The Cannon Fodder Awakens, Training the Cold and Proud Protagonist into a Submissive Dog - Chapter 6

The hands hanging by the hems of his trousers slowly tightened into fists as Xiao Huaiyan gave a slight nod of his head.

Shen Chaoqing glanced to the side. “Step over here.”

Obeying the command, Xiao Huaiyan walked behind Shen Chaoqing and stood with lowered head. His posture was deferential, yet it imperceptibly radiated a sense of oppression.

The muscles across Shen Chaoqing’s back tightened imperceptibly for a fraction of a second. Without turning his head, his voice turned a fraction colder: “Step around to my side.”

Xiao Huaiyan paused for a brief moment before walking around to the side of the desk and coming to a halt.

His gaze swept across the emperor’s slightly stiff shoulder line, and his tone remained calm and unruffled: “Your Majesty… seems to dislike having anyone behind you?”

A provocation.

The hand with which Shen Chaoqing held his brush stalled slightly, a drop of ink from the tip landing upon the memorial document and spreading into a small blotch of stain. Slowly lifting his gaze to meet Xiao Huaiyan’s bottomless eyes, the corners of his mouth twitched into an icy arc: “You talk too much.”

He indeed detested having anyone standing behind him. During those years in the Changle Palace, countless “accidental” shoves and hands reaching out from the dark had long since ingrained in him the habit of never exposing his back to anyone. Whenever someone stood behind him, he felt as though pins and needles were pricking at his spine.

Suppressing the churning malice in his heart, Shen Chaoqing looked away from Xiao Huaiyan and refocused his attention on the memorial before him, acting as though his previous remark had merely been an offhand comment.

Suddenly, as if his wrist had grown weak and sore, the purple-hair brush he was holding slipped with a soft clack onto the polished golden brick floor, rolling all the way to Xiao Huaiyan’s feet.

Keeping his gaze fixed on the memorial, Shen Chaoqing said in a lazy tone: “Pick it up.”

Xiao Huaiyan silently looked down at the brush on the floor, then glanced at the emperor who appeared entirely engrossed in state affairs, and slowly bent down. Every movement pulled at the wounds across his back and arms, yet no trace of pain could be discerned on his face. Using only his uninjured right hand, he picked up the brush and respectfully placed it back beside the inkstone.

Shen Chaoqing acted as though he noticed nothing and continued reading. Within moments, that same brush was “accidentally” brushed aside by his wide sleeve, tumbling down once more to land in the exact same spot.

“Pick it up.” The emperor’s voice remained flat.

Xiao Huaiyan’s movements halted for a fraction of a second before he bent down once again to retrieve it.

On the third time, when that brush fell in virtually the exact same manner and landed in virtually the exact same spot, Xiao Huaiyan stood rooted in place, lowering his eyes without moving an inch.

The attending palace attendants held their breath and bowed their heads, wishing they could bury their faces straight into the cracks of the floor.

Shen Chaoqing finally lifted his gaze from the memorial to stare at the silent, boulder-like man beside him: “My hand… simply trembles.” His tone was mocking, carrying a clear provocation.

Xiao Huaiyan remained silent, as if he had heard nothing.

The lazy expression on Shen Chaoqing’s face gradually faded, replaced by an icy, amused curiosity. “Since the Prince of Liao is of such noble and precious stock that he doesn’t know how to serve others, Fu An, teach him the rules.”

“This old servant is here.” Fu An stepped forward in response to the call.

Almost simultaneously with his voice dropping, four robust guards swiftly and silently flooded into the warm pavilion, two on each side, violently grabbing Xiao Huaiyan by his arms and forcing him down into a brutal, heavy kneel upon the floor. The rough, unmerciful movement slammed directly against all of his fresh wounds.

Xiao Huaiyan let out a muffled groan, cold sweat instantly beading across his temples, but he gritted his teeth hard as he was forced to kneel upon the freezing ground.

Shen Chaoqing watched his inability to struggle with appreciative satisfaction.

Fu An retrieved a bronze goose-foot lamp from the side, its bowl filled to the brim with boiling, hot lamp oil. The flickering flames cast a glow upon his entirely devoid-of-smiles eyes.

He stepped forward and forcefully shoved this heavy, hazardous lamp right into Xiao Huaiyan’s hands.

The weight of the bronze lamp and its scalding temperature transferred through the rough vessel walls, the flames nearly licking against his fingers. Xiao Huaiyan’s arms trembled slightly from the tearing of his wounds, yet he had to exhaust every ounce of strength to steady the lamp.

Looking down at him from above, Shen Chaoqing spoke in a gentle voice carrying a cruel smile, clearly announcing the rules syllable by syllable:

“Since Prince Xiao cannot even serve with a pen, you might as well learn how to hold a lamp first.”

“Hold it steady for me. For every inch the flame dips, you lose a finger.”

Xiao Huaiyan’s left hand was practically fractured, leaving him no choice but to raise it high in an awkward, agonizing posture to steadily support the heavy bronze lamp.

A few droplets of scalding lamp oil splashed out from the trembling, landing directly upon his newly bandaged left hand. The oil quickly soaked through the coarse linen gauze, adhering its sticky, boiling heat directly to his lacerated flesh. His wrists were scorched red by the overflowing hot oil, sending waves of burning pain.

Fine cold sweat beaded along Xiao Huaiyan’s temples, and his lips pressed into a pale, straight line. Yet, his spine and back remained as straight as an unyielding pine tree in the snow, without emitting a single sound of whimpering or begging for mercy.

Shen Chaoqing acted as though he entirely failed to notice his pain or rather, noticed it completely and simply didn’t care.

He lowered his head once more, focusing upon the memorials, wielding his vermilion brush and reviewing them with utmost concentration, as though that cruel punishment just now had merely been a minor interlude.

Inside the warm pavilion, only the soft rustle of the brush tip gliding across paper and the tiny crackle of the burning wick remained.

The emperor sat high upon the imperial throne, wielding the power of life and death; the enemy prince knelt in humiliation, holding a lamp with both palms like the most submissive hunting hound, awaiting whatever whipping or alms his master might casually drop upon him. The scene carried a bizarre, cruel aesthetic.

Time trickled away bit by bit; the charcoal fire gradually grew faint, and the daylight outside the window shifted from bright afternoon to the dim twilight of dusk.

Two hours passed.

Xiao Huaiyan’s arms began to shake violently and uncontrollably, every single muscle screaming in protest as his torn wounds re-opened under the continuous heavy pressure, seeping fresh blood that stained his coarse garments into dark patches.

Having trained in martial arts for many years, his sinews and bones possessed a resilience far exceeding ordinary men, yet even he could not withstand such prolonged, anti-articular torture. Relying entirely on an unyielding willpower refusing to collapse completely before this tyrant, that lamp stubbornly continued to burn in his trembling hands, the flame refusing to die out by even a fraction.

Finally, Shen Chaoqing finished reviewing the very last memorial, laid his vermilion brush aside, and stretched his slightly sore neck.

Lifting his eyes, his gaze fell upon Xiao Huaiyan, who was still kneeling rigidly straight and holding the lamp, appearing somewhat surprised that the man had genuinely managed to hold on through it all.

Shen Chaoqing smiled faintly. “Put it down.”

The instant the command was given, Xiao Huaiyan’s tensed willpower seemed to shatter abruptly.

He practically released his grip at once, the heavy bronze lamp crashing onto the golden brick floor with a loud clatter, splashing hot lamp oil across the carpet. The flame flickered a few times before going out.

A violent numbness and needle-like pins-and-needles sensation spread all the way from his shoulders to his fingertips, his wrists badly swollen, burning with fiery agony where they had been scorched and bruised by the edges of the lamp, practically losing all sensation.

Xiao Huaiyan attempted to wiggle his fingers, only to trigger an uncontrollable spasm.

Standing up, Shen Chaoqing paced over to stand right in front of him, looking down with half-lidded eyes at his wretched yet stubbornly unyielding posture, and chuckled softly: “It seems the Liao prince isn’t entirely useless after all.”

“At least,” he bent down, using a cool fingertip to lift Xiao Huaiyan’s chin and forcing him to meet his gaze, a hint of playful mockery in his tone, “as a lampstand, you’re reasonably steady.”

Xiao Huaiyan stared straight into Shen Chaoqing’s face inches away. That face was breathtakingly, almost freakishly beautiful his skin deathly pale, his lips vividly bright, and a pair of peach-blossom eyes swimming with light, as though looking at an entertaining plaything.

Just like when they first met, that face wore a smiling expression.

Deep within the dark depths of Xiao Huaiyan’s eyes, a tide of blackness capable of burning everything to ashes churned frantically, but the surface remained as calm as an ice-bound lake, waveless and still, locking all genuine emotions deep away within the abyss.

Seeming to find his restrained expression exceptionally amusing, Shen Chaoqing applied a fraction more pressure with his fingertip, pinching his jaw tighter and smiling even more brightly: “Subjected to such humiliation… deep down inside, don’t you want to kill me?”

The sentence struck like a sudden clap of thunder, violently cleaving into Xiao Huaiyan’s tensed nerves.

Narrowing his eyes, Xiao Huaiyan’s acute hearing caught the extremely faint sound of a bowstring tightening and breathing freezing from up among the palace rafters and behind the screen.

Someone was lying in ambush.

So that was it. Another test. This madman of an emperor took joy in torturing him, and took even greater pleasure in testing his bottom line over and over again, dancing on the edge of a cliff and relishing that thrilling sensation of walking a tightrope between life and death.

A little madman.