RWWAI 24

Chapter 24: Exactly How "Half-Forced, Half-Willing" Does That Work?

It was bad enough that this bastard Luo Fan had roasted himself into a fever, but he actually had the audacity to break out in cold sweats too?

After the herbal decoction was finished, Doctor Zhou declared that the sweat on the patient's body couldn't be left alone and had to be wiped away immediately, otherwise, he would easily catch a chill all over again.

Handling this kind of delicate chore wasn't something I was anywhere near as smooth at as Qin Miaomiao. Besides, since she had already managed to get pregnant, Qi Lu's entire physique was presumably something she had seen from top to bottom anyway, so my initial plan was just to summon her into the room to handle the chores.

As for what Luo Fan might think—well, the guy was completely passed out cold, so he shouldn't be picky about who cleaned him up.

To my utter shock, Doctor Zhou actually chewed me out for it!

"Madam! This is hardly the time to be throwing tantrums! Lady Qin is still in a state of pregnancy, how could you possibly let her step in to personally tend to someone suffering from a wind-cold? This—this is absolute madness!"

Damn it all!

Left with no choice, I had to unhappily grab a small towel, sit down right on the edge of the bed, and curse a blue streak under my breath while wiping the beads of sweat off Luo Fan's forehead and neck.

After a whole lot of tossing and turning, by the time evening rolled around, Luo Fan's body temperature finally dropped back down to normal, and his consciousness returned.

I tossed the towel straight onto his face and snapped irritably:

"I only wiped the parts of you exposed outside your clothes, I didn't take advantage of you!"

Luo Fan mumbled in a hazy, groggy daze:

"Huh?"

"Doctor Zhou said lingering cold sweat shouldn't be left on your body, clean the rest yourself!" I barked unhappily.

Luo Fan hoisted himself upright and said:

"Doing it this way is too much of a hassle, go have them boil some water! I'll just take a proper bath, keep it simple."

While the maidservants bustled about boiling water, I sat idly at the vanity table, staring blankly out of sheer boredom.

Right then, Luo Fan abruptly spoke up.

"You..." His tone was dripping with caution.

"...are you really going to wait until Qin Miaomiao's baby is born before you leave?"

I answered offhandedly:

"Not necessarily. Maybe before that even happens, I'll figure out a win-win solution. Or maybe I'll just get sick of dealing with you and decide I don't want to wait anymore."

Luo Fan let out a sigh, didn't push the matter any further, and instead offered a subdued remark:

"I know Qi Lu is an absolute piece of garbage, but Qin Miaomiao... the fact that she's terrified her child will be dragged down by her social standing and face mistreatment down the line—that part is real."

Putting up a stubborn front, I shot back:

"Liang Jingjing herself doesn't even care, what does that have to do with me?"

That, after all, was an undeniable fact, leaving Luo Fan with nothing more to say.

Yet bringing up Qin Miaomiao reminded me of a lingering doubt I'd had earlier.

"Hey! In your previous backstory context drops, did it mention what actually went down between Qi Lu and Qin Miaomiao back at the Xiazi Pass?" I asked.

"There was some of that..." he started, before hurriedly rushing to defend himself, "—but I wasn't trying to hide it from you on purpose! I just genuinely didn't think you'd care about Qin Miaomiao."

I waved a hand dismissively:

"Oh, come on, I know! No hard feelings. I'm just genuinely curious—if Qin Miaomiao isn't some money-grubbing green-tea baddie, how on earth did she end up getting pregnant?"

Luo Fan froze for a second, then looked at me with deep perplexity:

"Is that really so hard to understand?"

I hurried to explain:

"Of course it is! In this era, a woman's chastity is treated like the sky! Getting pregnant before marriage—if Qi Lu hadn't later taken her as a concubine and swept the whole scandal under the rug, Qin Miaomiao could easily have wound up thrown in prison! If she wasn't chasing wealth and status, what on earth was she after?"

Even after she entered the estate, tracing the timeline backwards made the math pretty obvious.

Precisely because of that, the collateral branches of the Qi family later looked down on Qin Miaomiao and her two kids with such utter contempt, even reaching the point of shaking them down for money and trying to kick them out.

Luo Fan put on that bizarre expression that clearly screamed, "Are you genuinely this dense?" and replied:

"She was chasing Qi Lu himself..."

I chewed him out with furious irritation:

"Spare me the useless garbage! Just tell me how the background lore described it!"

As it turned out, the things Luo Fan knew didn't involve any wild, shocking plot twists.

Qin Miaomiao's father happened to be a garrison soldier stationed at the Xiazi Pass. In border-station military camps like that, the boundaries between the garrison and the local civilian populace weren't nearly as strictly drawn as government offices back in the capital.

Qin Miaomiao, who lived nearby, would occasionally drop off homemade food or bundles of laundry for her old man at the camp, so the gate guards already knew who she was.

After Qi Lu was transferred there—given that a commandant held a fairly high military rank, and operating under the traditional mindset that men simply lacked the meticulous eye of a young woman—the camp quartermaster had called Qin Miaomiao in to help wash and mend Qi Lu's garments.

Since Qi Lu had never once mentioned he was already married, after interacting back and forth day after day, Qin Miaomiao naturally developed romantic feelings for him.

Put a group of soldiers out in the borderlands for half a year and even a stray sow starts looking like a prized beauty, let alone someone as genuinely delicate and pretty as Qin Miaomiao.

Between a bit of pushing and a bit of yielding, things naturally evolved into the exact mess we had today.

I frowned and pressed:

"Give me the details—what do you mean 'half-forced, half-yielding'? Would that hold up as a crime under modern law?"

Luo Fan replied with utter helplessness:

"How the hell would I know? All I saw were text bullet comments, not a live-action video feed!"

Right as we reached that part of the conversation, the maidservants finished heating up the bathwater.

Luo Fan hoisted himself up and stated with an air of absolute, unquestionable entitlement:

"Don't overthink it so much. When you get down to it, they were just a pair of consenting adults at the right age, hit by a massive wave of surging hormones, which makes pretty much anything possible."

Gesturing toward his own physique, he remarked:

"Qin Miaomiao is a country girl after all; with a specimen like Qi Lu strutting right in front of her eyes every single day, who wouldn't lose their mind?"

I have to admit—even though Qi Lu was basically a walking synonym for human garbage in my book, his face and his body genuinely possessed the capital to make people lose their minds; otherwise, Liang Jingjing wouldn't have stayed blindly devoted to him for over a dozen years.

Right then, just to prove his point, Luo Fan unbuttoned his outer robe, baring Qi Lu's rock-solid, chiseled upper body, and added with a hint of quiet, smug satisfaction:

"Just look at this physique! Forget Qin Miaomiao, even I could stare at myself in the mirror for a solid few seconds every time I take a bath."

I blinked, my body moving entirely on its own accord as I drifted closer toward that near-flawless military-commander meat-canvas.

I couldn't resist reaching out to nudge his robe open just a fraction wider to get a better look.

Oh, holy mother of god—what even are abs and a V-line compared to this?!

This jerk literally had serratus anterior muscles and pelvic Adonis belt lines; you could use his body to do laundry and save yourself the trouble of buying a washboard.

Alright, fine. Qin Miaomiao didn't lose her footing in vain.

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