"The man told her that pythons are a different species from humans, naturally cold-blooded and ignorant of human nature. They don't eat or drink because they plan to empty their stomachs before eating the woman."
Upon hearing this, Yuan Xingzhou's pale lips suddenly tightened into a straight line, his expression dark and cold, his gaze particularly venomous.
Zheng Quchi was preoccupied with his own thoughts and didn't notice any of that.
After a long silence, Yuan Xingzhou spoke in a soft, eerie tone, almost like a mocking laugh: "Is that so? You think Yuwen Sheng is like this python, and one day he will turn his back on you, lose his humanity, and attack you, right?"
Zheng Quchi remained silent.
This is clearly an implicit acceptance.
He seemed to have a pent-up resentment in his chest, his long neck tilted slightly forward, unconsciously trying to infect her with his breath, making her his possession. He emphasized each word heavily: "He will never hurt you again."
Upon hearing this, Zheng Quchi said in a complicated tone, "I know, he's dead now."
Yuan Xingzhou didn't mean it that way, but he didn't refute her either. Instead, a layer of sickly gloom, hard to discern as genuine or feigned, appeared between his brows: "When he was alive, you weren't missing any limbs. Every part of your body was intact, wasn't it?"
Zheng Quchi choked upon hearing this. She finally realized something was wrong and looked up at him.
The poison that seemed to have been implanted in Yuan Xingzhou's eyes under certain circumstances appeared to her like a gathering fog—it came quickly and dissipated just as fast, without a sound.
There was nothing unusual about that pale, world-weary face.
"You don't understand. Even though he hasn't intentionally hurt me, that doesn't mean I can trust him..."
In her mind, a person might temporarily hide their nature and behavior for a moment of impulse, but they can't hide it forever. Just like that python, it was a cold-blooded animal that was inherently bloodthirsty and cruel. The woman viewed it with human thoughts, thinking that as long as she got close to it and treated it well enough, she could change its nature and make it have human emotions so that it wouldn't hurt her. But what was the result?
Yuan Xingzhou truly couldn't understand her thoughts about Yuwen Sheng. He asked her, "Have you said these things to him before?"
Zheng Quchi was taken aback for a moment, then asked in confusion, "Why should I tell him these things?"
"Then why are you able to say these things to me, the Crown Prince?" he asked again.
Zheng Quchi thought for a moment and gave an ambiguous answer: "Perhaps His Highness just happened to be standing in front of me, and I just happened to be in a bad mood and wanted to talk to someone."
Yuan Xingzhou liked the confusion and vulnerability she showed at this moment, because this would allow him to take advantage of the situation.
"Would you like to hear my opinion?"
Her light brown eyes, like a butterfly fluttering its wings, slowly folded and perched on his alluring petals that exuded a strange fragrance, unaware of the danger and oblivious to his greedy, predatory intentions.
"I suspect that what you don't trust isn't him as a person, but rather the difference in how he treats you?"
Zheng Quchi was taken aback, and then the ripples stirred by those words began to spread in her eyes.
But Yuan Xingzhou was not satisfied with such a small token of her affection; he demanded more and more...
“Zheng Quchi, the gap and barrier between you do not exist in him, nor in your status, but in your eyes and in your heart. You have built a wall specifically for him, not allowing him to enter, nor allowing yourself to step out. You can open your heart to anyone else, even to this prince who you have only recently met, but you always have a stubborn prejudice against you and your husband.”
"Am I... prejudiced against him?"
As Zheng Quchi pondered, he frowned and tilted his head, following the certainty in Yuan Xingzhou's eyes, as if he had been made to doubt himself by Yuan Xingzhou's insightful words.
Two alluring eddies seemed to swirl in his eyes as he subtly guided her to open her heart: "He is not that python, and you are not that woman."
Yes, she used to view Yuwen Sheng with such a biased mindset, wishing she could stay far away from him. Sometimes she would even be terrified by the sinister and obsessive look in his eyes, even though he usually hid it very well and pretended to be harmless.
Why do I think he looks like a python?
Because pythons are insatiable creatures, even their way of expressing affection is a selfish and cruel act. They will only tighten their grip on their prey until the prey suffocates from lack of oxygen, while their own bodies twist into a dead knot...
How terrifying! Just thinking about it, she felt she might not be able to bear such a morbid and dark love.
If this is love.
Zheng Quchi's eyes gradually returned to a calm and quiet state. She said, "Your Highness, if people could exchange hearts for hearts, there wouldn't be so many difficulties in this world. If I were to truly offer my passionate heart to try and change him, I would only find out in the end that he is a heartless person..."
Yuan Xingzhou interrupted her, because her cold and hardened heart made it impossible for her to remain calm and act as a trader. His tone was somewhat exasperated: "Are you so sure he doesn't have a heart? What if... he grows a heart for you?"
Remembering how he had protected and saved her time and time again in Julu Kingdom, Zheng Quchi felt a tightness in her chest, a mixture of sourness, swelling, and heaviness, and she fell silent. Now that he was dead, she suddenly felt that it was pointless for her to talk about these things with Yuan Xingzhou.
Yuan Xingzhou also discovered that Zheng Quchi might be born without a romantic inclination.
“Zheng Quchi, you are the one without a heart.” The turbulent waves surging around Yuan Xingzhou subsided quietly.
This chapter is not finished, please click the next page to continue reading!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
