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"Chen... Chen Jing?" The sea of anger in Liu Rongrong's eyes vanished the moment she saw the newcomer. She had originally thought him some ignorant, unreasonable, arrogant guest—her bedchamber was not a place just anyone could enter, all the more so since a distinguished guest from the palace and the Prime Minister's Son had frequented her quarters.

Unexpectedly, it was him—

Li Chenjing's throat rolled twice as if burning with fire, a thin layer of sweat trembling on his forehead. He pressed his lips together and averted his gaze. "You... go put on some clothes. I have things to ask you."

He had forgotten rules and decorum, feeling no impropriety in forcibly breaking into a woman's room in the middle of the night, yet he had not expected her to be bathing at that very moment.

Instead of covering her body and screaming at the top of her lungs like a timid maiden, she calmly rose from the water. Amid swirling wisps of steam, water droplets slowly cascaded down the woman's bare, voluptuous curves. The sight before him made the dry fever in his throat neither cough up nor swallow down. Slow-witted as he was, even he knew this was no proper posture for a conversation. He hurried away, his back pressed against the screen, raising his line of sight to cast his thoughts elsewhere as well. Yet the image of her rising from the water lingered behind his pupils, that scene damnably making his body stir with a familiar sensation.

His fingertips were growing hot and trembling, as if something terrifying was about to burst out from his mind. He desperately pushed that sensation down to the deepest recesses of his head, yet they surged upward relentlessly, entangling like the incense smoke in this room...

—*"You, Li Chenjing, only