Tearing off Yan Feili's clothes, which felt like ice against his skin, Beitang Ao roughly helped him change into the dry clothes Qiu Ye Yuan had found.
Yan Feili was already completely weak, allowing Beitang Ao to pull him up from the bed and strip off his clothes.
His swollen, protruding abdomen was fully exposed before the leader.
Beitang Ao looked at his once well-proportioned body, now so distorted, the scars on his belly looked even more grotesque against the swollen skin.
For some reason, a fierce anger suddenly flared up inside him.
Qiu Ye Yuan frowned, watching Beitang Ao treat the laboring man without mercy.
"Ah…" Yan Feili, already in unbearable pain, felt as if he was falling apart after changing into the single layer of clothing. All he felt was pain, nothing else.
But compared to that, he was even more unwilling to let the leader see him lose all dignity.
"Leader…" Yan Feili looked at Beitang Ao's stiff expression and pleaded, "Please, please go out… don't stay here…" Beitang Ao ignored his words and tied his hands to the side of the bed.
With each wave of pain, Yan Feili instinctively clenched the cloth binding his hands.
Seeing the leader apparently unwilling to leave, Yan Feili felt deeply ashamed.
In front of the leader, he at least wanted to control his voice as much as possible, not wanting to appear even more miserable.
But how was that possible?
"General Yan, how long has your water been broken?" Qiu Ye Yuan asked again.
In pain, Yan Feili couldn't calculate, only vaguely replied, "It… it seems to have broken before the snow…"
"Then how long have you been having contractions?" The snow had been falling for about an hour.
"Uh…" Yan Feili realized Beitang Ao was standing coldly at his bedside. That gaze stung him deeply, but he couldn't look.
"Since… since the New Year's banquet started…" Yes, from the moment he saw the leader appear with his stunning fiancée, the intense heartache seemed to spread to his abdomen like an infection.
Actually, these past few days, he had felt heavy and burdened in his body, his belly weighed down.
This morning, he even vaguely felt some dragging pain.
But upon hearing the leader had returned, he didn't have time to see Qiu Ye Yuan and forced himself to attend the banquet.
Unexpectedly, he couldn't hold on any longer.
"What?" Qiu Ye Yuan was shocked.
From noon's banquet until now, it had been nearly five hours at least.
And he recalled Yan Feili had stayed at the banquet all afternoon, even toasting several leaders with many brothers. How did he endure the contractions all this time? Beitang Ao frowned, sitting on the chair beside the bed, watching Yan Feili.
The labor pains intensified continuously, and with each slow wave of amniotic fluid flowing out, the fetus gradually pressed down to the birth canal.
Yan Feili's moans grew heavier and more hoarse, feeling as if he had become a wild beast, only knowing to exert force repeatedly at Qiuyuan's command.
But in the corner of his consciousness, he clearly knew that the sect leader was sitting right beside him, watching his miserable childbirth, utterly devoid of dignity.
Never before had Yan Feili wished so much to die in pain as he did at this moment.
"Mm… ah…" The uncontrollable moans gradually turned into cries of alarm.
The pain in his lower body felt as if it was being torn apart, an inhuman torment; sweat poured from Yan Feili, and his lips were bitten until they bled.
Hearing Yan Feili's broken cries and seeing his laboring form, Beitang Ao suddenly stood up and paced anxiously inside the room.
No matter how lofty the sect leader was, facing such a situation, he could not escape the unique panic and nervousness of a man.
Moreover, the one lying there giving birth was not even a woman, but his subordinate, a general.
Furthermore, from what he knew of Yan Feili, the child about to be born from his abdomen was most likely his own flesh and blood.
Beitang Ao, encountering this for the first time, felt somewhat flustered.
Night deepened, the New Year's banquet had ended at some unknown time, and the drunken crowd gradually dispersed.
Heavy snow accompanied by a howling cold wind fell, ushering in the first day of the lunar new year.
No one would come to this remote and quiet northern courtyard; the entire bamboo garden was blanketed in white, and faint intermittent moans could barely be heard from the inner room.
After an unknown length of time, a faint cry of a newborn finally announced the end of Yan Feili's suffering.
Collapsed weakly onto the bed, Yan Feili looked as if he had just been pulled out of water, drenched in sweat.
Qiuyuan washed the baby with warm water and wrapped him in a torn brocade quilt.
Beitang Ao cast a sharp glance at the baby; although mentally prepared, seeing the bright red plum blossom-shaped birthmark on the baby's left chest still caused his expression to change.
