Chapter 170 A Gentle Trap
Reading Settings
Chapter 170 A Gentle Trap
On the snow, dazzling red plum blossoms bloomed.
Those were bloodstains left by the hem of Tangli's skirt as it dragged across the snow.
She walked slowly, each step aggravating her wounds, causing cold sweat to pour down her forehead from the pain. But her gaze never left the man kneeling in front of her.
Pei Yunjing remained kneeling there, as if nailed to the pillar of shame.
As Tang Li approached step by step, and as he saw the trail of blood winding beneath her feet, Pei Yunjing's pupils trembled violently.
He was trembling.
The trembling wasn't from the cold, but from a deep-seated panic.
He wanted to back away, to escape the woman he had hurt, and to hide his dirty, broken body in a crack in the ground.
However, his body seemed to be frozen, and he couldn't move at all.
He could only watch helplessly as she approached, looking at the wound on her body that he had inflicted with his own hands.
Panic, helplessness, despair.
It's like a condemned prisoner awaiting execution, watching the executioner raise the butcher's knife, wanting both relief and the fear of facing it.
"No...don't come any closer..."
Pei Yunjing's lips trembled, unable to utter a sound, only producing broken breaths in his throat.
Finally, Tangli walked up to him.
She stopped and looked at the man who had been proud his whole life, who was now humbling himself for her.
She didn't speak, nor did she show the resentment or accusatory expression that Pei Yunjing had imagined.
Tangli sniffed, enduring the excruciating pain, and slowly squatted down.
With her movement, her gaze finally met that of Pei Yunjing, who was kneeling on the ground.
She stretched out her injured left arm; the sleeve was torn, revealing a gruesome, bloody wound that was still oozing blood.
Pei Yunjing stared at the arm extended in front of him, his breath caught in his throat, and he instinctively closed his eyes, turning his head away as if he had been burned.
"Pei Yunjing."
Tangli called to him softly.
She tilted her head, her small face covered in blood, with glistening tears still clinging to the corners of her eyes.
But the corners of her mouth were trying to turn upwards little by little.
She flashed a bright smile, yet it also carried a hint of grievance.
"Your Highness, there's no need to kneel."
Her voice was soft and sweet, with a touch of coquettishness that made one's heart flutter:
"I haven't even received the land deed yet, how can you kneel on a washboard first?"
Pei Yunjing suddenly opened his eyes and stared at her in astonishment.
Tang Li pushed her injured arm forward, almost touching his nose.
She sniffed, like a child who had been bullied outside and was going home to complain to an adult, and whined in a spoiled manner:
"It hurts so much..."
"Your Highness..."
She blinked her large, wet eyes, looked at the dumbfounded man before her, and made a request that sent shivers down his spine:
"Can you give me some air?"
"Whoosh it and the pain will go away."
boom--!
The heavy wall of "self-loathing" that Pei Yunjing had built in his mind collapsed instantly at the sound of that childish, coquettish voice.
He was stunned, dumbfounded.
He thought he would be met with judgment, alienation, and fear.
But she handed him her wound and let him... breathe in?
She didn't see him as the one who hurt her.
In her eyes, he was still the husband she could rely on and who could soothe her pain.
A layer of mist slowly welled up in Pei Yunjing's lifeless eyes.
That heart, which had been shattered to ashes, began to beat again at that moment.
She needs him.
She's still in pain.
How could he... how could he kneel here like a coward, wallowing in self-pity?
Pei Yunjing's Adam's apple bobbed violently.
He looked at the little woman in front of him who was trying so hard to smile at him, and reached out his hands with trembling hands.
It's no longer resistance, nor is it escape.
Instead, with a cautious, almost reassuring, feeling of having regained what was lost, he slowly probed towards her wound.