Chapter 34 I Came for the Madam
The dark shadow rose like a tide under the moonlight, gradually engulfing Dai Li. In a moment, she seemed to awaken from a dream, quickly taking two steps back to get herself out of the shadow's reach.
"What brings you here?" Dai Li asked.
Her voice was soft and calm, the fleeting panic gone.
Dai Li thought Qin Shaozong would say that it was stuffy inside and that's why he came out for a stroll, or that he went out to relieve himself, in short, something safe that wouldn't disrupt the balance.
But just as Dai Li never expected that he would follow her so closely to Taiping County, she never expected it now either…
"I've come for the lady." The man's voice was deep, slightly hoarse from drinking.
He didn't change the subject; instead, he directly focused the conversation on her. In the darkness, Qin Shaozong's brown eyes were much deeper than usual, like a deep-sea whirlpool capable of swallowing a person whole.
Dai Li's breathing hitched slightly, her sensitive nerves buzzing, as if even the night breeze brushing her face had become much colder. "I...I've eaten my fill and I'm going back to rest. The banquet isn't over yet, and your subordinates are surely waiting for you to take charge. You should go back now."
After speaking, Dai Li turned to leave.
As her clothes fluttered and she darted away like a fish, a large, calloused hand reached out and precisely grasped the fair, soft hand beneath her sleeve.
He spread his fingers wide, making his palms appear even larger, almost completely enveloping her in his hands.
Qin Shaozong withdrew his arm, easily pulling her into his embrace. He loosened his grip on her hand, instead encircling her slender waist. "There are only a handful of people in this world whose status is above mine. Why is my wife so resistant to me?"
The world is bustling, all for profit; the world is bustling, all for gain. Qin Shaozong was always very clear that many people would flatter and fawn over him and choose to attach themselves to him because he was the patriarch of the Qin clan, the Marquis of Wu'an appointed by the imperial court, and the most powerful person in the north at present, because the power in his hands could bring them benefits.
There's nothing to be upset about, and no need to hold a grudge. After all, he also uses and manipulates these vassals, making them work for him to seek greater benefits.
Essentially, this is a transaction.
He believed he would never mistreat a woman, so why did she reject him time and time again?
Dai Li was forced to turn around and was now facing Qin Shaozong. The two were extremely close, almost touching, close enough that she could clearly smell the strong smell of alcohol on him.
This man drank quite a bit at the banquet; he might not be as sober as usual, or perhaps—
Intentionally or unintentionally indulging in one's behavior.
The latter is more dangerous, as it means that he knew what he was doing from the very beginning.
Dai Li raised her hand to block his strong chest, preventing him from getting any closer: "Everyone has their own preferences. Some people love swords but dislike books and paintings, while others do the opposite."
Qin Shaozong was silent for a moment, then suddenly asked, "Was your husband a scholar who couldn't even kill a chicken?"
Dai Li: "..."
There was no moon tonight, and Dai Li was enveloped in his own shadow. The surroundings were not bright, but that did not prevent Qin Shaozong from seeing her expression clearly.
He suddenly laughed, quite heartily, and said, "When you were in Taiping County, you told me that you were living there with your young child. You didn't mention your husband at all. I guess he's probably no longer alive."
As a man, if he could possess such a stunningly beautiful woman, he would never let her have the chance to leave.
Dai Li's pupils narrowed slightly. She knew he was always perceptive, but this ability to piece together a rough understanding from just a few casual remarks from others was truly terrifying.
“He is not dead. The reason I didn’t mention him before was because we had a fight, and I was still angry with him, so I didn’t talk about him then.” Dai Li insisted that she didn’t admit it.
Qin Shaozong remained silent, his answer unclear, whether he believed her or not. He removed the delicate hand that had been pressed against his chest, his thumb stroking the smooth skin of her wrist. "If you wish to find your son, I can do it. You told me on the bed that you must help me find him. If you could then, why can't you now?"
Dai Li couldn't help but feel remorseful; she shouldn't have blurted out those two sentences. She tried to pull her hand away but couldn't, and immediately became anxious.
She initially thought that by turning the dragon-bone waterwheel into a bite stopper and putting it on the vicious tiger, and then hanging a piece of fat meat in front of him, just like hanging a carrot in front of a donkey, she could make him drive her.
However, the plan deviated somewhat from reality.
A vicious tiger is a vicious tiger after all; it is cunning, treacherous, and scheming, a world apart from a docile donkey.
Perhaps it was because women of this era generally lacked access to education, and he had personally heard her say that the person responsible for the downfall was named Ma Jun, not herself, Dai Li. Therefore, even though she said she would offer a gift of gratitude, and deliberately steered the gift in a direction beneficial to his regime, he still didn't quite believe her.
It's like you're hiking in the wilderness in modern times, and suddenly a stranger appears and tells you that there are ten tons of gold hidden in a cave in the mountain ahead, urging you to quickly go and take the gold home to make a fortune. He then shows you a gold ring as proof.
Do you believe it or not?
Most people don't believe it.
The general environment is socialist. Not to mention that all mineral resources belong to the state, even if there really is a gold mine, it is impossible for it to appear in a place that is not even remotely populated. Do you really think the prospectors are vegetarians?
Dai Li, however, understood very well that she must not tell him everything she knew at once because of his suspicions, otherwise she would be in a nightmare situation.
Dai Li's heart gradually tightened. "My lord, I said before that if you had any news of my son, I would repay you with generous gifts. This was no empty promise. How many women in this world admire you? The dancers at the banquet just now would all be willing to please you if you so desired. Why should you care about the cold looks from others?"
With one arm around her waist and the other holding her wrist, Dai Li could only move her left hand, but she dared not struggle, fearing she would provoke the ferocity of this tiger.
Qin Shaozong smiled and was about to speak when he suddenly heard someone talking in the distance.
"Where has the lord gone?"
"It seems to be over in the garden. What do you want with him?"
"A letter arrived urgently from Yuyang; I must present it to him immediately."
...
Qin Shaozong's smile deepened as he looked down at the person in his arms. "Madam, a letter has arrived from Yuyang."
Dai Li didn't have his good hearing. She only caught a few words from afar, vaguely hearing "My Lord," "Garden," and "Present it over," but she couldn't make out any more details.
When he mentioned Yuyang, Dai Li was stunned.
She remembered him saying that his ancestral home was Yuyang, and she also remembered that today he had said that a branch of the Qin family had gone to Yangzhou in their early years, and that he had sent a message back to Yuyang to have someone investigate the movements of that branch, and that he would receive a reply in a day at most.
Now... a reply has been sent?!
"Quick, go get it!" Dai Li was so excited that she didn't care about anything else. She used her left hand to push his large hand away, and then grabbed him near his waist belt, trying to make him turn around.
Qin Shaozong raised his eyebrows slightly, turned around following her movement, and took two steps forward following the force of her push. "Why are you in such a hurry, Madam? The letter won't grow legs and run away."
Dai Li retorted, "The letter won't run away, but the guards carrying it will. You'd better hurry."
She urged him to hurry, but he defied her and slowed down, becoming listless. Dai Li would push him a step.
Dai Li gritted her teeth inwardly, thinking that this person was utterly despicable.
However, it didn't take long for Qin Shaozong to return to normal, because the guards carrying the letter arrived.
"My lord, a letter has arrived from Yuyang." The guard presented the letter with both hands.
Qin Shaozong accepted it.
The guard glanced quickly to his side out of the corner of his eye, then wisely excused himself.
After the guards left, silence returned, and the previously unsettling undercurrent seemed to rise again with the departure of the third party.
Both of them were facing the sculpted candlestick. Dai Li could clearly see the sealing wax used to seal the letter, and she could also see the small moths flapping their wings and flying towards the candlelight not far away.
Like a moth drawn to a flame, after a barely audible hiss, only a few specks of ash remained in the sculpted candlestick.
Dai Li stood there, stunned.
Qin Shaozong reached out and put his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into his embrace. She had also drunk wine during the banquet, a whole jug, which was a bit too much for a young woman.
Although she was drinking the same wine as him, both millet wine, Qin Shaozong smelled a different aroma. The fragrance of the wine was mixed with a few elegant notes, and the two scents intertwined like vines, making her stand out from the rest of the group.
Life on the march was simple; most people were covered in dust and dirt. Even the cleanest person couldn't possibly bathe every day. It was common for those less meticulous to go several days without water, and for the less fastidious, it might be even longer…
Don't you see some large camps that reek of foul odors? Dogs vomit when they go in, horses run across the road, and even mosquitoes find them repulsive.
But Qin Shaozong always felt that she had a very special fragrance, like the scent of flowers, or the rich aroma of a ripe fruit, as if it were seeping out from her skin and flesh. As long as she was there, the fragrance would be there.
And at that moment, the source of that fragrance was in his arms. Qin Shaozong was drawn to her, bending slightly forward, his chin brushing against her hair, asking knowingly, with a hint of coaxing in his tone, "Would Madam like to see this letter?"
There were a few stubbles on his chin that hadn't been shaved clean. Dai Li felt as if her forehead had been rubbed with sandpaper. She snapped back to reality, and her previously throbbing head quickly cooled down.
Dai Li wasn't in a hurry to move, but said, "Of course I want to see it. However, letters are important, so it's best to be safe. Why don't we go to the study? What do you think, my lord?"
The surroundings were dark, and the light from the standing candlestick was too dim; the atmosphere here was not conducive to her.
The sound of patrol footsteps approached from afar, growing louder and closer. They were closing in.
Qin Shaozong straightened up and released her. "Fine."
*
Inside the study.
Tear off the sealing wax and spread the mulberry paper on the table.
The letters were rolled into a tube. When Dai Li opened it, she saw two letters. Before she could look at them closely, Qin Shaozong took the top one away.
The top layer has been removed, revealing what's underneath.
Because it had been rolled up for too long, it wanted to roll back up after being unrolled, but a delicate hand held it down. Dai Li unfolded it again and weighed it down with a tiger-head paperweight from the table.
The letter was written in cursive script.
Zhangcao evolved from the cursive script of the Qin Dynasty and was also the predecessor of Xiaocao (small cursive script). The combination of traditional Chinese characters and Zhangcao, layered together, gave Dai Li a headache.
So when Qin Shaozong finished reading the rather thin report and thought about how to reply, he looked up and saw Dai Li frowning, still staring intently at the mulberry paper in front of her.
His gaze swept down over the letter, and he raised an eyebrow in surprise.
She actually spent half the night reading just three lines. And judging from her expression, she really hadn't finished. Did she intend to decipher each word one by one?
Qin Shaozong casually placed the letter in his hand aside. "Did you understand it, Madam? If there are any words you don't recognize, you can ask me."
Dai Li didn't even look up. "Thanks, but it's no trouble for you."
Qin Shaozong chuckled softly, letting her struggle with those few words on her own. He took a fresh sheet of paper from the side, ground the ink, picked up his brush, and wrote a reply in one go.
A short while later, a letter was produced to be sent to Yuyang.
Qin Shaozong put down his pen and looked up, just in time to see Dai Li's brows relax, as if she had solved a major problem.
The man placed the wolf-hair brush on the brush rest, turned the jade thumb ring, and suddenly leaned back in his chair, reverting to his previous lazy demeanor.
When Dai Li looked up, Qin Shaozong pointed to the paper beside him, "The paper and pen are here, and the ink has been ground for you. Please make yourself at home, Madam."
Dai Li: "..."
Their eyes met, and in this intense eye contact where neither looked away, Dai Li clearly saw him slowly curl the corners of his mouth into a smile.
This guy did it on purpose; he clearly knew during the day that she couldn't use a calligraphy brush.
Qin Shaozong laughed and said, "If Madam needs someone to write for her, I'd be happy to do it. But even a common scholar can earn a few copper coins; I, a marquis personally appointed by the court, can't do it for free. What do you say, Madam?"
Dai Li stared at him for a couple of seconds, then suddenly picked up the mulberry paper with information about the Qin family of Yangzhou written on it, turned around and walked out without saying a word.
If he won't help her write, she can just find someone else; Qin Shaozong isn't the only one in this household who can write.
However, she had only taken two steps when the man behind her spoke again, his tone as languid as he was now, without much of a sense of pressure, "You could try to find someone else to write it for you, and see if they will write it for you, and also see if this letter written by someone else can be sent out of Ying County in the end."
But it was this one sentence that made Dai Li suddenly stop.
Only a small fan was open in the window of the room, and the lingering smell of alcohol had not dissipated much; on the contrary, it gradually intensified as time passed.
Dai Li took a deep breath, turned around, and asked in a displeased tone, "What do you want?"
“Madam, come here.” He beckoned to her.
Dai Li pursed her lips and went back, but finally stopped in front of him across a long table.
Qin Shaozong remained silent, but his gaze clearly shifted downwards, lingering on the mulberry paper in her hand for a moment before beckoning again.
Not close enough.
Let her come closer.
Dai Li looked away from those brown eyes and slowly walked around the long table. Behind the table, the man sat imposingly, and from her narrowed field of vision, she could only see a corner of his black robe.
The deep black, a heavy color, is as unfathomable as he is, and also carries a sense of oppression.
Suddenly, her wrist tightened, and her vision blurred violently for a moment. By the time Dai Li reacted, she had already changed from standing to sitting. She sat sideways on his lap, with only his long arm wrapped around her waist as support behind her.
Qin Shaozong wrapped one arm around her waist, his large hand first pressing against her lower back. Once she was seated, his hand slid from her waist to the front.
The moment her waist was grabbed, Dai Li shuddered sensitively. She instinctively turned to the side to avoid him, but bumped into his chest.
All of Dai Li's attempts to get up and break free were stopped by this last sentence he uttered:
"What instructions does Madam wish to give them in the letter? The Qin family's collateral branches all obey me, so they will certainly treat this letter with utmost care."
Dai Li's eyelashes trembled rapidly, a scale swaying back and forth in her heart.
On the left is to offer a "bombshell" like a dragon-bone waterwheel as leverage to get his help and avoid his current predicament.
The right side is to hold back for now and not throw out any more bargaining chips. After all, it's far from the point of going to bed together, and Mr. Nalan, who is said to have a high reputation in the army, has not yet arrived in Ying County.
She needs others to help her restrain Qin Shaozong, and clearly, this potential partner has not yet arrived.
He drank a lot of alcohol at the dinner party, and after that confrontation in the corridor, she realized that this man was completely unpredictable.
After the scales swayed back and forth several times, the left side finally tilted high up while the right side landed on the ground.
“Send them to Qiantang to find a nine-year-old boy named Qin Yanzhou, he…” Dai Li’s voice trembled slightly.
Her hand, which was resting on her lap, was taken up by a large hand that wrapped around her waist. The rough, calloused hand was very noticeable, hot, and intensely controlling as it encircled her wrist.
His large, dark hand moved upwards along her wrist, first hooking her index finger, then slipping his long finger between her two fingers, slowly caressing the soft flesh on the inside of her finger.
Dai Li instinctively tried to clench her fist, but several of her fingers got stuck between his fingers.
Qin Shaozong picked up the wolf-hair brush on the table with his right hand and wrote down the appearance of the boy that Dai Li had just described on the spread-out mulberry paper with swift and skillful strokes.
"Anything else, besides your son's appearance, what else would you like to say, Madam?" The tip of the wolf-hair brush, dipped in black ink, curled up and returned to the brush rest.
Qin Shaozong turned his head, tightened his long arm around Dai Li, and forced the person in his arms to lean closer.
Dai Li sat on his lap, and although she was a little taller than him, she had to raise her hand to push against his broad shoulders as he pressed down on her lower back.
"Why not give them a month to search all the cities and towns within a hundred miles of Qiantang, and investigate all the kidnappers in Qiantang?" With each sentence Qin Shaozong spoke, the resistance in his shoulder blades weakened a little.
Before him stood a slender, white neck, like the long neck of a white bird. Qin Shaozong kissed it, and he could clearly feel her throat bones trembling slightly.
The unique fragrance seemed to intensify in that instant, and Qin Shaozong moved forward even further, pressing his nose against the smooth, white skin that looked as if it could release water.
He slowly moved upwards, and as the woman involuntarily raised her head, he finally placed a kiss on her lips. "What do you think of my suggestion, Madam?"
Dai Li's breathing was a little heavy. "Starting from Ying County, traveling day and night at full speed to Yangzhou, it will definitely take half a month to get there. The round trip will take a month in total. I need to know the search results within two months."
Qin Shaozong chuckled and said, "Of course. If I couldn't even handle such a small matter, it would truly be a disgrace to the Qin family's reputation."
"Write quickly," Dai Li urged him to start writing again.
Qin Shaozong didn't pick up his pen; instead, he leaned in again and kissed her. Unlike last time, when his kiss landed on the tip of her chin, this time he kissed her bright red lips.
-----------------------
Author's Note: Please give me some nutrient solution! [yellow heart]
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