After the Cold and Aloof Husband's Mask Falls - Chapter 27

Swish—

Another hidden arrow, its tip gleaming with a strange blue light, struck an assassin squarely between the brows. The man collapsed instantly.

Cui Jue’s arm, which held the concealed weapon, finally slumped down weakly. He leaned against a tree trunk, gasping for breath as if his strength had been entirely drained. He opened the hidden compartment of the weapon box; the last poisonous arrow had been spent.

This body is still too weak, Cui Jue thought bitterly, closing his eyes in a state of disarray.

Ever since his rebirth, he had tried to strengthen his constitution and even learn martial arts. However, in his earlier years, he had donated too much blood to sustain Cui Qiong, leaving his physical foundation depleted. Fortunately, his aim was impeccable. He had commissioned experts to craft various concealed weapons for him; the one he used today was hidden inside his brush case.

“Head of the Family! Your subordinate has arrived late! I deserve ten thousand deaths! Please forgive me!”

Eleven arrived in a hurry with his men after receiving the signal. His brow twitched violently at the sight of the corpses on the ground as he knelt to beg for mercy.

Cui Jue leaned against the tree, motionless. Only when his breathing leveled out did he slowly open his eyes. “Take the bodies back. Investigate them.”

“Yes!” Eleven took the order. Noticing Cui Jue’s deathly pale face, he stepped forward to support him. “Master, you have overexerted your spirit today. Let me take you back!”

Cui Jue brushed his hand away and stood up, gritting his teeth and forcing his back to be straight. “I… am fine.”

If the one accompanying Gu Lehuan and the others today had been her, she certainly wouldn’t be as pathetic as he was now. “Did the two from the Gu Manor see anything?”

“They have been rescued by the Protector Duke’s guards, but Gu Wanlan has ridden into the forest alone.”

“Why did she—” Cui Jue turned his head in surprise. Before he could finish, a realization struck him, and his voice became incredibly soft. “Was it for me?”

“Yes. She came to save you.”

Eleven nodded, and catching a glimpse of his master’s eyes, he was startled to see a flicker of a smile. “Master?”

“Capture every suspicious person in this area.” Cui Jue stopped walking and turned back toward the path he had come from. “I will go find her.”

Eleven watched Cui Jue’s retreating back and sighed. He only hoped that Gu Wanlan would not betray his master’s heart in the future.

Ah Sun.

His real name was unknown. He was a Rouran man whom Gu Wanlan had met in the slave pits when she was trapped in the Rouran grasslands. Because of his natural heterochromia—his mismatched eyes—he had been bullied and beaten by other slaves. Gu Wanlan couldn’t stand the sight of it and helped him several times. They had a period where they were considered friends, though in the end, Gu Wanlan had used him to escape Rouran after her adoptive father died.

She never imagined she would meet him again, let alone in the imperial capital of Great Xia.

“Who is Cui Jue?” A raspy male voice sounded in front of her.

Gu Wanlan snapped back to reality, meeting Xiao Sun’s dark, intense gaze. The assassin who recognized her spear technique… the Rouran man, Ah Sun… in a flash of insight, she understood everything.

She pressed the longsword against Xiao Sun’s throat again, gritting her teeth and suppressing her rage. “These people were here to assassinate you, weren’t they?!”

Xiao Sun acted as if he hadn’t heard her. He lunged forward, ignoring the blade, and stared into her eyes, stubbornly repeating, “Who is Cui Jue?!”

A thin line of blood immediately appeared on his neck from the sharp edge. Gu Wanlan looked down at the red staining his collar, then suddenly shoved him away with a palm strike. She withdrew her sword and turned to leave. Since he didn’t know who Cui Jue was, she had no time to waste on nonsense. Saving Cui Jue was the priority.

To her surprise, she hadn’t taken two steps before she was pulled into a tight embrace from behind. Hot breath enveloped her. “Wanlan, I missed you so much.”

Before she could react, a sharp shout came from ahead.

“Release her!”

Gu Wanlan looked up abruptly. Standing in the distance was Cui Jue, his expression unreadable in the shadows. Seeing him unharmed, her first feeling was joy, but then she looked at her current situation and felt her scalp go numb. She wished she could just faint and get it over with. But she couldn’t; she had to clean up this mess, or the misunderstanding would be catastrophic.

Gu Wanlan summoned the greatest acting performance of her life. She broke free from Xiao Sun’s grasp and ran toward Cui Jue, weeping. “Cui Jue! Thank heavens you’re alright! I was scared to death!”

Only then did she realize she was still holding a blood-stained sword. She dropped it like a hot coal. “It’s so scary, waah…”

Cui Jue clenched his hands inside his sleeves, forcing his eyes away from the other man. He pulled a handkerchief from his robes, tilted Gu Wanlan’s face up, and began to wipe it clean with a serious expression. “Wait a moment. There is some filth on your face.”

Xiao Sun’s burning gaze pierced toward him like a blade, but Cui Jue acted as if he didn’t notice. He didn’t even lift his eyelids, focusing entirely on wiping the blood splatter from her face as if she were a priceless treasure.

When he was rescued and learned that she had entered the woods alone to find him, God knew how overjoyed he had been. But that joy had plummeted to the abyss the moment he saw her in that man’s embrace, shattering his heart to pieces.

But she broke away from him and came to me.

The weight of the stare vanished, and Cui Jue looked up. Xiao Sun had torn off the outer robe he was wearing—the one belonging to Cui Jue—flung it to the ground, and disappeared into the dense forest. Just as Cui Jue expected, the man didn’t catch a single bit of Gu Wanlan’s attention. A faint smirk touched Cui Jue’s lips.

Gu Wanlan didn’t realize anything was wrong at first, until she saw the blood on the handkerchief. She remembered the blood that had sprayed on her face when she killed the assassin and began racking her brain for an excuse.

“Uh… I just happened to see a black-clad man get killed by a passing warrior, so some blood got on me.”

“I see. Try to avoid such things in the future.”

Gu Wanlan cautiously peeked at his face. Seeing that he seemed to believe her, she breathed a secret sigh of relief. Once he finished cleaning her face, she prepared her explanation for the scene he had witnessed.

“Oh, right. That man just now, his name is Ah Sun. He is my…” She instinctively turned around, only to find the area empty. “Where is he?!”

“He left.”

“How long ago?! How could he just leave without saying anything?” Gu Wanlan was anxious.

Cui Jue was silent for a moment. “He hasn’t been gone long. If you go now, you can still catch him.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, Gu Wanlan felt she had misspoken in her urgency. After being seen in an embrace, acting this worried seemed unnecessarily intimate. But because Ah Sun was Rouran and the assassins were professional soldiers, today’s incident was no small matter. Previously, she chose to save Cui Jue because his life was on the line; now that he was safe, she couldn’t let Ah Sun just vanish. However, the reasons behind this were not things a noble lady should understand or involve herself in.

She scratched her head irritably. “Er, his identity is special. I’m worried…”

Cui Jue gazed in the direction Xiao Sun had disappeared, his eyes dark. “Cui Qiong is here as well. He was the one who rescued me with his men. He mentioned this might involve Rouran, so he should be searching the area now.”

Cui Qiong is here?!

Gu Wanlan felt a wave of relief. Though she and Cui Qiong disagreed on everything, his presence was better than her acting alone. If he caught the man, she could just interrogate him later using her identity as Flying Kite. “Oh, good. With Cui Qiong there, at least his life isn’t in danger, haha.”

Cui Jue put away the handkerchief and took her hand, leading her forward. “Yes. It’s dark here. Let me take you back.”

Gu Wanlan looked down at their intertwined fingers. “Cui Jue, he… he’s a childhood playmate from my years in Rouran. I haven’t seen him in years. It was dark, and he was wearing your robe, so I thought it was you.”

Cui Jue paused. “So that was it. I lost a robe here; he must have picked it up while fleeing.” He reached out to brush away a low-hanging branch, a smile appearing on his face. “Do not worry. I do not mind.”

Gu Wanlan pouted and muttered, “Then who was the one acting jealous earlier?”

Cui Jue laughed but didn’t respond.

Gu Wanlan dropped her playful tone and said seriously, “Speaking of which, thank you for today. Without you, Lehuan and the others might not have survived.”

“It was my—”

“Ah, stop.” Gu Wanlan held her forehead with one hand and put the other out to stop him. “I can guess what you’re going to say.” She straightened her posture, coughed twice, and mimicked his scholarly tone: “It was all within my duty. There is no need for thanks, Lady Gu.”

“Not quite,” Cui Jue said, unable to suppress a smile.

“Oh? What would you say then?”

“I would say—” In the dim forest, Cui Jue leaned down slightly toward her. “It was all within my duty. There is no need for thanks, Wanlan.”

A blush suddenly crept onto the tips of Gu Wanlan’s ears. Cui Jue stared at the redness for a long time, and only when it began to fade did he slowly straighten up.

He wasn’t lying. He didn’t mind. Whether he minded or not was useless; he would simply do what needed to be done.