tilting her head back, wanting to grab the hand on her chest. The more she tried, the more unconsciously her hands broke free, but the ties tightened even more, rubbing the back of her hands until they were red and burning.
"I'm not going back."
"I've asked someone to take you to visit Leng Zhen. Don't you miss him?"
Yin Yuan murmured softly, "Parents love their children to the extreme... He can't live without you."
“Ling Niang, I know what you’re afraid of, and I don’t want to do that either. But if you insist on leaving me, I will naturally comply with your wishes, and Leng Zhen will naturally comply with mine as well.”
"After all, once you run off with someone else, I'll be left only to live a life of oblivion, staring at his face."
“You…” Leng Cuizhu glared at him hatefully, too shocked to speak.
Yin Yuan narrowed his eyes, a rare smile appearing on his lips: "If you want to have children with other men, I will do everything I can to snatch each one and raise them well."
"I hope they're more like you..."
She nodded resentfully: "Alright, my lord... I'll go back with you."
"Aren't you going to go find them?"
The man's hands moved more quickly, teasing and fiddling with the objects.
"I'm not going."
"But I need to take a shower before I go back."
"good."
"I also want to bring my usual clothes and jewelry."
"good."
"I also want to bring the chickens that I raised myself."
"……OK."
The dodder was happily eating in the rice bin when it was suddenly caught and forcibly stuffed into a cage.
After passing through several hands and being jostled around in a carriage for quite a while, it was finally delivered to Leng Cuizhu.
"Mom, what's going on?" The rooster stared wide-eyed at the gold collar that had been put around its neck.
Leng Cuizhu changed into a plum-colored dress, sat on a chair holding a chicken, and smelled faintly of soap and jasmine. The strand of long hair that fell to her shoulder was also fragrant.
The rooster nestled comfortably in her arms.
"Oh my god, I'm rich! This is the first time I've ever worn gold jewelry, Mom..." Before it could finish speaking, it heard the conversation beside it and its smile vanished.
"Husband, go and keep Sister Yi company. I need to rest."
Upon hearing this, Yin Yuan remained silent, straightened his emerald-green robe, and after a long while, looked up at her.
-----------------------
A note from the author:
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
