Xi Yan said through gritted teeth, "Are you even a man? You actually want to marry off the wife you bowed to Heaven and Earth with to someone else? Is there another vile, low-down, shameless, lecherous wretch like you anywhere in the world?"
Hu Xiaotian pleaded desperately for mercy. "Let go... I... I'm a eunuch... I'm a eunuch..."
Seeing him like this, Xi Yan was both angry and tempted to laugh. In the end, she released his ear.
Rubbing the ear she had pinched red, Hu Xiaotian complained bitterly, "You're too vicious! You nearly tore my ear off."
"You deserved it!" After saying that, Xi Yan remembered something else. "Did you stay because I pricked you with that needle, and you were afraid you'd die even if you escaped?"
"If you hadn't mentioned it, I'd almost have forgotten all about that," Hu Xiaotian said.
Xi Yan blinked. "You're rather bold, aren't you? You don't even care about your own life?"
"That's not it," Hu Xiaotian said. "Actually, I'm more afraid of dying than anyone. But I figured, if I die beneath a beauty's pomegranate skirt, even as a ghost I'll still be a romantic. Dying at your hands wouldn't disgrace me. Besides, I don't think you're quite that cruel to me. Surely you wouldn't go so far as to kill me. If I died, wouldn't that make you a widow?"
Xi Yan sneered. "You're wrong this time. I'd rather be a widow whose husband died than an abandoned wife whose husband cast her aside." She closed the window and said to Hu Xiaotian, "Take off your clothes."
Hu Xiaotian instinctively covered his chest. "What for? I'm not that kind of easy man!"
"Shameless!" Xi Yan spat. "Let me look at your wound."
"You're the one who told me to strip!"