After Becoming the Cannon Fodder Live-in Spouse A (GL) - Chapter 29: Twenty-Ninth Day

Chapter 29: Twenty-Ninth Day

Ye Fuguang was startled by the pair of eyes glaring at her through the wooden bars.

She wasn’t deaf yet. From the reactions of Ye Yuge’s fellow prisoners around her, she belatedly realized she might have said something shocking. Touching her nose, Ye Fuguang, the scholar, thought that as long as she wasn’t embarrassed, the embarrassment would fall on others.

“Things have come to this…” She deliberately lowered her voice and asked, “Do you actually have a way?”

Ye Yuge took a deep breath.

She now missed the free days at the Ye Family mansion. If this scene were at the mansion, she would have already taken out a silver needle to silence Ye Fuguang.

Damn it, things had come to this—

She rarely cursed in her heart with such frustration. If she had known that her mocking remark about Ye Fuguang being “out of favor” would push this little useless thing to such recklessness, she would have held back the sarcasm no matter what.

It took a long time for Ye Yuge to barely calm down.

Recalling the medical case Ye Rong brought in this morning and thinking of Prince Qi’s current condition, she estimated that the effects of the substituted herb would soon show. By then, who knew to what extent this little useless thing, staying by his side, would be implicated.

Should she cure her or not?

In a very short moment, Ye Yuge, unusually hesitant, wavered. She quickly thought of the reason for this little useless thing’s insomnia, tied to such matters. Now that Prince Qi had just woken up, she was already sidelined because of such bedroom affairs. If Prince Qi were to suffer from madness later…

This future divine doctor instinctively remembered that Qianyuan’s scent could suppress Dikun.

She suddenly looked at the frail, incapable little useless thing in front of her with a strange gaze, as if weighing something. Moments later, she gave up on the idea, thinking:

Forget it, as long as she could protect herself, Ye Fuguang probably couldn’t be that beast tamer.

Because Ye Yuge stayed silent for too long, Ye Fuguang felt uneasy and said, “If it’s too hard, forget it. Don’t hold back any harsh words to curse me. Just treat it as me asking casually.”

Ye Yuge’s eyes narrowed. “Did you bring paper and a brush?”

She said, “I’ll recite the prescription. Can you remember it?”

The little useless thing’s eyes lit up again. After looking around for a while, she sharply pointed to the scholar pretending to sleep in the next cell. “He has some. Hey, mister, I’ll trade food for a sheet of paper and borrow your brush and ink. How about it?”

…

After the time it takes to burn one incense stick.

Ye Fuguang carried the now-empty food box, walking back through the dark, damp staircase. When she stepped into the sunlight and saw that striking figure again, she let out a sigh of relief.

She handed the food box to Ruyi and jogged to the other person’s side, noticing the two children she had seen before leaving were there too. The little girl was tall and thin, like sturdy pine wood, while the little boy was less noticeable, with messy bangs almost covering his eyes, like a short stack of rice stalks.

Belatedly, she twitched her nose, realizing why she associated them with these images—it was because both children were Qianyuan, with the faint scent of their pheromones.

They felt so fierce—

Definitely fiercer than her.

Ye Fuguang recalled the time when Prince Qi was still unconscious, and she had to cut the back of her neck. Back then, she didn’t pay much attention to smelling her own scent, only feeling the air in the room turn sharper. Now, thinking carefully, could her scent be something like mint?

Cool and refreshing?

Before she could think more, the two children she was staring at looked up, exchanged a glance, and, as if they already knew her, bowed to her. “Greetings, Princess Consort.”

Ye Fuguang glanced at Shen Jinglan, then at them. “You are…?”

Shen Jinglan didn’t speak. Instead, the leading little girl answered with a proud tone, “Princess Consort, I am Shen Liu, and he is Shen Si.”

Ye Fuguang: ?

She keenly sensed that when the question was answered, Shen Jinglan, standing beside her, closed her eyes briefly, a trace of restrained expression on her face.

Since the two black-armored soldiers kneeling to Prince Qi had left, and there were only serving attendants around, no one could answer her questions. She could only honestly express her curiosity. “Are you Prince Qi’s family?”

“We are not the general’s family. We are the general’s personal guards,” the little girl named Shen Liu answered.

At that moment, Shen Jinglan suddenly opened her eyes. “Enough.”

She recalled what Yan Weijun and Bai Yu had said about these two children, who left their hometown and traveled east with their families, arriving in the capital through their parents’ connections with old subordinates—not to secure a job in the capital through them.

Instead…

“My father said that being favored by the general and becoming her personal guard was his honor. In life, he was the general’s man; in death, he was the general’s soul. If he passed before the general, his descendants would witness the general’s achievements in his place. When he returned to his hometown, he taught me his entire set of saber techniques. I practice every day, so when I meet the general, I can ask her how my saber skills compare to my father’s.”

“My mother’s… ghost shadow steps, I know them too.”

The two children’s words were relayed to her verbatim by those two.

Though they had already been enlisted in the Imperial Guards, when they recounted this to Shen Jinglan, their eyes burned with a fire, like the times in the past when, during a rare defeat in a city siege or letting an enemy escape in a battle of annihilation, they were unwilling to accept it, and their eyes would carry this same look.

It was restraint, endurance, only quenchable by a grander, more exhilarating victory.

Shen Jinglan suddenly understood. They were willing to come here to meet her not just because their superiors avoided her and sent her former subordinates to keep her from reacting, but because they firmly trusted her, believed she could turn the defeat in Yancheng six months ago into a complete victory.

Those sixteen cities—

Their General Shen would take them back one by one from the Da Zhi.

Just as their comrades in the personal guard, because of their trust in General Shen, had raised their children this way. Even if they died on the frontier, never returning to their homeland, their children took up their banners without hesitation, standing behind her.

Even if they had not yet seen the cruelty of the battlefield.

But Shen Jinglan knew this time she could not, as before, lead the people of the Great Dynasty out of the pain of the Yancheng defeat with a sweeping, triumphant victory.

Because she did not lose on the battlefield, but in the court.

Her phoenix eyes gazed heavily toward the direction of Yong’an Palace. Though still so young, she seemed like a weathered general, long seasoned by battle. After easily calculating the disparity in forces between friend and foe, she reached that conclusion:

If the next battle remained like this.

She would still lose, again and again.

–

Half an hour later.

Taiqing Tower.

Finally stepping into the restaurant most beloved by Yong’an City’s nobles, Ye Fuguang was dazzled by the dancing singers on water, the cascading fragrant petals, and the dazzling four-sided curtains. When the dishes were served, she felt her soul was shaken.

The appetizers presented included several exquisitely delicate cold dishes, served in colorful glass dishes, and a stunning thousand-thread golden tree—

Just a candied steamed bun.

The white buns were hidden under the tree, while golden syrup formed delicate branches hanging from the trunk, the solidified sugar threads nearly blinding Ye Fuguang’s eyes.

She didn’t know how to start eating and looked at Shen Jinglan beside her. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but when she asked about Shen Liu and Shen Si earlier, she seemed to have upset her. But when she looked over, she saw Shen Jinglan smiling at her:

“Reluctant to eat?”

Not really.

Ye Fuguang casually showed her ruthless side, picking up a stack of lotus pastries the two children curiously ordered. She bit into the pink, crispy, thousand-layered lotus pastry, discovering that, besides salted egg yolk, the filling had a thin layer of red bean paste and white bean flour, the soft texture contrasting sharply with the crispy shell.

Her eyes lit up, and with her other hand, she used serving chopsticks to pick a piece for Shen Jinglan. “This is delicious. Try it, Prince?”

Shen Jinglan held a cup of light-colored Biluochun tea, the translucent green cup turning in her slender fingers. She said, “Hmm,” but didn’t move, letting Ye Fuguang’s gaze linger on her beauty for a moment.

She suddenly recalled the kiss from last night in the bathhouse.

When Shen Jinglan’s palm touched the back of her neck, the calloused part brushed over, causing a slight itch and tingling around her scent gland.

Ye Fuguang forgot about whether she ate the pastry and looked down at her own fingers—

Also slender, very fair, like tender green onions.

And pampered, without a single callus. If it were her, she probably wouldn’t make the Prince feel uncomfortable, right?

She would definitely be very gentle.

Not yet full, the scholar, inexplicably starting to entertain lustful thoughts, held the half-eaten lotus pastry, her face pinker than the lotus petals, her gaze vacant, lost in wild thoughts as she sat there.

Shen Jinglan noticed her prolonged stillness from the corner of her eye. Since it was just the two of them at this small table, she couldn’t help but look directly, noticing something off about the little consort’s expression. She glanced at the dishes, then at Ye Fuguang’s profile, softening her voice:

“What is my dear consort thinking about?”

Ye Fuguang: “!”

…

Before the scholar could stammer out an excuse, the plum wine she had curiously ordered was brought up by the waiter, instantly diverting her attention.

Knowing the private room held distinguished guests, the manager personally came to serve the wine. The faint wine fragrance was contained in equally vibrant green cups, luxuriously filled with ice cubes, accompanied by preserved plums from last year’s harvest.

She stared, childlike, at the manager’s movements.

When he finished pouring for Shen Jinglan and came to pour for her, Shen Jinglan, who had little interest in the bland green tea, happened to reach for the wine cup on the table—

“Clink.”

The cup tipped over.

The shallow wine spilled, wetting the tablecloth and spreading to the jade-colored wide robe.

The manager, turning back, was startled and instinctively knelt, wanting to call for a clean cloth to wipe the Prince’s robe, even blurting out a string of apologies.

But before he could approach, the woman who knocked over the cup merely closed her eyes indifferently and said to him, “Get out.”

The manager kowtowed, bowed, and retreated with his head lowered.

Beyond the screen, Jixiang, Ruyi, and the others heard the commotion. Even the boy named Shen Si had silently appeared nearby, cautiously looking around, pulling out a very sharp dagger from somewhere, startling Ye Fuguang.

“…Prince?”

Sitting by the window with a view more radiant than the spring light outside, the person slightly turned her head, catching the sound of movement nearby. “Stand down.”

Shen Si silently bowed to her, retreating formally, as serious as a rigorously trained soldier, making it hard to believe he was just a boy not yet of age.

Shen Liu held back a few maids, smiling, “Since the Prince has given an order, let’s not disturb them.”

Only Ye Fuguang, on the other side of the screen in the same room as Shen Jinglan, remained uncertain, like a rabbit on the grasslands hearing the wind, lifting its head from the grass to observe.

The rabbit was called by name. “Fuguang.”

The rare direct use of her name stunned Ye Fuguang. She couldn’t even process the difference between this and the earlier “Princess Consort” or the teasing “dear consort.” Then she heard Shen Jinglan say, “Come here.”

–

Shen Jinglan suddenly couldn’t see.

The headache that tormented her last night, when the manager came to pour her wine, suddenly shifted to her eyes. At first, it was just blurry vision, but the moment she reached out—

It was as if someone had suddenly covered her eyes with a black cloth.

All light vanished.

In an instant, her other senses sharpened. She instinctively felt something was wrong. She didn’t want the manager to come closer or the servants to know her condition. In the short time she sat there, the only one she could think to rely on was Ye Fuguang.

It was as if she were trapped in this body again.

Was someone plotting against her?

Or was there a problem with the tea she drank earlier?

These doubts were answered when Ye Fuguang approached, calling her “Prince” in a confused voice.

If there was an issue with Taiqing Tower’s food or drink, she shouldn’t be the only one affected. Was it a lingering effect of the poison from Yancheng? Or were the palace physicians sent to treat her not skilled enough?

She could almost imagine her condition today spreading throughout Yong’an.

Until that voice called her again, “Prince?”

Suddenly, Shen Jinglan recalled the days when she lay immobile in bed, when this little rabbit was the one running around for her, even comforting her—

Now, it seemed she had to rely on her again.

…

“Carry me back to the carriage.”

When Ye Fuguang heard this, her eyes showed a trace of astonishment.

From this angle, she could even see, over Shen Jinglan’s shoulder, the bustling Yong’an streets outside. If she carried Shen Jinglan out like this, who knew what people would imagine.

But she couldn’t refuse.

Ye Fuguang obediently walked over, lifting Shen Jinglan, who had her eyes closed. She felt her breathing was rapid, heavy, brushing against her neck. But more striking was the wine fragrance on her, as if Ye Fuguang were immersed in camellia-soaked wine.

Shen Jinglan instinctively raised her arms to hold her neck, seemingly worried Ye Fuguang’s strength wouldn’t be enough and she might fall.

As they passed the screen, the servants at the other table kept their eyes down, not daring to ask a single extra question. They silently followed them downstairs. Ruyi even went ahead to lift the curtains in the restaurant, while Yinping and Quhua quickly cleared the way, hurrying forward to have the manager find someone to lead them to the back door and bring the mansion’s carriage over.

Only the occasional guest glimpsed the elegant robe being carried out of the restaurant, thinking, with a fleeting glance, it was some reckless young master, acting as frivolously in the restaurant as in a brothel, unable to wait under broad daylight.

Up close.

The damp sleeve brushed Ye Fuguang’s cheek.

The wine fragrance was too close.

And when she turned her head, the cold, faint scent touched the edge of her lips. Ye Fuguang glanced regretfully at the empty table, where dishes hadn’t yet been served. Though confused by Prince Qi’s command, she carried her outside, thinking it might be some strange quirk or an attempt to tease her.

She was a bit greedy for that wine, so while Shen Jinglan’s eyes were closed, she quietly stuck out her tongue, licking around her lips.

—So sweet.

She subtly lowered her head, glancing at Shen Jinglan’s wine-soaked robe at her waist, cinched by a gold-and-jade belt, her waistline strikingly slender. For a moment, a sinful thought flashed:

It’s… too little wet.