Rebirth of Poisoned Empress, by 颜若优雅

Chapter 65

"Liangliang, why would you have Zhen Ge find a monk out of nowhere?"

"I naturally will have a use for him. Speaking of which, how's your martial arts recently?"

"...I'll go practice my fists now."

"...." Watching him running away in a hurry, Shen Liang couldn't help but feel his forehead go dark. He was only asking. It wasn't like Shen Liang was going to test him. Why did he have to run so fast?

When night fell, a gentle breeze had started. After dinner, Shen Liang took out his outer garments and tied up his waist length hair. He stepped into the bathtub behind the screen in his bedroom and soaked himself in what smelled like herbal bath. In the twenty so days he had returned to the Imperial City, so much have occurred and happened. He would be lying if he said he wasn't tired. Shen Liang never was a person who liked to scheme and conspire to begin with. But whenever he thought of how the current him had a different fate than the him in his previous life, and how the fates of those implicated by him could also change, Shen Liang no longer felt weary. He didn't dare to feel weary. 

"If... I was born in an ordinary family, how wonderful would that be..." Shen Liang raised his hand to lather the warm herbal water over him as he unconsciously blurted out his extravagant wish.

"If you were born in an ordinary family, it would be much easier for this lord to marry you."

"..." 

Pei Yuanxian's voice suddenly sounded in the room. Shen Liang, who was naked in the bathtub turned around with startle. Borrowing the murky image through the screen, he was able to barely make out Pei Yuanxian's image sitting on his bed with his foot poised in the air. He seemed to be carrying something in his arms. 

After the initial shock, Shen Liang regained his composure and sat back down: "It's a shame for my lord to not take up an occupation as a flower thief." *Rapist/pervert or playboy basically.*

Coming and going without a trace. Didn't he present the perfect conditions as a flower picker candidate?

"It's harmful to the body to pick too many flowers. This lord just so happened to like peony kings like you. I wonder if Liangliang would allow me to pick you?"

Footsteps sounded and Shen Liang could vaguely see him drawing near and towards him through the screen. He would be lying if he said he wasn't nervous, but he was accustomed to responding with a calm facade. Besides, everyone was a man anyways. Even when Pei Yuanxian came to the screen and his slender fingers slid across the edge of the tub and all the way to his back, Shen Liang never gave any response.

"Has the lord come here to help me rub my back?" he wouldn't lose two pounds of fat just from being stared at anyways. With such mentality, Shen Liang's calm was like an unmovable mountain. In fact, he even relaxed. Pei Yuanxian couldn't do anything to him anyways. At least, he couldn't know. What was there to worry about?

"If you require it," his fingers slid against Shen Liang's bare back and onto his shoulder little by little. Pei Yuanxian leaned down and against Shen Liang's ears. His warm breath intimately caressed against Shen liang's sensitive neck.

Shen Liang resisted the urge to shrink his neck and stated as calmly as possible: "If the lord is willing to condescend, then even if I don't need it, I would still have to need it, am I right?"

He wants to play? Then Shen Liang wants to see exactly who will be able to hold on until the end.

"It is this lord's honor to serve the Wangfei."

What a pity. Almost!

As his words fell, Pei Yuanxian really did pick up the soft cloth restng on the edge of the tub. He dipped it into the water and then rubbed it against Shen Liang's shoulders and back.