◇ Chapter 81: To coax
66 didn't believe it and tried again.
"?"
Where is the poison? Where is the poison? Why can't it be tested?
System failure?
66 tried again, looking at the analysis report on the small screen, and fell into deep thought.
There is indeed no lethal ingredient, but there is an ingredient that can cause coma, and the concentration is not low, enough to make a doctor sleep for a whole day and night.
——This glass of wine is more like a sleeping tea than a poison.
66 looked at the host who was unconscious on the couch with complicated eyes.
...The Duke didn't kill the host, but made him unconscious. What the hell is going on?
Separated by a wall, Imur quickly issued the order.
In the order, the Duke has sentenced Bai Yu, a traitor of the Black Robe Society, to death. Bai Yu will be forced to drink poison and his body will be dumped in the wilderness. He has also issued an investigation order, hoping that all the ministers and nobles will take this as a warning.
But on the other hand, he wrote a letter and handed it to a farm outside the city-state of Illia.
Bai Yu refused to cooperate. As an undercover agent of the Black Robe Society, he could no longer survive in Illia. Imur also didn't have the heart to lock him up in the mansion for the rest of his life. After much deliberation, he had no choice but to let him go.
He would send his personal guards in the early morning to escort Bai Yu out of Illia and temporarily live on the farm. He could then decide where to go. With his identity and skills as a doctor, he could live well in any city-state.
But in this way... he will never see Bai Yu again.
Imur raised his head, looked at the moon in the sky outside the window, and curled his fingers slightly.
Tonight is the last night.
Separated by a wall, Bai Yu fell into a deep sleep.
He was lifted up from the soft couch by the guards and laid flat on the bed.
The interrogator opened the door for Imur and bowed, saying, "Grand Duke, the person is here."
Imur nodded calmly and said, "You can go down."
The criminal officer saluted and then withdrew.
The doctor lay quietly on the bed.
He folded his hands on his abdomen, his brows were relaxed and his expression was calm and peaceful.
The mattress sagged slightly.
The Duke sat down beside the bed.
He didn't turn on the lights. The moonlight outside the window was as bright as a silver thread, and the room was filled with light. The moon shone on Bai Yu's handsome face, softening his cold features.
This is indeed a very beautiful face, but...
Imur thought, it’s a pity that I will never see him again.
From now on, the Baiyu of Illia will be an unrecognizable rotting corpse in the wilderness, and the doctor will be exiled, never to return.
He would not know Imur's identity. Everything that had happened in the past few months was the Duke's dream alone.
Imur lifted the quilt and lay down next to the doctor in human form for the first time.
The doctor's body temperature was still warm, and his chest rose and fell regularly with his breathing. The bulging lines were soft and beautiful. Imur tentatively reached out his hand and hugged him.
The width of the doctor's chest is also suitable for being hugged. When I snuggle in his arms, it seems that all harm will be blocked, leaving only pure safety.
He rubbed the doctor's shoulder blade and thought, "What a loser."
A grand duke of a country has ended up like this.
But the doctor's side was so warm that it suppressed the pain in his bones during the mutation period. Bai Yu had the bitter smell of the pharmacy, cold, inorganic, but very clean, and was warmed by the temperature of his skin. Imur took two greedy breaths and then set his eyes on Bai Yu's lips.
He had wanted to kiss the doctor for a long time.
Bai Yu's lips are thin, and look serious and cold when he is not smiling. When he smiles, his lips are curved and he looks very kissable. At this moment, he is drowsy, his facial muscles are relaxed, and his lips are light pink, like the color of unripe berries.
When Bai Yu was awake, Imur didn't dare to do that, not even in his kitten form. But now, he stretched out a finger and placed it on the doctor's cheek, rubbing it wantonly, as revenge for these days, and then he gently leaned down and stole a kiss on his lips.
Very light and shallow.
Imur had never kissed before and didn't know how to kiss. He didn't even know how to pry open his teeth and stick his tongue in. This kiss was more like a random rubbing, like a kitten licking to express affection.
Then, he emerged from his clothes, transformed into a platinum kitten, and laid on the doctor's belly.
The muscles are soft when not exerting any force. The kitten curled up into a ball and thought to himself, "This is the last time."
I slept in Bai Yu’s arms for the last time. After tomorrow, we will be strangers.
During each subsequent mutation period, there was no one to hold him and rub his sore joints.
The kitten lay on the doctor and fell into a light sleep.
At dawn, Yimuer climbed up from Bai Yu and turned back into human form. He held his clothes to cover his naked body, and slowly extended his fingertips to trace the doctor's cold eyebrows and beautiful jaw, as if he wanted to remember this face in his mind.
The butler knocked on the door: "Duke, it's almost dawn."
According to the plan, they had to take Bai Yushen out through the city gate at night without anyone noticing. Now it was only a little over an hour away from dawn. When the east got bright and the city started to wake up, it would be difficult to operate.
Imur was startled, slowly took his hand back to button his clothes, and lowered his eyes: "Come in."
He stood beside the bed, covering up all traces.
The guards put Bai Yu on a stretcher, carried him away, put him on a cart, and mixed him with a pile of grass and fodder out of the city. At the same time, a decayed male corpse with an unrecognizable face appeared in the barren hills in the western suburbs of the city. The corpse had been dead for a long time and was covered with wounds. The Duke issued a notice announcing that the spy Bai Yu was dead.
*
When Bai Yu woke up, his whole body felt like it was falling apart.
His waist was padded with straw, and a few poles just poked his waist. As the cart bumped up and down, Bai Yu put his hands under his waist, opened his eyes, and saw the endless azure blue sky.
According to the knowledge in the geography book, Illia's latitude is not low, and there are dense grasslands around the edge of the city-state. He turned over and sat up on the cart. The green grass spread to the sky, and the clouds were soft and white with a very high saturation, like the startup desktop of Windows XP.
They sped along the path, not knowing where they were going.
Bai Yu burst out laughing.
He rubbed his lower back and thought, "Silly little cat, is that all the courage you have?"
When the glass of wine was brought to him, he thought that when he opened his eyes again, he would be in a dungeon. Imur would strip him of his identity, lock him up, and threaten him not to go anywhere.
In the end, you let him out even though you were reluctant to do so?
...Sure enough, no matter how fierce he pretended to be, the Duke still softened his heart.
Bai Yu even had a package at hand with some new clothes in it, obviously prepared by the Duke. He also had a bag tied around his waist. Bai Yu opened it and found seven or eight small gold bars and a handful of gold beans for easy sale. These things were not engraved with the Duke's Palace and were hard currency that was easy to circulate. In addition, there was a box wrapped in silk cloth, which contained a thick stack of glasses lenses.
It is enough for Bai Yu to use until the end of time.
Bai Yu wanted to laugh even more.
He thought about how Imur secretly gave him gold beans, grumbling in anger, and at the same time stuffing a bunch of glasses lenses into his eyes for fear that he would go blind and unable to see the road, and he couldn't help but curl the corners of his lips.
...really, it's quite cute.
66 had been lying on the side counting clouds with a sad face, like a melancholy little mushroom. He finally found that Bai Yu had woken up, so he floated over with a sad face and stretched out his tone: "Host——"
Bai Yu: "Speak properly."
66 sobbed: "Why didn't you die? This is not the script for us."
“…”
If it were in human form, it would have already burst into tears.
Bai Yu sighed lightly: "I'm sorry 66, but I'm sorry, I'm afraid I'm also..."
He and 66 are already familiar with each other, and he knows more or less what happened to the previous hosts. As a system that abuses the host, the first two hosts of 66 rolled into the same bed with the protagonist, loving each other and being very happy, while 66 could only hover on the edge of passing, becoming the bottom of all systems.
66: "QAQ"
It wiped away its nonexistent tears: "What are you afraid of..."
Bai Yu shook his head, hugged the crying little system into his arms, and changed the subject: "What time is it now? Where are we?"
66: "It's two o'clock in the afternoon. We are between Illia and Bliss. We will soon reach a farm."
Bai Yu shouted: "Driver, turn around."
The driver was one of the Duke's personal guards, and was driving to the farm. He didn't expect the doctor to wake up so quickly, and was stunned when he heard it: "What?"
With a sharp blow of the hand knife, the cart braked suddenly and the driver crashed into the frame.
Bai Yu withdrew his hand, put him in the hay, stripped off his clothes and personal guard credentials, turned the car around and increased the speed to maximum.
If we rush back to Illia now, it will probably be late at night.
*
Late at night, at the Grand Duke's Palace.
After correcting the last document, Imur rubbed his forehead.
The butler was serving on the side. Two male servants had accidents one after another. The Grand Duke didn't even have someone to serve him closely, so he had to take on the responsibility with his old body.
He took the revised document and put it away, turned off the reading light on the table, and asked softly: "Grand Duke, it's almost your monthly memorial day again. Are you going to stay in the countryside for a while?"
Grand Duke Imur would go on a long journey every month without anyone around, and would stay at his mother's residence for a few days. This was a custom in the Duke's Palace.
Imur bit his lower lip and nodded: "I will leave at dawn, as usual, you don't have to follow me."
The so-called memorial service for the mother was just a cover. Only Imur himself knew that he was about to reach the period of mutation.
During the mutation period, he would turn into a weak kitten, feeling sore all over and unable to move. That was the time when the Grand Duke was at his most vulnerable, and also the most secretive, and could not be known to others.
Even the old butler cannot know this secret, otherwise the identity of the descendant of slaves will be exposed, and Imur does not want to know the consequences.
The old butler said yes and withdrew respectfully.
Imur nodded, got up and went out, deliberately bumping into a few servants and pretending to leave. Then he returned to the house and pressed his clothes carefully at the bottom of the closet.
The Grand Duke had a lot of clothes, and no one would notice if he left one extra piece unworn.
Then, he felt the familiar swelling pain in his body, and then his vision gradually became shorter, his muscles trembled and twitched, and uncontrollable changes occurred...
He fell to the ground and turned into a kitten.
Unlike the arrogant appearance of jumping around in Bai Yu's house, Imur did not dare to be discovered. He carefully concealed his presence, jumped onto the windowsill, and came to the garden alone while everyone was resting late at night.
He walked around the artificial lake where swans were raised and found a hole in the lawn that was only big enough for a kitten to pass through.
If Bai Yu were here, he would find that this was the underground forbidden area he had been to before.
That is where Ymur lived during every mutation period.
He announced to the public that the Duke had left and could not appear in the mansion, and the kitten could not appear in the next few days. Otherwise, if someone was interested and compared the cat and the Duke, only one of them would appear, and they would be able to find clues.
And Imur couldn't go to the street. Illia was not safe. The stray kittens were just toys that could be killed at any time. It was very dangerous for him to wander around with his physique.
Imur could not ask anyone for help. In order to avoid being discovered, no one knew the Duke's identity. Even his most trusted subordinates might stab the Duke to death after learning the secret.
He had to find a safe and private place to spend these painful days.
This place is the underground space of the Duke's Mansion, the dark prison where he grew up in his childhood.
This place has been abandoned for a long time and is a forbidden area, so no one will come here. It is deep enough underground and soundproof enough, so even if the mutants can't bear the pain and scream, no one will hear it.
The place that carried his childhood nightmares has become his only refuge now. How ironic it is that he would crawl in on his own initiative when he is in the most pain.
His body was limp and his steps were unsteady. Imur was dizzy and couldn't step on the stairs. He almost rolled all the way down and fell to the ground.
……it hurts.
The kitten's ears deflated and became airplane ears, but this time no one helped him rub his ears.
Imur struggled to stand up on all fours and crawled to the center of the basement. He then wrapped his tail around himself and lay there motionless.
On the first day of the mutation period, he didn't have the energy to move.
The pain surged in from all directions like a tide, never ending. Cold sweat seeped out, and the platinum hair was wet and stuck to the body.
…It’s so cold.
The basement was built at the bottom of the lake. It never sees sunlight all year round and is dark and damp. The ground beneath is cold and vaporous, and the air is filled with the smell of rotting moss. If the kitten stays here for too long, it will probably get ringworm.
But Imur had no choice.
The pain made him breathe heavily. The big tail covered his body, but it could not cover the shallow warmth of his body. Imur felt that he was gradually losing temperature.
Imur was very familiar with this process. He had gone through every previous mutation period in this way. The winter in Illia was long and cold, and it was particularly difficult to endure every time at this time.
There was a little moisture in Xiaomaohu's blue eyes. He blinked hard, but failed to stop the moisture from spreading. It even had a tendency to gather.
...It feels so uncomfortable.
Although this was the case during previous mutation periods, this time it was particularly different.
He has been with the doctor and has passed two stages of the mutation safely.
The doctor's house was warm, the quilt was warm, his fingertips were warm, his chest and stomach were also warm. He would carefully hold Tuanzi in his arms, press on his swollen muscles to help him relieve the pain, and make delicious porridge for him so that he wouldn't go hungry.
The doctor's windowsill can get sunlight and there is no damp moisture. There is a clean fragrance around the doctor and no smell of mold. Everything around the doctor is ten thousand times better than it is now.
Imur closed his eyes tightly, his body twitching in sharp pain. He was full of grievances, and finally he tasted a little bit of tears at the corner of his lips.
The water vapor still gathered and rolled down.
The kitten closed his eyes stubbornly, trying to stop his tears, but the feeling of grievance that came from nowhere was lingering in his heart, so he had to stretch out his claws and wipe his face fiercely.
Although this is how it had been for many years before, the kitten, who had been pampered and cared for, found it really difficult to tolerate the basement.
Imur thought it was all in vain.
But what can I do?
The doctor is a member of the Black Robe Society and wants to kill him. If the doctor knew that the kitten was Imur, he would have wielded the butcher knife long ago. All the love and kindness were just stolen by him and will eventually disappear.
As the descendant of slaves, and as punishment for killing several brothers to gain power, perhaps he deserves to be in this basement, tasting pain over and over again.
...Besides, he had already sent the doctor out of town.
Calculating the time, Bai Yu has already settled down on the farm and will go to another city in a few days at the latest.
They will never meet again.
Imur could no longer find anyone who was willing to hold it, coax it, and make porridge for it during the period of mutation.
The more Imur thought about it, the more aggrieved he felt. He rubbed his cheek roughly with his claws, but he could not wipe away the wetness of his hands. In the end, the grievance became more and more intense and turned into silent sobs.
But suddenly, he heard a sigh.
The iron plate covering the basement was opened at some point, and Imur's body suddenly felt lighter.
——He was gently picked up and placed in his arms.
Yimuer looked up blankly, and saw Bai Yu's handsome face. The doctor gently rubbed his ears.
"Whose kitten is this? It's crying here alone, and it's crying so pitifully."
The author has something to say:
Doctor: Why is my kitten crying here alone? Come and give him a hug.
Duke: Mi-- (crying)
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