Which unlucky fool crossed Zhang Lanhe?

"Splash-"

Seeing no one around from beneath the water, a youth secretly emerged. Water dripped from his hair onto his collar and slid down his collarbones, his half-open clothes revealing a broad expanse of pale skin.

His soaked clothes clung to his waist and its lightly defined abs, the faint outline of his waist enticingly visible.

The spring breeze was chilly. A gust blew past his face, turning it deathly pale. He coughed softly, feeling a little dizzy.

"Cough, cough, cough, cough. Good thing I can swim, but this body can't stand this kind of ordeal."

I need to hurry back, drink some ginger soup to warm up, and rest. If I catch a chill, I'll be laid up for a while.

Relying on his excellent swimming skills, Xie Huizhou had managed to swim stealthily back to the vicinity of the detached palace where he lived, then slipped inside under cover of darkness.

"Hardly anyone knows this route. No one will know what happened tonight. I'll just treat it as a dog bite."

Others considered the detached palace where he, the ninth prince, was kept under partial confinement unlucky. No one wanted to approach someone who had no value.

Only after returning to his quarters did Xie Huizhou finally relax after being tense for so long.

Xie Huizhou hid his dripping clothes in a corner beneath the bed, planning to burn them once they dried, then dried his hair and body.

As a prince who had been all but abandoned, he had few attendants. Most had long since found more promising masters, leaving only a few who idled away their days.

No one had any idea where Xie Huizhou had gone or what he had done.

"How vicious. He bit me up like a dog. I'd die of embarrassment if anyone found out."

Beneath his ethereal, refined exterior, Zhang Lanhe had revealed a greed that belied his appearance, leaving marks on Xie Huizhou's body as though marking his territory.

Boys needed to protect themselves when going out alone, too.

Fortunately, the night had been dark and windy, and no one could tell it was him.

"What's this?"

Xie Huizhou's pupils trembled as he looked at himself in the mirror. After checking repeatedly, he was completely dumbfounded.

A silver snake marking had appeared at his waist, its scales faintly visible. It wound downward from his side, its green eyes like two pieces of venom-steeped jade, as though a poisonous snake had wrapped tightly around his waist, flicking its forked tongue.

It reminded Xie Huizhou of Zhang Lanhe, of the way his hands had clamped around his waist, holding Xie Huizhou under his powerful control.

Xie Huizhou tried to rub it off, but the Snake Pattern seemed carved into his flesh. Even after he rubbed the surrounding pale skin red, it remained unchanged.

Every time he touched the Snake Pattern, his entire body trembled.

Xie Huizhou said, "What exactly is this? Does he hate me so much he had to mark me to make me easier to find? The imperial preceptor doesn't seem very human."

At that, he paused.

He inwardly cursed himself for letting his imagination run wild. The original novel was a conventional court story. Where would all these strange things come from?

The Snake Pattern at his waist suddenly gave off heat. Xie Huizhou staggered a couple of steps, leaving him no room to dwell on it.

Utterly exhausted, Xie Huizhou drank some ginger soup and slept so deeply he lost all sense of day and night, until his troublemaking friend Li Xu, the minister of rites' son, and several other troublemaking friends shook him awake.

"Zhouzhou, wake up! You disappeared halfway through our drinking session. We searched all night! I was terrified. You're so good-looking-what if someone kidnapped you and sold you? If my father found out I took you drinking at a tavern and then lost you, he'd break my legs!"

There was no denying that Xie Huizhou was very good-looking. It was entirely possible he might encounter someone with bad intentions who coveted his looks.

The group sobbed uncontrollably, wailing as though at a funeral, and insisted on waking Xie Huizhou with their racket.

Roused groggily by the commotion in his bedchamber, Xie Huizhou slapped Li Xu on the head. His cool voice emerged from beneath the covers. "What time is it? Even the emperor doesn't get up this early for court, yet I'm being given the privilege."

Can't I get some proper rest?

My head's spinning.

When Xie Huizhou moved, the others noticed how different he looked from usual.

Xie Huizhou lay flushed in bed, a mass of kiss marks trailing down his neck beneath his collar. Who knew how disastrous things looked beneath the quilt?

Clearly, last night had been intense!

"Zhouzhou, you've finally grown up!"

Having spent years surrounded by women, Li Xu had a keen eye and could tell at a glance what Xie Huizhou had just experienced.

"I wonder whose daughter managed to move a block of wood like you. A girl's reputation matters. Why not bring her into the palace and give her a proper status? You might have a big, chubby son in your arms before long!"

Li Xu wept with emotion. The dear friend he had grown up with was no longer a fool and had even taken an interest in a girl. It seemed he would live to see his best friend's child call him godfather.

But wasn't this girl a little too fierce? She had nearly drained Xie Huizhou dry.

Looking so pitiful, he seemed more like the one who had been thoroughly devoured.

At that thought, Li Xu's heart skipped a beat, and he wondered how he could let his imagination run wild like that.

Xie Huizhou might be frail, but he was still a man. How could someone else have bullied him?

Don't overthink it. Don't overthink it.

Li Xu grew increasingly interested in that girl.

At the thought of Zhang Lanhe, that insatiable man who had ignored him even after he explicitly said they could not continue, Xie Huizhou's expression darkened at once. "No! Impossible. I could never be with him!"

He had no intention of asking for trouble!

With that man around, his grand escape plan would probably run into obstacles. Nothing in the world mattered more than escaping and avoiding his fatal ending.

"Wow, Zhouzhou, you're going to be a scoundrel? Just don't let her turn up at your door one day with a baby, demanding you acknowledge it."

Xie Huizhou thought of the youth he had taken a risk to help by drinking in his place. "What happened to him after I left?"

"He's fine. He seemed pretty grateful to Zhouzhou and was planning to visit to thank you." Li Xu thought for a moment, then continued, "His name was Zhou something-Yanqing, I think. He's a scholar who came to the Capital City to prepare for the exams. The eighth prince set his sights on him because he's good-looking. Luckily, you got him out of trouble, or he would've had a terrible time. But we've offended the eighth prince, too."

Still, the eighth prince's birth mother was low-ranking, and he was a good-for-nothing, no better than Xie Huizhou, so offending him was no big deal.

Xie Huizhou froze. "Zhou Yanqing?"

Oh no. I seem to have stolen the lead couple's scene.

This should have been the first meeting between Zhou Yanqing and Fang Yuanke.

Zhou Yanqing had been harassed by someone powerful. The lustful eighth prince wanted to drug him, and after falling victim to it, he escaped and encountered Fang Yuanke. Passion flared between them, and they ended up in bed together.

The kindhearted Xie Huizhou had intercepted that cup of drugged wine.

No wonder he had ended up in bed with the main villain.

Noticing that Xie Huizhou's face was abnormally red, Li Xu checked with the back of his hand and found him burning hot. "Zhouzhou! You're sick again! I'll get you a physician."

Xie Huizhou was often ill, and each illness left him much thinner than before. Li Xu regretted selfishly inviting Xie Huizhou out on his birthday.

Xie Huizhou caught his sleeve. "Don't! Everyone in the Capital City is watching me. They can't wait for an ill-fated jinx like me to die. Why would they let an imperial physician treat me?"

His imperial father loathed him beyond measure and resented the fact that he was still alive.

It was not as though no one had tried to find him a physician when he had been gravely ill before. In the end, none of the physicians dared treat him. They merely stammered that they had families and truly did not dare.

Xie Huizhou had more or less understood what was going on.

No family was more heartless than the imperial family.

Frail though Xie Huizhou was, he was blessed with enough luck to pull through unscathed every time and survive to this day.

It must have infuriated certain people.

"If there's really no other choice, I'll have to do it myself!" Although his family expected Li Xu to gain office through the imperial examinations, he loved taking pulses and prescribing medicine. After all these years of practicing on Xie Huizhou, he had learned a fair amount. "Without me, I don't know how you'd have made it through."

Li Xu had worried himself into a mother hen.

"Luckily, it's just an ordinary cold. I'll get you some medicine."

His troublemaking friends hurried out to fetch and brew his medicine.

When Li Xu emerged from the detached palace, the young master, who was accustomed to throwing his weight around, saw a party behaving even more arrogantly, aggressively searching for someone with complete disregard for everyone around them.

"Who are these people? Acting so arrogantly right under the emperor's nose?"

Accustomed to being overbearing himself, Li Xu was astonished to see people even more overbearing than he was!

They're actually throwing their weight around more than I do.

"Young Master Li, these are the imperial preceptor's men. Have you forgotten that bloody night in the Capital City? So many people died. Come to think of it, he's your distant older cousin, too."

An old acquaintance quietly caught hold of him, warning him not to recklessly provoke that formidable man.

"I heard someone offended him and ran away. They're searching everywhere for that person!"

Zhang Lanhe's conspicuous actions had stirred criticism among the people of the Capital City.

The group was in a hurry to fetch medicine for Xie Huizhou, so Li Xu left in haste without even offering a greeting.

"So it's him? What unlucky little fool crossed Zhang Lanhe and still thought they could run? I'll tell Zhouzhou about this amusing business later to cheer him up."