The Imperial Preceptor arrived silently through the wind and rain, appearing at the Bookshop entrance with an umbrella, like a god descending to earth.
His eyes held only Xie Huizhou, who sat by the window drinking tea and watching the rain.
"Your Highness, I have come to take you home."
"Cousin! What are you doing here?" Li Xu's legs always went weak at the sight of Zhang Lanhe, and he dropped to his knees at once. "I swear I haven't done anything bad this time. Please don't make me kneel in the ancestral hall again."
Every time he saw Zhang Lanhe, his knees would ache for days afterward, and his parents would take their bamboo whips to him, too.
It was fast becoming a psychological scar for poor Li Xu.
But Zhang Lanhe did not even glance at his younger cousin. His eyes were filled with Xie Huizhou alone as he walked toward him.
Li Xu: "???"
Am I invisible to you?
Xie Huizhou stared at the umbrella in his hand in astonishment.
He had only just finished complaining that he could not get home without an umbrella when Zhang Lanhe arrived.
Had he been listening in on him all along?
Xie Huizhou hardly knew what to say about Zhang Lanhe's occasional bouts of utterly deranged perversity. "Imperial Preceptor, why have you come in person? We were only just talking about it. Did you hear us from so far away?"
The Snake Demon's supernatural abilities really defied all reason.
"Perhaps our hearts are connected."
Zhang Lanhe handed Xie Huizhou a furry cloak. Only after Xie Huizhou put it on did his body, shivering beneath his thin clothes, begin to warm up.
Zhang Lanhe showed no embarrassment at being suspected. His explanation was watertight, his gaze lowered and his brows slightly