Shen Qinghuan was captured.
She fled into the woods from Yanshuiwan, her feet were bare, her clothes were torn, her nails were broken, and her palms were covered in blood. She stuffed herself into the aerial roots of the old banyan tree and shrank into the tiniest ball, trembling like a hare chased to the end by a hound.
Then he came. Bend down, reach out, and pick her up from the ground - like picking up a fallen tool.
"Run once, ten times."
This is Fu Yan's rule. He made it very clear, and she recognized it. Accepting the punishment, admitting the mistake, kneeling on the cold cement floor, spreading your palms for him to hit. After five strokes, the blood on his palm seeped into the white gauze. He bandaged it with his own hands and fed the porridge with his own hands. His movements were as gentle as taking care of something precious.
He then told her that each person who opened the side door for her would receive ten blows.
"If you obey the rules, they don't need to be punished."
At that moment, Shen Qinghuan saw clearly that the real imprisonment was not the pale light in the basement or the bleeding wounds in his palms - it was the chains he had woven with the safety of others. She can escape, be caught, and punished. But the price of every resistance was not just her own blood.
She could choose not to run away. But you can't choose not to feel pain.
Unless——she stood up and used her body to block the blood back.
"I don't want to be like you."
She knelt on the ground, the blood on her palms seeping into the gauze, and spoke to him word by word.
"It will cause others to be beaten on your behalf, and you will feel that it is natural."
At that moment, Fu Yan finally saw something in her eyes that she couldn't understand.
Not anger.
