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Lin Ling insisted he wasn't sleepy even as he honestly wrapped himself up in the blanket.

"Look, doesn't this resemble the spring rolls we ate at the temple fair before?" Lin Ling asked excitedly.

Shi Changyuan smiled. "No."

"Lin Ling is whiter than a spring roll wrapper."

As they chatted idly, Lin Ling drifted off without realizing it. Though he was drowsy, he was not completely asleep.

In the haze between sleep and wakefulness, Lin Ling kept feeling that Shi Changyuan was calling him.

"Mm...?"

Lin Ling opened his eyes groggily and stared blankly at Shi Changyuan's moving lips, trying to make out what he was saying.

"What is it?"

But Lin Ling was far too sleepy to think at all.

"I said, I want to sleep too." Shi Changyuan looked at the bewildered Lin Ling and patiently repeated himself again and again, until Lin Ling's brain finally started working for one second and he realized he was sleeping in Shi Changyuan's bed.

He had occupied Shi Changyuan's room, Shi Changyuan's bed. When the owner of the room wanted to rest, he still had to ask Lin Ling for permission.

Before Lin Ling could fall asleep again, he gathered all his strength and shifted to the side.

Watching Lin Ling clear space for him on the bed for the second time, Shi Changyuan found it a little amusing.

He bent close to Lin Ling's ear and asked with utmost gentlemanly courtesy, "Is Lin Ling inviting me to sleep foot-to-foot with him?"

Lin Ling could not answer. After a moment, Shi Changyuan sighed, put out the light, and lay down beside Lin Ling.

This was the legendary dragon bed, broad enough that two people sleeping side by side would barely feel crowded. There was even room for a dividing line between them.

But Mushroom was sleeping with someone else for the first time. Though he had been the one to share the bed, he still felt as if someone had invaded his territory, so he rudely shoved and kicked.

Shi Changyuan grew annoyed by the fuss. With one sweep of his hand, he pulled Lin Ling into his arms, locked an arm around his waist, and wrapped him completely in the blanket, leaving him unable to move at all.

Perhaps Shi Changyuan's embrace was simply too warm. Lin Ling soon sank into a deeper sleep.

Fast asleep, Lin Ling was extremely well-behaved. He kept burrowing into Shi Changyuan's arms, making his earlier behavior seem deliberate.

The next day, Mushroom woke from the heat. In that groggy instant after opening his eyes, he even thought spring had arrived.

As his vision gradually cleared, Shi Changyuan's face suddenly filled his sight, startling Lin Ling badly.

Lin Ling jerked in Shi Changyuan's arms. Not only did he fail to break free, he made Shi Changyuan hold him even tighter.

Only then did Mushroom realize how inseparably tangled together they were.

Lin Ling woke up instantly. Then he realized something even more serious and hurriedly reached out to shake Shi Changyuan—

"Wake up!! Why haven't you gone to court yet?!"

"Oh no, oh no, people are going to gossip about you behind your back!"

Looking at the faint light beyond the window, Lin Ling could already imagine those people calling Shi Changyuan a "tyrant" behind his back, then adding "fatuous ruler" to the list.

A line of poetry he had once seen in Liu Xiangyu's storybook even flashed through his mind—

Mm... something about a spring night, and the ruler something something not attending court early.

Damn it, he could not remember.

"Stop fussing."

With such warm, soft jade in his arms, Shi Changyuan was already somewhat restless, and the person in his embrace kept rubbing against him. Just as things were about to get out of control, Shi Changyuan hurriedly subdued him.

Shi Changyuan's voice was low and hoarse. "It's a rest day."

Shi Changyuan looked at Lin Ling in his arms and shifted his attention. "I also want to experience what it feels like to sleep all day like Lin Ling."

Lin Ling had been teased, but that was not his focus at all. "What happened to your voice? Did you accidentally catch a chill yesterday? And what is a rest day?"

Shi Changyuan fell silent for a moment and chose to answer selectively. "Mm, it's a day when you can rest."

Still held in Shi Changyuan's arms, Lin Ling wanted to move closer, but Shi Changyuan held him firmly in place. Left with no choice, he reached out and poked him, pressing for an answer. "Then why didn't you have them before?"

Shi Changyuan did not know where Lin Ling had poked him, but his gaze darkened at once. His Adam's apple bobbed, and resignedly, he caught Mushroom's restless fingers as well.

"Great Li officials have one rest day every ten days. It was simply that, in the early days of Great Li's founding, official duties were busy. Even on rest days, I and several key ministers would still attend court to discuss affairs."

Besides, he had slept poorly in the past and suffered countless nightmares. Rest had meant nothing to him.

Lin Ling understood.

That was really hard.

"So be good and let me rest a little longer."

After saying that, Shi Changyuan closed his eyes again.

Lin Ling could feel the exhaustion emanating from him, so he quietly lay beside Shi Changyuan.

Once they both fell silent, the sounds of their breathing rising and falling in the room, along with each other's body heat passing through their thin inner robes, became especially distinct.

He could not sleep...

Lin Ling stared at the top of the bed curtains, unusually without the slightest hint of drowsiness.

In the quiet bedchamber, Lin Ling's heart seemed to beat harder and harder, louder and louder. His body temperature gradually rose until it felt as though he might burn up.

Shi Changyuan's breath did not seem to fall directly on Lin Ling's neck. Instead, it brushed faintly along the edge, making the fine hairs on his body tremble.

At an inappropriate moment, Mushroom suddenly remembered the strange dreams he had had one after another after reading those storybooks.

The final scenes in those dreams all seemed to involve an embrace this warm.

Mushroom suddenly noticed the changes in his body.

He went rigid with fright and hurriedly checked whether his spores were leaking.

Perhaps Shi Changyuan noticed Lin Ling's body gradually stiffening. As though afraid of waking him, or perhaps for some other reason, he remained still and said nothing even when his arm had been pressed numb from lying awkwardly.