WRA CH89

The hands on the wall clock quietly ticked past midnight into the early morning hours.

The body heat, tinged with grievance, transmitted from Chu Ren’s palms gripping his shoulders, gradually igniting the hibernating snake.

His lover’s body heat, to Bai Qi, was the best aphrodisiac.

—In the literal sense of coaxing a snake to awaken from hibernation and enter its active spring phase.

After about thirty seconds, Bai Qi completely regained his vitality. Leaning against Chu Ren’s fiery chest and listening to the human’s heart still beating powerfully even in winter, he slowly explained, “My heart hasn’t changed, Chu Ren.”

Having his wife lean against him so softly and bonelessly, Chu Ren’s doubts vanished by eighty or ninety percent. He hugged Bai Qi tighter. His wife was so weak and fragile.

Bai Qi narrowed his eyes comfortably. “My body is a bit special. Once winter comes, I just can’t muster any energy; I only want to sleep in. Chu Ren, if you’re hoping for me to take care of you as diligently as I did in the summer, I can’t do it.”

“Have you gotten it checked at the hospital?” Chu Ren asked. “Is it a Vitamin D deficiency?”

“I checked. The doctor said it’s just laziness,” Bai Qi replied.

Chu Ren reached his own conclusion: it was still a deficiency in Qi and blood. His hands and feet were already ice-cold in the summer, so this kind of constitution would only be weaker in winter. He could never get the bed warm no matter how long he slept, and the longer he slept, the colder he got, leading to his reluctance to get out of bed.

Chu Ren reached under the covers to feel the soles of Bai Qi’s feet. Sure enough, they were freezing. “Why didn’t you turn on the floor heating?”

Bai Qi blinked. “What floor heating?”

Chu Ren choked. Filled with remorse, he got out of bed to turn on the floor heating for the entire house. He blamed himself for being too careless. Bai Qi’s family was poor; he probably didn’t even know what floor heating was. It was currently late autumn—cold, but not yet bone-chillingly so—so most people hadn’t reached the point of needing the heat on.

How could he have forgotten about Bai Qi having ice-cold hands and feet?

Floor heating didn’t blow air; it warmed from the soles of the feet up, making it much more comfortable than air conditioning.

The pre-installed underground water heating pipes began to work, and the indoor temperature climbed bit by bit. It would take two hours to reach the set temperature. Chu Ren went around checking each room to make sure the floor heating was functioning properly, and then spotted a perfectly untouched bag of takeout on the dining table.

The Peking duck he had ordered for Bai Qi hadn’t been touched at all.

He touched the packaging; it was completely cold.

Frowning, Chu Ren popped the roast duck into the microwave, and after heating it up, placed it on a tray along with the sauce packets and condiments, carrying it all into the bedroom.

Wrapped in his blanket like a snowman, Bai Qi’s eyes darted around, following Chu Ren’s movements.

The room hadn’t warmed up yet. Chu Ren reached up and stripped off his own shirt, pulled the over-bed table closer, and started assembling roast duck rolls for his wife. Knowing Bai Qi loved quail eggs, Chu Ren had spotted a vendor selling salt-baked quail eggs at the high-speed rail station exit and bought a whole pound.

The bed-warming effect of a strapping eighteen-year-old male goes without saying. Bai Qi’s appetite was simultaneously awakened by the heat, and he accepted a roast duck roll.

Seeing his good appetite, Chu Ren felt relieved. As long as he could eat and sleep, it was fine. As he peeled the quail eggs, he asked casually, “You haven’t eaten today, have you?”

“Mm,” Bai Qi hummed.

Chu Ren’s peeling motion paused.

As soon as he answered, Bai Qi realized he’d been tricked and quickly changed his tune: “I ate.”

“I checked all the trash cans,” Chu Ren said. There wasn’t a single wrapper or food scrap.

Bai Qi: “…”

Uh, snakes were just like that. A massive meal could last them a whole week. Eating three meals a day during the summer had been entirely just to keep Chu Ren company. As for winter, hibernation didn’t require any food at all.

Bai Qi silently took huge bites of the roast duck, trying to make up for his mistake.

Chu Ren burst out irritably, “I’m not studying anymore! I’m dropping out! When I’m not home, you don’t even eat properly. I’m going to stay home full-time and take care of my wife!”

“No, if you have class, you have to go… wait, don’t you have a class tomorrow morning?” Bai Qi asked.

Chu Ren had rushed back in the middle of the night; he couldn’t possibly be expected to rush back to school in the wee hours of the morning. Tomorrow morning’s class was destined to be skipped.

Chu Ren reached under the covers and squeezed his wife’s inner thigh. Even the fleshiest part had gotten thinner. “I’m not going!”

He was going to drop out and test into a local university! All that stuff about having a virtuous wife who cooked for him was just a facade. If he wasn’t home, Bai Qi was fully capable of starving himself to death.

Bai Qi had to spend a good while coaxing him, promising to eat at least two meals a day. Seeing Chu Ren remaining stubborn, he put on a stern face, grabbed the glasses from the nightstand, and put them on. “Chu Ren, I have requirements for your GPA. Top 5% at least.”

It was a perfect ranking: high enough to snag scholarships, or fall back and successfully switch majors.

For the first time, Chu Ren discovered the benefits of studying ahead: “I already know it all. Don’t worry.”

He immediately called his mom, asking her to request three days of leave from his counselor for him, making it a total of five days together with the weekend. The excuse was that his dad had been hospitalized.

His mom submitted the leave request without a single question. This was because Chu Ren was the most worry-free and outstanding child of his generation, trailed by a flock of younger cousins and siblings who were expected to barely scrape into vocational colleges.

Lying back helplessly against the pillows, Bai Qi thought, This is the danger of puppy love.

Whatever. He would behave perfectly for five days and then pack this young master right back to school.

After finishing their late-night snack, Chu Ren demanded that Bai Qi go out for a walk with him. Eating too much right before bed was bad for digestion.

It was cold outside and there was no floor heating. Bai Qi’s feet had absolutely zero desire to touch the ground.

Brooking no argument, Chu Ren wrapped him in the blanket and carried him out on his back for a stroll.

With only his two eyes exposed, Bai Qi observed the tail end of autumn from his perch on Chu Ren’s back.

The villa district had spent a fortune on landscaping, mixing evergreens with deciduous trees so that the scenery never repeated itself throughout the four seasons.

Yellow heart-shaped leaves had piled up under the trees all day. When the wind kicked up, they scattered everywhere; the sanitation workers wouldn’t come to sweep them up until tomorrow morning.

Sneakers crunched on the yellow leaves with a rustle, rustle, sounding like a small animal scurrying through piles of fallen leaves.

After making a lap around the parasol tree-lined avenue, Chu Ren finally headed home. By this time, the floor heating had evenly raised the temperature to 26 degrees Celsius. Chu Ren set Bai Qi down.

When Bai Qi’s feet hit the floor, the blanket dropped to the ground. Pleasantly surprised, he padded around barefoot here and there. So this floor could generate heat! It was even more comfortable than the bed.

Since autumn began, it had been a long time since he’d walked barefoot on the ground.

“Is it warm?” Chu Ren asked.

“It’s warm. Let’s sleep on the floor tonight,” Bai Qi decided.

Chuckling, Chu Ren spread out the bedding. “Alright. Hubby will warm the bed for you.”

Who could say no to a piping hot human husband?

Bai Qi’s Guide to Adulthood had already been mailed back to Demon Spirit Village, otherwise he would have added an extra clause: When looking for a husband, find one with a roaring internal fire and a house with floor heating.

The couple slept on the floor mat all night. Bai Qi, displaying excellent flexibility, coiled himself tightly around Chu Ren. When Chu Ren tried to get up to make breakfast in the morning, it took a fair bit of effort to peel his wife off. Bai Qi was surprisingly strong, and Chu Ren couldn’t bear to wake him up.

Bai Qi didn’t wake up until he heard the clanging and banging coming from the kitchen. Walking out to take a look, he saw Chu Ren frantically fumbling around trying to cook.

He wanted to say, “Let me do it,” but feeling a bit too lazy, he tilted his head and said instead, “I can’t take care of you in the winter.”

“If you just eat your meals on time, I’ll thank the heavens and the earth!” Chu Ren huffed.

Bai Qi felt that it was bad for Chu Ren to skip classes to stay home and cook. His pitch-black eyes darted around as he came up with a compromise: “How about we break up in the winter and get back together in the summer, and just do that every year? I can’t do anything in the winter anyway, and I’m just troubling you.”

Chu Ren was nearly scared out of his wits by this idea: “Do you think I found a wife just so someone would cook for me?!”

Bai Qi tilted his head and looked at him. That was exactly how it started, wasn’t it?

“I… I’ll just cook in the summer from now on too!” Chu Ren sputtered.

“Alright,” Bai Qi agreed.

With the roles of caretaker and young master reversed, Chu Ren began learning how to cook and look after his wife. The first three days were clumsy and rough, but the following two days went much smoother.

After serving his wife, he would roll into a tangled heap with him. “In the summer you cool me down, and in the winter I warm you up. Is it too hot, wife?”

Bai Qi raised a hand to cover his eyes. He was officially a snake going into heat out of season. “…Hot.”

Chu Ren adhered strictly to a ‘high quality, low frequency’ rule, afraid that his wife wouldn’t be able to handle it. He generally wouldn’t go for a second round, and when he finished once, he wouldn’t withdraw immediately. Instead, he would cuddle affectionately with his wife, continuing to serve his function as a human heating rod.

His wife’s bodily flexibility and recovery ability in the rear were both quite good. It was just that his constitution was too weak, prone to sudden chills and heat flashes. When active, his body temperature would run scorching hot, but when still, he would sweat and his temperature would drop back down. Traditional Chinese medicine said this was bad for the health.

This tempering through alternating cold and heat made Chu Ren, the “blade,” even more effective and durable, increasing both his rigidity and resilience.

Yet he never abused his “weapon.” He cherished his wife’s body immensely and loved post-coital cuddling the most, radiating his residual heat.

Unlike novels, which would explicitly describe ‘seven times a night,’ television dramas preferred to exaggerate men’s inadequacies—avoiding intimacy and rolling over to feign sleep. Bai Qi could easily list off one, two, three, four, five such dramas off the top of his head.

Bai Qi didn’t know about all that. All Bai Qi knew was that his husband lasting two hours per session was already incredibly impressive.

Thus, the couple, neither knowing the other’s true limits, maintained a level of intimacy that left them both deeply satisfied.

When Sunday afternoon rolled around, Chu Ren once again couldn’t bear to leave.

Bai Qi, a snake braving the biting winter wind with stiffened limbs, snapped off a cypress branch. His cold, pale fingers contrasted sharply with the dark green cypress leaves. “Be self-aware. I don’t want to whip you.”

Chu Ren proposed a new set of ground rules: “Video calls for all three meals a day. I want to watch you eat.”

He had absolutely no idea how difficult this was for a lazy snake.

“Fine.” Bai Qi had conditions of his own. “If your GPA drops, you can just stay at school during the winter break and take remedial classes.”

Studying was the highest priority. Bai Qi was genuinely worried that Chu Ren would let his coursework slip because of their early romance.

Chu Ren sighed. His illiterate wife was a pure meritocrat regarding grades.

Fortunately, he had tested in with high scores. Even at a prestigious university teeming with top talents from all over, he still had the strength to hold his own.

“Wife, you go inside first, then I’ll leave,” Chu Ren said.

“You get in the car first,” Bai Qi countered.

Afraid that his wife would be standing out in the cold for too long, Chu Ren had no choice but to immediately get in the car.

Bai Qi watched the car drive away. Thinking about his husband, who was looking more and more like a proper spouse these days, he also felt a pang of reluctance to part.

He stood there for a while, having nowhere to vent his feelings. After a long moment, he dialed Auntie Guihua’s number.

The younger Li Guihua’s mahjong addiction wasn’t too severe yet. After all, at this point in time, Bai Qi hadn’t struck it rich, and the Spirit Foundation didn’t have a never-ending stream of massive donations flowing in, so Li Guihua couldn’t just sit around eating into her savings, could she?

Li Guihua was out foraging in the fields. She answered the phone and asked with concern, “Bai Qi, are you cold? Do you want to come back and hibernate?”

“Auntie, I’m doing very well. I’m in a place that isn’t cold at all,” Bai Qi replied.

He twirled the cypress sprig in his hand—Chu Ren had snatched away the larger branch. Smiling, his thick black eyelashes casting shadows over his irises, he said, “Auntie, in the future, if there are other spirits, don’t teach them how to cook anymore.”

It was a waste of time learning. A human husband will do it for you.

Li Guihua was more than happy to enjoy the leisure. Great, great, I won’t teach any of them. Every spirit has different dietary habits anyway, and some don’t even like to eat food.

……

With the floor heating on, Bai Qi no longer needed to hibernate, so he picked back up the management of Changsheng Media.

The people in the company only knew that investments now had to go through Young Master Chu’s approval process, completely unaware that it was Bai Qi making the decisions entirely on his own.

Seeing that his son was doing a stellar job, Father Chu handed over even more responsibilities, all of which Bai Qi accepted without missing a beat.

He possessed a remarkably sharp commercial instinct for the film and television industry and never made a wrong decision.

Changsheng Media was his husband’s source of income; Bai Qi wouldn’t let it go under.

Once Chu Ren’s college life got on track, he was finally able to return home once a week.

One Wednesday.

Bai Qi was still sleeping early in the morning—he usually slept until the sun came up and the ground warmed up before waking. Suddenly, a raucous clamor broke out outside, sounding as if a flock of ducks had suddenly swarmed in.

Had Chu Ren come back? Did he skip class again?

He got out of bed, put on his glasses, twisted open the bedroom door, and was met with a group of teenagers he didn’t recognize.

They were Chu Ren’s three younger cousins, currently in middle school. They were obsessed with skipping class to throw parties with wannabe-thugs, looking exactly like the type of kids who wouldn’t even be able to test into high school and would inevitably have to be shipped abroad.

Their parents were at their wits’ end. They couldn’t beat them, so they restricted their allowances instead. The three of them put their heads together, remembered that their oldest cousin’s villa was empty, and came to wreak havoc on his place.

Chu Ren had lent the place to his cousins for a birthday party once before and hadn’t changed the passcode. The cousin sent Chu Ren a text message and just marched right over.

“Who are you?” Bai Qi asked.

“And who the hell are you?!” the youngest cousin shot back. “Why are you in my cousin’s house?!”

“I am his boyfriend,” Bai Qi replied calmly. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

“None of your business!!” the oldest cousin spat. “Class, my ass! The teachers’ salaries aren’t even as high as my allowance. What’s the damn point of going to school?”

Bai Qi: “?”

He fell silent for a moment while the three brothers began causing a ruckus, shoving all the furniture in the living room aside to clear a space.

Bai Qi walked over and patted the oldest cousin on the shoulder. “You—”

In families like theirs, the eldest cousin was absolutely bound to marry a proper wife eventually. What was a boyfriend? Just a temporary plaything. The oldest cousin snapped impatiently, “What do you want—Ah!”

A scream tore through the room. Everyone snapped their heads around, only to see the 165-pound oldest cousin hoisted into the air by Bai Qi, dangling single-handedly by his collar.

The other two lunged forward to save him. Bai Qi sneered coldly, tossed the chubby cousin onto the sofa, and grabbed the other two, pinning one down with each hand.

Before the chubby cousin could even scramble up, his two younger brothers came flying over.

The other wannabe-thugs were utterly stunned.

Bai Qi cast a frigid glare their way, the lenses of his glasses flashing with a cold light. “Scram.”

Snakes were creatures fully capable of cannibalism. When Bai Qi was apathetic, there wasn’t a single shred of human warmth in his eyes.

“Go, go, go…” The wannabe-thugs scattered like a flushed flock of birds, leaving the three Chu family scions huddled into a ball on the sofa.

Bai Qi narrowed his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?”

The oldest cousin was being crushed so hard he was ready to cough up blood. “Yes, yes, yes!”

The middle cousin cowered behind the oldest. “Mercy, Cousin-in-law! We didn’t know anyone was here!”

“We’ll leave right now,” the youngest cousin whimpered.

Cousin-in-law?

Bai Qi furrowed his brow slightly. Why the sudden family title? Relatives in human society were an incredibly important bond; they united against outsiders and supported one another.

Since they had called him that, he had a duty to discipline them on Chu Ren’s behalf.

“Put everything back the way it was,” Bai Qi ordered.

While waiting for them to restore the room, Bai Qi figured out that they were all third-year middle school students. He found an online English course on the TV and forced them to study.

“Vocabulary memorization. Finish memorizing a hundred words today.”

“Sit up straight.” Gripping a broom handle, Bai Qi patrolled behind them like a demon lord, whacking the chair of anyone who dared to slouch.

“From now on, at school, remember to sit and pay attention in class exactly like this.”

Chu Ren didn’t see his messages until after class. Spotting his cousin’s text, he frowned. Idiot cousins. He truly couldn’t be bothered to deal with this bunch of juniors, but since all the elders in the family were so close, they always pressured him to look after his younger cousins.

His frail, weak wife was going to be bullied!

He immediately called his cousin, but no one answered.

Chu Ren instantly dialed Bai Qi instead: “Wife, they didn’t bully you, did they?”

“No,” Bai Qi replied.

“I’m heading back right now. Wait for me at home,” Chu Ren said.

Even if his cousins didn’t bully Bai Qi, those loudmouths would definitely go tattling to the elders. He had to go back and officially come out of the closet.

He couldn’t wait to become stronger anymore; the Chu Ren of right now was the strongest Chu Ren.

Hanging up the phone, Bai Qi looked at the snapped broom handle in his grasp, then cast a dark, eerie gaze over the three boys in front of him. “Are you going to tell Chu Ren?”

The three of them chorused in absolute unison: “No! Nothing happened here today!”

Fuck, Cousin-in-law hit so damn hard. They had heard their brother screaming in agony and thought he was being beaten to a pulp, but on the surface, he looked completely uninjured. If they went back and complained, no one would ever believe them.

What an utterly terrifying, venomous Cousin-in-law.

This wasn’t their eldest cousin’s villa at all!

Bai Qi pointed the broom handle at the oldest cousin. “You, run first.”

Overjoyed, the oldest cousin made a mad dash for the door. Just as he reached it, his body suddenly went light; Bai Qi had snatched him right back and slammed him back down into his chair.

The oldest cousin felt as if the sheer weight of Mount Tai had been dropped onto his shoulders.

“Don’t ever skip class again. If I catch you, this is what happens,” Bai Qi said.

The broom handle snapped cleanly in his grip with a sharp crack.

By the time Chu Ren finished his six-hour journey and arrived home, dusty and travel-worn, what he found were three exceptionally well-behaved younger brothers.

“Why are you still here?” Chu Ren asked.

“You can go now,” Bai Qi told them.

The three cousins fled for their lives. The second they were out the door, the youngest cousin texted: “Big Bro, we got beaten for skipping class.”

Chu Ren scoffed. “He hits me too.” How hard could it possibly be? His wife barely had any strength at all.