After the Alluring Beauty Was Forced into a Political Marriage - Chapter 10

Shen Lianzhi could not remember when he had moved from the carpet back onto the bed. By then, his mind was already a chaotic fog, and he was so exhausted he could not even lift an arm.

However, Siqin Bari remained feverishly excited. He pressed his body low, his searing kisses sliding from Lianzhi’s ear to his slightly arched neck, like a trail of sparks that made Lianzhi tremble uncontrollably.

“Siqin, Great King,” Lianzhi’s vision blurred. He pressed a hand against the other’s shoulder to push him away, but the force was so feeble that to Siqin Bari, it was like an ant trying to shake a tree.

Siqin Bari caught his wrist and leaned in to bite the bone. His sharp canine teeth sank into the flesh; the stinging pain and the moisture on his wrist briefly seized Lianzhi’s senses. The young Chanyu stared unblinkingly at Lianzhi’s fluttering pupils, his gaze moving slowly from those eyes to Lianzhi’s lips, which he had bitten until they were blood-red.

He extended a finger to wipe the blood from Lianzhi’s lips, smearing it toward the corner of his mouth. It looked as if Shen Lianzhi had accidentally smudged his lip powder. Siqin Bari said deeply, “You are enticing me again.”

Shen Lianzhi’s vision swam. He realized, with a delay, how absurd this was. Enticing him again? What enticement? Fortunately, his confusion did not last long, as Siqin Bari answered the unspoken inquiry.

The little beast leaned down to kiss his forehead and the tears that had flowed at some unknown point. “It does not matter if you are unwilling. You brought this on yourself. Shen Lianzhi, you brought this on yourself.”

Shen Lianzhi had to endure him while listening to his accusations. In Siqin Bari’s eyes, removing his clothes to apply medicine after being chased by wolves was a deliberate display of flirtation, and crying on the day of Suhe Chanyu’s funeral was a calculated seduction.

Shen Lianzhi felt truly wronged. “I did not.”

“You cried while casting glances at me like hooks. If that is not seduction, what is it?”

Shen Lianzhi instinctively wanted to argue. He had cried that way because he thought Siqin Bari hated seeing him shed tears; he thought doing so would get him kicked out. Who knew it would have the opposite effect? However, those words were swallowed back down the moment he saw Siqin Bari’s dark gaze. Shen Lianzhi cursed him in his heart as a beast and a hypocritical scoundrel.

It was clearly Siqin Bari who had developed lustful thoughts, yet he threw the blame onto Shen Lianzhi. He was the one who felt desire first but refused to admit it; he looked down on Lianzhi, yet continued to torment him. What a hypocrite.

These were Lianzhi’s true thoughts, but he would never dare utter them to Siqin Bari’s face. Seeing him remain silent, Siqin Bari felt he had reclaimed some dignity and pushed even further, his words becoming increasingly bottomless.

“Does your Great Zhou not call itself a land of etiquette? At my father’s funeral, you claimed to regard him as your husband, yet you tempted me again and again. Shen Lianzhi, you.”

Siqin Bari abruptly swallowed the rest of his sentence. He reached out to pull Lianzhi, who was burying his face like an ostrich, back toward him, leaning down to lightly kiss away the wet tears on his face. He let out a low laugh. This little brat felt no shame for his cruel words. He toyed with the messy hair at Lianzhi’s temple. “Why are you crying again?”

“Khatun, if my father were not dead, would you have bewitched me like this? Every day and every night, would you be casting hooks at me while living in harmony with my father?”

Lianzhi turned his head away, his face flushed red with shame and fury. He lifted his head and, courting death, spat hard into Siqin Bari’s face. Shen Lianzhi said hoarsely, “Stop flattering yourself. Who would want, ugh!”

Before he could finish, Siqin Bari pinned him down by the neck with his arm. Siqin Bari looked at him with a half-smile, his deep eyes striking fear into his heart. “Khatun, this King did not ask you to speak. You still need to learn the rules properly.”

Shen Lianzhi was still afraid of him. Siqin Bari equally enjoyed his fear and the trembling of his body. He showed Lianzhi no mercy, pressing his arm down further. As the sensation of suffocation set in, Lianzhi turned red and tried to pull at his arm, but Siqin Bari remained as immovable as a mountain.

“That would also be quite thrilling, Khatun. Do you not agree?” Siqin Bari said provocatively. “Though your methods of seduction are not very sophisticated, they are effective. I think I would take the bait. When my father neglects you, I will come to serve you. How about that?”

“Eji.”

All of Shen Lianzhi’s struggling stopped because of those two short words. He had stayed in Great Xia for many days and had learned a few short phrases; it just so happened that he knew this one. Eji meant mother.

Siqin Bari watched his strangely embarrassed face and broke into a triumphant grin. He withdrew his hand from Lianzhi’s neck and instead lightly pinched his chin. “If my father were still here, and if you two had truly married, then I would have to call you that. Eji, Eji.”

Who was the one truly without a sense of shame? Siqin Bari was a shameless little animal. Shen Lianzhi still remembered Siqin Bari’s heavy grief on the day Suhe Chanyu died; he had looked like a truly filial son. How many days had it been since Suhe closed his eyes? Yet he could speak such filthy words in bed. If the old Chanyu knew from the afterlife, he would probably be enraged back to life to cut down this rebellious son himself.

A barbarian who knows nothing of social order or human relations, Lianzhi thought.

He had a belly full of vicious words he could not and dared not speak. During that chaotic night, Lianzhi did not know when he lost consciousness and fell into an exhausted sleep. Perhaps because he was too wronged, too sad, or perhaps because he missed home too much, Shen Lianzhi dreamed of Lu Jingce.

He dreamed of the day he first met Lu Jingce.

Before the age of eight, the Internal Affairs Office always withheld Shen Lianzhi’s monthly allowance. That was truly a time he did not wish to remember. Lianzhi would fall asleep in the cold and be forced awake by a burning, searing hunger. Often before dawn, he would take Xiao Anzi and sneak to the Imperial Kitchen. There was a cook there who treated him well; occasionally, when she was on duty, she would sneak food to him when no one was looking.

But Lianzhi’s luck was always terrible. Before he could have a few days of full meals, the cook was reassigned, replaced by a fat chef with a face full of fleshy folds. Seeing that Lianzhi was small and thin and his clothes were not expensive, the chef’s nostrils practically pointed to the sky. He waved a ladle fresh from the deep fryer to chase Lianzhi away. Droplets of hot oil splashed onto his exposed, thin white arm, turning a large patch red instantly.

“Go, go!” The fat chef ignored his mournful pleas, coldly driving them away.

Lianzhi cried piteously, “Just one leftover bun is enough, I beg you.”

“Are you still looking for trouble? Where did this rat come from? Begone!”

Shen Lianzhi had a confrontation with him on an empty stomach. Not only did he fail to get food, but his arm was also burned. Xiao Anzi touched the edge of the wound with his fingertip and asked softly, “Your Highness, does it hurt?”

Shen Lianzhi sniffled, shook his head with red eyes, and felt utterly miserable. Xiao Anzi called him “Your Highness,” but who in this imperial palace truly regarded him as a prince? Even a cook could bully him. Dawn was breaking. He was ashamed to let anyone see his current pathetic state, even Xiao Anzi.

Ignoring Xiao Anzi’s shouts behind him, Lianzhi ran as fast as his legs could carry him. Unknowingly, he left Xiao Anzi behind and found himself beneath the window of the Upper Library. The Upper Library was where his other imperial brothers studied in the morning. Lianzhi occasionally heard them complaining about their lessons and cursing the difficult texts; Lianzhi could never personally relate to their indignation. After all, there was not even a seat for him in the Upper Library.

Lianzhi stood on his tiptoes and leaned against the windowsill. The tutor sat at the front, holding a book and chanting while swaying his head. Lianzhi did not understand what he was chanting, but he could not suppress the yearning in his heart. So, he followed along, “Vast and wide like the heavens, deep like a spring, ah!”

Before he could finish, a sudden pain struck Shen Lianzhi’s temple. He clutched his head and kicked away the jade pendant that had fallen beside him. Frowning, he looked in the direction the pendant had come from. Meeting that person’s gaze, he could not stop his legs from trembling.

“Big, Big Imperial Brother,” Lianzhi said apprehensively.

The First Prince was born of the Empress and was deeply loved by the Emperor, with high hopes of being named Crown Prince. Relying on his noble status and favored position, he acted tyrannically in the palace. His favorite target to bully was his youngest brother, Shen Lianzhi. Lianzhi usually avoided him at all costs. He came to the Upper Library as rarely as possible, but today his yearning had made him forget that such a plague was sitting inside.

Just then, the tutor set down his book. The sound of a pearwood chair dragging echoed, and Shen Lianzhi’s heart nearly jumped out of his throat. He leaped in the opposite direction like a rabbit, but unfortunately, he was a step too late.

“It hurts, Big Imperial Brother, I did not come here on purpose, it hurts.” Lianzhi’s left ear was violently twisted by a force that nearly lifted him off the ground.

The First Prince, four years his senior, displayed pure malice in his eyes. He did not soften at Lianzhi’s pleas; instead, he squeezed harder. “You half-man, half-woman monster. This Prince told you, did I not? You are not allowed to appear before me.”

“Big Imperial Brother, I was wrong, ahhh!”

“Who allowed you to call me your brother? What are you supposed to be? You monster, ugh!”

A dull thud of a hard object striking echoed in Shen Lianzhi’s ear. The First Prince suddenly let go, and Lianzhi fell to the ground in a disheveled heap. Tears hung on his lashes, ready to fall. In the next moment, Shen Lianzhi was helped up by another pair of hands. He caught a faint, elegant scent and was led to lift his head. Shen Lianzhi’s eyes slowly widened.

He thought he had seen the Golden Boy who stands beside the Bodhisattva.

“You must be the Fourth Highness?” The older boy, who looked not much older than himself, studied him for a moment. He smiled at Lianzhi and pointed to himself. “I am Lu Jingce. Lu Jingce of the Huayang Estate.”

The last bit of explanation was unnecessary. No one knew the Fourth Prince Shen Lianzhi, but everyone knew the Young Lord Lu, the apple of the Empress Dowager’s eye. Yet in all these years, Lianzhi had never had the chance to even see him. He thought Lu Jingce was more handsome and more noble than the rumors suggested.

Lianzhi could not help but lower his head in a sense of inferiority, but Lu Jingce quickly cupped his cheeks. In the morning light, the Lu Jingce who smiled gently at him held an infinite attraction for the small, pathetic Shen Lianzhi.

“Do not cry,” Lu Jingce said softly to him.

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