SEHE Extra 5

What Kind of Decent Person Keeps Chains by Their Bed

Before, when Pei Yanci had still been wavering, he had intended to have Tangxi Zhui move from the Pei Manor to the Chief Overseer’s Mansion. Tangxi Zhui used the excuse that the Chief Overseer’s Mansion had been sealed for several months and was full of dust and cobwebs in need of renovation, and shamelessly insisted on staying in the Pei Manor.

After the two reconciled, they urgently headed south the very next day to recruit soldiers and rally support.

By the time the vassal princes had been driven out and power reclaimed, and Gu Yisui had enfeoffed him as a prince, Pei Yanci no longer had any intention of chasing Tangxi Zhui out of the Pei Manor.

It was only one day, when he happened to overhear Wushu asking whether Huo Cun was living in the Chief Overseer’s Mansion, that he remembered the Chief Overseer’s Mansion was still in a state of abandonment.

The renovation that had been mentioned before — bricklayers and tile workers had been going in and out for some time, yet he had no idea what they had actually been doing.

He asked Tangxi Zhui. Tangxi Zhui put on a face of complete blankness and innocence, saying it was only ordinary repairs and patching up. When asked whether the Chief Overseer’s Mansion was finished yet, he said it was not.

Something always felt like the Chief Overseer’s Mansion was hiding something he was not meant to know.

It was not that Pei Yanci feared Tangxi Zhui would turn against him. After all, someone who had used vassal prince after vassal prince as his weapons, causing the imperial bloodline to be slaughtered by more than half and throwing the realm into utter chaos, would surely be scrambling to seize power and make himself emperor.

But him? He had caused a great commotion, even gotten his hands on Xu Xiangqian’s hundred-thousand-strong army, along with the Elu Bureau’s forces that spread across the entire realm — with all that at his disposal, what could he not do? And yet he had chosen to come to him with tearful eyes, asking whether he loved him, threatening to slit his own throat if the answer was no.

Chang Shuangchong really ought to study him carefully.

Still, he was curious what this person was sneakily up to.

On a moonless, windy night that was neither cold nor warm, Pei Yanci took advantage of Tangxi Zhui’s absence from the Pei Manor, dressed himself in black from head to toe, covered his face, and slipped over to the Chief Overseer’s Mansion.

The Chief Overseer’s Mansion was still under renovation and was naturally very deserted. He used his qinggong to dart left and right through the compound, yet found nothing remarkable.

He had heard that beneath the Chief Overseer’s Mansion there was a great treasury filled with untold riches, and also a private dungeon where Tangxi Zhui carried out his extrajudicial punishments — the Lu brothers had once been locked up in there.

The entrance to such a place would ordinarily be hidden inside Tangxi Zhui’s own bedchamber.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, he pushed open the door to the main courtyard’s room.

The room was pitch black inside, with no lamp lit. But by the moonlight streaming in from outside, he could see that the furnishings were exactly as he remembered them.

He wandered around. They had been south for several months, and no one had cleaned here in all that time. There was not much dust, but there was a faint, stale, mouldy smell of a place long uninhabited.

He felt his way across the vast bed and his fingertips touched something ice-cold. He drew it out — it was a gold chain about as thick as a thumb.

Why would there be a gold chain by the bed? How had he never noticed it before?

He was still puzzling over its use when a faint wisp of cold air brushed the back of his head. He had just begun to turn when he felt a sharp pain at the nape of his neck, and he fell unconscious.

He did not know how much time passed before he furrowed his brow and his senses returned to him.

His eyelids stirred, yet he did not open them at once, because he could smell the musty staleness of the room, and from beside him came the faint rustling of fabric against the floor, and in the air there was a barely perceptible sweetly cloying and pungently spiced scent.

Tangxi Zhui.

Realizing it was someone he knew, he relaxed at last. No wonder he had been caught off guard — he had had no defences against this person whatsoever.

He opened his clear, bright eyes and turned his head toward the edge of the bed.

Tangxi Zhui stood by the bedside dressed in a dark crimson robe trimmed with black, composed and unhurried.

The hem of his robe, level with the edge of the bed, was lit by the moonlight from the window and seemed to churn like fresh blood. More than half of his face was submerged in the decayed, rotting darkness of the room. The hand that extended from his sleeve and his face both carried the pallor of a white-bloated corpse. He wore the most magnificent jewelled thumb rings. At the corners of his eyes were painted the most luridly gorgeous manjushage flowers.

Meeting Pei Yanci’s limpid and flawless gaze, his large and slender eyes narrowed to a slit. His blood-red lips moved like those of a marionette, the two corners lifting upward, pulling into a smile utterly devoid of feeling.

Pei Yanci’s heart gave a violent lurch.

He had startled him.

“You’re awake?”

“Mm — mm mm mm — mm?” Pei Yanci blinked.

His mouth had been stuffed with a wad of cloth. He could not speak.

Certain unnecessary curiosities were actually permissible to have.

Wasn’t Tangxi Zhui at all curious who this black-clad intruder was?

The black cloth over his face had not been removed. The cloth gagging his mouth had been stuffed in right through the face covering.

His wrists and ankles were each fitted with a gold ring wrapped in a layer of soft silk. The gold rings were connected to gold chains, and the other ends were fixed to the four corners of the bedframe.

He was like a sacrificial offering being presented to some wicked god or demon — both arms raised high above his head, all four limbs spread wide in a great “大” shape, unable to move at all.

Such outrageous insolence — had he swallowed a leopard’s gall bladder or something?!

He channelled his internal energy and strained against the chains, only to hear the clear, crisp clinking of chain links colliding. The chains were completely unharmed.

“This lord had thought, what thief could possibly have the audacity to steal from the Chief Overseer’s Mansion.” Tangxi Zhui raised his pale, bloodless hand to hover loosely before his lips, laughing in a way that was both eerie and gleeful. “To think it’s someone with barely a cat’s worth of kung fu.”

Who are you calling a cat?!

Pei Yanci glared wide-eyed, looking at him with indignation.

An ice-cold index finger traced across his forehead, raising a wave of goosebumps.

“Since you’ve come, stay and keep this lord company for a while.”

The words had barely fallen when his upper garment’s hem was yanked up to his waist and, with a sharp tearing sound, his lower garments were ripped clean apart.

That crisp, clear sound of cotton and silk being torn made the pitch-black pupils of Tangxi Zhui’s eyes slowly shift to violet, visibly growing excited.

Pei Yanci sighed. Right now it was the knife and the chopping block on one side, and he was the fish and the meat on the other. Thinking of the wounds that had covered the Lu brothers from head to toe, he consoled himself: as long as his hands and feet were left intact, once he was free he would return everything twofold.

They had been together for so long — touching had happened, kissing had happened — and yet with a cloth over his face, this person simply did not recognise him?!

Pei Yanci seethed inwardly. All those declarations of liking him, and yet it amounted to no more than this.

Then he saw Tangxi Zhui pick up a deep-red cherry.

His eyes blinked in a daze.

Tangxi Zhui popped it into his own mouth and ate it, frowning slightly. “Not sweet enough, and too cold. It needs to be warmed up properly.”

Saying so, he pinched out another one from amid the ice chips, removed its slender stem and the pit inside, rolled it in a dish of creamy white cheese, then sauntered toward the bedside.

“Care to taste it?”

Pei Yanci nodded immediately.

To eat the cherry, the cloth would have to be removed from his mouth. Once the cloth was removed, he could speak. The moment he spoke, wouldn’t Tangxi Zhui recognise his voice?

Then let’s see how he would still dare to be so outrageous — chaining him to the bed so he couldn’t move. He had utterly lost his mind!

“What a pity that your mouth has cloth stuffed inside it. Eating would be inconvenient.” Tangxi Zhui sat on the edge of the bed and slowly leaned down until his upper body nearly pressed against him, skin almost touching skin, while his free hand reached toward a place Pei Yanci had not anticipated.

Pei Yanci felt an ominous premonition rise in his heart.

They had been intimate so many times. If it were not for the fact that he himself had domineeringly commanded Tangxi Zhui — this is not allowed, that is not allowed — purely given that man’s temperament, he would have been thoroughly tormented long ago.

But tonight, Tangxi Zhui did not recognise him, and only thought he was an ordinary petty thief.

Just as the thought passed through his mind, sure enough, one finger deftly reached over, circling lightly, shallowly, probing.

“This mouth is lovely — small and vivid, just right to pair with cherries.”

“Mmm mm mm—”

Just listen to yourself — is that any way for a person to talk?!

He thrashed violently. That half a finger finally withdrew, reluctantly.

In the next moment, a plump, round cherry coated in cheese was stuffed into the very place it hadn’t come from.

Pei Yanci’s eyes went wide.

What kind of a thing was this to do?!

It was so cold!

His body instinctively struggled even more violently, but with his hands and feet bound by the gold chains, no matter how much strength he used, Tangxi Zhui paid absolutely no mind to his evasion and struggling.

“Mmm—”

Damn it all!

Pei Yanci shuddered from head to toe.

“Well-behaved children suffer less.” Tangxi Zhui breathed warm air against his chest, and through the thin layer of fabric his tongue-tip moved in circles, grinding and biting lightly, as though soothing and rewarding.

Very quickly, the only changes across his entire upper body were two symmetrical patches of deep colour that had bloomed on the fabric to his left and right.

Through the cloth, Tangxi Zhui sucked and gnawed with intensity.

Even without tearing it open, one could tell the colour beneath had deepened to dark crimson.

Itching and burning hot.

After all this time, Tangxi Zhui knew this body better than he himself did.

Pei Yanci furrowed his brow, his mind drifting somewhat.

“There — that’s better.”

Tangxi Zhui pressed his lips to his earlobe, then released his hand and stepped off the bed, picking up a dish of pitted, ice-cold cherries.

Pei Yanci’s pupils contracted sharply. He shook his head with fierce, desperate urgency.

TL/N: 

Aiyooo I’m very deeply sad to say this, but extras 6-17 can’t be purchased yet, meaning I can’t buy it with points like any other locked chapters on jjwxc.

Anyway here’s the notice from the jjwxc site:

-This bonus chapter is a special treat from the author to give back to readers. It will be unlocked for free once the main text’s subscription rate reaches 70% (as set by the author).

Bonus content is not currently available for separate purchase.-

Let’s just hope it’ll be sooner aiyoo. For now, I’ll put this on hiatus.