Chapter 68
Upon hearing these words, my heart felt as if it had been suddenly gripped by an invisible hand, and an inexplicable, inexplicable tearing sensation came over me! The feeling came quickly and went quickly, disappearing without a trace in an instant, as if it were just an illusion.
He paused for a moment, his gaze fixed on Xi Xiao. He saw that she was still looking down, intently studying the medical book in her hands, seemingly just earnestly seeking knowledge, without looking up at him, and there was no sign of anything unusual on her face.
He barely managed to suppress the shock in his heart, pretending to be a stern senior brother, and said in a deep voice, "Find it in the book yourself! If you ask people directly whenever you have a problem, instead of thinking and verifying for yourself, how can you remember it and learn real skills?"
Xi Xiao wasn't afraid of his blustering but cowardly demeanor. She turned the pages as instructed, her long eyelashes casting heavy shadows beneath her eyes. After a moment, she looked up from the book and wrinkled her nose at Pei Yun: "Senior brother just thinks I'm stupid. I'll learn by myself. You don't need to lecture me."
Looking at her vibrant and lively appearance, Pei Yun's doubts were replaced by a twisted tenderness. His gaze softened, and he said gently, "Okay, you can keep an eye on things for now. I'll go to the kitchen and call you when it's ready."
"Okay." Xi Xiao gave him a bright smile full of trust, then lowered her head again, her gaze falling on the medical book in front of her, but her fingertips curled slightly at an angle that no one could see.
Before long, the enticing aroma of food wafted from the kitchen, gently wafting into her nostrils. Xi Xiao's nostrils twitched almost imperceptibly, but her eyelids remained lowered, focused intently on the yellowed pages of the book. She sat firmly on the stool, as if everything around her was irrelevant.
"Dinner's ready."
Pei Yun's voice came from afar, accompanied by footsteps. He rolled up his plain sleeves, revealing a section of his slender wrist. A few strands of his dark hair had come loose from the hairpins while he was busy, and fell lazily to his forehead and neck. Far from looking disheveled, they added to his ethereal quality, a rare touch of worldliness.
He walked towards Xi Xiao, his gaze gentle. "I'll tidy up your desk for you. You can set the table, okay?"
Upon hearing this, Xi Xiao raised her head, her eyes filled with a perfectly timed sweet smile: "Senior brother is here to check my homework again? But I only studied for a short while today, and I haven't had time to think about many parts in detail. How can I answer?"
"I won't check, I won't test you today." Pei Yun shook his head with a smile, his tone indulgent. "It's just that you always dawdle when you're cleaning up. By the time you finish slowly, the food will probably be cold. I'll have to do it for you." As he spoke, he reached out and gently took her wrist, pulling her up from the stool and gently urging her to move towards the kitchen.
"Okay, I'll go." Xi Xiao stood up, but didn't forget to turn back and point precisely to a row of wooden cabinets against the wall, and instructed, "Then senior brother, please remember to put the book in the second cabinet on the left for me. If you put it in the wrong order, it will be troublesome for me to find it later, and I won't read it."
As she spoke, her gaze lingered on Pei Yun's face for a fleeting moment, a look as swift as a shooting star, difficult to catch. Then she quickly turned back, walking briskly out while muttering to herself as if not really paying attention: "However... Senior Brother's cooking skills seem to have improved a lot since then."
Pei Yun was lost in his own chaotic thoughts and did not see her meaningful glance just now. He did not even hear the second half of her muttered sentence clearly. He only vaguely heard the words "cooking skills" and subconsciously responded, "Okay, senior brother understands."
After Xi Xiao's figure disappeared through the doorway, Pei Yun walked to the table. He didn't tidy up immediately, but instead picked up the herbal medicine book that Xi Xiao had been looking at, running his fingertips over the illustrations and annotations on the pages as he carefully read through it.
However, after reading a few lines, he gently closed the book. Following Xi Xiao's instructions, he began to tidy up the scattered writing brushes, inkstones, paper, inkstones, and other odds and ends on the table, preparing to put them in the cabinet.
He walked to the row of wooden cabinets and reached out to pull open the second cabinet door from the left. Unexpectedly, as soon as one side of the cabinet door was opened, the scrolls and miscellaneous items inside lost their balance and tumbled out with a "whoosh," scattering all over the floor.
Pei Yun looked at the mess on the ground, sighed helplessly, and resignedly bent down to pick everything up. He first picked up a few scrolls, then two notebooks. When his hand touched a book with a slightly damaged spine, "Annotations on Herbs," a piece of ordinary letter paper suddenly slipped out from between the pages.
He didn't pay it any mind, assuming it was just a recipe Xi Xiao used as a bookmark or jot-down notes. He picked it up casually, intending to put it back in the book. However, just as he unfolded the letter, intending to smooth it out, his gaze inadvertently swept over a few lines of text on the paper...
...
Pei Yun's pupils suddenly contracted, and his fingers gripping the letter tightened sharply, his knuckles turning white instantly! The familiar, sharp pain in his chest and heart struck again without warning! His face turned deathly pale, and fine beads of cold sweat even appeared on his forehead. He stood frozen like a statue amidst the debris on the floor.
"Senior brother, I've already set the table, what are you dawdling for?" Xi Xiao's clear voice suddenly rang out from behind him, her tone carrying a hint of usual urging, without any hint of anything unusual, as if she had just arrived, or as if... she had been standing there quietly for a long time.
The sound was like a thunderclap, abruptly pulling Pei Yun back to reality from his immense shock and pain. Almost instinctively, he quickly suppressed all the uncontrolled ferocity on his face, his muscles twitching slightly from the forced restraint. With lightning speed, he crumpled the letter into a ball and swiftly stuffed it into his shirt.
He took a deep breath, forced himself to calm down, bent down and quickly put the scattered items back into the cabinet, then slammed the cabinet door shut.
After doing all this, he slowly turned around, his face once again displaying that gentle and refined mask. He even tried to force a seemingly helpless yet indulgent smile as he walked towards Xi Xiao: "Your cabinet is a mess, as if it had been robbed. I only opened one side, and everything inside spilled out. It's naturally going to take some effort to clean it up."
He approached her, his tone relaxed, trying to cover up his earlier lapse with a joke, "With things placed so haphazardly, it's no wonder your medical skills have always been difficult to improve. So that's the reason." As he spoke, he even reached out as if to pinch Xi Xiao's cheek, his actions intimate and natural, as if nothing had happened.
Xi Xiao's face instantly blossomed into a bright smile, like a summer flower in full bloom. She deftly tilted her head to dodge his outstretched hand, and then playfully turned the tables on him: "In that case, why don't you teach me step by step from now on, Senior Brother? Wouldn't that be much faster than me figuring it out on my own?"
Pei Yun gazed at her bright, carefree smile, a fleeting hint of jealousy flashing in the depths of his eyes, too quick to detect. He smiled and replied, "Alright, then you'd better listen to your master obediently."
The meal was finished in a seemingly relaxed and pleasant atmosphere. After the meal, Pei Yun went back to his room first, and Xi Xiao didn't ask any questions.
As night fell, the two returned to their respective rooms and did not speak to each other again that night. Only the cold moonlight silently bathed the quiet courtyard.
"Young master."
A low, hoarse call broke the deathly silence of the courtyard. The newcomer, dressed in night clothes that blended almost seamlessly into the darkness, appeared silently in the room, his breathing barely audible, leaving only his hoarse voice, which brought an eerie atmosphere to the already quiet bedroom.
Pei Yun was sitting behind his desk when he heard the sound. He calmly picked up a tinderbox and lit a candle beside him. The dim, flickering candlelight barely dispelled a small patch of darkness, but it only made his face appear more indistinct.
"Where is it?" he asked, his voice flat and expressionless, his gaze never leaving the candlelight.
The man in black stepped forward as instructed, deftly taking out several brand-new books from his pocket and carefully placing them on the desk. In the candlelight, the words on the book covers were strikingly similar to those in the several obscure and difficult medical books in Xi Xiao's room.
"Has it been investigated?" Pei Yun then turned his gaze to the books, picked up the top one at random, opened it, and looked at the densely packed characters. As he looked closely, he asked as if he were just casually asking. When he encountered particularly difficult and obscure parts, he would even pick up the red pen next to him and leave small annotations in the blank space of the page.
The man in black lowered his head, his posture respectful, but his voice was like an emotionless machine, cold and flat: "Young Master Xi Yu was hit by three arrows that day. Judging from the shape of the arrows left at the scene and the angle at which they entered the flesh, the arrowheads were all aimed directly at the vital points of the heart. Moreover, the recovered arrows were soaked with blood, so logically speaking, there was absolutely no possibility of survival."
Pei Yun's fingers, which were turning the pages of the book, paused slightly, as if he had encountered some extremely difficult point to understand. He did not immediately respond to the report, but instead focused intently on studying it, his brow furrowed slightly. After a long while, long enough for the candlelight to crackle softly, he finally came back to his senses, his tone still calm: "Send He Ying and Xiang Mo back and keep a close eye on Ling Zhouling. I need to know his every move."
He suddenly raised his eyes, his gaze not falling on the man in black, but briefly sweeping towards a vague corner of the room. His voice carried a hint of coldness that was barely perceptible: "Hesong... have you been in contact with anyone during this time? Or have you done anything unusual?"
As soon as he finished speaking, the man in black's already dull eyes seemed to be instantly stained with even darker ink, becoming even more profound and dark, almost filling his entire eye sockets. He was silent for a moment, and finally, in that same stiff tone without any inflection, he said, "No."
Pei Yun finally lifted his head completely from the pages of the book. In the candlelight, his gaze was as cold as ice, fixed directly on the man's lowered head. "Cong Jiu," he called out, his tone even gentle, yet it sent a chill down the listener's spine. "He Song once saved your life. It is only natural that you are grateful and retain some old feelings for him."
Cong Jiu's heart skipped a beat. Having followed him for many years, he knew all too well when this master would ever speak to someone in such a casual manner. He dared not think any further, nor hesitate in the slightest, and said, word by word, "This subordinate is loyal only to His Majesty."
Pei Yun watched him quietly for a moment. In the end, he just waved his hand listlessly, leaned back weakly against the cold chair back, and closed his eyes, as if he didn't care how Pei Yun responded.
A gust of wind swept by, and the burning candle on the table flickered slightly. When the flame stabilized again, Cong Jiu was no longer in the room, leaving only Pei Yun sitting alone in the dim light, with a few open and obscure medical books.
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