Chapter 75 "You're not qualified to be a dog."...
"Don't talk nonsense." She frowned, pulled him into her arms, and gently patted his back. "Absolutely not."
"Take a nap, a nap will make you feel better."
Dodder burst into tears, saying, "No, I'm afraid I'll fall asleep and never wake up again..."
He muttered as he crawled toward the bed, "I think I'll get out of bed."
Leng Cuizhu quickly grabbed him and covered him with the blanket: "Where are you going? Don't wander around."
“But…but…” the dodder stammered, “I’m afraid that if I die in your house, it will bring you bad luck.”
"Ugh... I'm so afraid of dying, I don't want to die!"
"Sigh, don't think too much about it. It's just being sick. Everyone gets sick sometimes."
"Once you feel better in a few days and can get out of bed, I'll take you to the doctor. For now, rest well and get your energy back," she said, rubbing his forehead.
After comforting the dodder at night, she was still so bothered that she added some sleeping potion to the warm water and fed it all to the dodder. The potion worked well, and he passed out in less than fifteen minutes and stopped crying.
She tucked the blanket around the dodder, put on her coat, and went out of the room.
The night was cool and still. She sat on the stone steps, looking up at the starry sky.
A mist condensed by the pond in the courtyard, which dissipated with a gust of wind. The damp mist clung to the stone bricks and window frames, reflecting the clear moonlight on the ground.
She buried her head in her knees, dozed off for a moment, then got up and went back inside.
"lady."
She paused, then slowly turned her head.
"Where have you been?" she asked, her gaze falling on the tightly wrapped bandage on the man's arm. "Are you injured?"
Eun took off his cloak and draped it over his arm to cover the bandages.
"It's so late, why isn't Madam resting?" He lowered his eyes, picked up the food box in his hand, and asked, "Would you like some midnight snacks before going to bed?"
Yuen brought her some millet cakes from the Wang Mama's shop in the east of the city. The rice cakes from that shop were mildly sweet and had a pleasant fragrance, and she often went there to buy them.
Logically speaking, the shop should close at noon every day, so you shouldn't be able to buy it late at night. But not only did Eun manage to buy it, he also bought it fresh out of the steamer, still hot and steaming.
She used chopsticks to cut the rice cake into several small pieces, picked out a large piece and placed it separately on a plate for the dodder to eat.
"Where have you been? You haven't come back for days."
"I've been supervising the office these past few days."
Her lips twitched slightly as she sipped the rice cake.
What are you going to do at the supervisory office?
"I heard from the jailer that they are preparing to bury Young Master Si Qing in a few days."
She looked up: "Have you found the murderer?"
"It doesn't seem so."
Ewan explained, "It was several officials above who kept putting pressure on the chief prosecutor, ordering him to close the case within three days."
"Among them, Lord Yin is the most imposing."
Leng Cuizhu nodded, seemingly lost in thought.
Yin Yuan gave her a strange feeling, not only in his attitude towards her, but also in his attitude towards the whole case.
She could sense that Yin Yuan was vaguely doubting her innocence, but to the outside world he insisted that she was not the murderer and was obstructing others from handling the case properly.
The same goes for this case. He verbally urges others to investigate and close the case quickly, but every now and then he goes to the supervisory office to cause trouble—Yi Yinwan told her about this, saying that Yin Yuan had his servants go to the ghost market to buy a large sack of cockroaches and woodlice. At night, when the people in the supervisory office were dozing off, he would lift the roof tiles and dump the insects into the house, scaring the people inside half to death. Yi Yinwan laughed herself silly.
For someone so grown up to do something like this is truly despicable and childish.
"Is he so all-powerful that he dares to treat the affairs of the Marquis's mansion so carelessly..." She was slightly displeased.
Eun responded with a smile.
She put down her chopsticks, yawned, and said, "You should go to bed early after you finish eating. I'm going to bed too."
"By the way, Eun, could you help me buy some medicine tomorrow? It's for fever and bone pain."
The man paused for a moment, his silver eyes filled with apprehension: "Have you been busy taking care of him these past few days?"
"...How did you guess that?"
She nodded: "Yes, Cuscuta has been sick these past few days. He has a high fever and keeps complaining of pain."
“That’s not an illness,” Eun said. “Madam, it can’t be cured. We can only wait for the symptoms to subside naturally.”
"If you can get through it, then you can; if you can't... there's nothing you can do."
How did you know?
He sighed and peeled off the bandages from his arm, revealing skin that had been scratched raw and bloody.
Then he stood up and, facing her, removed his clothes piece by piece until nothing was left.
She opened her lips wide.
“It seems he has made his choice,” he said. “No matter what choice you make, there will be sacrifices, but the price you have to pay will be more readily apparent.”
"At the very least, suffering is inevitable."
Eun said that as a system, its only mission in this world is to assist the host in advancing the plot. Since the dodder has violated this fundamental rule, all the preferential treatment it receives as a system will be stripped away.
Immortality, resurrection... From the moment he decided to defy the rules of being a system, he would slowly gravitate towards mortals, even becoming inferior to them. His body would become hot and painful every few days, and both his physical form and human form would gradually fade until there was no more color left to fade. At that point, the pain in his physical form would only intensify.
He said that the pain wouldn't kill him, but it would torment him relentlessly, like a poisonous insect gnawing at his bones.
“The first time, it’s easy to not be able to bear the pain and want to kill yourself,” Eun said as he added water to the pot. “Soaking in hot water and wrapping the painful area with bandages will help.”
"Madam, you go back and keep an eye on him. I'll call you when the water is ready."
“Eun…” She stood by the stove, wiping the sweat from her forehead, hesitant to speak.
Eun looked up and withdrew his hand from adding firewood.
His face was covered in round beads of sweat, a few drops sliding down his high, straight nose and onto his neck, wetting the stray hairs there. His long, silvery-white hair was casually tied up, the ponytail hanging down to his waist, glistening and bluish from the heat of the stove fire.
Apart from an open-necked outer robe, he was completely naked, and from top to bottom, one could even see his abdominal groin through the collar.
"Was it because of this that you were always running around before?" She had never noticed this before.
"I remember you didn't have so many injuries before, why do you have them now... Is it more painful?"
"Why do you never tell me these things..."
“Because,” the man frowned, “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”
"Besides, there's really nothing to say. This is my own choice, and I shouldn't burden you."
“I didn’t have any injuries before because you still needed me. I didn’t want to spoil your fun by showing me scars during your happiest moments. Now, my body, and my whole being, are no longer attractive to you.”
"What's the use of a smooth and neat piece of discarded paper..."
"How could you say that?" She approached him. "It was clearly you..."
He was the one who abandoned her time and time again.
He was the one who distanced himself from her, yet he pushed other people onto her.
He was clearly the one who remained silent.
It was clearly his own will that led him to do it.
She bit her lip, her voice trembling with tears: "It's clearly you who's so mean, always bullying me."
“I don’t want to be your master, and you’ve never considered yourself a slave.” She knelt down in front of the man, reached out to stroke his damp cheek, and gently slapped his face. “If you were to be a slave, you would be utterly unfit, not even as good as a loyal dog.”
"I wouldn't dare test your loyalty. In other words, Eun, do you really have it?"
The man didn't answer, but gently took her hand that was touching her cheek, slowly sliding it down, leading her to slip her hand inside her slightly open neckline, guiding her to touch it.
“Yes,” he said, lowering his eyes and fluttering his eyelashes. “Feel it.”
He fell off the stool and knelt straight in front of her, bowing and scraping, looking up at her and begging for mercy.
"Kick me, hit me, it's all fine. I just want you to see me like a dog, to have me as equal to a dog in your eyes."
She had clearly softened her heart, but seeing him wagging his tail, she couldn't help but sneer, "You're not good enough to be a dog."
She stroked the man's chest, then moved her hand down a little further, pausing to gaze at him every inch of his smooth skin.
He closed his eyes, easily took off his robes, put his arm around her waist, and lay down together.
The kitchen was very hot, with rising steam swirling overhead and the firewood crackling as it burned.
She reached out and pulled at his hair tie.
He also went to remove her hairpins.
Then, they looked at each other in silence, but their hands never stopped moving. He supported her, and she supported him, and they slowly sat down until they were completely swallowed up.
The water in the pot boiled, bubbling and steaming.
Amidst the increasingly loud splashing of water, all other sounds were drowned out. But the sighs could not be concealed.
"I was thinking, should I cut my long hair?"
She grabbed the end of his hair, and tugged at it again when she heard him say that: "No."
"Since that's what you think, why don't you just shave it off, so it won't always get tangled in my hair... and it'll be hard to separate them."
She brushed a strand of hair from the man's chest and lightly fanned him: "You're so naughty."
She was so devoted to him that she didn't keep an eye on the pot of water, and it boiled down to almost nothing, so she had to boil a new pot.
By the time she and Ewen had dressed and boiled the water, it was already dawn.
She went inside to call for Cuscuta, but found no one on the bed, nor the chicken.
"He didn't really go and kill himself, did he?" she asked Eun, turning her head to look at him.
"Why don't we go look in the dining room? It's probably too hungry to stay in bed and has quietly gone to eat."
She nodded: "Indeed, that's more like something he would do."
She followed Eun to the dining room and searched everywhere, but still couldn't find the dodder.
Just as they were at a loss, the two passed by the courtyard and caught a glimpse of a golden figure by the pond.
"Oh, no!"
Before she could run over to stop her, the dodder jumped into the water and swam straight into the depths of the pond.
She quickly ran to the pond and shouted, "Dodder, come back! Don't swim over there!"
"Ugh," the dodder seed mumbled, turning its head groggily as it soaked in the water, "But host, I'm so hot... my head is spinning..."
"Oh dear!" She picked up a stick from the ground and handed it to the man in the water. "Quick, grab the stick, I'll pull you up."
"But it's so hot..."
"You brat!"
She bent down to take off her shoes, and Eun grabbed her arm from behind: "Madam, why don't you let him soak in the water until he's unconscious, then you can just pull him out."
"If Madam is concerned about the cost, there is another way that will require no effort at all."
Leng Cuizhu: "What method?"
The man leaned close to her ear and whispered something.
She frowned, and her face flushed.
"...That is indeed a good method."
The dodder was soaking in the water to cool off when it heard someone call its name. It raised its head and stared blankly at the person.
"Host... I'm not coming up, the water is so refreshing."
"Okay, you don't have to come up."
She smiled faintly, and in front of Dodder, wrapped her arms around the neck of the man beside her, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him.
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