ITVCFITB CHAPTER 38

 Chapter 38: Liu-shi Is Gone

Fresh off duty, Luo Renshou was about to head to Concubine Cheng’s quarters for dinner when the butler rushed up and blocked his path. “Master, it’s urgent.”

Luo Renshou trusted the butler’s judgment. Urgent meant urgent. “To the study.”

Once inside, the butler had two servants brought in, both battered and bloodied. Their news knocked the breath from the room.

Liu-shi was dead.

Yes, dead.

She’d died on the road back to the Luo clan’s ancestral home.

Sobbing, the two servants stammered out the tale: they’d taken a winding mountain pass and been waylaid by bandits. The money was taken and Liu-shi was cut down on the spot. One stroke, head and body parted, blood spraying yards across the ground. Only these two escaped by tumbling down the slope in terror.

A roaring filled Luo Renshou’s ears, darkness crept into his vision, and he crumpled where he stood.

The household scrambled for a physician.

The commotion jolted Old Madam Luo from scolding Luo Shuyu’s younger brothers. Supported on either side, she hurried to her son’s courtyard. At the moment, the one tending him was the current favorite, Concubine Cheng.

“My son, what’s happened to you?” Old Madam Luo started to weep as soon as she saw the cold cloth on his brow.

The family stood on Luo Renshou’s shoulders. His elder and younger brothers were both born of concubines; they weren’t much help. All she could do was fret.

“Mother, I’m fine. Just a poor night’s sleep,” he hedged, burying the panic. The old madam had no idea Liu-shi had been sent “home”; she still believed the woman was tucked away in a nunnery.

“How could you be fine? You’ve worked yourself to the bone!” she snapped, then turned her fire on Concubine Cheng. “Useless, the lot of you! Is this how you care for the master?”

Concubine Cheng took the scolding with misty eyes. Luo Renshou forced out a weak defense on her behalf, and only after the old madam had cursed out every attendant in reach did she return to Fushou Residence.

When word spread that Luo Renshou had fainted, Luo Shumo and Luo Shuhan hurried back. Hearing from their father that Liu-shi had fallen to mountain bandits, both went chalk-white, hands trembling.

“Mother… Mother is… gone?” Luo Shuhan slid bonelessly into a chair.

Luo Renshou pressed a shaking hand to his temple. “You two will go retrieve her body tomorrow and see her buried with full honors.”

He repeated what he has said, as if the words would tether him to the ground.

They’d already told the world she was gravely ill, a funeral fit the tale neatly enough.

“I’ll leave at dawn,” said Luo Shumo, oddly calm. “Who did this?”

“It must be Luo Shuyu!” Luo Shuhan burst out.

A paperweight nearly flew at his head. “Why is it ‘Shuyu’ with every breath?” Luo Renshou barked. “Your mother was in the wrong first! And he’s newly married, he knows nothing of her journey. I only told him she’d gone to the nunnery!”

“Why… why would this happen? We sent so many guards. I should’ve gone myself!” Luo Shuhan raked his hair, tears streaming.

Luo Shumo kept his head. “Since when are there bandits on that road? I’ve never heard of such.”

“Never before doesn’t mean never now,” Luo Renshou said bleakly. “If the harvest failed and trouble’s brewing…”

“Father, let me take a suppression order,” Luo Shuhan growled. “I’ll avenge Mother!”

As the three were still reeling, a servant sprinted in, breathless with fresh disaster.

“Bad news! Bad news, Master!”

“My father is right here. Which courtyard? Mind your tongue or I’ll have you dragged out and beaten!” Luo Shuhan snapped, everyone rubbed him raw at the moment.

Luo Renshou lifted a hand to still him. “Well?”

“We’ve been keeping watch on Young Master Shen, as ordered,” the servant panted. “He ran away last night!”

It was Luo Shumo who froze first, more shocked than at the death itself. “What did you say? Cousin Shen… ran?”

Luo Renshou missed his eldest’s overreaction. Luo Shuyu had warned him privately that the Fourth Prince intended to propose; he’d told no one else, lest Old Madam accuse him of favoritism. This wasn’t a rumor for the halls, one misstep would stain the entire clan.

A leaky roof in a storm, he thought wildly.

The Fourth Prince was due to arrive with a proposal and Shen Mingyun chose now to flee? What was the boy playing at?

He’d spent the night out with a man, and now he ran dragging the Luo name through filth at every turn.

Fury and panic warred in Luo Renshou’s chest.

“Why would he run?” Luo Shumo asked, baffled. “He’d only just come home. Where would he go?” He’d heard about the Crown Princess’s punishment, yes, but he could do nothing but stew. “Father, what did you do to him?”

“I told him to stay inside! Every time he goes out he causes trouble!” Luo Renshou nearly pulled his own gray hairs loose. “He made a scene at the Crown Prince’s villa, he needs to learn rules. Send men. I don’t care if you have to tie him up, bring him back! Like some wild brat with no home!”

Luo Shumo’s frown deepened. What could frighten Shen Mingyun into bolting?

After a brief, unhappy silence for Liu-shi’s death, they scattered to their tasks.

Luo Shumo started digging into this “runaway” and felt his heart lurch: the Fourth Prince meant to propose?

Because he and Shen had been caught slipping out of the city at night?

He stared, stunned. He knew Shen had little patience for stifling rules, but that? Had the Fourth forced him?

No, that didn’t fit. The Fourth Prince was the most proper of the lot, courteous and measured. Why would he arrange a clandestine midnight tryst? He refused to believe it. He had to find Shen and hear it from his mouth.

His cousin could not marry the Fourth Prince.

Desperate, he sent men to search. He even wanted to storm his father’s study and declare his own intentions, but his mother had just died. Chaos everywhere. How had it all gone so wrong?

Could he even compete with a prince?

He thought of how Shen’s eyes always brightened when he mentioned the Fourth Prince. Yet if he admired the man so much… why resist the marriage?

Maybe it was pure admiration, not passion.

The idea cheered him. Perhaps his cousin did have feelings for him. Otherwise why allow those furtive intimacies?

His mind drifted to the night they’d drunk together in the courtyard. Shen flushed, lips red, cheek pink. He’d stolen a kiss he couldn’t help, and Shen had kissed back. Surely he’d squeezed his eyes shut from shyness, not rejection. Sweetness swelled in Luo Shumo’s chest.

This “night out” had to be the Fourth Prince’s trick.

---

Exhausted, the Fourth Prince had just finished dinner when a planted servant from the Luo manor reported in: Young Master Shen had disappeared.

Li Mingchun: …

Interesting. If Shen Mingyun could vanish under his net of eyes and ears, that only proved the boy had uncommon resources. All the more reason to marry him quickly before the Crown Prince or Eldest caught the scent.

---

Everyone who needed to know about Shen’s disappearance knew. Luo Shuyu did, too.

But while the others scattered in frantic searches, he stayed cool.

The Luo clan didn’t know where Shen had gone; the Fourth Prince had lost the trail. Luo Shuyu, however, didn’t need to search. He already knew.

The test phrase Shen had tossed at him “Heaven-king blankets the earth; the pagoda pins the river demon” pointed to the very bolt-hole he’d choose.

Clever boy. He hadn’t left the city.

Most would assume a runaway flees beyond the walls. Shen had just enough wits to do the opposite: the most dangerous place is the safest. Besides, there’d been no formal proposal yet. Technically, he wasn’t “running from a marriage.”

Still, his guard was up. Emperor Tiansheng had refused the Fourth’s request to take Shen as principal spouse; if the Fourth insisted on preserving the Luo name, he could only accept Shen as a concubine.

In Great Xia, a man could wed one or many. The Fourth Prince had sworn “one lifetime, one pair,” but in the end, a concubine was a concubine. Feelings changed.

And not all princes were created equal. Take the Third: with his mother’s sensitive standing, the emperor would never allow him to marry into an overmighty clan. Best to choose a principal spouse without a powerful natal family, hence Luo Shuyu. As a legitimate son, he didn’t shame the rank; as a scholar’s child with shallow roots in the capital, he didn’t threaten the throne. To Emperor Tiansheng, their match was heaven-made.

And it had borne fruit, Li Mingjin’s enthusiasm for court had picked up after the wedding. The emperor was pleased with his own good judgment.

Twice pleased, apparently.

The Fourth’s calculus was different. His mother’s birth was low, yes, but she was Great Xia through and through. The emperor could leverage the Fourth’s marriage for stability. As for Shen Mingyun, he was nobody. A distant Luo relation, not a true heir. Asking for a principal seat was like asking to pluck the moon; the doorway into the Fourth Prince’s household was “concubine” or nothing.

None of which worried Luo Shuyu. He knew where Shen was. The board was still under his hand.

Once his men confirmed the hideout, he started laying the next tiles, step by step.

If he wanted them married sooner, he’d need another push. Shen’s delight in rubbing shoulders with the underworld gave him just that.

“Bro this” and “bro that” the people Shen called “brother” were the sort to slit throats without blinking, to burn and pillage wherever they went. Shen wined and dined them lavishly, even planned to hire them as escorts when he slipped out of the city.

He holed up two days. At first, he worried the Luo clan would find him; when Luo Shumo looked in all the wrong places, Shen relaxed.

He’d chosen the city’s north quarter, chaos on two legs. All walks of life rubbed shoulders there. Compared to the capital’s four famed brothels, these pleasure dens were mud to jade.

A pretty ger with coin in his purse. Shen was a walking target. The “brothers” he’d befriended eyed not only his money but also his body.

On the third night, as he’d just lain down, the men sharing his courtyard made their move.

Fortunately, the system jolted him awake in time to use his invisibility trinket.

They took some money. He might have stomached that except they’d dosed his dinner with a muscle-softener and an aphrodisiac.

So it was going to be robbery and rape.

If not for the system, he’d have lost everything.

Even with it, the item wouldn’t last long. Heat seared his veins; his breath came fast; his mind filled with men.

He couldn’t quite stifle a moan. Someone heard.

A burly brute, long hungry for him, rubbed his hands together and prowled closer.

The trinket flickered out.

“So you’re here,” the man grinned. “Mingyun, you call us ‘big brother’ every day. Time to be a good boy for your brothers, eh?”

“Get out,” Shen snarled.

Fingers clamped his jaw. “Little beauty, we’ll show you a night you won’t forget. Try it once and you’ll beg for seconds.”

Only then did Shen realize what sort of men these were. Panic shook him. “Trash. Get lost!”

System, help me! What’s happening to me?

“You’ve likely been drugged with an aphrodisiac,” the system said coolly.

Greasy hands roamed his body.

“Get off! Don’t touch me! I’m a man!”

A belt hit the floor, half undone. Just as Shen believed he was finished, something hot splattered his face.

Blood.

The “big brother” who’d been leering over him crumpled in a spreading pool. A man stood behind him, sword dripping.

The Fourth Prince.

Half-dressed, half-hidden, trembling, Shen whispered, “Your Highness… help me…”

Li Mingchun shrugged off his outer robe and wrapped him up, then scooped him into his arms.

On the way back to his residence, he noticed Shen’s glazed eyes and the breathy sounds falling from his lips.

Aphrodisiac, clearly.

Back at the manor, he carried Shen straight into his own bedchamber.

“Li Mingchun… help me,” Shen pleaded, clutching his sleeve.

The Fourth Prince didn’t hesitate. Thus, cloth tore.

Shen was beyond thinking and too far gone to wonder why the prince never sought an antidote first.

They passed a night without restraint.

---

Luo Shuyu woke to find, for once, not empty sheets. His head pillowed on Li Mingjin’s arm; the man still slept.

Serves you right for being so restless every night, he thought fondly.

Then he met a bright, wakeful gaze.

So much for underestimating his stamina.

Li Mingjin kissed his brow. “Anywhere hurt?” A large hand drifted toward last night’s overused territory.

“No!” Luo Shuyu yanked it away. “I’m getting up.”

Li Mingjin chuckled low. “Shy, now?”

“I have thin skin. Unlike some people whose faces are thicker than the city walls,” Luo Shuyu shot back and getting thicker by the day; bronze and iron both.

Li Mingjin plastered himself to him. “You even tease me now.” He sounded utterly unoffended.

He caught Luo Shuyu’s wrists, pinned them above his head, and nuzzled along his neck until Luo Shuyu squirmed with helpless laughter.

“Hey! Hey! No funny business!” Luo Shuyu protested.

“No funny business,” Li Mingjin murmured. “Just don’t want to get up.” He just wanted to hold him, soft and warm and sweet.

They tussled until at last they rose and ate breakfast.

No sooner had they finished than Shadow Nine arrived with a report from Shen Mingyun’s quarter.

Li Mingjin had the day off. They’d planned to paint together in the study. He read the slip first and frowned. “‘It’s done’? What does that mean?”

“Beg me, and I’ll tell you,” Luo Shuyu said, grinding ink.

Li Mingjin’s eyes narrowed. He let the note fall, then the inkstick, wrapped an arm around Luo Shuyu’s waist, and leaned him over the desk, nose to nose, mock-dangerous. “Tell me or I carry out justice on the spot.”

Luo Shuyu didn’t flinch. He tipped up and pecked his lips, drawling, “Then-do-your-worst.”

An invitation if ever there was one.

A quarter-hour later, Luo Shuyu clung to the table’s edge, biting his lip, thoroughly regretting his moment of bravado. One lesson learned: once a man’s had a taste, don’t ever tease.

Li Mingjin was entirely too much.

---

Author’s note:
Third Prince: “Little beauty, I’ll let you taste big brother’s prowess tonight!”
Luo Shuyu: “…”

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