Chapter 61#

The Cross-dressing Wife#

Before dinner in the evening, Lin Xiaodong specifically instructed the back kitchen to cook the remaining crabs he had brought back that day and serve them for dinner.

He was still pondering; he had flirted a bit too much earlier, and he estimated that Gu Xingzhai probably wouldn’t peel shells for him again today, and might even avoid him for the next few days. So should he peel them himself, or call a servant to help?

But to his surprise, when dinner time arrived, what Lin Xiaodong saw wasn’t fragrant large crabs, but a big fat boy being dragged in by the ear by the housekeeper.

“You scoundrel!” The housekeeper was half-dead with rage, mostly due to the loss of face. “Where in town can’t you buy crabs? And have I ever let you go hungry?”

The big fat boy looked about eleven or twelve years old, with so much flesh on his face that his eyes were almost invisible. He was crying miserably because of the pain in his ear, with tears and snot smeared all over his face.

Lin Xiaodong sat a bit further away with some disgust: “Whose kid is this?”

“It’s my unworthy son,” the housekeeper sighed. “I’m truly sorry, Miss. I was busy handling the Old Master’s funeral affairs this afternoon, and his mother went to the town market. In a momentary lapse of supervision, he slipped into the back kitchen and ate all the crabs you were keeping in the water vat.”

“All of them?” Before Lin Xiaodong even had time to feel bad for his crabs, he glanced at the little fat boy’s height, his eyebrows knitting together. “Are you joking? This kid isn’t even as tall as the stove. Besides, with so many people in the kitchen, how did he secretly start a fire?”

The big fat boy sobbed: “I, I fished the crabs out, threw them into the wine jars in the cellar to drown them, and then just ate them.”

Lin Xiaodong: “…………”

This one is truly impressive.

“Aren’t you afraid of getting parasites?” he asked incredulously. “Even drunken crabs need to be processed; how can you just soak them in wine and eat them directly? That’s no different from eating them raw.”

The big fat boy said while sobbing: “But that’s how we eat them at home.”

“You brat! You still dare to talk back!”

Seeing the housekeeper raising his hand high while stealing glances at him, his blustering act looking utterly fake, Lin Xiaodong sighed and waved his hand listlessly: “Forget it, it’s just a few crabs. If they’re eaten, they’re eaten. However, I suggest you go to town and buy some Wumei pills to make a decoction for him; otherwise, he’s very likely to contract a parasitic disease.”

“Rest assured, this boy is tough as nails, no need to worry about him.” Seeing that he didn’t pursue the matter, the housekeeper immediately returned to his previous fawning and flattering manner. Seeing that even the father didn’t care about the son, Lin Xiaodong couldn’t be bothered to care either.

As the saying goes, good advice is lost on those hell-bent on their own destruction. When that day truly comes, this greedy brat will have a hard time.

After dinner, since this world had neither internet nor television, Lin Xiaodong originally intended to go to bed early and have the system play a movie for him. Unexpectedly, Gu Xingzhai came over once more.

“How have you considered it?” He waved his hand to let the servants clear the table and asked Lin Xiaodong in a deep voice.

“Consider what?” Lin Xiaodong asked in confusion.

Gu Xingzhai’s lip twitched: “I mean the matter of the dance partner.”

“Oh, you mean that,” Lin Xiaodong feigned a look of sudden realization and said intentionally, “But the invitation from Master Huang didn’t say I had to bring a partner.”

Seeing him playing dumb on purpose, Gu Xingzhai endured for a moment before asking politely: “I’m saying, do you want to be my partner and go to the ball together?”

Lin Xiaodong raised an eyebrow and smiled.

He sat with his legs crossed, supporting his chin with one hand, and looked at the man standing before him with a beaming smile: “So, you’re inviting me now?”

“……Yes.”

“But I don’t see your sincerity,” the smile on Lin Xiaodong’s face deepened. They had already kissed; he wanted to see how long Gu Xingzhai could keep being stubborn. “Inviting a lady to be one’s dance partner so abruptly is quite a rude behavior, Young Master Gu.”

Gu Xingzhai took a deep breath and looked directly into Lin Xiaodong’s eyes: “Then what do you want me to do?”

“Hmm,” Lin Xiaodong put on a pensive look, then said to him after a moment, “You see, I don’t know how to dance either. You’re someone who has been to the big city; since you want to invite me as your partner, it’s not too much to ask for you to teach me how to dance, right?”

“…………”

In fact, Gu Xingzhai’s original plan was to take Lin Xiaodong there in the name of a dance partner just to make an appearance and mark his territory. As long as he declared his sovereignty in person, if Master Huang had any sense, he would no longer covet another man’s wife.

But he truly didn’t expect that even though Lin Xiaodong dressed so fashionably, he still didn’t know how to dance.

“Alright.” He reluctantly agreed, “How do you want me to teach you? Let’s get this straight first: I’ve never been a dance teacher, and I only know the most basic steps.”

“Just the basics will do.”

Lin Xiaodong didn’t care about these details; he stood up, walked to Gu Xingzhai, and extended a hand toward the man.

Out of years of martial arts habits, when observing someone’s skills, one first looks at the calluses on their hands. So Gu Xingzhai instinctively lowered his head and stared at that fair, slender hand with distinct knuckles for a moment. But the more he looked, the more confused he felt—this hand was beautiful, but why did it feel not quite like a woman’s hand?

“What are you dazing about?”

Lin Xiaodong waved his hand before his eyes testily. Gu Xingzhai, who had just sensed something was wrong, had his thoughts interrupted and finally reacted, reaching out to take the youth’s hand, but very reservedly only touching half of the palm.

They moved the table in the room to a corner and even brought an old-fashioned gramophone, which played a very slow and lyrical English song. The dim yellow light of the crystal ceiling lamp swayed gently overhead, and an unspeakable, ambiguous atmosphere gradually brewed and fermented in the room.

Lin Xiaodong placed his hand on Gu Xingzhai’s shoulder. The man lowered his eyes somewhat uncomfortably and placed his hand on the youth’s back.

“My waist is here,” Lin Xiaodong said helplessly.

He personally dragged Gu Xingzhai’s hand and pressed it onto his waist, thinking to himself: just who is teaching whom to dance?

Having finally settled into the posture, accompanied by the soft music, Gu Xingzhai counted the beats in a low voice and began to teach Lin Xiaodong how to do the woman’s steps. But at the beginning of learning, mistakes were unavoidable, especially since Lin Xiaodong was wearing high heels.

In less than ten minutes, he stepped on his partner’s feet several times.

Gu Xingzhai: “…………”

“Sorry,” even thick-skinned Lin Xiaodong couldn’t help but feel his old face turn red. “Forget it, I’ll dance without shoes.”

After saying that, under Gu Xingzhai’s dumbfounded gaze, Lin Xiaodong directly kicked his legs and cleanly shook off the high heels on his feet. The feeling of finally stepping on solid ground made him let out a long sigh of relief. When he regained his senses, he saw the man staring at him with an indescribable expression and couldn’t help but ask in confusion: “What’s wrong? Is there something on my face?”

“……Nothing.”

Gu Xingzhai wanted to say something several times but eventually said nothing.

So the teaching continued.

Without the worry of stepping on feet, Lin Xiaodong’s dance steps gradually became smoother and more natural. To simulate the situation of wearing high heels, he even specifically tiptoed slightly, light as a butterfly fluttering among flowers.

Although they weren’t dancing the tango, Lin Xiaodong still followed the classic scene from the movie Scent of a Woman, improvising at the end of the dance by holding Gu Xingzhai’s hand and spinning around him. However, when he leaned back for a dip, he suddenly remembered he hadn’t given any warning and instinctively wrapped both arms tightly around the man’s neck.

And at this moment, Gu Xingzhai had already quickly reached out to catch his waist.

The two maintained this posture until the record finished playing without realizing it.

Lin Xiaodong lay on his back in the man’s embrace, blinked his eyes, and looked up.

Silhouetted against the overhead light, Gu Xingzhai’s features appeared even more handsome and deep. His dark eyes stared unblinkingly at Lin Xiaodong’s face, his expression as calm and indifferent as usual, yet his gaze seemed to have stirred up a thousand waves.

A few seconds later, he applied force with his hand and pulled Lin Xiaodong up.

“You have already learned,” Gu Xingzhai let go, turned his head away, and said in a faint voice, “I have nothing else to teach you. Let’s stop here for today.”

The man silently walked to the corner, bent down to pick up the high heels Lin Xiaodong had kicked aside, placed them in front of him, and then left the room without looking back.

Lin Xiaodong stared at the shoes for a while, gave an ambiguous hum, put them on, and went to his room to sleep.

The moon reached the middle of the sky, and all was quiet.

It was late at night. Although it wasn’t yet the season for burning charcoal, the chill outside had already caused the lotus leaves in the pond to wither.

Gu Xingzhai lay on the bed, his eyes tightly closed, his breathing heavy, and his fists clenched.

Who knows what he was dreaming of; his face showed both struggle and pleasure, a layer of thin sweat seeped from his forehead, and the veins on his arms resting by his side were bulging.

Below his white inner robe, on the man’s left chest, was tattooed an Azure Dragon riding the clouds. This was an exorcism mark his master had specifically asked a master to tattoo for him when he first started learning martial arts. Sensing the succubus’s demonic qi lingering around him, the Azure Dragon pattern suddenly flashed with red light like a brand from charcoal fire. The red light was fleeting, but it instantly jolted Gu Xingzhai awake from his deep nightmare.

The man sat on the bed drenched in sweat, his chest heaving violently, and his heart beating like a drum against his eardrums. He stared blankly at the white wall opposite him. The memories from the dream gradually returned: the image of Lin Xiaodong sobbing softly beneath him and the scene of the intense kiss during the day gradually intertwined and merged, making it hard to tell which was fantasy and which was reality.

Lying in the bedroom where his father had lived for a long time, Gu Xingzhai gripped the corner of the quilt and restrainedly covered his eyes with one hand.

He blocked out the moonlight coming in from the window, but he couldn’t stop that wildly imaginative heart.

“Young Master Gu has a clear conscience, but I am just a commoner.”

Lin Xiaodong’s smiling voice seemed to echo in his ears again.

Gu Xingzhai lowered his hand and laughed self-deprecatingly.

Formerly, he could still stand before everyone and say this phrase uprightly and honorably.

But now, he could only be like a rat in a sewer, hiding in a dark corner and repeatedly torturing himself. Only in his dreams could he wantonly release the most base fantasies suppressed in the depths of his heart.

Once the intense heartbeat in his chest had calmed slightly, the man took a deep breath and walked barefoot to the cabinet in the corner.

He hesitated for a long time.

But in the end, he still took out the lotus leaf sachet hidden in the depths and hung it back on the head of the bed.