The Young Marquis is Ruining the Court! - Chapter 29

Chi Zhou knew very well that feigning death was the best solution.

Clean, final, and leaving no lingering worries.

The only downside was that it would force He Lingzhen and the Old Lady to endure the heartbreak of outliving their child once again.

But this was something destined to happen in the original plot anyway. He was simply moving the ending forward, while simultaneously preventing the Marquis Mansion from falling into ruin because of him.

No matter how one looked at it, the benefits outweighed the harms. Anyone else in his position would find no reason not to do it.

But matters of the heart cannot be measured simply by gains and losses.

Chi Zhou stood on the street, looking directly at the sun until black halos filled his vision. Only then did he lower his head and close his eyes, scrutinizing his own despicableness amidst the surrounding clamor.

He could easily “reserve” a body of similar stature at the mortuary, or exchange a death-row prisoner from the Great Prison.

As the master of the Ningping Marquis Mansion, he was a member of the clear-cut privileged class in this world.

Whatever he wanted, there would naturally be no one to refuse.

To satisfy his wishes, countless people would rush forward, even offering him multiple options to choose from just to earn his favor.

But if he did that, human life would become a tradable commodity.

Chi Zhou didn’t want to die, yet he would become the mastermind behind someone else’s death.

No matter how many times he tried to convince himself—that those people were already going to die, that he was merely utilizing their final bit of value, that he could even provide their families with a handsome compensation to make their deaths more “meaningful”—it wasn’t right.

He couldn’t guarantee that a body would appear “by chance” rather than being deliberately manufactured by others for profit, nor could he cross that moral line in his heart.

This was a novel, but it was also a real world.

Every sound falling by his ear, every beam of light reflecting on his eyelids, was so vivid and natural, no different from the world where he had lived for twenty-six years.

He had been trying to distance himself from this world, but that didn’t mean he could comfortably accept a real person becoming a tool for his fake death.

Especially since he would have to pick that tool himself, meaning he would witness them breathing in this world with his own eyes.

If he truly did it, Chi Zhou had no doubt that the nightmare of his remaining life would simply shift from one prison to another, forever confined in the torment of his conscience.

Someone bumped his shoulder. A peddler carrying a pole of straw-stuck treats passed by, apologizing incessantly, “Pardon me, pardon me, please don’t take offense, Young Master. My eyes failed me just now, I really didn’t see you standing there…”

Chi Zhou opened his eyes to see a tanghulu vendor dressed in brownish-grey short clothes, bowing low before him.

The man looked panicked, speaking at a rapid-fire pace. While bowing and scraping, he couldn’t stop eyeing the fabric of Chi Zhou’s clothes, the fear and dread in his eyes nearly overflowing.

Passersby instinctively slowed their pace. Even those who walked past couldn’t help but look back, stopping a few paces away to silently watch this small scene.

Chi Zhou turned his head and noticed a tear in his right shoulder. A strand of pale gold silk thread was snagged on a tanghulu skewer.

No wonder he was so nervous.

Before the sense of absurdity in Chi Zhou’s heart could dissipate, a stronger sense of wordlessness surged up.

He tilted his head, quietly scanning his surroundings.

The people he saw were dressed quite uniformly, coarse cloth clothes, wooden hairpins and crowns—all plain and ordinary. When they met his gaze, they dodged to varying degrees, as if terrified of incurring his wrath.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

The vendor in front of him was still apologizing.

In the few seconds Chi Zhou remained silent, the man nearly dropped to his knees to beg for forgiveness.

Chi Zhou was used to scenarios on the road where both parties apologized calmly and discussed compensation, and he had seen dramas where the wrongdoer turned things around to blacken the innocent. It was his first time seeing something like this.

It was as if tearing a single thread on his clothes could cost the man his life.

He suddenly felt a blockage in his chest.

Chi Zhou coughed softly, his voice sounding as if it were squeezed from his throat, “Give me that skewer of tanghulu.”

The vendor’s apology was still on the tip of his tongue. Hearing this, he blanked for a moment, then hurriedly pulled a skewer from the straw pole, then tried to pull another.

Chi Zhou stopped him. “One is enough. Consider it compensation.”

The vendor was almost moved to tears of gratitude, immediately handing the tanghulu to Chi Zhou. As he stammered out thanks, his eyes shimmered with the excitement of a narrow escape.

It was the first time Chi Zhou had seen someone smile so happily, yet he only felt his heart being dragged downward.

He took the tanghulu and fled from the small encirclement.

After walking a long distance, he realized with a start that he had unconsciously wandered back to the vicinity of Jifu Alley.

The Xuanxing River continued to flow quietly around the Imperial City. The early summer sun wasn’t intense, just warm, not even enough to melt the syrup coating the hawthorn berries in his hand.

Chi Zhou stood at the alley entrance, the shimmering river at his back.

He thought for a long time, then suddenly remembered he hadn’t given the business contract to Xie Jiu yet.

As if he had finally found a reasonable excuse, Chi Zhou let out a soft breath and stepped into the alley.

He knocked for a long time, but no one opened the door.

Instead, the neighboring gate opened. A young man poked his head out, looked him up and down, and asked, “Looking for someone?”

Chi Zhou felt he must look quite disheveled right now.

His clothes were torn, he was holding a stick of tanghulu, his forehead hair was dampened by sweat and stuck to his temples, and his expression was likely quite dazed.

His throat tightened as he nodded. “Yes. Is the family not in?”

The man said, “Little Xie went to the market to buy groceries. Do you want to come into my place and wait for him?”

Hearing that Xie Jiu had only stepped out and would be back soon, Chi Zhou instinctively felt relieved. He shook his head and said, “No need, I’ll just wait here.”

The man didn’t speak for a moment, his gaze landing on Chi Zhou’s hand. After a thought, he asked, “Is that tanghulu for him?”

Chi Zhou was slightly stunned. He looked at the hawthorn skewer in his hand and smiled. “Yes. I don’t know if he likes sweets.”

He probably did, considering he put plenty of sugar in the rice balls and eggs he cooked for him.

“Oh.” The man nodded. Half his body was still behind the door while the other half was stuck outside. He stared at Chi Zhou for a while with a conflicted face, then as if suddenly remembering something, he turned back into his house and brought out a small stool. “Sit and wait. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”

Chi Zhou: “Thank you.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to wait in my house?” the man asked again.

“I won’t disturb you. I’d like to sit in the sun for a bit,” Chi Zhou said.

“Oh.” The man hummed an answer, heading back into his courtyard while looking back with every step. He closed the gate, then his footsteps moved as fast as if he were flying against the wall. He vaulted over and cursed in a hushed voice, “Where the hell is Shadow Seven slacking off again!?”

“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?”

“Are you stupid? The Marquis is here, waiting outside. Didn’t you hear?” the other replied.

“Shadow Seven didn’t tell the Master!? Isn’t he supposed to be following the Marquis?”

“Heaven knows what he’s doing!” the man cursed again, going to the backyard to grab a messenger pigeon. He hurriedly wrote a few words, tied them to the pigeon’s leg, and released it toward the north.

Several heads huddled together, biting their fingers as they stared at the courtyard gate.

One moment they thought they should just open the door—what kind of sense did it make to let the Marquis wait outside? If Chi Zhou got impatient and left, the Master would surely have their heads.

The next moment, they wondered how they could even open the door. The Marquis still thought the Master was a poor, abandoned little thing. If they opened the door and he found out the house was lived in by.

One, two, three…

Three large men. Heaven knows how much he would misunderstand.

Over the years, the Shadow Guards had long understood a certain priority.

Better to make the Master angry than to make the Marquis of Ningping angry.

The heads huddled together again, biting their fingers, praying the messenger pigeon would be more reliable than Shadow Seven and bring the Master back sooner.

Chi Zhou waited outside for a long time, his mind blank as he stared at a few weeds growing in the cracks of the bluestone pavement.

Ants were crawling back and forth carrying fruit, getting blocked by the weeds and then detouring, only to be blocked again on the next trip. They were like a tireless program, repeatedly obstructed by a bug from the Creator.

After watching the ants move food several times, the light suddenly dimmed.

Chi Zhou blinked his eyes, which had grown a bit sore, and looked up to see Xie Jiu standing before him.

He was carrying a small bamboo basket with a fresh fish inside.

Chi Zhou smiled instantly. “Great, I didn’t get to eat much last time.”

Xie Jiu frowned as he stared at him. Chi Zhou seemed not to notice. He tried to stand up, but because he had sat for too long, his legs were numb. He stumbled as he rose, falling directly forward.

Xie Jiu immediately reached out to catch him, asking in a cold voice, “Didn’t you say you didn’t want to see me? Why wait here for so long?”

“How could I not want to see you,” Chi Zhou countered with a smile, though he didn’t answer the actual question.

Xie Jiu’s expression grew colder. Just as he was about to press further, his gaze dropped, landing on a certain spot, and his expression changed instantly.

He was almost furious. Gripping Chi Zhou’s arm with one hand, he asked in a suppressed voice, “Chi Zhou, have you gone mad?”

Chi Zhou: “?”

He looked quite innocent. As the numbness in his legs faded, he pushed against Xie Jiu, trying to stand steady on his own. Hearing this, he felt quite wronged and asked back, “Why are you scolding me? I haven’t even called you a madman yet.”

Xie Jiu didn’t answer, only staring fixedly at his shoulder.

Only then did Chi Zhou seem to realize. He glanced sideways at the tear in his clothes and said indifferently, “I bumped into someone on the road, it’s fine…”

Before the word “fine” could fully land, Chi Zhou silenced himself.

He stared at his shoulder for two seconds, suddenly feeling a bit deflated.

His tensed body relaxed. Chi Zhou no longer forced himself to stand straight, but instead leaned forward, letting his weight rest on Xie Jiu. He rested his chin on Xie Jiu’s shoulder and said gloomily, “Yeah, Jiujiu, I think I am a little mad.”

He said, “I brought you tanghulu. Help me tend to the wound.”

Yes, a wound.

From the collision on the street, to walking for so long alone, to sitting in front of the door for such a long time, Chi Zhou hadn’t realized once that under the tear in his clothes, a wound nearly two knuckles long had been sliced open, almost cutting across his shoulder from front to back.

It wasn’t deep, but a layer of fine, dense blood had seeped out. Because it had been covered by his clothes, no one had noticed.

Looking at it now, a thick scab had already formed.

Heaven knows how thick one’s nerves must be to remain oblivious for so long, even ignoring the pain.

Chi Zhou leaned on Xie Jiu’s shoulder, his voice soft and weak, a hint of genuine plea showing through his usual playfulness: “Help me, Jiujiu.”

He closed his eyes, intending to let himself be led by Xie Jiu, but the man in front of him didn’t move.

After a long time, just as Chi Zhou thought Xie Jiu intended to keep him standing there like a door god, he heard a very soft, suppressed question: “You hate it here very much. Where do you want to go?”

Xie Jiu’s tone sounded even more exhausted than his own. Without waiting for an answer, he asked again in a low voice, “Chi Zhou, why did you come to find me?”

**

Chi Zhou leaned on the small couch, chewing a hawthorn ball that had almost lost its sugar coating, thinking about Xie Jiu’s question. He felt even more lost than the other man.

Why did he really come to find Xie Jiu?

Why wasn’t he in a hurry to run away, but instead spent day after day idling away time with Xie Jiu?

Wasn’t he the one most afraid of death, most afraid of following the original owner’s fate?

Then why waste time in Jindu, allowing himself to gradually drift toward the possibility of being unable to escape?

Chi Zhou closed his eyes. As the last layer of sugar dissolved, the tart, astringent taste of the hawthorn began to spread in his mouth.

He frowned, remembering an ill-timed memory of a Lunar New Year he spent in the modern world.

He was in university then, an adult already. His grades were good, and he had been chosen as an exception for a project by a professor who taught graduate students. He was working in the lab during the winter break.

It wouldn’t have been a big deal. He wasn’t in a relationship and was just an undergraduate, so he had far more time than the seniors in the group. He was perfect for projects that required long hours of monitoring data runs.

But it was unlucky timing. Near the Spring Festival, they discovered something was wrong with a set of data at the very end. They needed to trace the source to find the error and run it again.

But by then, the seniors in the lab had already grabbed tickets to go back to their hometowns days in advance, and the locals needed to go home to reunite with their families for the holiday.

Seeing their troubled expressions, Chi Zhou said almost without thinking, “I’ll stay. I didn’t get a ticket anyway, I can’t go home until the second day of the new year.”

His voice was calm, his expression gentle, and he even had a smile on his face as he said it. No one thought anything was wrong. They looked at him like a savior, promising to come back as soon as possible—right after New Year’s Eve dinner and New Year’s Day greetings, they would come to relieve him.

Chi Zhou accepted it indifferently and turned back to check the remaining sets of experimental data.

The lab was a place rented by the professor, overall a very clean, cold white, brightly lit.

It was fine when there were many people, but once the voices were gone and only the hum of the machines remained, it took on an inorganic coldness.

On New Year’s Eve, delivery services were tight. Chi Zhou finally found a shop that was still open and ordered a Chinese meal of three dishes and a soup. He waited an hour and a half, and it was cold by the time it arrived.

He calmly took the bag from the delivery man, said “Happy New Year” with a smile, then took the containers out one by one and put them in the microwave to heat.

When the notification beep for the microwave sounded, a message alert also chimed on his phone.

Chi Zhou unplugged the microwave, pulled out his phone, and saw a reminder that his train would depart in less than thirty minutes.

Only then did he remember that he had reserved a ticket long before the winter break, and half a month ago, he had secured a seat on the very last high-speed train going home on New Year’s Eve.

Actually, he didn’t want to go home that much. Even if he went home, no one was waiting. But still…

He couldn’t help but want to grab a ticket back.

Chi Zhou stared at the link in the message for a long time, but in the end, he didn’t click it.

He didn’t rush to hail a taxi to the station, nor did he cancel the ticket before departure.

He just watched it quietly for half a minute, then opened the microwave, carried the containers of heated food back to his workstation, opened a video app, and finished that not-very-tasty meal to the sound of laughter from the Spring Festival Gala and the whirring of the machines behind him.

At the same time the sound of a firework exploding came from far outside the lab, Chi Zhou saw a message on his phone saying the train had departed.

It wasn’t a big deal, really. He spent many New Years alone after that.

There was one where he went to a beach abroad to join a bonfire party with locals, and another where he was surrounded by colleagues at the company celebrating a project bonus.

And naturally, there were times he stayed home alone, cooking a meal and staying up until dawn.

That New Year he spent in the lab didn’t feel particularly lonely at the time, nor did it feel special afterward.

After many years had passed, he had long forgotten about it.

Aside from Tomb Sweeping Day, the Winter Solstice, and his parents’ death anniversaries, the holidays that society deemed worth celebrating were, to Chi Zhou, just ordinary days not worth much attention.

Yet he remembered it now.

The hawthorn grew more and more sour, until his cheeks started to ache.

Chi Zhou endured it, but eventually couldn’t help it. He turned his head and spat it into his palm.

He stood up and walked out, throwing the soggy hawthorn under a camellia tree.

Xiao Chuan scurried over, nudging his leg with its wet nose.

Chi Zhou smiled and crouched down, gently scratching its chin.

While Xie Jiu was making lunch in the kitchen, Chi Zhou gave it some serious thought.

Xie Jiu said he hated it here, but actually, he probably didn’t.

He certainly didn’t like this world that divided people into ranks with such distinct boundaries, but to say he hated it wasn’t quite accurate either.

He just…

Lacked any sense of belonging.

The Marquis Mansion wasn’t his, his relatives weren’t his, and this world wasn’t his.

But even in his own world, Chi Zhou hadn’t felt much of a sense of belonging.

It was only because he had a job, a career, and a social circle there that he didn’t seem so lonely.

And here?

He was a thief who had stolen someone else’s identity. He had to constantly worry about dying at the protagonist’s blade. He didn’t have the energy or desire to maintain the original owner’s social circle, nor could he comfortably accept the unconditional pampering and indulgence given by his relatives.

Only Xie Jiu.

Xie Jiu was the world he had actively broken into by pushing open the wooden door of Liuliyue.

Only the emotions that occasionally flickered in Xie Jiu’s eyes would make one feel, in a daze, that they weren’t just for the original owner.

And only when Xie Jiu stared at him while speaking did Chi Zhou feel that he was only looking at him—looking through this skin and identity toward the person named “Chi Zhou” himself.

Then, every word Xie Jiu said was also just for him, a soul that had accidentally strayed into an alien world.

This realization made Chi Zhou’s soul tremble. It allowed him to let his body’s weight fall on Xie Jiu when he was too exhausted to untangle his thoughts.

Aside from the objective fact that he could sleep relatively better by his side, these reasons were why Chi Zhou had, time and time again, actively walked to his side.

Even if he had made up his mind the day before not to see Xie Jiu again, when he fell into a daze and panic the next day, he would still unconsciously walk to his side.

Xie Jiu was like a magnet. As long as he stood there, Chi Zhou’s instinct was to draw closer.

But that wasn’t right either.

Xiao Chuan had happily flopped onto the ground under his petting. Chi Zhou touched it with curved eyes, as the dull pain on his shoulder began to itch and tear at him.

Chi Zhou thought silently:

How was this any different from wanting a corpse?

He quite liked Xie Jiu, but this was far from love.

If he truly analyzed it, Xie Jiu was perhaps more like a medicine that worked specifically on him.

He could make him sleep well and help him find a long-lost sense of belonging in this alien world.

A person might rely on medicine to cure an illness, but would they fall in love with it?

Therefore, he could neither take Xie Jiu with him to hide under an assumed name for a lifetime, nor could he recklessly marry the protagonist while keeping Xie Jiu on the side, waiting for the plot to end so Xie Jiu could die with him.

Footsteps approached. Xiao Chuan gave a low bark, scrambled up from the ground, and ran away from under Chi Zhou’s hand.

It was exceptionally good at reading the room; he didn’t know how it had been raised.

Chi Zhou’s hand felt empty. He paused for two seconds, then chuckled softly.

He looked up to see Xie Jiu standing before him, looking down at him.

The light was blocked. Looking up created an unnecessary blind spot in his vision, so Chi Zhou couldn’t see the expression in his eyes, but he could smell the scent of the hearth on him.

In an instant, he was pulled back into the mundane world.

He maintained his smile as he looked at his “medicine” and said softly, “Jiujiu, it’s the eighth day of the fourth month.”

Xie Jiu hummed an answer.

“I’m getting married in ten days.”

“…I know.”

Chi Zhou sighed softly, patted his hands, and stood up. He looked into Xie Jiu’s eyes, as if giving up or perhaps resigning to fate, and asked, “Until then, can I come see you every day?”

Xie Jiu: “…”

He frowned at Chi Zhou, for a moment unsure whether to say yes or no.

Chi Zhou took a step forward, closing the distance between them.

He reached out, gently grasping the side of Xie Jiu’s neck, his thumb stroking the skin there. His voice was very, very soft, infinitely tender: “And after that, let’s not see each other again.”

Xie Jiu: “…”

The Shadow Guards hiding in the dark, not daring to breathe: “…”