"Uwaak!"
From above, Lin Xiaofei could hear the screams of the men below the pit. It was filled with disgust and pain as they tried to squirm away from the worms. They didn't know what type of worms it was but considering the current situation they're in where they had wounds everywhere and mud sticking to their bodies, it was not a good idea to get any worms closer to them. Who knows if their wounds would get infected by them.
Lin Xiaofei stood in the broken shade of a budding maple a few meters away from the pit with her back against the trunk of it as she watched Qu Xing Xu pouring the last worm into the pit. The moon was shining from high above, and the coldness of it seemed to seep right through her bones.
Honestly, she didn't think that the moment that she would makeYu Fangzhu pay for his sins was in a place like this. Just right under the yellowish-white light coming from the moon and beside the empty grounds near the mountain, Lin Xiaofei felt herself drifting towards the memories of her past..
When she was inside the caged prison of the dungeon, the moon was also her only companion. Every time the torturer comes to her cage in a timely manner, Lin Xiaofei would sit or lay on a raised platform as he goes on his ways to torture.. And every single time, he would vary his kind of torture just to test out his new found knowledge of how to inflict more pain towards a dying criminal.
But she wasn't a criminal. She was once the torturer's master's concubine and praised by the people of the Zheng Empire, but nothing that was hers were left when she was stripped of her fine clothes and pushed behind the metal bars of a cage. She was treated like an animal who had no right to protest and have a trial.
"Are you alright?" Lin Xiaofei felt something cold touching her cheeks. She saw Qu Xing Xu standing before her with his arm raised as his fingertips touched her wet cheeks.
She didn't even realize that she was crying.
After wiping away the tears that rebelliously escaped from her eyes and fell down her cheeks, she looked up and said, "Never been better."
She knew it was a lie and the way her voice cracked a little bit from bottling her feelings up proved everything.
Qu Xing Xu looked at her worriedly. He caressed her cheeks and then paused. His body stiffened as if something bothered him. "Don't get angry." He suddenly said.
"I'm not. My feud with Yu Fangzhu is a matter of my past and I want to handle it soon. Having him suffer only a little tonight doesn't bother me at all." Lin Xiaofei said. Qu Xing Xu might be thinking that she was crying for making the man she once loved suffer, but she wasn't thinking about it.
Qu Xing Xu blinked at her as if he was caught off guard by her words. His hand was still positioned upward but it wasn't touching her face anymore.
He then said, "Although I am happy that you want that man to suffer… That's not what I was talking about."
It was her time to get confused.
She frowned and she heard him speak.
"I was asking if you're angry because I touched your face without cleaning my hands." Seeing her not responding, he continued, "I swear I didn't touch the worms. So don't get angry."
When his words finally dawned on Lin Xiaofei, she tipped her head lower to laugh. Her shoulders shook with her back still against the trunk of the tree.
"Qu Xing Xu… my hands have touched dirtier things more than those worms you've touched earlier, so you don't have to worry about that." Her laugh was bitter as she said those. "Instead, I wish you would touch me more."
She reached for his hand and held them tightly. She put their entwined hands towards her cheeks and tipped her head slightly to the side as if searching for comfort somewhere in his now warm hands. Never in her life would Lin Xiaofei think that she would be thankful for having someone around her when she's showing the ugly side of herself. And fortunately, the person she could show it to was someone who could accept her everything without feeling disgusted by her past and the wicked things she will do in the future.
Qu Xing Xu silently watched as she closed her eyes against his hand. Her eyelashes brushed against his thumb and stroked his cold heart to warm up. He didn't know what she was thinking deeply inside her mind but her being so vulnerable and weak before him, it only brought out an instinct of wanting to protect her from harm.
And that's when he realized that whoever tried to harm the woman standing before him right now would have to pay a heavy price of offending him. He would certainly make sure they would hurt severely and burn before they could ask for forgiveness.
"I'm here." He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her waist. "It's okay. You're here with me now."
Like a dam of water being opened from within, Lin Xiaofei choked up in her tears as soon as she heard him. The softness of his voice and the security his words brought her to tears, and now she couldn't stop it.
"It's alright." He kept on saying as she trembled in his arms, stroking her back to ease the pain.
Qu Xing Xu grew up surrounded by men and even when his mother was alive, he didn't have the chance to show any compassion towards others. Much less stroke their back and comfort them.
And yet, the awkward feeling of doing this the first time didn't matter to him. The most important thing for him right now was to make Lin Xiaofei smile and never shed a tear again.
"For now, let us return back home." he said.
Lin Xiaofei shifted in his arms and asked, "What about them?"
Qu Xing Xu shifted his eyes to give the hollowed ground where there were still groans of pains coming from a glance and told her, "The dungeon in our residence should have enough room to store them. I'll make sure to give them the best accommodation they could ever get and you could sit beside me to watch them suffer."
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