Qinglian Chronicles

Chapter 57

[NSFW and discomfort warning, different reasons this time.

Tsk, tsk. Dumb children.]

Jinzi doesn’t look happy, and I know what he’s mad about. He seems to be glaring at me like he was last time.

All misdeeds will be exposed, in the end.

I thusly didn’t dare make a peep on the way back, not wanting to add oil to the fire.

But the way he clasped me under his arm is really uncomfortable. Even if he doesn’t want to carry me, can’t he just put me on his back? Did he carry me back the last two times I fainted in such an unsightly way?

Dawn is breaking and the night wind is cool, not a soul on the streets. Jinzi moves quickly across the tops of walls like a character from a wuxia work, light and masterful.

The wind sweeps past my ears and hair. I felt as if I was flying.

Upon finally returning home, he alerted no one as he jumped straight over the outer wall and went straight for my Water Pavilion.

The young maids at the doorway saw Jinzi had returned from rescuing me and happily welcomed us. He told them to get lost, frightening them into not approaching.

Jinzi kicked open the door and ruthlessly threw me onto the couch. The whip lashes on my back were hit hard, the pain making me dizzy for a moment, the robe covering my body haphazardly opening.

Him being so rough truly startles me.

Jinzi’s gloomy face isn’t one that I’ve only see once or twice, but this time is noticeably different. His thin lips are tightly pursed, something roiling about within his slanted and shining phoenix eyes – I’ve never seen him look so aggravated up til now. Though he’s young, he’s been subtle all throughout, a reserved and introverted person.

Everyone has the hidden capacity for violence and destruction in their hearts, so a normally composed and intelligent lady might go nuts and break things. There’s some people who might never have an outburst in the lives, though.

Jinzi currently looks like a wild animal that’s failing to control its heart.

My original feeling of being wronged yet guilty was instantly changed to dread: what would he do to me? If he did anything to me, I wouldn’t be able to take it, unlike Yuan Qingyun. Even if he tortured me further, even if my physical body gave in and surrendered, he wouldn’t be able to destroy the serenity within the depths of my heart. But Jinzi…

I probably shrank back, or my face betrayed a bit of my fear, because he was even angrier. He pulled me closer, my injuries chafing against the bed, tears coming out from the ache.

He used his hands to tear open his own clothes, his body pressing down as if he’d gone berserk. I can guess his intentions, great alarm rising in me: the wounds on me right now are so heavy, how could I withstand his snowfall on top of the frost already here?

I used up all my strength to struggle in a flurry, but with the gap in our physical strength doesn’t make it useful at all. He restrains me with hardly any effort, one hand nailing my bare chest to the bed while the other continues to deal with my lower garment.

I don’t want to hate Jinzi!

My struggle is completely ineffective and unable to prevent any of his actions. I begged him in a desperate whisper, “Jinzi, don’t do this now… please, I… know that I was wrong…”

I’ve been begging a lot of people today.

He hardly paid that any attention, eyes sweeping over to me coldly as he placed his hand below my lower abdomen. I suck in a breath of cold air. I don’t have even a bit of interest right now, but I can’t stop the regular physiological reaction. Is this the male species’ eternal woe?

He straddled me, and only then did I understand what he actually wanted to do, my eyes widening.

He isn’t using any lubricant beforehand, making me enter him raw. My heart contracted into a ball at that. Finding it hard to witness, I shout, “…Don’t, Jinzi! That’ll hurt you!”

He laughed mockingly and grabbed my chin with so much force it hurts enough for my to think my jaw broke. His voice is glacial and fiery, “Did you just not want to be on the bottom? You could have just told me! …You didn’t even ask, how would you know I wouldn’t want to? —Or were you drooling over that Bao Yun’s charm from earlier on?…” He suddenly lowered his voice, speaking with teeth-gnashing rage and provocation into my ear, “Did he make you feel good? So much that you kept going to find him? …Shouldn’t you at least have a comparison?”

My face blooms red, my heart pained as if those words were knives stuck into it. I just shook my head vigorously, blinking back the stream of liquid starting to rush from my eyes.

He’d since lowered all the way down on me with no sort of slicking-up whatsoever, dry and rough. Even I feel that the friction would hurt badly, yet he didn’t even furrow his brows. I try to get him off only for the movements to seem to make his pain worse, him making a stifled noise. Hearing the normally extremely strong-willed Jinzi groaning made me think it was from the pain, scaring me from making further random movements.

He didn’t hesitate to do some sort of mechanical motion, a liquid slowly acting as a lubricant, making a certain part of my body very smooth and comfortable. He didn’t seem like he felt any pain as his movements didn’t slow at all. His young and handsome face was completely expressionless, his eyes staring stonily at my face. That liquid overflowed from the place where we were joined, spilling onto my- no, Zhang Qinglian’s white jade-like body, an ever-increasing eyesore of dark red.

I feel like I can see many things in this slice of red. Did the 15-year-old Jinzi bleed like this when he was disgraced? What method had Zhang Qinglian used to torment him previously? What was he thinking about then? How is his mood now?

The sky began to spin and ground gradually turned about, my haemophobia reaching an unprecedented intensity. My body is gradually warming up from the pleasure while my heart cools down bit by bit, pulsing violently and contracting. It’s like all the blood in my body is flowing back into my heart, and I can even hear the sound of it beating, my surroundings beginning to blur…

I’m on the verge of… passing out. Why is it that Yuan Qingyun’s torture didn’t make me dizzy, yet this is making me that right now?

Humanity’s composition is really perplexing.

I lose awareness of the scorching pain on my back and rear, my gaze still hypnotized by the she short of irregularly spattered crimson liquid and I can’t look away. Can’t look away…

But I can’t faint right at this moment, I can’t allow Jinzi to do this while in such a mood… I fought to extend my trembling hands, grab onto his supporting arms on either side of me, used all of my strength to sink my nails deep into his perfect and sturdy yet flexible flesh, and hissed out, “…Stop it, Yao Jinzi—”

Perhaps my voice was too anguished and ear-piercing, as Jinzi jumped in fright from it and ceased his movements, scared stiff. He slowly raised his eyes to me.

I also raised my face towards him, only to find that my face was coated in tears. It took a good while of sobbing before I could talk. “…Jinzi, don’t. Not like this… I… I’m fine with being on the bottom… I won’t go looking for anyone else again, there won’t be anyone besides you and me…”

Jinzi gazed at me deeply. When I thought he’d ignore me again, he got off, a certain part of mine returning from the warmest place to the air accompanied by a small bit of chill and sense of loss. I mentally sigh in relief.

I thought he was going to talk with me, but he laid down beside me and turned me over onto my own side, holding me from behind and being careful not to mess with my wounds.

Seems he wants to do it to me now. Though it’s my own suggestion, I’ve gotten the feeling that he was too quick to follow it, as if he was waiting for me to say that. Yet taking back what one’s said is no good. This situation where I’ve had no better choice in the matter has happened a thousands times before anyways.

I left the tears on my face to air-dry. My body is involuntarily rigid from the nerves, curling up slightly. He lightly gripped my uninjured upper arm and said in a low voice next to my ear, “Relax a bit. It’ll hurt at the start, but it won’t always hurt… I’ll be careful.”

I completely do not believe him. In accordance with my experiences, previous information and resources, and my own scientific inferences based on the structure of the human body, it not hurting is impossible. Though, in retrospect, I’m not really being fair to Jinzi. The last time this happened I was already injured, so even if he was gentle the pain would still make me want to die.

It should be given a chance. Maybe it won’t be as painful as last time. Who knows.

Jinzi gets up from the bed to go get some kind of lubricant made of some kind of animal fat before coming back. He told me to part my legs. I was ashamed, but still did as he’d said.

His fingers were gentle, their tips sending a pleasant shock of electricity through me when they touched, but when they tried to enter, I froze up from nervousness.

“Don’t be afraid.” He comforted me with a soft voice, stroking my back that was strung up like a bow like he was calming a frightened animal.

The fingers that stubbornly squeezed their way into me stay there for a long time, until I slowly became accustomed to the uncomfortable foreign object. The application of the ‘substance’ also persisted for a long time, until I slowly felt a little bit more comfortable. He almost used the whole case before he put it down and came to bed.

Jinzi adheres to my back, and of course I can sense a certain hard thing pressed against me. I know very well how big it is, so I can’t help but dread it. When he tried to get in, though I was adequately, I was still extraordinarily tense.

In my opinion, there’s a big correlation between tension and one’s mental state. Tension makes the sphincter contract, making this process a lot more difficult and multiplying the pain. As a result, a long time passed and Jinzi still wasn’t able to enter, and he didn’t have the heart to go any harder. The pain of these repeated attempts have made me cry again, my body huddling up more severely, but I’ve held in my noises all along.

He tried once more and enter in a bit deeper. I shivered all over from the ache, biting my lip.

Jinzi finally gave up, sighed, and withdrew from me.

Neither of us say anything.

He suddenly spoke up from behind me. “I… it’s true that when Zhang Qinglian humiliated me, I sometimes thought of reversing it and pushing him under me… I thought it, but… it’s also true that I didn’t like him. I didn’t have a trace of hesitation when I killed him…”

I unhurriedly turned my head to look at him, and he was gazing at me. For the first time in those phoenix eyes was a complicated and tender-ish yet somewhat anxious and uneasy expression. Something was moved, and gradually melted, in my heart. I heave long sigh, feeling my amassed sadness sweep away, my body relaxing as if I’d just finished running a marathon.

I think about it, smiling at him. “Jinzi… from when I was young until now, you’ve been the only one I’ve cared about like this… and it’s really unreasonable.”

My smile and voice were faint and calm as I said that, with only me able to hear the increasingly loud hammering of my heart in my chest. Even I couldn’t believe that a day would finally come that I would say this to another person, another life, in all sincerity, when I had vowed never to say anything like it to safeguard all of my prestige.

I saw a little bit of a joyful smile in Jinzi’s eyes, his lips even rising up a bit. The candles’ flames in the bedroom suddenly became very warm, the cool evening wind from outside seeping into our cores.

His face slowly drew near, and the moment his lips softly covered my open, I though that, no matter what the final outcome will be, this will be one of the most important events in my life before my return to death…

The taste of our lips and tongues is beautiful, as tender and beautiful as my heart being a tiny white dove about to spread its wings, as the young dewy grass growing extremely quietly in the early morning of a spring day.

……

We explore each other’s bodies in bed, and making love suddenly becomes the most logical course of action. I can relax and accommodate him, thirsting with all my heart and soul to do so. There really is pleasure after the pain…

With the gentle yet intense rhythm, it seems like I have never been so natural in bed like this, accustomed to worrying over the pros and cons, wearing spine-like armor in order to protect myself early on and halting the operation of my rationality, everything following instinct…

I’ve found the pulse of life itself, at last.

……

I don’t know how much time had passed. Maybe it was a snap of the fingers, maybe it was a hundred thousand years.

My universe has been shattered and recombined, recombined and then shattered…

Jinzi was finally spent on top of me, and, afraid of overwhelming my injuries, quickly leaned his own body weight on his elbows. I was also spent, gazing at him with a light smile.

Jinzi fixed his sight upon my face, tracing my lips with his fingers and gently touching the welts on my body. “Are they hurting you?”

I smile and shake my head. It actually hurts a lot, but I decide to throw a tantrum about it later.

He looked into my eyes for a time, then suddenly said, “I was so scared.” His voice trembles at the end, somewhat choking up.

I remember that he’s not even eighteen yet. An ache in my heart, I reach out and embrace him, which he enthusiastically returned.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble.

“I’m the one who should be sorry.” His face is buried into the crook of my neck, his dejected voice holding rare boyishness. “I was too conceited. I thought I could protect you… Last time- last time I was scared to death… Last night I almost went mad, I couldn’t find you anymore, I didn’t know what I should do…”

In spite of my wounds, I hold him close with all of my strength. He got very nervous, saying, “Careful, your injuries…”

I said once more that it didn’t matter. He loosens up to an extent on par with me, thinking to massage me as we held each other. I wince in pain, but the edges of my lips rise up.

We’re like two children that have been wandering lost in the dark for a long time, and when we reached out our fingers to feel out the path, we accidentally ran into the other’s fingertips, bringing with them the heat of life.

Finally, I can find and listen to the beat of his heart. I can hug him all the time at night to stave off all sorts of cold. From this point on, I won’t have to be alone and filled with fear in this long, dark hallway that never ends…

I fear what’s coming no longer.