Spóglia: a spoiling, a robbing, a stripping. Also a raiment, a clothing or weede. Also a mans mortall vaile or bodie. Also the skinne that any Serpent or Snake leaues off. Also a coffin of paste made for a Pie, a Tarte, or a Custard. Also any pillage, praie, bootie, prize, reprisall or spoile taken from an enemie. Also the outward skinne of any thing.

The good news is that it provides some much-needed confirmation, alongside further clarity: they now know the trick and the twist as to how their current suspect is orchestrating a rather elaborate extortion scheme. The bad news is that Sui Zhou is poisoned.

The hot springs were deep enough here that the water lapped at Lan Jingyi's thighs. He couldn't see much of the man in front of him except that his hair was tied up and he'd been taller than Lan Jingyi before he got on his knees. To suck Lan Jingyi's dick. Because Lan Jingyi was having anonymous sex in the gay hot springs in Qinghe and getting his dick sucked by a stranger.

He dislikes his body sending messages he doesn't intend or even necessarily endorse.

The deluge of rain that sweeps the capital is sudden.

Silly little ficlet about Bob visiting Gerard.

“What else was there to do, hm?” Tang Fan tugs the records back, tucking them under his arm with a flap of his drapey sleeve and a jut of his chin. “Let him learn a hard lesson not to be so complacent in his obstinance towards you from now on. It wasn’t undeserved.”

Sui Zhou hears Tang Fan coming long before he arrives, because he knows intimately, resolutely, the shape that Tang Fan takes in his life.

After, when Taxian-jun has gorged his nightly fill, he cages his favoured consort into his arms and drifts off into a sated sleep.

Chu Wanning finds no such rest, for he knows no such peace.

They say the nights on Lake Houhu will drive a man to madness.