Chu Mingzhao saw that he wasn’t moving, so she had no choice but to grit her teeth and continue playing out the plot.
She leaned in slightly, and a faint yet intoxicatingly alluring scent of warm roses instantly tore through the fierce wind and snow, brazenly invading Pei Yan’s nostrils.
This fragrance was identical to the absurd fantasy in the stable last night, overlapping without the slightest difference.
Boom.
It was as if a fire had been set off inside Pei Yan’s mind.
Chu Mingzhao extended her delicate fingers and, in an insulting manner, lifted Pei Yan’s chin.
“You insolent slave, why don’t you kneel down?”
“Chu, Ming, Zhao!”
Pei Yan abruptly turned his head away, dodging her touch.
The mole at the corner of his eye was so red it seemed to drip blood, and his eyes were filled with terrifying bloodshot veins from extreme anger and humiliation.
He ground his teeth and said:
“You’re simply… shameless! Dissolute and wanton!”
Facing such a severe accusation, the little man inside Chu Mingzhao’s heart was already frantically kowtowing and apologizing:
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—I’m really a law-abiding good citizen—it’s all the system’s fault!
But on the surface, she let out a cold laugh. The sound was crisp as silver bells, yet it carried a bone-chilling venom.
“This lady is shameless? Pei Yan, you must have forgotten who you are now.”
Chu Mingzhao took a half-step back, gazing down at him with icy eyes.
“Right now, you’re nothing but a dog in the Chu family. When the master tells you to wag your tail, you wag it. When the master tells you to pleasure yourself in this freezing snow, you unfasten your trousers and do it immediately!”
Pei Yan trembled violently, and his knees heavily struck the icy snow-covered ground.
It wasn’t out of fear, but under the suppression of that inexplicable plot force, his body had already made the first move of submission.
The biting wind was like a knife, whipping snowflakes against his thin frame.
“Begin.”
Chu Mingzhao coldly uttered two words.
Pei Yan slowly raised his hand like a marionette.
Those long, slender hands—once accustomed to holding imperial brushes for vermilion endorsements and drawing powerful bows that could shake stone formations—trembled as they moved, with excruciating slowness and difficulty, toward the cloth belt of his coarse garments.
The agony reached his heart; the bits of his broken fingertips from smashing them in the stable last night were still oozing blood, a gruesome sight.
He kept his head down, so Chu Mingzhao couldn’t see his expression—only the rigid line of his tightly clenched jaw and the faintly pulsing veins.
Shame.
Boundless, overwhelming shame.
To be forced to do such a thing in broad daylight on the icy, snowy path by the prime minister’s mansion corridor, right in front of a woman.
Pei Yan felt as though his soul was being flayed alive.
But what terrified and tormented him even more was that—
As his fingers touched the belt, that damn, rebellious body of his, surrounded by the faint, almost imperceptible rose fragrance from Chu Mingzhao, began to stir uncontrollably once again.
He hated her to the bone, yet he harbored the basest desire for her.
The belt was undone, and his thin outer garment fell open, revealing a somewhat slender chest, yet still defined with muscle and sheened with cold sweat.
The cold wind rushed in, sending a delicate shiver across his skin.
His fingers had already reached the edge of his undergarments.
Chu Mingzhao stood there, her entire body numb.
Save me!!!
She was just a lifelong single woman who stayed up late reading novels!
Why did she have to bear such an unbearable burden?!
Watching Pei Yan with his restrained, humiliated expression, the corner of his eye red as if weeping blood, and that forced, somewhat broken and sensual demeanor, she felt a surge of heat rush to her head.
If she kept watching, she feared she’d get pinkeye.
“Enough!”
Just as Pei Yan’s fingertips were about to pull down the last barrier, Chu Mingzhao spun around abruptly, her voice tinged with a barely perceptible panic, forcibly masking it with impatience.
“How unlucky. Doing such filthy things in the main courtyard early in the morning—you’re sullying this lady’s eyes.”
Pei Yan’s movements froze.
He raised his head, and his bloodshot eyes churned with indescribable emotions.
There was seething hatred, the shock of being interrupted, and even a hint of secret emptiness.
Chu Mingzhao turned her back to him, took a deep breath, and carried the villainy to its conclusion:
“Get back to your stable and clean yourself up in that doghole of yours. One hundred strokes, not one less. If I find you’ve slacked off…”
She tilted her head, casting a sidelong, contemptuous glance at him, and curled the corner of her mouth into a cruel smirk:
“Tomorrow, I’ll have someone cut off that thing of yours and feed it to the dogs.”
With that, she dared not look one more second at this suffocating scene. Flicking her sleeves, she fled the place like she was escaping.
“Cuizhu! What are you standing there for? Follow this lady back to the rooms!”
The maidservants in the distance sighed with relief as if pardoned, hurrying after her in small steps.
By the corridor, only Pei Yan was left again.
He knelt in the snow, his clothes half-open, the cold wind like blades cutting across his burning skin.
The echo of Chu Mingzhao’s words still seemed to linger in his ears, crude and vulgar, yet they stirred no more anger in him.
Because all of his senses were already focused on one place.
Pei Yan looked down at his own miserable, pitiful state.
He had thought this was a one-sided humiliation.
But why… when he heard her say “Get back to your stable and clean yourself up,” did his mind uncontrollably conjure the image of her sitting by the bathtub last night, looking down at him from above?
Pei Yan slowly clenched his fingers, gripping them tightly into a fist.
“Chu Mingzhao…”
He rose slowly from the snow, standing up straight, his spine still rigid even as his legs went numb from the cold.
But those eyes, once cold and clear as frost, were now stained with a thick, unshakeable darkness.
He dragged his frozen steps, one by one, toward the stable.
One hundred strokes, was it?
Fine.
He would remember each and every one of these strokes, clearly in his heart.
The days ahead would be long, and he would surely find his chance—to take back from this haughty daughter of the prime minister, every single stroke, plus interest, paid in full.
...
Chu Mingzhao walked swiftly, fleeing back to her warm chamber like a coward.
Bang. The heavy nanmu door was slammed shut behind her, cutting off the roaring wind and snow outside completely.
“All of you, get out! No one come in without my orders!”
She shouted harshly through the door panel, and only after she heard Cuizhu and the others mutter their assent, and their footsteps fade away, did her forced arrogance deflate entirely.
Chu Mingzhao’s legs gave out, and she slid down against the door onto the thick lamb’s wool rug, an import from the Western Regions.
She covered her burning cheeks with both hands, her heart pounding like a drum.
Too horrible.
Her eyes were soiled.
[Ding—]
In her mind, the system’s emotionless electronic tone rang out like a death knell.
[Warning: Detected that the host exhibited a retreat behavior at a key plot node! This time, due to the plot directive having already been issued, it is barely considered a pass. If such negligent behavior, where instructions are given but interaction is incomplete, occurs again, it will be directly deemed as plot voidance!]
[Please adopt a proper attitude and pursue the task with dedication!]
[Don’t! Take! Blessings! For! Granted!]
