Chapter 58: Madly Proposing Marriage Part 2

He knew deep down he was capable of it, but this was too embarrassing, so he immediately turned the tables. “You just said you only got here! How’d you get slapped then?”

Yan Xinfeng sighed, a hint of resigned acceptance. “That slap of yours was so loud, the steward thought it improper and shoved me out to rest and ice it.”

As he spoke, he slightly turned his face, offering the other cheek toward Wei Tingxia. In the light, a faint, not-yet-faded red mark was visible.

Wei Tingxia: “……”

Seeing the honest, forbearing, swallowing-insult look on the man beside his pillow, a rare flicker of guilt stirred in Wei Tingxia’s iron-hard heart.

Then he heard Yan Xinfeng sum it up: “So this medicinal smell is actually yours. I’m not the medicine jar.”

No use being disgusted—you still have to put up with it.

He didn’t say it aloud, but Wei Tingxia got the message.

He choked, staring at Yan Xinfeng’s expressionless yet unreasonably reasonable face. That budding guilt instantly ignited into a small flame.

“Twisting words,” he huffed. “I wasn’t conscious then. If you’d been rougher, of course I’d be scared.”

Scared? Yan Xinfeng recalled the slap—Wei Tingxia hadn’t seemed all that scared. Even half-dead with eyes barely open, he’d lashed out, refusing any grievance.

Yet a person with such a temperament had fallen ill for two years in the Shuo Kingdom, his body ruined, doomed to drink medicine for life.

Yan Xinfeng felt both heartbroken and annoyed. With his head aching intermittently and Wei Tingxia saying this, he didn’t want to hold back anymore. “If you were scared, you should cherish your body, take good care of it—instead of wrecking yourself so young. What are you going to do in the future!”

“As if it was my choice,” Wei Tingxia rolled his eyes, utterly nonchalant. “Heaven decided to make my latter years miserable. What can I do?”

“Is it Heaven that won’t let you live well? Was it Heaven?!” Yan Xinfeng suddenly sat up.

The pent-up anger and frustration of these past days all transformed into an unbearable fury at this moment. Yan Xinfeng’s voice grew louder without him realizing it. “It was clearly you who didn’t cherish yourself, choosing a—”

“What did I choose?” Wei Tingxia interrupted him.

He sat up as well. Strands of hair fell from his shoulders, and the cold moonlight leaking in from the window sliced across half his face, like a mask of frigid iron overlaid upon it.

The two suddenly faced off, uncontrollable rage surging in each other’s eyes.

The patience and consideration of these days, the teasing and provocation, had all been real—but not the whole truth. Beneath the pretense of everything being fine lay ceaselessly churning resentment.

Wei Tingxia suddenly let out a cold laugh, his face deathly pale. “Two years ago, I chose Fu Chi and not you, so you harbored resentment.”

“I didn’t,” Yan Xinfeng said stiffly through his throat. “I don’t hate you.”

“Didn’t? Heh…” Wei Tingxia abruptly thrust out a finger and jabbed it at Yan Xinfeng’s chest again and again, with vicious force. “You might as well hate me! You pride yourself on being magnanimous and tolerant… but in truth, you’re the most hypocritical of all!”

“Enough!” Yan Xinfeng suddenly struck out, clamping down on his wrist like an iron vise and yanking him backward sharply! Caught off guard, Wei Tingxia pitched forward, nearly crashing into his embrace.

Their distance closed even further. They could feel each other’s breath and see their own reflections in the other’s eyes.

The smile at the corner of Wei Tingxia’s mouth hadn’t faded; instead, it deepened gradually.

His voice was as light as a breath, yet it pierced Yan Xinfeng’s heart like a awl.

“Yan Xinfeng, back then you went mad. You only wanted to win. You couldn’t see the corpses behind you or hear the cries behind you. You knew you would die, so you wanted to drag everyone behind you to their deaths with you.” Wei Tingxia slowly extended his other hand and brushed it over Yan Xinfeng’s slightly disheveled collar. “For me to abandon you—wasn’t that perfectly normal?”

The hand gripping his wrist tightened abruptly. Shadows of the past flickered in Yan Xinfeng’s eyes—trembling, struggling. He hated so much, yet he couldn’t bear to let go.

“You abandoned me…”

He repeated through gritted teeth, his fingertips trembling faintly. “You chose another general, and then what? Did things turn out as you wished?”

Two years, not a single second free of suffering, exchanged for an ailing shell of a body racked with pain. Was this what Wei Tingxia had wanted?

Wei Tingxia laughed.

“Yeah,” he said softly, his breath brushing over Yan Xinfeng’s tense jaw. “This is exactly what I wanted.”

His words sliced like a blade, inch by inch into the heart. Yan Xinfeng stared into the smiling eyes before him and realized more clearly than ever that Wei Tingxia wasn’t joking.

Abruptly, he released his hand. Without another word, he strode quickly out of the room.

The loud bang of the door closing carried on the wind, slamming into the gauze curtains on both sides, as if putting a period to this argument that had started inexplicably and ended just as strangely.

Wei Tingxia sat on the edge of the bed, watching the gauze curtains flutter and fall. After a long while, he slowly exhaled.

[Why did you bring up the past?] System 0188 asked.

“As if we could avoid talking about it,” Wei Tingxia lay back down on the bed, in the very spot where Yan Xinfeng’s head had just rested. “It had to be said sooner or later. Might as well be now.”

[I thought we could avoid it.] System 0188 said.

What it didn’t say was that it had nearly panicked earlier. When Wei Tingxia suddenly brought up his defection two years ago and kept stabbing at Yan Xinfeng’s chest, System 0188 watched that fatal red line shoot upward and silently began counting down to collapse in its mind.

Wei Tingxia blinked and looked at the Collapse Index as well.

“That’s what you thought,” he said. “The longer you avoid talking about a thorn like this, the deeper it buries itself. Eventually, it’ll be too late to even try.”

Better to clear the air now—lay everything out plainly, expose all the wounds, and let them air in the sun.

It would hurt, sure, but once the pain passed, they could apply medicine, bandage up, and get on with life.

[What now? The protagonist is pretty pissed.]

Wei Tingxia rolled his eyes. “How should I know? Do I look like a fortune teller? We’ll just take it one step at a time!”

System 0188: [……]

It wanted to say more, but even the simplest data calculation showed a 95% or higher chance that Wei Tingxia would get angry if it kept talking. And with his body already unwell, coaxing him would be even harder.

So after some hesitation and weighing, System 0188 displayed a standby notice and fell silent.

Meanwhile, Yan Xinfeng returned to his own courtyard.

The steward, who had long heard the two arguing, handed him a cup of hot tea. Yan Xinfeng took it and sipped, but didn’t swallow. Two breaths later, he spat it out—the water had turned red.

“Marquis! This!”

The steward panicked. His sixty-plus-year-old frame trembled. He wanted to run for the physician but feared Yan Xinfeng would collapse the moment he left, so he stood there, torn.

Yan Xinfeng waved him off and placed the tea back on the tray.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just an old ailment.”

The steward held the cup of bloodied tea, feeling as if the tray weighed a thousand pounds. A chill seeped from his fingertips straight into his bones.

He watched Yan Xinfeng walk straight to the window. His back was ramrod straight, but his gaze drifted unfocused into the heavy night outside. Candlelight flickered across half his face, casting shifting shadows.

The room held only the soft crackle of the wick burning and the steward’s own pounding heartbeat. The air congealed like frozen ink, heavy enough to suffocate.

Just as the invisible pressure was about to crush the steward, the figure by the window finally moved.

Yan Xinfeng slowly turned his head. His eyes remained cold, like two icy pools rimed with frost, revealing inscrutable thoughts.

Yan Xinfeng spoke, his voice low but every word clear. “Go make preparations.”

The steward jolted and bowed hastily. “What are your orders, Marquis!”

“In a few days, I’m going to propose marriage.” Yan Xinfeng’s tone was calm, which only made it more chilling.

“The three letters and six rites. Betrothal gifts, asking for the name, divination, bride price, wedding date, and fetching the bride. Prepare everything properly.”

He spoke slowly, as if worried the steward wouldn’t hear or remember, enunciating each word with exaggerated patience.

But the slower he spoke, the greater the impact of each term. By the time Yan Xinfeng finished, the steward was utterly stunned, frozen in place, unsure what to do.

Propose to whom? What marriage? Where?

The three questions grew more urgent by the second. The steward glanced at the still-warm teacup in his hand, then at Yan Xinfeng’s rigid back. A bad premonition weighed heavier, beading cold sweat on his forehead.

“Marquis, may I ask… to whom?”

He ventured cautiously. Something felt off about the Marquis now—he couldn’t pinpoint what, but it set his heart racing, so his words were exceedingly careful.

Before he could finish asking, Yan Xinfeng by the window suddenly let out an extremely abrupt laugh.

“He resents me in his heart. He’d rather suffer than stay, and he never would have come back unless forced.” Yan Xinfeng seemed lost in his own thoughts, murmuring to himself. “Now he’s back, but he’ll leave again sooner or later. Even if it’s not Fu Chi, it could be Li Chi, Wang Chi, Liu Chi…”

At that, he let out a mocking huff, as if finding it ironic himself.

“He can’t leave again. His illness will take years to recover from. Who else but me could care for him so wholeheartedly… If he leaves once more and endures endless torment, clinging to life, dying young…”

Yan Xinfeng spoke faster and faster, as if he could already see Wei Tingxia bullied and miserable in death. His vision reddened, his head throbbed like it would explode, and the bloody taste in his mouth grew thicker.

“He followed me on campaigns for nearly a decade, devising strategies and pouring out his heart’s blood. Even without merits, he has toiled hard. How can I watch him leave to suffer torment?”

The figure by the window swayed slightly. The man seemed to be convincing himself, his tone already bewitched as he muttered words only he understood. “As long as we marry, it’ll be fine. Once we’re married, we can support each other, united in heart and mind. He can recuperate properly, and we can forget all the past…”

With that, Yan Xinfeng turned his head in a daze, his gaze landing toward the steward.

“Did you hear that clearly?” he asked, ever so softly.

Meeting those bloodshot eyes, the steward’s back was instantly soaked through, his spine shivering.

“This old servant understands! I-I won’t let the Marquis and Mr. Wei’s wedding go awry!”

He bowed deeply and declared loudly. As his words fell, Yan Xinfeng slowly exhaled, as if resolving a weight on his heart.

“Go on,” he said, his voice calm again, urging gently. “As soon as possible.”