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Moonlight painted the green tiles of the pavilion in the Small Courtyard, and the air was filled with a faint medicinal scent mixed with the chill of an autumn night.
At the stone table in the pavilion, Zhu Wuneng's left fist, no longer needing bandages, slammed down hard. The dull thud sent the tabletop buzzing.
"They've crossed the line! Heaven Dou Academy's appetite is too ugly. They're not even pretending anymore—they can't even be bothered to pull over a fig leaf." Sparks of anger pressed beneath his voice, and his face flushed red with fury.
The layers upon layers of "mummy" bandages on his arms seemed as if they might be burst apart by that rage.
Opposite him, Chen Shurui leaned against a pavilion pillar, his right arm still slung in front of his chest, while his left hand leisurely picked up a melon seed and cracked it open with a click.
The smile on his face was still sunny, as though nothing had happened. "Wuneng, that prince captain, Xue Shiming, doesn't look like the kind to hide treachery and play dirty."
"You can know a face but not a heart, Eighth Young Master." Zhu Wuneng pointed at his own bandage-wrapped chest, his tone fierce. "He's a prince, a prince of Heaven Dou City!"
"He's been splashing around in that dye vat since he was a child. Could his mind be clearer than the moat outside the city? Sinister? That's his family learning!"
"Precisely because he's a prince," Chen Shurui said, spitting out the melon seed shell, his fingertips lightly tapping the tabletop, "he should still care about some dignity, shouldn't he? Doing something this low?"
Yet within that sunlit smile, a thread of ice slipped in, almost