Chapter 40: Resentful Marriage 22

Chapter 40: Resentful Marriage 22

"You went off on your own again." Jiang Huanyun whipped around, his outer robe sliding off one shoulder, and he didn't even bother with it. "Why didn't you call me?"

"You're hurt—you can't be moving around." Li Yu's tone was flat.

Jiang Huanyun opened his mouth to argue, but then remembered his right shoulder was still wrapped in bandages. Forget scaling walls—even that little lunge just now had his vision swimming.

He yanked his robe back into place, sulking, and said nothing.

But then again, Li Yu was hurt worse than him. A hole in his chest, burns across his back, and a gash on his left palm that still hadn't scabbed over...

How dare this guy tell *him* he couldn't move, when he himself scaled walls quieter than a cat?

The more he stewed on it, the madder Jiang Huanyun got. Li Yu watched him, then suddenly lifted a hand and curled his fingers at him, like calling a cat. "Huanyun. Come here."

Jiang Huanyun eyed him warily. "What?"

"Come here. Don't stand so far away."

Jiang Huanyun hesitated, then grudgingly dragged his stool closer. Li Yu took a piece of paper from his chest and spread it on the table.

It was that thin bamboo paper from the Xie estate's study, edges curling from the night breeze. He grabbed the nearly dry brush off the table, dipped it in the leftover ink, and dashed off the Xie estate's outline in a few strokes.

"You called me over here just to watch you draw?" Jiang Huanyun propped his chin on his hand, his tone deliberately baiting.

Li Yu ignored him and added a few more strokes to mark the screen wall, the covered walkway, the old locust tree, and Xie Zining's room.

His drawing was honestly terrible—stiff lines, zero sense of proportion. The screen wall looked like a lopsided block of tofu, the walkway like a centipede bent out of shape by the wind. The old locust tree was the worst: trunk all twisted, crown like a spiky ink splotch.

And yet he drew with total seriousness, every stroke steady and precise, like he was mapping out some profound, inscrutable mechanism.

"Are you even looking at this?" Li Yu turned his head and saw Jiang Huanyun staring at him. His face was deadpan.

"I *am* looking. What do you mean I'm not looking?" Jiang Huanyun leaned in, squinting at the drawing, then pointed at the tree. "Is that... a hedgehog?"

Li Yu said flatly, "It's the old locust tree."

"The old locust tree looks like *this*? People would think you were drawing that cocoon-covered tree back in Sangyu Village." Jiang Huanyun's shoulders shook with stifled laughter, his good hand gripping the table's edge so hard his knuckles went white.

Li Yu stared at him for a beat, then set the brush down.

"Then we're done here." He started to fold the paper up.

"No no no, I'm sorry, I'll actually look." Jiang Huanyun pressed his hand over Li Yu's, fingertips resting on the back of it, gentle but firm. "Great Hero, please keep drawing. This humble one will put his eyes back in his head and shut up."

Li Yu's hand stayed put, pinned under his. He picked up the brush again, circled the formation's core he'd spotted earlier, then sketched the half wooden token he'd seen on his night scout next to Xie Siyin's name.

At that stroke, the smile slowly slipped off Jiang Huanyun's face.

"You saw a wooden token on Xie Siyin's wrist?" he asked.

"Tied with red string. Half of one. The markings match the runes on the old locust tree." Li Yu said.

Jiang Huanyun stared at the lines a while longer—each ugly in its own special way—then suddenly reached out, fingertip landing on the spot marking Xie Zining's room in the back courtyard, circled twice in ink.

"You said before this house has a massive formation. The screen wall draws qi, the floor tiles gather it, the walkway traps it, the locust tree seals it."

His voice dropped low, like he was talking to himself, or maybe to Li Yu. "If all the qi in the house flows into Xie Zining's room, then what happens to Xie Siyin, who lives in the same house?"

"She'd slowly be drained dry." Li Yu said.

"What about Xie Siyin's wooden token? What role does she play in this formation?"

Li Yu fell silent. The oil lamp's flame shrank to a pea-sized flicker, stretching their shadows into impossibly long shapes that overlapped on the stained wall.

Jiang Huanyun's fingers stayed pressed on the paper, beside Xie Siyin's name, as if he could reach through the thin sheet and pull that carefree, laughing girl out of the whirlpool.

"She's part of the formation too." Jiang Huanyun suddenly lifted his head, those pale green eyes blazing with startling intensity in the dim light. "This formation isn't meant to trap her—it's using her life to feed Xie Zining's. Xie Zining has always been sick, but he's still alive. A man this sick—how's he managed to hold on for so many years?"

Jiang Huanyun looked up at Li Yu, and Li Yu was looking back at him.

"A life-exchange formation." Jiang Huanyun said.

Li Yu didn't answer, just gave a slight nod.

"She doesn't know." Jiang Huanyun said.

Li Yu watched him.

"Xie Siyin doesn't know." Jiang Huanyun's fingertips scraped at the table's edge without thinking, his voice low and urgent. "She was so happy getting ready for the wedding, even told people 'worst case, I'll die together with Xie Zining'—she has no idea she's the one whose life is being drained. She thinks Xie Zining can really get better, thinks everything will change once they marry. She doesn't know..."

He trailed off, his lashes drooping to veil the barely contained anger in his eyes. He remembered the way Xie Siyin's fingers were so gentle when she did his hair, remembered her teasing him about being handsome.

Remembered the way her eyes lit up like a little fox who'd stolen honey when she slipped pine nut candy to Xie Zining.

A girl like that—how could she possibly be someone who willingly fed another person's fate?

"Xie Zining knows." Li Yu said.

"Of course he knows." Jiang Huanyun almost blurted it out, his voice carrying an anger he hadn't even registered himself. "He knows, and he still made her wear that token, still let her marry him happily. He said he didn't want her to wait, said he wanted to marry her out in the open, said it all so..."

He paused, swallowing back the rest of the sentence, and only squeezed out a barely audible, "So real."

The oil lamp's flame finally burned through the last of its wick. It jumped once, then went out. The whole room sank into darkness, only the faint moonlight from outside leaking in, laying a thin frost across their faces.

Jiang Huanyun sat in that dim light, half his face hidden in shadow, only the cinnabar mole between his brows still burning a vivid red, like a drop of scalding blood fallen on snow.

Li Yu reached out and, in the darkness, pressed down on Jiang Huanyun's clenched fist. That hand was cold, trembling slightly. He held it down, without force, just wrapping his own palm around it.

"Investigate before passing judgment," he said. "If it's really so, then this marriage—no matter how much gold is offered—cannot go forward."

Jiang Huanyun looked up at him in the dark. He couldn't see Li Yu's expression, only felt that hand was very steady, just like when it had caught him in the Mist Forest.

He suddenly went still. After a long moment, he let out a soft "Mm."

The hand wrapped in Li Yu's slowly turned, and closed its fingers around Li Yu's wrist.