He looked up and met Liu Yushu's clear and gentle eyes. Her expression was pure and innocent. He couldn't detect the slightest bit of malice on her face. The ice - cold wariness in his eyes eased just a tiny bit, and he silently turned his back.
Liu Yushu gasped when she saw the large wounds on his back.
He didn't look like a thief. Thieves wouldn't be this badly injured, would they? She couldn't help speculating about his identity.
Wu Qing handed the medicine jar to Liu Yushu. When she took it, his hand accidentally touched the tip of her finger. Her fingertips were cool and soft like tender tofu. There was also a faint smell of licorice on her, which was very soothing.
He turned his head sideways. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a red mark on her neck, which he had pinched just now.
"I won't hurt you," he said in a deep voice. This was the first time he had spoken since entering the room.
"Okay," Liu Yushu tried hard to control her trembling hands and quickly applied the medicine to him.
She gave the front hall to him and went back to the inner room herself. She saw the bowl of porridge on her younger brother's bedside. Her brother hadn't touched it, and it was a bit cold, but at least it could fill his stomach.
By the candlelight, Wu Qing changed into the clean clothes she had brought. He was much taller than her younger brother. The pants were okay, but half of his arms were exposed from the upper - garment. Seeing the shadow moving on the ground, he looked up. Liu Yushu walked over carefully with the bowl in both hands. She bent down and placed it beside him, then immediately stepped back and sat on the chair farthest from him.
Liu Yushu saw that he had been staring at the bowl of porridge. His Adam's apple rolled as he swallowed a few times. It was obvious that he was starving, but he stubbornly refused to eat. Summoning up her courage, she whispered, "It's not poisoned. It's just a bit cold. If you don't mind, please have it."
Looking at his appearance, he didn't seem like a thief, because he showed no interest in the jewelry on her at all.
She guessed that he might be too embarrassed to eat with her around. So, she lay on the tea - table with her head turned sideways, pretending to be asleep. Then she turned her head again and secretly opened her eyes a little. Sure enough, the bowl was empty.
It was late at night, well into the second half of the night.
"The light is still on in the room. Why haven't these damned siblings gone to bed yet? How about we come back later?" Two figures appeared outside the door. They were two women.
"What are you afraid of? Put the poisonous snakes into the room. They'll surely be dead by tomorrow morning. Our young mistress is so smart. This method is undetectable. Even if the old mistress comes back, she won't find out anything," the other woman said with a very proud chuckle.
Liu Yushu recognized the voices of these two women. One was Qinghua, who had taken care of her younger brother before, and the other was Xiangmei from Mistress He's courtyard.
Liu Yushu was greatly shocked and scared out of her wits. She quickly got up. Just as she was at a loss and trying to think of a way, the door was pushed open a crack. About five or six colorful snakes as thick as two fingers crawled in. Their triangular heads showed that they were extremely poisonous.
She opened her mouth and was about to scream. In the blink of an eye, several pieces of porcelain flew towards the poisonous snakes. The snakes were all cut in half. They wriggled a few times and then lay still on the ground.
Wu Qing quickly got up and yanked open the door. The two maids outside the door stared at Wu Qing with their eyes wide open in fear. Before they could even scream, Wu Qing knocked them unconscious. Then he carried the two maids and disappeared into the rainy night.
After calming down, Liu Yushu walked to the door and closed it. Looking at the corpses of the colorful snakes all over the ground, she thought that it was really lucky that he was there just now.
He had saved her and her younger brother's lives.
She thought he probably wouldn't come back, right? Liu Yushu hurriedly moved the chair in the room to the door and propped it up to prevent any more bad guys from coming in.
The next day, when Liu Yushu woke up, she heard a commotion outside.
She opened the door and grabbed a maid in the yard to ask what was going on. The maid replied in a panic, "Someone's dead. Someone in the mansion is dead."
Liu Yushu was instantly stunned in shock.
The dead were Qinghua and Xiangmei. They had been strangled with a blood - stained white cloth around their necks and hanged in Mistress Tian's Green Elegance Pavilion. They were already dead when they were found.
Who on earth had done this?