Everything happened in an instant. Wenren Lin instinctively raised his hand, seizing the sharp weapon Zhao Yen had thrust at him.

Looking closely, it was actually the golden hairpin that bound the Crown Prince’s hair.

So when she had just now collapsed onto the bedding, or twisted her sleeves tight, it had all been in order to conceal this object.

“This prince even thought that Your Highness meant to use it for suicide.”

After a brief moment of surprise, Wenren Lin pulled her forward toward him, the depths of his gaze carrying a darkly tinted smile. “So it was to slaughter the donkey once it’s done with the millstone, to stab this prince instead?”

Zhao Yen panted, her gaze trembling.

If she truly harbored intentions of seeking death, then at the time when the medicinal decoction had been the hardest to endure she ought to have committed suicide. Why suffer until now?

“Gu cannot die now.”

The pressure Wenren Lin exerted was too strong. Zhao Yen had no choice but to free her other hand and press it against his chest, attempting to carve out a thread of breathing space. “Since the Grand Preceptor has saved Gu, why then cut off the road of life?”

That one address of “Grand Preceptor” again stirred Wenren Lin’s lingering memories.

He had underestimated her. How could such a verdant and fervent maiden be one of those ordinary vulgar women who wallow in self-pity?

“Who told Your Highness to provoke me at such an inopportune time? This prince has no choice but to be cautious.”

Wenren Lin’s fingers applied slight force, pressing down on the golden hairpin in her palm. “Look into this prince’s eyes. Think carefully of what stake you should put forth to negotiate with this prince.”

His eyes were jet-black, seeming to carry a power that bewitched the heart. His voice, ever low and laced with a smile, now bore a few degrees of pressing interrogation.

In a daze, Zhao Yen thought she had once seen a pair of eyes even more magnificent and frenzied. She wanted to pursue the thought further, yet could recall no more detail.

If between them one person had to die in order to guard this secret…

She knew that what she was doing was no different from striking a stone with an egg, yet she could think of no other way.

The sky was nearly all dark. To delay further—even if Wenren Lin did not kill her—she too would be doomed.

The self-defense techniques she had learned that day suddenly surfaced in her mind, each move and posture incomparably clear. By the time she returned to her senses, she had already shifted her strength, spun her body, and with her other hand seized the hairpin tossed into her right palm, once again slashing sideways toward Wenren Lin’s Adam’s apple.

Wenren Lin caught it with one hand, frowning. “You—”

Before the words had fallen, the third move was already before him.

Wenren Lin clicked his tongue and had no choice but to twist her arms behind her back. With force applied from his fingers, the golden hairpin finally slipped free and dropped to the ground, letting out a crisp ding-dang.

Zhao Yen’s wrists were bound behind her by his single hand. Instinctively she hooked her legs to kick at him. Seeing that dainty dragon-patterned black boot about to strike between his thighs, Wenren Lin hastily shifted his body aside, bending his leg to jab the crook of her knee.

Zhao Yen’s knees went soft. With a muffled groan she pitched forward, face-down into the disheveled soft brocade quilt. The gust stirred by her fall sent her black hair floating like smoke and clouds, brushing past Wenren Lin’s jaw and arm before scattering in strands.

Wenren Lin braced one knee against the edge of the couch, one hand pressing down on her struggling body, the other supporting her face as he bent to cover over her.

This was truly a dangerous posture. Zhao Yen’s entire spine stiffened, while unspeakable soreness and ache surged up one after another.

Her disheveled hair veiled half her face. Through her blurred vision she saw only Wenren Lin’s hand braced on the couch: frost-white and slender, pale blue veins faintly visible, and less than two inches from her neck.

She could even smell the cool woody fragrance that came from behind him, as though she were a fish pressed down upon a chopping board, left to be butchered.

“This prince has exhausted his efforts assisting Your Highness, yet Your Highness uses the very techniques taught by this prince to kill this prince—how truly cold and thin of affection.”

On Wenren Lin’s face, eternally calm as ten thousand years, there was at last a trace of displeasure. He lifted her chin. “Cooled down now?”

His voice paused slightly. He gazed at the little princess, her eyes reddened at the corners, still gasping unsteadily.

Having shed the cowardly disguise called “Crown Prince,” her entire being now flared bright and unrestrained. Those eyes, clearly like rippling spring water, yet seemed to burn with two clusters of flame—soft yet tenacious.

Even upon the couch it was so. More than once Wenren Lin thought she would cry, but rather than shed a single tear, she would rather bite hard into his shoulder, chew down her sobs, and not let them fall.

Now, shackled upon the couch, she still pointlessly kicked with her legs, just like a beautiful little beast trapped in difficulty, baring her teeth and claws in an attempt to break free of the cage, fighting for a single line of life.

Under his palm, the slender wrist’s pulse raced wildly and erratically. The damage of the medicinal effect coupled with the surge of emotion already showed signs of fierce fire attacking the heart.

Wenren Lin no longer pressed with words to force an answer. Slightly frowning, he raised his hand and pressed it toward the back of her ear.

Zhao Yen stiffened her neck, staring at his slowly approaching fingers…

This time, it was likely truly over!

Her pupils trembled, then everything before her eyes began to blur and dim. Her eyelashes fluttered in vain, and at last slowly closed.

Only when Zhao Yen’s rapid breathing gradually lengthened into calmness did Wenren Lin withdraw his hand.

“Truly one who brings no peace of mind…”

Wenren Lin also released his other hand from her wrist, turned over to sit at the couch’s edge, and with his forearm casually propped upon his knee said, “The one who should rightly be worried about a headache is clearly this prince.”

Having spoken thus to himself, he felt something amiss.

The Prince Su, who held sway over court and realm, must be invulnerable, invincible in all directions. Yet the Cold-Bone Poison within his body was a life gate he could not touch. Were others to learn of it, who knew what sort of trouble it might invite.

That was why Wenren Lin had earlier spoken several times to probe her. But Zhao Yen, rather than mention the slightest thing connected to the Cold-Bone Poison, would rather draw her hairpin and fight to the death.

Zhao Yen was not foolish. On the contrary, she possessed clever little tricks, able several times to leap free of the snares he had set.

Could it be that when his poison flared, that form worse than ghost or man—Zhao Yen truly remembered nothing of it?

Judging from the bewildered anger in her eyes just now, it did not seem feigned.

Wenren Lin fixed his gaze upon the slumbering maiden on the couch for a long while. Raising his hand, he brushed aside some of the black hair that veiled her face, revealing a visage as bright and beautiful as hibiscus.

That was also fine.

Even if at that time she had indeed seen some trace, he had been…somewhat unwilling to do away with her afterwards.

Wenren Lin’s lips curved slightly.

On a whim, he pressed the pad of his finger gently over her eyelashes, then paused, covering the teardrop mole at the corner of her eye that did not belong to her.

Mm. Looked far more pleasing to the eye.

On the ground still lay two scattered luo socks. Wenren Lin stepped forward in the warm glow of candlelight to pick them up, then turned and lifted his robe hem, half kneeling. With a large hand he raised Zhao Yen’s small leg that dangled over the couch edge, gently slipping off her leather boot.

Her delicate, pale toes were fully revealed, coated in the warm luster of jade beneath the lamplight. She had been so anxious to flee that she had not even managed to put her socks on properly.

Wenren Lin let out a mocking laugh as he pinched those faintly pink toes, murmuring lowly: “If Your Highness were willing to utter even a few soft words to coax, how would you have ended up so wretched as this?”

Naturally, Zhao Yen could not hear this sigh, half mocking, half lamenting.

Unaware, she allowed him to do as he pleased.

Wenren Lin grasped her slender ankle, held it up to the light for a while, and then placed his own palm against it to compare.

Seeing that this tender foot was in fact smaller by a full circle than his palm, he raised his brows in faint surprise. “So small.”

After studying it with his gaze for a moment, he then slid the luo sock up from her toes, tied up the trouser leg, and put the boot back on.

Wenren Lin lifted a finger to his chin, contemplating the beauty upon the couch for a while, before drawing out the pill Zhang Cang had prepared. Bending down, he lifted a corner of her loose robe and placed the pill upon the lightly rising and falling hollow of her navel.

Then, pressing his palm over that delicate jade-like skin, he used the warmth of his hand to melt the pill until its medicinal oil was fully absorbed into that piece of creamy-white abdomen.