Pei Qing failed to notice the utterly different moods of the two people beside him. Entirely absorbed in the case, he pressed on. "So, after his sudden coital collapse, you fled?"
"How could I?" Rouniang sneered. "Even death by a thousand cuts would have been too good for that beast Li An. So I stabbed him, right through the heart! Hahahaha!"
Lou Yun lifted her tea, only to find the cup empty. She pursed her lips in displeasure and was about to summon someone when she realized that not a single attendant remained in the hall.
Forget it. She set the cup on the table. A sudden warmth brushed the back of her hand, and the young man's eyes curved with a smile. "I've filled it. Have some."
Pei Qing did not have the sunny, adorable looks of someone with puppy-dog eyes, yet at that moment, he still gave Lou Yun the gentle warmth of a spring breeze against her face. It was like basking in the winter sun; that smile and those few words scattered the gloom in her heart.
Lou Yun's heart trembled, and for a moment, she said nothing.
The young man held out the cup for a long while without anyone taking it. A layer of hurt settled over his expectant eyes. It was beautiful, like the sugary frost on a dried persimmon.
For some reason, Lou Yun thought that if she had had someone like Pei Qing beside her in her previous life to share her burdens, perhaps she would not have died at a desk piled high with official business.
When she took the cup, the young man's eyes immediately lit up, like a child receiving malt candy from his mother at New Year. It was the most ordinary expression of delight, yet it burned so brightly that Lou Yun dared not look.
Rouniang, who discovered that neither of them was paying attention to her again: ...
Did she really have so little presence?
When Lou Yun turned her gaze back to her, she actually felt a little like weeping with joy.
She hurriedly continued, "After stabbing him, I set the place on fire and left."
Oh~
Although both had let their minds wander, they quickly gathered their thoughts after hearing Rouniang's words.
Pei Qing asked, "Then when did you lock the separate residence?"
"Lock it?" With a smile that was not quite a smile, Rouniang looked toward Lou
Yun.
Lou Yun: What? I'm not the one asking you. Why do you keep looking at me with all these bizarre expressions and glances?
"Li An gave the order to lock the courtyards. A slave attendant had taken up with one of the Li household's servants, and they met in secret every night. Naturally, Li An couldn't stand wearing that green hat. From then on, he ordered the steward to lock every courtyard before bed, apart from the guards patrolling the residence and the servants on night duty."
Propping up her head, Lou Yun watched with interest as the young man questioned her, bit by bit.
"Then when did you replace all the water in the vats with oil?"
"I didn't replace the water in every vat with oil. Only the ones around Li An's courtyard."
"Where did the oil come from?"
The woman did not answer, so Pei Qing asked another question. "How did you drive the dagger into Li An's heart?"
Rouniang's lips twitched. Had anyone other than the imperial preceptor asked, she would probably have started cursing by now. But precisely because it was the imperial preceptor asking, she did not know how to speak without sullying his ears.
Lou Yun quietly took in every change in Rouniang's expression. Wasn't Rouniang treating Pei Qing a little too differently?
Every scowl and glare was directed at her, and at first, Rouniang had only been willing to leave with Pei Qing. If Pei Qing had not invited her along today, would this woman have refrained from deliberately putting on this performance?
Although Rouniang's every movement resembled the madness of someone who hated Li An to the extreme, a close look at her expression revealed that her eyes were perfectly clear. She was plainly putting on an act.
But... since she hated officials so much, why did she trust Pei Qing alone? Judging by the courses of their lives, they should never have had an opportunity to meet.
As she thought, the displeasure on her face deepened. Surely this could not be some romantic debt Pei Qing had incurred somewhere?
She glanced at the oblivious young man and inwardly shook her head. Pei Qing led a simple life. Romantic debts were not something that would fall to him.
After hesitating for a while, Rouniang finally explained what had happened. "I was beneath Li An at the time. When I saw him collapse, I grabbed the dagger beside me and stabbed him."
Beneath him? Rouniang was lying.
The knife wound on Li An's back had a distinct notch, showing that the killer had driven the dagger in from behind. Moreover, the wound was higher on his back and lower on his chest, meaning that the killer had stabbed downward from above.
The two exchanged a glance, neither intending to expose her.
Lou Yun merely asked, "What grudge did you have against Li An that warranted drugging him, stabbing him, and setting the place on fire?"
Rouniang's expression suddenly became strange. Sitting on the floor, she laughed foolishly. "Imperial Preceptor, Your Highness the Crown Prince. You've heard plenty of stories about repaying kindness. Let this common woman tell you a story about repaying kindness with enmity."
"I was originally from Jiangling. The year I turned twelve, there was a terrible drought. Not just our family's crops, but all the crops in the village died. My family fled with our fellow villagers, all the way to Jiangnan. Jiangnan was a prosperous place. I thought our family would be able to make a good life there."
"But eight or nine things out of ten in this world never go as you wish. We finally managed to settle in Jiangnan, only for my parents to offend someone powerful and be beaten until they were disabled. My younger brother worked three jobs to pay for their treatment. In the end, he died of exhaustion while moving goods. After he died, Mother was so overcome with grief that she followed him. Only Father and I were left. I had no choice but to embroider handkerchiefs for money, but no matter how many I embroidered, I couldn't even afford to bury Mother and my brother, let alone pay for Father's medicine. Father was afraid something would happen to me, so he forced himself to hold on for another half month. Then he passed away too."
Rouniang looked up, tears glistening in her eyes without a single drop falling. Her gaze abruptly turned vicious, and her lips curled into a derisive laugh. "Then came the old, hackneyed story of selling myself to bury my parents. As you can see, the one who saved me was Li An. I thought that a man of his standing surely wouldn't be interested in a country woman like me, but I obviously underestimated how shameless he was."
The woman sitting on the floor suddenly rolled up her sleeve, exposing whip marks on her wrist. Besides the old, purplish bruises, there were even quite a few fresh red marks.
The crisscrossing marks looked all the more shocking on her slender, frail arm. As though she still felt this was not enough, Rouniang abruptly pulled down half the front of her robe.
Startled by her actions, Pei Qing instinctively turned his head and averted his eyes. Noticing his movement, Rouniang mocked herself. "There's no need to look away, Imperial Preceptor. My purity is already gone. What difference does it make who sees?"
The girl made no attempt to conceal the disgust for herself in her words. The young man wanted to dissuade her but did not know how to begin.
Lou Yun, watching from the side, frowned and spoke rather coldly. "Put your clothes back on and continue."
At those words, Rouniang shot Lou Yun a resentful look, as though she had transferred all her anger toward Li An onto her.
She silently pulled her clothes back into place. "I didn't know how, so Li An sent me to a training matron to learn. If I did the slightest thing wrong, I was whipped and denied food. Several times, I thought I would die there. But every time I opened my eyes, I was back in that sunless cage. There wasn't even a possibility of seeing hope."
"At first, I resisted too, but..." Rouniang drew up her knees and curled into herself. "Everyone feels pain. To make life a little less unbearable, I worked hard to learn everything the matron taught me, one thing after another. I thought that as long as I could get out, at least I wouldn't have to be beaten anymore."
Hugging her knees, Rouniang stared blankly at the floor and spoke woodenly, faint tremors hidden beneath her seemingly steady voice. "But I was wrong. The matron had to answer to someone, so she wouldn't really leave permanent marks on us. But these people had no such restraint!"
"They were beasts! Beasts!" Her voice suddenly sharpened. Rouniang felt as though she were still trapped in that abyss, her eyes blood-red.
Only when a gentle touch settled on top of her head did Rouniang stare up in a daze. She saw that man, like a banished immortal, lower his eyes and tell her, "It's all right. It's all right. It's all over now."
Watching the young man take the initiative to approach Rouniang, Lou Yun felt none of her earlier violent emotions. Rouniang looked no more than fifteen or sixteen, and Pei Qing's gesture was no different from how one would treat a child.
And perhaps it was her imagination, but whenever Pei Qing looked at Rouniang, she felt he resembled her grand tutor from her previous life looking at the younger generation. In short: this imperial preceptor of Great Yan, only twenty-two years old, seemed to think of himself as forty-two.
If that was the case, Lou Yun's heart sank. Pei Qing might really have incurred some romantic debt without even realizing it. With a face in its twenties and no blood relationship whatsoever, certain doting-father-like gestures really might lead someone to misunderstand.
Pei Qing, who had completely failed to notice that the mind of the person beside him had begun galloping across the heavens: Poor child. You've suffered.
Pat, pat. (Note: the same technique he used to pet the fur babies in his backyard.)
The frenzy in Rouniang's eyes softened, and tears streamed straight down her face. At first, her sobs were suppressed, but at last she could contain them no longer and began to wail.
However mature she had acted before, the moment she received care, every high wall she had built in her heart crumbled. The nerves stretched taut since disaster struck her parents, and all the suffering she had endured, found release in that moment.
The girl cried so hard she could barely breathe. In the end, she clung to the young man's robe and simply wept.
Pei Qing, who had suddenly frozen into a wooden statue and dared not move: !!!
He hesitantly turned toward Lou Yun, the alarm in his eyes unmistakably genuine. Of course, the imperial preceptor of Great Yan's students were all born into aristocratic families. Clinging to their teacher's robe and sobbing was not something they could do.
Lou Yun, upon whom he had pinned his hopes, calmly held her cup and sipped her tea, the very picture of someone leisurely keeping out of a matter that did not concern her.
Unwilling to give up, the young man looked to her for help again. Lou Yun shook her head with an air of helplessness, indicating that there was nothing she could do either, though in truth she could not suppress the upward curve of her lips.
Really, the young man standing rigidly in the middle of the hall, not daring to move a muscle, was simply too adorable.
Besides, if she did not let him learn a little lesson this time, who knew whether this kindhearted imperial preceptor would let his sympathy overflow like this again?
She had to say it: Pei Qing was a little too kindhearted in his dealings with others.
Looking at those eyes, which others saw as warning strangers to keep away but which to her were no different from a newborn tiger cub's, Lou Yun sank into thought.