After Becoming the Cannon Fodder Live-in Spouse A (GL) - Chapter 31: The Thirty-First Day

Chapter 31: The Thirty-First Day

Due to the sudden onset of Prince Qi’s symptoms, the mansion’s carriages naturally could not linger at Taiqing Tower and returned directly to Prince Qi’s mansion. Amid the sound of wheels rolling over Yong’an Street, the person lying on Ye Fuguang’s lap suddenly said:

“Originally, I promised to take you out for a stroll, but we’re heading back to the mansion halfway. Once the carriage arrives at the mansion, if there’s still somewhere you want to go, take the maids and coachman, and just remember to return before dark.”

Ye Fuguang’s movements paused for a moment.

She lowered her head to look at the beauty on her lap. Perhaps because Prince Qi had shown such a strong sense of frailty earlier, her response now was not like answering an unpredictable superior but rather a natural follow-up question:

“And what about you, my lord?”

Shen Jinglan, her head held by Ye Fuguang, could feel the qi slowly descending. She opened her eyes again, noticing she could vaguely see a bit of light, though a buzzing in her ears made it hard to hear the girl’s words clearly.

“Hmm?”

She responded lazily.

Ye Fuguang immediately said, “I don’t really want to go out to play. The scenery in the mansion is already exquisite. Does my lord not need me to stay by your side to serve?”

After the trip to Xiangguo Temple, Ye Fuguang was not keen on wandering outside under the red banner of Prince Qi’s camp. Besides, she was a homebody even during her school days, with little interest in traveling far. The aura she was most familiar with now was Shen Jinglan’s, and the other was displaying a frail state she knew well—

Compared to going out to play, she’d rather stay in the mansion and play with the miraculous Prince Qi.

Her words fell, but no response came.

Ye Fuguang’s face immediately drooped into a pouty puppy expression, like a child during school days who wanted to stay home and watch TV but was forced by parents to go downstairs for a couple of laps, forbidden from being lazy at home.

…

Until the carriage stopped in front of the mansion gate.

Ye Fuguang said, “We’re here,” and tried to help Shen Jinglan up, only to find the other gripping her sleeve tightly, squinting at the folding wooden door of the inner chamber without a sound.

“…My lord?”

She followed Shen Jinglan’s gaze to the door but saw nothing special and called out in confusion. Yet, in her heart, she secretly rejoiced, thinking that Shen Jinglan indeed wanted her company and that the earlier permission to go out was just a pretense of generosity.

A few breaths later.

Shen Jinglan sat there like a porcelain doll, motionless.

This dampened Ye Fuguang’s inner joy. She quietly touched the fingers gripping her sleeve with her own fingertip, but before she could do anything else, Prince Qi suddenly grabbed her fingertip, her lips pursed tightly in apparent displeasure.

Then, Shen Jinglan raised her other hand and began writing in Ye Fuguang’s palm, stroke by stroke.

At first, Ye Fuguang felt a slight itch from the calloused fingertips and tried to pull away, but Shen Jinglan held her tighter, causing her to wince and say softly, “It hurts…”

But Prince Qi did not react.

She stubbornly continued writing something.

Ye Fuguang endured and endured, only to realize she was writing. She followed the movements for a long time.

Oh no—

It was traditional Chinese characters.

Back when she played word-guessing games with classmates, she had never tried the traditional character version!

Having been repeatedly hurt by oracle bone script and the traditional character version of “you draw, I guess,” the history major, now a despairing illiterate, let out a whimper. Her palm ached from being gripped, and after struggling for a moment, she lifted her hand to hug Shen Jinglan, saying aggrievedly, “My lord, I can’t read it…”

Shen Jinglan, held by her, remained silent for a long time.

The other’s breath and voice were faint, and the part she could see was even blurrier. Her throat moved slightly, and after a long while, she suddenly said, “Return to the mansion.”

Her voice was full of vigor, even causing a slightly deafening effect in Ye Fuguang’s ears.

Startled by the shout, Ye Fuguang let out a dry “oh,” instinctively lifting her up. As they disembarked from the carriage, the other attendants kept their heads down, not daring to look up.

—

Shen Jinglan was unaware that her loss of hearing had caused her to misjudge her own volume, startling the little princess.

But she had no time to care about that—

Headaches, loss of sight, loss of hearing—what else would come?

If she lost all five senses at once, how would it differ from being trapped in a bed, immobile, in this gradually decaying body?

As Ye Fuguang held her and placed her on the rosewood chair in the main hall of Plum Garden, Yu Qing, unaware of the troubles they had encountered on this outing, was about to enter to report some matters.

A silent blue figure approached from afar, and Shen Jinglan instinctively grabbed an empty teacup from the nearby table and threw it toward the approaching figure.

“Stay back.”

A crisp sound rang out.

The teacup shattered into pieces at the feet of the head steward, Yu Qing, fragments scattering.

Ye Fuguang, still held by her sleeve, and Yu Qing, not far away, were both startled. Yu Qing immediately lifted her robe and knelt, saying, “My lord.”

The blue figure stopped moving. Shen Jinglan, guessing it was someone from the mansion, said coldly, “Leave.”

Yu Qing responded without complaint, “Yes.”

The atmosphere in the hall instantly grew quiet.

Noticing the little princess’s attempt to pull away, Shen Jinglan sharply turned her head, like a gravely wounded beast, panicking and fearful at the retreat of a familiar scent: “Where are you going?”

The girl was supposed to answer every question, so Shen Jinglan calmed slightly, her voice tinged with helplessness, “I can’t hear.”

…

Ye Fuguang froze.

So, from the strange behavior in the latter half of the carriage ride until now, it was because Shen Jinglan could neither see nor hear.

The somber black robe highlighted Prince Qi’s face, more alluring than red camellias. The harmlessness she showed when she lost her sight had now turned into a sharp, defensive edge.

Though her robe still bore the supreme python pattern, after the defeat at Yancheng, the palace’s delayed judgment left her as the prince second only to the emperor, yet now, tormented by this strange illness, she seemed to embody a fate too cruel.

…If she knew that her original fate, as in the original story, was to lie ignorantly until death, and that Ye Fuguang’s arrival caused her to endure such pain, would she prefer to return to that story?

Perhaps because what Prince Qi was suffering now was too cruel for her original status, Ye Fuguang felt an extravagant sense of guilt toward her.

She slowly took Shen Jinglan’s hand, opened her palm, and with trembling fingertips, imitated her earlier writing. After much hesitation, she wrote:

“What should we do?”

Shen Jinglan’s body stiffened slightly.

Though she couldn’t hear the sound of the thrown teacup, she could guess how frightened her easily tearful little princess would be. She was the one suffering, yet thinking of Ye Fuguang’s timid demeanor, even her trembling as she wrote, Shen Jinglan felt she had gone too far.

It would scare this little creature, wouldn’t it?

Shen Jinglan let out a long breath, closed her eyes, and forcibly caged the rampaging beast in her heart. She meant to say something but instead withdrew her hand and patted the back of Ye Fuguang’s hand.

As if gently soothing her, “Don’t be afraid.”

—

How could Ye Fuguang not be afraid?

With the grand court assembly just days away, if Prince Qi appeared in this state in the turbulent court, wouldn’t those scheming ministers, with minds like honeycomb coal, tear her apart with their pens?

If Shen Jinglan weakened, what would happen to her, this drifting duckweed?

Could she send someone on a fast horse to check on Ye Yuge’s prison again?

But right now, Prince Qi herself was surely more frustrated than she was. Ye Fuguang sighed, writing in Shen Jinglan’s palm like coaxing a child: “Rest first, okay? My lord, perhaps you caught a chill from going out right after recovering. Maybe a nap will help.”

She wrote slowly, and Shen Jinglan didn’t stop her. Ye Fuguang assumed the clever prince understood, and after thinking, she added, “I’ll stay with you.”

Seeing no objection from Shen Jinglan, Ye Fuguang walked up to her, lifted her, and carried her behind the inner chamber’s curtains. When Jixiang and Ruyi came to draw the screen, noticing the tension in the person in her arms, she signaled them to leave the hall and not linger.

The maids, having seen the head steward scolded earlier, moved lightly, barely daring to breathe heavily. They quietly picked up the teacup fragments from the floor and left the room silently.

Inside the room.

After placing Shen Jinglan on the bed, Ye Fuguang forgot about the many hairpins and dangling ornaments she wore today. As she leaned down, they caught on the bed’s curtains, pulling her hair painfully.

“Hiss.”

She gasped softly, releasing the prince and standing up, tears welling as she tried to remove the hairpins. But with so many clinking accessories tangled together, her hair felt tormented.

She had worked so hard to keep her youthful hair!

Ye Fuguang moved more carefully, delicately untangling them, but still unfamiliar, a sharp golden hairpin fell from her hair, its pointed end landing near her scent gland, making her instinctively recall the pain of cutting herself last time. Her whole body tensed involuntarily. ○

As the golden hairpin fell to the carpet, her usually idle scent gland seemed to recall that painful story, now unusually active, releasing bursts of scent.

As if shouting at its master:

I’m still here! Are you trying to make me a eunuch with this blade?

…

When the icy snow-like scent touched her skin, Prince Qi, lying flat on the bed, froze.

The chaotic heat in her mind calmed slightly with just a brush of this scent, and even the blurry colors before her eyes cleared for a moment.

Her ears faintly caught the little princess’s cry of pain.

…Could she have been so clumsy as to bump into something while carrying her?

Shen Jinglan squinted, vaguely looking at the carved patterns on the bed’s canopy. In the coolness of this early winter snow-like scent, she waited patiently until Ye Fuguang lay down beside her.

The little princess nestled obediently, without any lustful or improper thoughts, treating this as a mere afternoon nap. Even though she hadn’t eaten her fill, she rested her head close, her breath falling near Shen Jinglan’s jaw.

Prince Qi waited, but the usually obedient puppy didn’t snuggle closer. Her hand at her side moved, suddenly pulling the girl into her arms.

The girl seemed startled by her action, lying on her without moving. But Shen Jinglan didn’t stop, her palm sliding up along the glossy satin of Ye Fuguang’s back, following the spine to the nape of her neck.

Her calloused fingertip touched the smooth skin there. As Ye Fuguang’s breathing quickened from the intimate gesture, Shen Jinglan unhesitatingly pressed on her scent gland.

“!”

As expected, the snow that had paused began falling again, swirling.

The spreading scent filled the entire inner chamber, even drifting out through the windows. Though it was spring outside, some imperial guards near Plum Garden seemed to see winter returning.

A trace of confusion appeared in their eyes as they instinctively twitched their noses.

—

“The skin around the scent gland is most sensitive. Even the softest silk or a passing breeze can cause slight discomfort to Qianyuan and Dikun, especially Dikun, who, with a little pressure, may show a pitiful look with misty eyes and rapid breathing.”

This was a line from the original story’s setting.

Recalling it, Ye Fuguang wanted to cry. No one said that when a Qianyuan’s scent gland was touched, it would feel like being poisoned with an aphrodisiac, making her feel hot and uncomfortable all over!

However.

No one in the original story would touch a Qianyuan’s scent gland like Shen Jinglan did!

This Prince Qi, how could she be so wicked? Just because she was a married-in consort, did that mean she could bully her like this?

She let out a muffled hum, calling “My lord,” trying to dodge Shen Jinglan’s touch, but the other didn’t stop. Realizing she couldn’t hear, Ye Fuguang endured the discomfort, leaned in, and lightly bit her lower lip.

At first, her bite was gentle, but fearing Shen Jinglan wouldn’t understand her intent and would continue toying with her, she gradually bit harder.

Like a puppy warning with restrained ferocity.

She heard a soft laugh spill from Shen Jinglan’s lips.

Then, her chin was lifted, and Shen Jinglan tilted her head, not letting her bite her lips again. Instead, she turned slightly, pressing Ye Fuguang’s head to her neck.

Ye Fuguang was suddenly enveloped in a rich pool of camellia fragrance.

The camellias that once merely surrounded and protected her now sprouted wildly, their blooming petals like a chaotic rain, kissing her brows and lips, even brushing the skin below her neck, brazenly enticing her.

Her scent gland, pressed so firmly, finally erupted in fury, provoked by the Dikun’s scent. What was once a delicate snowfall now turned into a howling blizzard, charging at the fragrant camellias!

It would freeze those flower buds, make them tremble in its chill, and force them to submit to this winter!

Driven by the scent-fueled rush of bl00d, Ye Fuguang felt an urge surge in her bones to pin Shen Jinglan down, to mark every flower and leaf with snowflake patterns.

Her throat moved for a long time.

Her breaths grew hotter.

She even couldn’t help grinding her back teeth.

…

Yet the culprit releasing this camellia fragrance seemed oblivious to her struggle. The blooming red flowers brushed her cheeks intermittently, like a vibrant cluster plucked from the branch, made into a floral whip, teasingly tapping her face.

As if, having felt her canine teeth, Shen Jinglan knew how fierce she could be but wouldn’t hurt her.

To provoke the puppy’s ferocity, Shen Jinglan curved her lips, opened her palm pressing the scent gland, and pulled Ye Fuguang closer, commanding lazily in a hoarse, satisfied voice she couldn’t hear:

“My beloved consort.”

“This prince prefers it heavier.”