Chapter 8

Chapter 8

When I returned to my quarters, Qi was sitting alone on the snow-white reed mat by the door, playing with a wooden doll carved from a tree root. The Imperial Slaves were afraid of him and kept their distance.

I had picked up that doll in the bushes a few days ago. It was his only toy.

The moment he saw me come back, he happily tossed the toy aside and clambered up my leg with one hand. I crouched down, and my tears fell onto that round little face.

“Ma-ma-ma-”

Qi wiped my tears with one chubby little hand, repeating that simple cry over and over until my wavering heart gradually hardened like stone.

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t frightened.

I had just refused Di Ku, and I was terrified he might retaliate. I quickly wiped away my tears and went to the Spiritual Well to draw a great deal of Jade Milk into a clay jug, planning to secretly leave with Qi afterward.

At worst, I would hide back in Youtai and return to being its chieftain.

But just as I turned around with the clay jug in hand, I saw someone standing in the dense shade.

He wore hemp robes as light as gauze. Tall and elegant, with dark hair like lacquered silk, he held Qi in his broad arms, making the child look especially small.

“What are you doing here?”

Before I could say anything harsher, he spoke first.

“What do you think I should do to be a father?”

“You need to call him ‘Papa.'”

“Pa… ah…”

“Pa-pa-”

“Pa… pa…”

Qi was a clever child. He very quickly grasped the mood, circling around Di Ku’s knees and calling out “Papa” again and again with such feeling that he sounded extremely affectionate.

Di Ku, however, still wore that faint, indifferent expression. I could not tell what he was thinking.

“The first time I heard Qi call me Mama, I was overjoyed.”

I sat beneath the deep shade, weaving a pair of tiny straw sandals out of soft reed cores. “I only thought that perhaps you might feel the same as I did.”

“Is that so? You do not find him ugly and vile?”

“Qi has never despised me for being mortal. If a child does not despise his parents, what reason do parents have to despise their child? Besides, what part of him is ugly and vile?”

I glanced at the other party’s clear eyes, then at Qi’s pitch-black, hollow-looking pupils, and said against my conscience, “Look at him. He resembles you so much!”

“…Mm.”

After hearing this, Di Ku seemed to grow somewhat interested. He lifted Qi onto his lap.

The two of them sat there staring at each other, big eyes meeting little eyes, for a while. Then he set Qi back down on the ground. “I was born of heaven and earth and never had parents. How am I supposed to be one? No. I am not used to this.”

Without lifting my head, I said, “Even if you are not used to it, you can try to play the part of a good father, can you not?”

“Treat him the way you would wish to be treated. That will be enough.”

A long while later, after I set aside one finished little straw sandal, I realized Di Ku was holding the child in his arms and silently watching me.

Our eyes met, and he praised me.

“Yuan, you are a good mother.”

The beautiful lips before me curved slightly, red and moist like a fresh cherry beaded with dew.

It was the first time I had ever seen him smile, and for a moment, the sight dazzled me.

To keep myself from making a fool of myself, I could only lower my head to hide my thunderous heartbeat.

“Qi, come try them on. See if the shoes fit.”

Lively Qi hopped down from his father’s lap and slipped his little feet into the pure white straw sandals.

But though I had only measured his size last night, the sandals were already a little short and narrow on those small feet. He seemed to like them very much and refused to take them off no matter what.

Watching him walk back and forth in those little straw sandals, I felt a pang in my heart. “Qi has not even been a child for long, yet he is already going to become an adult…”

“Your heart aches for him?”

“All mothers under heaven ache for their children.”

At that, Di Ku did not refute me.

“With a mother like you, perhaps he truly will become a good child.”

I hurriedly said, “But a mother alone is not enough.”

“Only a father’s authority, together with a mother’s gentleness, can help him grow into a man who stands tall between heaven and earth.”

At that moment, the dim golden sunlight filtered through the branches and draped over his shoulders like a warm veil of gauze.

I thought he would refuse. Yet the corners of his lips lifted faintly, and his voice was unexpectedly beautiful to the ear.

“Very well. I will do my best.”