The Yan Xiaohan in the dream was cold as ice, refusing to call for help. Fu Shen was anxious and angry but hesitated, not reaching out to pull him.
“Why did you lie to me?”
The words he couldn’t ask in reality were finally voiced in his dream. Fu Shen paced back and forth on the cliff’s edge, breathing heavily, suddenly breaking down and shouting: “You’re lying to me! After lying last time, you’re lying again! Jump!
Go ahead and jump!”
After shouting, he suddenly jolted awake.
The sky outside was already dark; he had unknowingly slept through the afternoon. Fu Ting Xin stood beside his bed, looking slightly haggard. Seeing him awake, he asked caringly: “Why did you sleep without changing clothes? Were you having a nightmare?”
Fu Shen looked down and discovered his hand was firmly pressed against his chest, no wonder he felt breathless in the dream.
He got up, stretched his sore and stiff shoulders and neck, and suddenly noticed Fu Ting Xin was wearing plain clothes, looking solemn. An inexplicable heaviness sank in his heart, and he asked: “Second Uncle, are you going out?”
“I just received a message from the palace,” Fu Ting Xin said slowly, “Master Jin couldn’t withstand the torture and slit his wrist with a broken ceramic piece in prison, leaving four words before dying…”
Fu Shen was instantly solemn.
“What did he… write?”
Fu Ting Xin closed his eyes, exhausted, and his suppressed sob finally broke free, hot tears rolling down—
“He wrote, ‘No regrets in life’.”
While bandaging his swollen right hand, he asked, “The barbarians are constantly targeting us, seizing every opportunity to strike. Weren’t you putting yourself in danger by rescuing that little eunuch?”
Fu Shen had no good expression for him and coldly retorted, “What else could I do? Watch someone beat him to death?”
“He’s just a eunuch,” Yan Xiaohan said, finding it inconvenient to manage with one hand and giving up. He rested his right hand on his knee and calmly asked, “Was it worth saving him?”
Fu Shen became even more irritated. He casually grabbed a nearby bandage, quickly applied medicine and wrapped it up, turning his right hand into a neat bundle. He threw down a cold remark and walked away.
