Pei Du placed the little bird on the pillow beside him.
But Shen Jiujiu, remembering the little bird’s naughty antics from last time, pawed at the pillow with his talons. His gaze drifted to Pei Du’s chest.
This time, he mainly wanted to dive into his dreams to uncover details about Ziming’s death. Who knew if he’d get riled up again? If he flew into a rage in the dream and ended up pummeling his benefactor in the dead of night, that would be terribly rude.
Feeling a touch sheepish, Shen Jiujiu let out a chirp and pointed at Pei Du’s chest with the tip of his wing.
Pei Du sighed. “I’ll crush you.”
Shen Jiujiu shook his head vigorously, his chirp brimming with utter faith in Pei Du’s sleeping habits.
Truth be told, Pei Du awake was the picture of aristocratic refinement in every gesture and word, molded straight from the template of a noble clan’s young master. And Pei Du asleep was nothing short of a flawless jade statue—motionless, not even a single hair out of place.
Shen Jiujiu had marveled at it last night while waiting for Pei Du to drift off. He’d assumed Pei Du wasn’t in deep slumber, but after ages of waiting, Pei Du’s breaths came long and even, his body locked in a perfect supine pose, utterly still.
There was no reasoning with Shen Jiujiu. The little bird only heard what he wanted to hear.
When Pei Du still wouldn’t relent, Shen Jiujiu cut straight to the chase. With feather-light steps, he hopped onto Pei Du’s shoulder, trotted across his inner robe toward his chest, nudged the quilt’s edge aside with his head, and slipped right in.
Pei Du: “…”
Reminded of the calming incense he’d deliberately skipped lighting tonight, Pei Du paused before indulging the little bird dumpling’s clinginess once more.
What else could he do—chase the dumpling around the bed in the middle of the night?
A headache bloomed behind Pei Du’s eyes.
Shen Jiujiu nestled against Pei Du’s chest, lulled by the steady thump of his heartbeat. The quilt lifted just enough to free half his little head for air. Taking it as permission granted, he chirped in delight.
Pei Du made no reply, though a trace of helplessness softened his features.
Curled on Pei Du’s chest under the shared quilt, this cozy warmth was a world apart from dozing by the pillow. It felt so good his tail feathers fanned out in bliss.
Yet after stewing in drowsiness for what felt like forever, Shen Jiujiu remained wide awake, eyes unblinking and alert as could be.
This wasn’t right.
He’d slaved over a chunk of his policy essay today, talons cramping from the effort. How could he not be exhausted?
And last night, the moment he’d snuggled against Pei Du, sleep had crashed over him like a sedative.
That sparked a thought. Shen Jiujiu craned his neck to peer up, only to find Pei Du equally restless—brows knitted tight, body even more rigid than when he’d first settled in.
Resting his head sideways on the soft fabric of Pei Du’s inner robe, Shen Jiujiu mulled over the differences between tonight and last night.
Same bed, same man, same bird—no swaps there. Wait.
His eyes lit up. He jerked his head higher.
Tonight, the bird hadn’t gotten skin-to-skin!
Certain he’d cracked it, Shen Jiujiu wriggled his talons on Pei Du’s chest, inching toward the collar’s edge with utmost care. Pei Du stayed asleep, so steeling his nerves, Shen Jiujiu dove straight in without a second thought.
So fragrant.
Pei Du’s inner robe brimmed with his natural scent.
Stripped of the outer robe’s incense overlay, that oddly familiar herbal note sharpened into something intoxicating. Utterly addictive.
Shen Jiujiu inhaled deeply, unable to resist.
Only afterward did the realization hit: he really was one perverted little bird.
Smacking his beak guiltily, he pressed his head to Pei Du’s bare chest and shut his eyes.
~~~
This time, even before his dream-eyes fluttered open, a heavy weight bore down on Shen Jiujiu’s chest, stifling his breath.
“Feeling better, Jiujiu? Be a good boy and take your medicine on time.”
A gentle voice filtered into his ears as a tender hand caressed his cheek.
“I’m okay, Mother. Go on with your work—the shopkeeper and the others must be waiting out front.”
Shen Jiujiu opened his mouth, only a child’s piping voice emerging.
“Very well. The sun’s brutal outside. Stay in this afternoon and take a nap, alright?”
The woman’s tone wasn’t soft or lilting. Each word marched straight and true, dipping slightly at the ends—not harsh, but laced with the unshakeable confidence of a veteran trader.
“Mm! Jiujiu knows!”
Shen Jiujiu watched her back with aching reluctance, his heart a tangle of warmth and sorrow.
Once Mother had gone, the child flung off the quilt and leaped from the bed.
Too hasty—he doubled over the bedframe, hacking fiercely till he caught his breath.
Forced to take it slow, the boy sighed like a tiny grown-up and slithered under the bed. From a crack in the wooden slats, he pried out a small bundle sealed tight in oil paper.
It was a roll of plain silk wrapped in oilcloth, dotted with ink spots and horizontal lines—like a child’s bored doodles at first glance.
Against the era’s vertical script, Shen Jiujiu knew at once these marks were meant to be read sideways.
The child laid the plain silk on the bed’s edge, shuffled to the copper basin, and rinsed the dust from his hands.
In the water’s reflection gleamed a boy’s face.
His features differed starkly from the youth in prior dreams, yet Shen Jiujiu knew without doubt: this was Shen Xinian too.
Shen Xinian dried his hands, returned to the bed, and perched on the footstool. As he unrolled the silk, its secrets came into focus.
Shen Xinian was a soul reborn—drowned last life in a backyard pond during his sophomore summer break. Awakening, he found himself thrust into the Long Aotian stallion harem novel he’d just binged.
To others, he was simply frail from birth. Only he knew the truth: as an outsider bearing foreign memories, this world rejected him outright.
The more he mingled with its people, the fiercer the repulsion, the frailer his body grew.
Deep down, Shen Xinian sensed that surrender meant forgetting his past life, dismissing the novel as mere prophecy—and thriving as a normal, healthy soul.
But Shen Xinian dared not forget.
In his previous life, Shen Xinian had been an orphan without a single relative. But in this life, he had struggled on the edge of death since infancy, and it was his mother, Xie Jingtang, who dragged him back from the darkness time and again, raising him to adulthood with unwavering love and tender care despite all the hardships.
Yet in the original book, all of his mother Xie Jingtang’s hard work and her entire estate were nothing more than golden opportunities handed to the Long Aotian male lead on a silver platter by the author. And because of that, she met her end in the ruthless power struggles of those at the top.
Shen Xinian knew all of this full well. He had tried every method he could think of, but none of them allowed him to warn his mother about the original plot ahead of time.
That was why he was content to live this frail, isolated existence, never daring to let those memories fade.
He waited in dread, like someone watching the last grains of sand trickle through an hourglass, bracing for the year in the story when Xie Jingtang would die.
The year he himself turned fifteen.
But Shen Xinian knew all too clearly that simply keeping a watchful eye on Xie Jingtang might stave off her death in the plot for now—a temporary victory at best. To truly alter the course of events, he had to head to the Capital.
Only by reaching the heart of power, where the main storyline truly unfolded, could he strike at the root of it all and change the fates these characters had been doomed to.
He couldn’t rely on the Zhenguo Marquis Mansion to propel him upward. His only path was the imperial examinations.
And so Shen Xinian threw himself into his studies with desperate fervor, determined to take the exams as early as possible, step into officialdom, and ensure he didn’t miss any crucial plot developments or key figures.
“If I hadn’t happened to be studying Morse code with the mystery club right before transmigrating, I might not have remembered it at all…”
Shen Xinian scratched his head and fished a palm-sized Emerald Bamboo Small Pen out of his little pouch.
“My memory’s getting hazier and hazier. No, I have to concentrate—where was I last time…?”
The Emerald Bamboo Small Pen in Shen Xinian’s hand was a peculiar little thing. Its tip was made from animal hair that was far stiffer than the soft bristles of a regular brush pen. Unlike traditional brushes, its shaft was crafted from a slender, hollow length of bamboo for easy portability, with a small hole at the point where it met the tip.
A thin ink stick was stored inside the shaft. To use it, you simply added a drop of water, inserted the ink stick, and ground it around until the ink gradually soaked into the tip.
His mother, Xie Jingtang, had made it for him herself, following the sketches and explanations he had painstakingly drawn and described.
Through the eyes of Shen Xinian in the dream, Shen Jiujiu quickly spotted Sui Ziming’s name on the plain silk.
