In order to pick her up, Crown Prince has to touch her back.
So, his arm were placed to cross her back.
Zhu WuXin gripped tightly at his sleeve, enduring the pain and not making a sound. This is good. After yearning (for help) left and right, she managed to chance on the Crown Prince. It’s more useful than being saved by anyone else. The Crown Prince carried her up, casually found a clean room and put her on the bed. Inside the woodshed it’s cold and humid, plus it rained before this. Her whole body is wet, it didn’t manage to dry even though the sun came out today.
The Crown Prince ordered people to boil water and bring it to him. Not caring about the difference between men and women[1], he personally untied her clothes.
As for Zhu WuXin, she don’t have much energy to care. Getting saved is more important, just let him help her to change clothes. Although the outer layer can be taken off, there’s no way to remove the inner clothing due to the blood have caused the skin and clothing to stick tightly together. He can only use scissor to cut off bits by bits. As the Crown Prince cut the clothing, his hands trembled. Starting from the neck downwards, there’s almost no unblemished skin on her body. Large and small wounds criss-crossed on her back. Obviously, the abuse she received was not in a matter of a day or two. He has seen a lot of dead people. And killed a lot too. But, there’s not a single person who could give him such a big shock. The areas that he can touch, there’s not a single meat there. She can be simply described ‘as thin as a match'[2].
The lights in the room have been lighted up, plus a few maidservants have brought buckets of boiled water, making the room filled with warm and humid heat. Causing the people in it to feel groggy. Seeing that she is about to fall asleep, the Crown Prince hurriedly called out, “Miss, Miss wake up!”
Zhu WuXin woke up by his push muttered, “I’m…. I’m so hungry.”
His hand on her face trembled a bit and said, “Wait for a while.”
Then, turning his head to the people behind him, he coldly ordered, “You go and bring back some food.”
After his order, he turned back to look at Zhu WuXin.
“Miss, you wait for a while. Food will be brought in immediately.”
“You can’t sleep, absolutely can’t go to sleep, can you hear what I said?”
Zhu WuXin’s body was shaken badly by him, nodded her head. In order not to let her fall asleep, the Crown Prince looked for words to start a conversation, “Who are you? Why are you locked inside this woodshed?”
“Me, I’m Zhu WuXin. My father said I have offended Princess Ning An, so he wanted to starve me to death.”
“How about the injuries on your body? Was it from your father hitting you?” His voice trembled slightly.
“En.”
Hearing that, the Prince was going to flip out when a maidservant came forward and carefully said, “Your Highness Crown Prince, the water has been prepared.”
The Crown Prince nodded and held back his anger. Picking her up, he put her directly into the water.
After letting her soaked a short while, he quickly took off the last layer of her inner clothes.
[1] : 男女有別 – Saying, kinda means people from different genders shouldn’t touch each other
[2] : 骨瘦如柴 – Idiom, meaning bone-thin
Hi thank you for the chapter ❤️❤️❤️❤️
Thanks for the chapter. 🙂
From what I know, if a man saw a woman’s body in ancient China he’d have to marry her to protect her honor. Why didn’t he ask someone else to undress her?
Indeed, but I think the author didn’t stress much on this point. Some ancient chinese novels I read also the same. As in they don’t follow strictly the norm/common sense/logic and just write what they wanted.