Chapter 5

Chapter 5

That day, several guards pinned my shoulders and hoisted me high into the air.

Zhao Rui drew his treasured blade. “But before that, we should have the Jiaofang train her properly. Once she’s ripe for the plucking and soft as boneless flesh, she’ll know how to serve a man.”

With that, he swung the blade straight down at my hand-

In an instant, blood sprayed everywhere.

Pain of the flesh could not make me cower, but the moment I thought of the methods used in the Jiaofang, terror seized me at once. “No, no! I won’t go!”

Through the heavy curtain of blood, My Lady’s eyes were blurred with tears.

In the distance, Han Mo said nothing.

Zhao Rui was different from Zhao Rang. He was obstinate, arrogant, and a tyrant through and through.

After I was dragged into the Jiaofang, something was forced down my throat. In moments, the blood in my body seemed to boil. No matter how well I could endure pain, I soon bit my lower lip to a bloody pulp.

Through the haze, My Lady wept before me. “Little Cat, when you follow Junior Preceptor Han, you must live well from now on…”

I wanted to say I could not leave her behind, and that I would never serve another master.

But when my voice came out, it turned into strange, feverish moans. In my unbearable torment, I even tore off every stitch of my own clothing.

Seeing that the time was right, the people of the Jiaofang wrapped my naked body in a brocade quilt and swiftly carried me to a carriage.

My whole body was burning, yet I was limp and powerless.

I did not know how much time had passed before I was roughly tossed into a richly carved and painted residence.

Before my eyes hung three feet of embroidered tassels, swaying faintly. The lamps were dim, but moonlight slipped through doors and windows, spilling a thread of silver beside the bed, like a tiny Milky Way I could not cross.

I was dazed in the grip of a high fever. In my trance, a figure had already sat down at the bedside.

The man looked down at me in silence. His skin was pale as white porcelain, but his brows arched in a sharp, severe line.

His pupils were extraordinarily bright, so bright that in this dark night, they seemed like moons suddenly set aflame.

All at once, I understood what he had come to do.

A bone-deep sense of humiliation surged through me-

In that instant, I somehow gathered all my strength and rasped, “Han Mo!

“If you dare touch me…

“When I wake, I will kill you!”

That night,

my vision was shrouded from beginning to end in a rouge-colored fog.

It was as if I were tossing and turning in a burning hell, everything charred to ashes. All I remembered was how wretched I looked, twisting and writhing like a snake, wet moans spilling endlessly from my throat…

A blurred figure sat before the bed. If not for the white-silk moonlight occasionally illuminating half his brow and eyes, I would almost have thought he was only a shadow.

After I lost all reason, perhaps I begged him through streaming tears.

Begged him to do something-anything-as long as it eased that boiling fever.

Perhaps I even cast aside all dignity and pleaded with him for release.

I did not know.

I only knew that whenever I regained the slightest clarity, the moans in my mouth would turn back into curses and threats, nearly exhausting every venomous malediction I had in this life.

Yet that shadow never wavered at all.