He and Yuqing had shared only a single encounter.

Yet brief as it was, it could not remain merely that.

With eyes wide in sheer disbelief, the man tried to crane his neck back for one last look at his killer. After a few muffled, choking coughs, his bloated head floated atop the washbasin like a weightless balloon.

Zhou Xiao wiped his hands clean. From the stage outside, the nightclub singer’s melodious voice drifted in, switching to the tune of Night in Shanghai.

Faintly haunting and rather pleasing to the ear, Zhou Xiao stood before the mirror, smoothing down the stray locks across his forehead. His pomade-styled short hair looked sharp and clean. Even though a few drops of blood had dampened his black suit, not a trace of the crimson showed against the dark fabric.

Several continuous stabs, each precise and steady. The blade was short—barely the length of a palm. A fine military dagger: stabbing without leaving a trace of blood, white blade in, white blade out. A truly fine weapon.

“Watch what you say in the future,” Zhou Xiao murmured to his reflection as he washed his hands, tilting his head with a touch of pride. “All people are created equal. Toying with women and terrorizing children—what base, wretched character.”

With that, he slipped the dagger back into his sleeve and stepped out of the restroom spotless and composed. In high spirits, he even hummed along with the melody drifting from the stage: Night in Shanghai…

The moment Deng Yongquan pushed open the restroom door, a splitting headache hit him. He couldn’t help but complain, “Young Master…!”

Why was it always him left to clean up these messes?!

It had been the same during their studies in France: whenever Zhou Xiao didn’t want to draw blueprints, he would order Deng Yongquan to go learn and do it instead.

A young master who preached that “all men are equal,” yet bossed people around more ruthlessly than anyone else.

How could he go and kill Section Chief Wang at a time like this?!

The original plan had been for Zhou Xiao to embezzle ready cash from the bank to fund the early construction of the railway. As a newcomer who couldn’t rely on the Zhou family’s influence, he had very little usable money of his own, and everything had to be done step by step.

They had planned to use Section Chief Wang as a scapegoat to balance the books later on. Who could have foreseen that he’d kill him now? Who were they supposed to use to balance the ledger in the future?!

The initial phases of the railway required substantial, hard cash investments.

How could the Young Master be so reckless!

Deng Yongquan wanted to weep, but with no tears left to shed, he could only silently set to work cleaning up the aftermath.

By the time Yuqing arrived in Shencheng, newsboys throughout the streets and alleys were shouting: “Extra! Extra! Land Department Section Chief murdered in nightclub—”

Shencheng was nestled against the mountains without access to the sea; real estate and farmland were the very livelihood of the common folk. The death of a Land Department official was monumental news, on par with the assassination of the Chamber of Commerce vice president in Baizhou Port.

Yuqing bought a copy of the newspaper and read it carefully.

He possessed an excellent memory; of course he remembered who Section Chief Wang was.

Ten years ago, when he was still a child, this man was among the guests his mother had entertained.

Separated by a folding screen, he had wept outside while playing the lute. His mother had never formally taught him; he was simply quick-witted, understanding everything with a single glance.

Even after his mother accompanied the section chief, it still hadn’t secured the Liu County coal mine for Ruan Xufeng, prompting his father to throw quite a temper.

Outside, traffic bustled through the streets.

The newspaper read: Section Chief Wang engaged in a drunken dispute, sustained multiple stab wounds, but the cause of death was drowning. The culprit is preliminarily presumed to be an enemy seeking revenge.

Over the years, countless people had sought to exploit Shencheng’s coal mines. The Land Department governed real estate and farmland, and no one knew how many illicit kickbacks they had pocketed.

Section Chief Wang accepted gifts without delivering results. Word had it that his youngest concubine had just turned eighteen—a student from the big city. Naturally, he had no shortage of enemies.

Yuqing folded the newspaper and sat quietly beneath the Peace Hotel, sipping tea and waiting.

Zhou Xiao had drunk quite a bit that night. The police station was filled with a bunch of useless gluttons; previously, whenever Section Chief Wang forced himself on someone’s daughter or beat a subordinate to death in anger, they would laugh it off after being stuffed with bribes. Now that his own turn had come, aside from sparking a wave of sensational news, the liveliest commotion came from the flock of concubines turning his household upside down.

After returning from questioning at the police station, Zhou Xiao developed a fever. The climate here was dry, lacking the moist coastal air of Baizhou.

Bundled in a duvet in his hotel room, Zhou Xiao breathed heavily with feverish heat, thinking to himself that he had reacted the same way the first time he saw a dead body—he hated the sight of blood.

When was the first time he had seen a corpse…?

Four or five years old? Too much time had passed; he couldn’t remember clearly.

Ever since his earliest memories, his mother—the First Madame—had been a severe, forbidding figure. As soon as he learned to walk, he had been made to stand at attention in the study, holding books, enduring countless springs, summers, autumns, and winters.

His mother didn’t like him. Zhou Xiao had never understood why. When he was six, merely because he played in the courtyard catching crickets instead of studying earnestly, his mother poured boiling water over his palm, ordering him to learn his lesson.

When Zhou Yuzhang found out, he would come to the First Madame’s quarters and argue endlessly with her.

Zhou Yuzhang had many concubines in the rear courtyard, but none had been brought in by him—they were all elevated by the First Madame.

As Zhou Xiao grew older, his mother would occasionally cradle his face and sigh, “You truly look like a bastard.”

He asked, “Mother, what is a bastard? I am your seed.”

The First Madame hailed from an official family of the third rank under the previous dynasty, married to Master Zhou through the traditional arrangement of parents’ orders and a matchmaker’s words.

In the second year after their marriage, Master Zhou met a woman he fell in love with while traveling on business. How they loved, and how she was brought back to the manor, Zhou Xiao did not know.

Zhou Xiao was that woman’s child, registered under the First Madame’s name from birth.

The First Madame had Master Zhou’s most beloved concubine killed, and from then on, the Master refused to take a single step into her courtyard. To regain the love of a man, she inexplicably began committing bizarre, absurd acts: bringing new concubines into the manor for him.

Master Zhou refused to look at any of them—until she found one with a similar appearance. After he stayed the night for a few days, that new concubine died as well.

These concubines were all purchased from the lowest social class; their quiet disappearances from the world went unnoticed and unmourned.

Zhou Xiao was not the First Madame’s biological son.

He was merely a tool used by the First Madame to retain her husband, clinging stubbornly to the belief that as long as she kept this son, her husband would one day return for the child’s sake.

From childhood, Zhou Xiao watched his mother weave her own cocoon. He would often lean against the doorframe, gazing at the stars all night long, weeping until his tears ran dry.

Only later did he learn that his biological mother had long since been murdered by the First Madame.

He did not know who his mother was.

While still a toddler, he had been forced to recite the Analects with sharpness.

When his father refused to return home, he had to produce fine calligraphy to plead for his return.

To outsiders, the First Madame was a loving mother; only Zhou Xiao knew how much his pinched thighs ached, or what searing agony boiling water inflicted upon his chest.

He did, in fact, resemble his father closely.

So much so that as he grew older, the First Madame would often stroke his hand, murmuring softly, “Touch your mother…”

Zhou Xiao vomited until the world spun. Because his retching was unsightly, the First Madame slapped him several times across the face and struck him on the head with a hand warmer: “Your father doesn’t want me, and now even you reject me!”

The mother who raised him was no true mother.

The biological mother he possessed was one he had never laid eyes on.

At fifteen, Zhou Xiao set foot on foreign soil. From childhood to adulthood, he had never once experienced the warmth of a mother’s embrace. Even when returning home, the decaying Zhou household exuded a stench that made him nauseous.

Whenever he fell ill as a child, the First Madame would deliberately strip off his clothes, eager for his illness to worsen so his father would return home.

“You are the child born of that whore the Master loved most. He will cherish you, and in time, he will cherish me too.”

As an adult, every time Zhou Xiao saw a dead person, he recalled the glazed, lifeless eyes of a favored concubine being hauled up from the well—bloated like a goldfish dead for days, a dull grayish-white, exuding the exact same stench of ancient, rotting wood.

Before his eyes, the hazy figure of the First Madame wavered.

Bundled tightly in his blankets, Zhou Xiao felt groggy and feverish. Frowning, trapped in a dream from which he couldn’t wake, he cracked his eyes open slightly and thought he saw someone.

A slender face, long hair cascading down, a delicate chin resting gently against his burning forehead, softly soothing him, humming a sweet melody.

It was Mother.

The mother from whom he had been separated since the day he was born.

Zhou Xiao wrapped his arms tightly around the figure, his parched throat rasping softly, “Mother… don’t go.”

The blurry figure leaned down to feed him medicine. Cool liquid was transferred mouth-to-mouth into his oral cavity; Zhou Xiao sucked at it almost instinctively. “Don’t go… don’t go…”

The liquid carried a faint aroma of jasmine and mint.

A gentle haven, a tender path, slowly flowing across from his lips.

“Yuqing…”

Yuqing’s spine stiffened. Just as he was about to set down the medicine bowl, Zhou Xiao—like a ravenous wolf cub—refused to pull away from his fragrant lips. Reversing their positions, he pinned Yuqing beneath him.

Zhou Xiao had never had a mother and did not know what a soft, fragrant embrace smelled or felt like. But in that singular moment, it felt as though the scent of the mother he had never met overlapped entirely with Yuqing.

Assuming it was all a dream, he began to gnaw and feast upon the soft lips without restraint, just as he had on their wedding night.

“Mmh…” Yuqing pressed both hands against his chest, entirely unable to withstand the overpowering weight of the man above him.

“Don’t go…” Zhou Xiao feared the person would slip away.

His lips roved over Yuqing’s cheeks without hesitation, planting rough kisses. The greatest asset of a young man was reckless, untamed vigor.

Tasting the jasmine flavor on his tongue, even the tip of his mouth felt pleasantly cool.

“The Young Master was frightened, it seems.” A soft voice reached his ears. Unable to break free from his grasp, Yuqing let out a helpless sigh, and the medicine bowl slipped from his fingers.

Zhou Xiao’s squinted eyes gradually gained clarity.

Yuqing lay beneath him, long hair splayed across the soft mattress. The collar of his sky-blue robe had two buttons undone, revealing a collarbone as fair and pristine as jade.

“Yuqing…” Zhou Xiao’s voice held a note of confusion.

The medicine bowl spun on the floor, rattling away before coming to rest upside down on the floorboards.

Yuqing’s lips were bitten a deep red. Almost in disbelief, Zhou Xiao nuzzled the tip of his nose against the flushed cheek.

Stunned, he gently pinched Yuqing’s cheek with his slightly rough thumb; the sensation felt startlingly real.

Their eyes locked. Zhou Xiao’s slender fingers pressed into Yuqing’s long hair, yet it felt as though Yuqing’s strands were wrapping around his fingers, binding him tightly, suffocating him until his heart raced out of control.

The mole beneath Yuqing’s pupil drew his gaze irresistibly, pulling him in until he felt he would drown.

It was too real…

Zhou Xiao snapped back to his senses, recoiling instantly to put distance between them, his chest heaving violently. After a long daze, he asked, “Why are you here?”

Yuqing slowly sat up, fastening the buttons on his robe with one hand before crouching down to retrieve the bowl from the floor. “I wanted to see you, so I came.”

“While waiting for you downstairs, I happened to run into Deng Yongquan. He mentioned you were ill, so I came up to attend to you…” Keeping his back to Zhou Xiao, he set the bowl on the table and poured another serving of the decocted herbal medicine, filling the air with a pungent, bitter aroma.

Yuqing said, “It was your first time taking office and you encountered a murder—you must have fallen ill from the shock. It must have been truly difficult for you…”

Zhou Xiao stared at his back—a slender silhouette. Even wrapped in a traditional robe, Zhou Xiao felt as though he could see the supple waist and long legs beneath the cloth.

His throat felt parched and uncomfortable, and an unusual heat instantly stirred between his thighs. “What did you just pour?”

“Medicine,” Yuqing replied softly, lifting the bowl with his slender fingers. “You are ill. Drinking some will help you recover faster.”

Zhou Xiao let out a nearly helpless sneer.

Such crude tricks. He had seen them countless times in the manor; the First Madame also loved giving tonics to the old man, allowing them to pass a night of passion together.

This was precisely why he despised parental arrangements: all Ruan Yuqing had ever learned were these base, underhanded schemes.

“Do you find this amusing?” Zhou Xiao cleared his throat, every syllable rolling over his tongue seemingly savoring the lingering jasmine scent.

“What?” Yuqing didn’t understand.

He turned to lean against the edge of the table, looking every bit like a helpless elder. As he tilted his head, his long hair fell over his shoulder. “What did I do?”

“You know very well.” Zhou Xiao felt certain the scent of jasmine was growing stronger, his body burning with intense heat.

He was wearing thin silk pajamas; the moment he stood up, his physique was sharply outlined.

Yuqing hadn’t looked closely that night. Now, leaning against the table, he unabashedly stared at the prominent outline, his brows furrowing slightly in rare contemplation. “It looks… quite serviceable…”

“You dare use such brazen words with me!” Zhou Xiao’s face flushed crimson. With a warning glare, he stepped aggressively toward Yuqing. “You came here just to drug me?”

How could it be a coincidence?

Driving from Baizhou to Shencheng took four full hours.

How could Yuqing arrive just as he fell ill? Was he so desperate for him—so desperate for a man—that he would resort to drugging his own husband twice?!

What did he mean by saying his equipment looked “quite serviceable”?

Wasn’t this state merely the result of Yuqing’s aphrodisiac?

In this life, Zhou Xiao hated nothing more than being used as a tool: the First Madame used him as an object to summon the Master home, Yuqing used him as an object to appease the old man, and now treated him as… a serviceable tool!

Men had fancied men since ancient times, but Zhou Xiao was not one of them. He had never liked men; had Yuqing not drugged him last time, how could he have lost control?

“I wanted to live in peace with you. Since we’re in different places, I couldn’t be bothered with whatever you and the old man were up to. But you provoke me time and again. Is it because the old man is bedridden and useless now? Hm? Are you really that desperate for a man?”

A look of innocent bewilderment crossed Yuqing’s face.

Zhou Xiao stepped closer and whispered harshly, “His lower half no longer works, so you praise how much I resemble him and use me instead. Ruan Yuqing, I told you: I will not fall for your bewitching potions like the old man did!”

Yuqing blinked, then couldn’t help but stifle a laugh. Silently, he drank the rest of the bowl clean, rested a slender arm on Zhou Xiao’s shoulder, and asked with a beaming smile, “By your logic, if the Master and I were truly intimate, wouldn’t you have to call me ‘Little Mother’?”

Zhou Xiao clenched his fists. Scorching heat surged through him, his sharp jawline tightening.

He didn’t know what kind of drug Ruan Yuqing had used; the tight tension was agonizing. Standing so close, an unbearable itch crawled in his throat like marching ants.

“Would you like to call me ‘Mother’ again for me to hear?”

“Nonsense!” Zhou Xiao bent down instantly, gripping Yuqing’s face to tilt it up before crashing his lips down in a fierce, tearing kiss. “I am not Zhou Yuzhang! Take a good look at who I am!”

“Mmh—Eldest Young Master—mmh—” Yuqing hadn’t expected the kiss to be so fierce. His eyelashes fluttered, eyes widening in shock as he hastily began to struggle. “No—mmh, Zhou Xiao! You are still sick… you can’t.”

How could he conceive a child while the man was ill? Yuqing didn’t want his efforts to go to waste, so he tried to push him away.

Yet Zhou Xiao sucked hard at his lips, scooping him up and throwing him onto the bed, pinning him down beneath his full weight. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

Traveling thousands of miles to find him, using drugs, longing for him—wasn’t it all just to have him?

Since that was the case, he would gladly satisfy him.

__

Author’s Note:

Yuqing: Wait, no… [melting] I came here for a baby; your quality while sick isn’t good enough [melting]

Zhou Xiao: If you miss me, love me, and want me, just say it directly! [angry] No need to drug me!

Yuqing: I’ve seen through the hearts of many, but Eldest Young Master, I truly cannot understand you [melting]