Huo Fenghua sat by the brazier to warm himself. As his hands gradually loosened from the cold, he turned his back to Feng Tianzong and carefully looked at the note. There was only a word written on it: “Wen.”
He immediately tossed the note into the brazier, where it burned into ash.
What “Wen” could it be? Of course it was his Martial Uncle, Wen Heyi.
Before sleeping, Huo Fenghua lay down on the bed first. He watched as Feng Tianzong checked the doors and windows and bolted everything from the inside. Only then did Feng Tianzong return to the bedside. He didn’t even undress. With one finger hooked around the handle of his long whip, he sat at the edge of the bed, leaning back against the headboard.
Huo Fenghua rolled over and lay on his stomach, propping his head up with one hand as he looked at him. “You’re sleeping like that?”
Feng Tianzong only said, “Go to sleep.”
Huo Fenghua blinked. “Why be so vigilant, General?”
Feng Tianzong gave him a cold look and didn’t answer.
After a moment, Huo Fenghua pushed himself up and knelt on the bed. He leaned toward Feng Tianzong slowly. Just as he was about to press his lips to Feng Tianzong’s, Feng Tianzong suddenly raised a hand to block his mouth and said coldly, “What are you doing?”
Huo Fenghua smiled, took Feng Tianzong’s hand, and toyed with it in his palm for a moment. Then he leaned to his ear and murmured, “There’s an ambush.”
Feng Tianzong looked at him without changing expression. He abruptly tightened his grip, yanked Huo Fenghua into his arms, slipped his fingers under the hem of his clothes, and with his lips brushing Huo Fenghua’s neck, said softly, “So what did the note you got say?”
Huo Fenghua froze slightly. Straddling Feng Tianzong’s leg with his knees apart, rubbing close cheek to cheek, he said, “You saw it?”
Feng Tianzong didn’t answer. His hand slid along the resilient line of Huo Fenghua’s waist, slowly up to his chest. His index and middle finger pinched one nipple, while his thumb pressed and teased.
Huo Fenghua’s breathing turned ragged.
Feng Tianzong said, “Moan louder.”
Huo Fenghua glanced toward the door. He wasn’t sure if someone was hiding outside listening, so he deliberately let out loud moans.
Only then did Feng Tianzong murmur, “They’ll definitely be listening, but they won’t dare get too close. They’re afraid I’ll notice. Still, with you making noises like that, they’ll hear it.”
Huo Fenghua wanted to snort, but what came out was, “General, be gentler.”
Feng Tianzong tugged and toyed with his nipple. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
Huo Fenghua wrapped his arms around his neck. Their clothes rubbed together with soft rustling sounds as he said, “Wen Heyi and Shao Feijie are definitely here. I don’t know how many people they’ve got lying in wait outside.”
His robe was loose, and the friction made it slip further open, exposing a broad stretch of pale chest. Feng Tianzong pulled him tighter around the waist and asked, “How many of you were there when you came to Zhuyue City?”
Huo Fenghua felt Feng Tianzong harden. He couldn’t help getting stirred too. Through their trousers, he ground his own slowly stiffening erection against Feng Tianzong’s, panting and moaning while still whispering into his ear, “Three of them in total.”
Feng Tianzong’s gaze darkened. “They didn’t have time to call in troops. And if they had a lot of men waiting, they wouldn’t need to wait for a moment. They’d have moved already.”
Huo Fenghua deliberately let out a loud “Mm…” then whispered, “If it’s just the three of them, and the two of us, we still have a chance.”
Feng Tianzong couldn’t help giving a cold snort. “Three of them, and I still have to drag you along. Where does that confidence come from?”
The corners of Huo Fenghua’s eyes were flushed red. He lowered his head, staring at Feng Tianzong’s sharp, thin lips, then suddenly leaned in and took them into his mouth, making a wet sound. Feng Tianzong didn’t push him away this time. It was as if he understood his intent, and he cooperated, letting the kiss turn loud and messy with slick, wet smacks. When they finally parted, Huo Fenghua tipped his head back and gulped air, and even Feng Tianzong felt his desire grow heavier.
Huo Fenghua asked, “When do you think he’s planning to make a move?”
Feng Tianzong instead said, “What did she write on that note? Wasn’t it for you to work with them from the inside?”
Huo Fenghua shook his head. He rested his forehead on Feng Tianzong’s shoulder, both hands stroking Feng Tianzong’s taut body. “She didn’t write anything.”
Feng Tianzong thought for a moment, then suddenly shoved Huo Fenghua down onto the bed and pressed on top of him, kissing his neck as he said, “Then it was to warn you to be careful when they strike, so you don’t ruin their plan.”
Huo Fenghua found it almost funny. He didn’t know where Wen Heyi got the confidence to think Huo Fenghua would abandon Feng Tianzong and go with them. Maybe Huo Fenghua had played along too well back in Zhuyue City, making Shao Feijie and the others lower their guard around him.
Feng Tianzong’s kisses drifted lower, to Huo Fenghua’s chest. He took one nipple into his mouth and sucked hard.
Huo Fenghua arched his head back and moaned, spreading his legs without thinking, letting Feng Tianzong kneel between them.
Feng Tianzong played with his nipple for a long time, then lifted his head to look at Huo Fenghua’s bright red, wet lips and finally kissed him. After releasing him, he took Huo Fenghua’s earlobe between his lips and gave it a light bite.
Breathless, Huo Fenghua said, “So when do you think they’ll move?”
Feng Tianzong considered it. “If there aren’t more people waiting, then they’ll strike tonight. If it were me, I’d wait for the moment a man is weakest, when he has the least guard up.”
Huo Fenghua said, “When is he coming?”
That was too blunt. Feng Tianzong didn’t answer, which was as good as admitting it.
Huo Fenghua laughed. “General, it’s time to test your acting.”
That was what he said, but in the end, the one truly forced to “act” was Huo Fenghua himself. Feng Tianzong withdrew from him and leaned back against the inner side of the bed, closing his eyes and sitting in meditation. If they kept rubbing like that, it wouldn’t be acting anymore. He’d genuinely lose control and press Huo Fenghua down hard and take him for real.
Huo Fenghua lay there, moaning and writhing, as sweat soaked him. By the time his throat went hoarse, he was still moaning, “General, stop, I can’t take it.”
Feng Tianzong kept his mind collected, his senses sharpened. He knew there was likely no one right outside, but Huo Fenghua’s voice was so loud that even several rooms away, it could be heard. His fingers rested on the whip’s handle, ready for any movement.
Huo Fenghua’s hoarse voice grew more obscene as he went. He was exhausted too. To keep the performance going, he simply shoved his trousers down and gripped his hard cock, pumping it up and down while rocking the bed, pretending they were fucking. He was a bit annoyed that Feng Tianzong refused to cooperate, leaving him to play this one-man show with such difficulty.
In the end, Huo Fenghua began to climax. He let out a sticky, shameless moan, wide-eyed as he stared at Feng Tianzong’s fierce, dazzling face. He tilted slightly to the side, still gripping himself, and came onto Feng Tianzong’s face.
Feng Tianzong’s eyes flew open. His gaze was vicious and razor-sharp. After that act of mischief, Huo Fenghua immediately wilted. He drew his legs together, curled his body, lowered his head, and pressed his face near Feng Tianzong’s knee, nuzzling obediently.
For a moment the room fell quiet, except for Huo Fenghua’s harsh breathing that still hadn’t settled.
Thick fluid slid slowly down Feng Tianzong’s cheek. Before he could even lift a hand to wipe it away, several arrows whistled through the air in quick succession. Sharp and fast, they pierced the window paper and shot straight toward the bed.
Seeing three arrows fly in from outside and sink into the bed, Huo Fenghua screamed. Then the room went quiet again.
And after that brief silence, someone smashed the door open and burst inside.
Huo Fenghua woke after sleeping for a while and heard faint movement in the room. He opened his eyes and peeked. Feng Tianzong was sitting by the table, apparently writing a letter.
Thinking of how debauched he’d been on that very table earlier, Huo Fenghua couldn’t help flushing. He closed his eyes again.
Feng Tianzong finished the letter, folded it a few times, opened the door, and handed it to Cong Wenhao who was standing guard outside. Then he shut the door, returned to the bedside, and said coldly, “Since you’re awake, get up. We still have to travel.”
“Travel?” Huo Fenghua sat up at once. “Where to?”
Feng Tianzong stood at the bedside. “You’re taking me to find Su Zeyang.”
Huo Fenghua was still a mess. His lower abdomen and his ass were uncomfortably sticky. He pulled the quilt aside a little and didn’t bother covering himself in front of Feng Tianzong. “I really don’t know where Senio… Young Master Su went.”
Feng Tianzong said, “Song Wei came back with word that you and Zeyang slipped out of the inn together, and you even rode the same horse. I tracked you for a long time, and in the end I only found you. I didn’t see Zeyang at all. I know Zeyang doesn’t treat you like he treats others. I can’t understand how he could bear to leave you with Wen Heyi and go off alone.”
That jabbed right where it hurt. Huo Fenghua let out a long sigh. “I told you before, but you wouldn’t listen. I wasn’t even finished and you pinned me down and threw your weight around. Now you’re questioning me again.”
Feng Tianzong gave a cold snort. “Speak honestly!”
Huo Fenghua thought, snort all you want, as if it was me who forced you. He said, “I’m sticky all over. Have someone bring me water so I can bathe.”
The tip of Feng Tianzong’s whip slid out from his sleeve.
Seeing it, Huo Fenghua hurriedly said, “It was that night at the inn. Wen Heyi suddenly showed up and said he’d seen a formation at Luofeng Ridge with your name carved on it…” This time he truthfully told Feng Tianzong everything that had happened at Luofeng Ridge from start to finish.
Feng Tianzong sat by the bed and listened in silence the whole time. Huo Fenghua’s account was clear and orderly, and he mentioned the Yu family’s woodworks and Feng Tiansheng by name. It didn’t sound fabricated. Feng Tianzong frowned slightly. “He said he went to find Gu Guangji?”
Huo Fenghua said, “He said he was going to ask Master how to break it, but I don’t know where Master is.”
Feng Tianzong weighed it. Really, he could take Huo Fenghua to Luofeng Ridge and find out whether he was lying. But at this moment, he was more desperate to find Su Zeyang. And whether the cursed formation at Luofeng Ridge was real or not, once he found Su Zeyang, the truth would come out.
Seeing Feng Tianzong hesitate, Huo Fenghua waited quietly. After a moment, Feng Tianzong stood up, went outside, called Cong Wenhao, and gave a few instructions.
When he returned, Feng Tianzong said, “I’ve told them to bring you water. After you bathe and change, we leave.” He had Cong Wenhao take a letter to Peng Po and return to the army camp to hold things down, while Song Wei was sent to investigate Gu Guangji’s whereabouts.
It would’ve been easier for him to move without Huo Fenghua, but right now he didn’t trust leaving Huo Fenghua with anyone. What he feared most was that Shao Feijie and the others would snatch him again. After turning it over in his mind, he decided to keep Huo Fenghua with him.
Huo Fenghua didn’t know any of those considerations. He only said, “Bringing me along is useless. I told you I don’t know where Senior Brother and Master are.”
Feng Tianzong said, “If you help me find Zeyang, I’ll let you go.”
Hot water had already been brought into the room. Huo Fenghua was naked as he got out of bed and walked toward the tub. He froze at those words. “What did you say?”
Feng Tianzong looked at him and said heavily, “After we find Zeyang, we go back to Yujing. You’ll pretend you’re seriously ill and can’t get up. I’ll summon a doctor to treat you, but you’ll ‘die’ despite treatment. Then I’ll give you a sum of money, and you’ll slip out of Yujing and live under an assumed name. But I have two conditions. First, for the rest of your life you’re not to return to Xichou. Second, you’re not to see Su Zeyang again.”
Huo Fenghua didn’t hesitate for a second. “A gentleman’s word is binding. I agree. When the time comes, General, don’t forget your promise either.”
He sank into the tub and took a long, comfortable hot bath. When he got out, he changed into a newly bought set of coarse cloth clothes, though they couldn’t hide his handsome looks at all.
Cong Wenhao and Song Wei went off to carry out their orders. Only Feng Tianzong and Huo Fenghua remained. They left the inn. It should’ve been one horse each, but Huo Fenghua said, “I can’t ride.”
It wasn’t that he truly couldn’t. He’d ridden plenty while following Wen Heyi, but once the horse went fast he always got jittery. He thought to himself, ‘It’s like driving. If there’s a driver, why would I drive myself?’
Feng Tianzong didn’t waste time with him. After mounting, he held out his hand.
Huo Fenghua grabbed Feng Tianzong’s hand, stepped into the stirrup, and swung onto the horse, sitting behind him.
When Feng Tianzong urged the horse forward, Huo Fenghua’s body tipped back. He hurriedly wrapped his arms around Feng Tianzong’s waist.
Feng Tianzong said coldly, “Keep your distance.”
However, Huo Fenghua didn’t listen. He hugged him tighter, pressed his head to his shoulder, and said, “We’ve already done filthier things. Why care about this?” As he spoke, he slid his hand over Feng Tianzong’s lower abs through the coarse cloth, feeling solid, hard muscle. He couldn’t resist groping at his chest too, thinking that Su Zeyang was still softer and nicer to hold, fragrant and gentle. Still, when it came to what he had down there, Huo Fenghua had to admit defeat.
Feng Tianzong said, “Touch me again and I’ll throw you off the horse.”
Huo Fenghua laughed. “Then throw me off. I don’t even want to go with you.”
Feng Tianzong stopped wasting words and increased their speed, leaving Zhuyue City before nightfall.
Once outside the city, the two of them rode one horse across a vast, bleak plateau. Huo Fenghua felt cold wind pouring in from every direction. He clung to Feng Tianzong even tighter. “Let’s find somewhere to stay before it gets dark.”
For a long stretch beyond here was nothing but wilderness with only low shrubs that didn’t fear the cold; there wasn’t even a single tree big enough to block wind and rain.
Huo Fenghua didn’t want to sleep out in the open. With sunlight it was bearable, but he was afraid that once it got dark he’d freeze to death outside.
Feng Tianzong didn’t answer, but he did spur the horse faster. Before nightfall they reached a cluster of buildings near the border between Zhuyue City and Xichou, though it could barely be considered a village. There were just a few lonely houses, one of which was a tea stall and the other an inn.
The inn was like a farmhouse courtyard, with only three guest rooms.
When they arrived, all three rooms were empty, but Feng Tianzong only took one. He and Huo Fenghua would share.
Huo Fenghua didn’t care. After entering, he shut the doors and windows tightly, lit the charcoal brazier, and sat by the stove warming himself. After a while he felt that wasn’t right, went back to the window, cracked it open a thin sliver, and peered outside.
Feng Tianzong took off his cloak and tossed it by the bed, then asked the inn’s runner for some warm food.
A little later, a young girl knocked softly outside the door. “I’m bringing supper for the two honored guests.”
Huo Fenghua was closer to the door. When he opened it, he saw a gentle-looking girl with delicate features standing outside. He smiled at her at once. “Thank you, miss. Sorry to trouble you.”
Seeing how handsome he was, the girl couldn’t help lowering her head with a shy smile. She carried the tray in with both hands, set two dishes and two bowls of rice on the table, and said, “Please enjoy.”
Huo Fenghua kept watching until the girl left. After he shut the door, he sat down at the table and called to Feng Tianzong, “General, time to eat.”
Feng Tianzong came over and sat down, but he didn’t pick up his chopsticks right away.
Huo Fenghua had been traveling for half the day and was starving. He grabbed his bowl and chopsticks and shoveled rice into his mouth. After a while he noticed Feng Tianzong watching him. “General, why aren’t you eating?”
Feng Tianzong said, “I was afraid someone might have poisoned the food. Now it’s safe to eat.”
Huo Fenghua choked on a grain of rice and erupted into a violent coughing fit. After a long while, holding his chest, he glared at Feng Tianzong in indignation, then buried his head and continued eating.
After dinner, the girl knocked again, wanting to come in and clear the bowls.
Huo Fenghua took the initiative to stack the dishes into the tray, opened the door, and handed it to her.
The girl blushed as she thanked him. When she took the tray, her soft fingers brushed Huo Fenghua’s palm, and her face turned even redder.
After the girl left the room, Huo Fenghua couldn’t help rubbing his palm. Aside from that brief soft touch, there was now a note in his hand, slipped into his palm by the girl just then.
Huo Fenghua was both shocked and terrified. His neck was still entangled in Feng Tianzong’s whip, and he couldn’t pull it off with his own hands. He wanted to push Feng Tianzong away, but he knew that resisting would only provoke the other man’s anger, and he would inevitably suffer even more.
So, when Feng Tianzong’s hard, thick cock forced its way into his ass, Huo Fenghua took a deep breath, trying to relax his body to allow Feng Tianzong to enter more easily.
Even so, Huo Fenghua was in so much pain that tears welled up in his eyes. After all, that area was too dry and tight. While relaxing his body, he softly pleaded, “General, please, be gentle.” Most men are more responsive to gentleness than to force.
Perhaps his pleading had an effect, for Feng Tianzong stopped after fully entering him, breathing slowly, and reaching out to pinch his chin.
Before Huo Fenghua could even sigh in relief, Feng Tianzong suddenly pulled out and then thrust in again violently.
“Ah—” Huo Fenghua cried out in pain. When he opened his mouth, Feng Tianzong inserted his fingers into his mouth. The long fingers pressed against the base of his tongue, while the thrusting below continued without pause, completely withdrawing and then fully penetrating into him again.
Huo Fenghua didn’t dare to close his mouth and bite his fingers, only whimpering as he let Feng Tianzong insert his fingers deep into his throat, causing him to gag repeatedly, which simultaneously caused his hole to clench.
Feng Tianzong’s breathing became rapid. Even though he didn’t want to admit it, Huo Fenghua’s body was warm and soft inside, the tender flesh wrapping tightly around his dick. After the initial dryness of the first penetration, it quickly became moist, and the thrusting became smoother. Compared to Su Zeyang, Feng Tianzong had far more experience and skill in this matter. Since Huo Fenghua’s body was receptive to him, he changed angles as he kept thrusting, searching for that sensitive spot inside Huo Fenghua, until he felt Huo Fenghua’s throat suddenly tighten. He withdrew his fingers from his mouth and thrust harder into that spot.
Huo Fenghua couldn’t help but cry out, a sound full of lust that made his own face flush and his body tremble, his fingers gripping the edge of the table. The pain in his ass had become numb after repeated penetration. He knew that the place Feng Tianzong was thrusting into was his prostate. He understood that every man would feel something when that area was pressed, but what frightened him was that the feeling of being filled and rubbed made his whole body tremble with pleasure.
He unconsciously accommodated Feng Tianzong, relaxing his hole to let him in, then reluctantly clenching it, not wanting him to leave. He couldn’t suppress his cries of overflowing lust, even though he wanted to scold himself for being shameless.
At this moment, Feng Tianzong suddenly loosened the long whip wrapped around his neck, withdrew from his body, and grabbed his arm, flipping him over to lie supine on the table.
Huo Fenghua was caught off guard. His eyes were hazy and his cheeks were flushed, while his cock stood erect between his legs. All this was clearly visible to Feng Tianzong.
Feng Tianzong sneered, “It seems you like it.” With that, he grabbed his legs with both hands, spreading them completely apart, and once again fully thrust himself into Huo Fenghua.
After a groan, Huo Fenghua vaguely thought to himself, ‘What’s wrong with me liking it? You’re raping me, and you won’t even let me enjoy it? What kind of logic is that? I’m going to enjoy it. Let’s see what you can do about it.’
So, he cried out even louder. Feng Tianzong thrust against his body, causing him to slide uncontrollably backward. His head, no longer supported by the table, tilted back; his Adam’s apple trembling violently. His pale body was completely exposed before Feng Tianzong, and his hard, aching cock was pressed against his slightly concave lower abs due to his thinness, swaying from side to side with his movements.
Huo Fenghua struggled to lift his head as he reached out to grab his dick.
Feng Tianzong, however, said sharply, “Don’t touch it.”
Huo Fenghua’s movements froze, and he shamelessly pleaded, “General, please, I can’t take it anymore.”
Feng Tianzong often exchanged flirtatious and playful words with Su Zeyang in bed. When he said to Su Zeyang, “Beg me,” Su Zeyang would always say with flushed cheeks, “Please enter me,” but his tone was mostly calm and affectionate, completely different from Huo Fenghua’s desperate pleading.
In fact, Huo Fenghua was right; Su Zeyang was like a white plum blossom, unattainable. Even when Feng Tianzong fucked him fiercely in bed, he never dared to torment him excessively, as if he were a reflection in a mirror or a moon in the water*, afraid that a forceful touch would shatter him like a bubble.
*Metaphor referring to something that is illusory, fleeting, and difficult to grasp or achieve.
But Huo Fenghua was a different story. His pleas sounded sincere and heartfelt, as if he truly couldn’t bear Feng Tianzong’s actions any longer, his body becoming as soft as spring water. This aroused Feng Tianzong’s sadistic desires as a man, making him want to torment him even more, to see him helplessly writhing, to see him uncontrollably shedding tears.
So Feng Tianzong repeated, “Don’t touch it!”
Huo Fenghua, with tears in his eyes, glared at him hatefully, clenching his hole causing it grip tightly to Feng Tianzong’s cock.
Feng Tianzong’s breath hitched, and he spread Huo Fenghua’s legs wider, fucking him even harder. This time, Huo Fenghua’s body swayed, almost knocking the table over. He could only cling to the edge of the table with both hands to keep himself from falling, but he had no energy left to comfort himself.
Feng Tianzong attacked him again with a storm of thrusts. Huo Fenghua felt his penis swelling to the extreme. Because his head was tilted back, his throat was dry, itchy, and burning. He opened his mouth and let out a startled cry before managing to say, “General, no more…”
“No more?” Feng Tianzong looked at him; his body didn’t seem to want to stop.
Huo Fenghua let out a long “Mm—” and shook his head vigorously, scattering sweat everywhere, before saying, “I can’t take it anymore. Stop, please stop?”
Feng Tianzong answered him mercilessly, “No.” It wasn’t that he really didn’t want to stop, but he himself couldn’t stop either, completely immersed in the wet and hot embrace of the other’s body.
Huo Fenghua didn’t know if he wanted Feng Tianzong to stop or not; he only felt that his body had reached its limit of endurance. His cock was swollen and aching, and the pleasure had accumulated to a terrifying degree. Eventually, his whole body tensed, tightly gripping Feng Tianzong’s cock inside him, that was grinding against that sensitive spot. His penis suddenly trembled, and he came, spilling out streams of cum onto his abs.
After cumming, Huo Fenghua’s whole body went limp, without a trace of strength left, and his body slid towards the edge of the table.
Feng Tianzong grabbed his waist and lifted him up. Maintaining their connected position, he carried him a few steps and pressed him against the wall, telling him to hold onto his shoulders. “Hold on tight.”
Huo Fenghua had no strength left. The moment Feng Tianzong let go, he would slide down, so Feng Tianzong had to support his knees with both hands, pressing his back tightly against the wall, and began thrusting again. However, as a result, Huo Fenghua’s back was chafed painfully against the rough wall, so he could only use all his strength to hug Feng Tianzong’s shoulders. He panted continuously, digging his fingernails into Feng Tianzong’s skin.
Feng Tianzong paused, and whispered in his ear, “Are you seeking death?”
Huo Fenghua loosened his fingers, his head resting weakly on Feng Tianzong’s shoulder, his words broken and fragmented by Feng Tianzong’s thrusts. “General, you… You’re so cruel, you’re… you’re using your cock, ngh, roughly thrusting it into my ass, and—and you’re still scolding me. I—”
Perhaps his words were too vulgar; before he could finish a complete sentence, Feng Tianzong began thrusting in and out rapidly. His back muscles tensed and he panted besides Huo Fenghua’s ear before spilling inside him.
After cumming, Feng Tianzong couldn’t support himself anymore and slowly knelt on the ground, his legs bent. Huo Fenghua was still hugging his shoulders, straddling him with his legs apart, feeling Feng Tianzong’s cock throbbing inside him.
Huo Fenghua felt like he was dying and coming back to life, his whole body feeling languid and unwilling to move.
Until Feng Tianzong picked him up, threw him onto the bed, and he rolled to the inner side of the bed, comfortably wrapping himself in the blanket and closing his eyes.
After confirming Huo Fenghua’s identity, Pan Yan gave no outward reaction. He merely had a servant relay the message. “It has been verified that this man is not Xichou’s eldest prince, Huo Fengnian, but General Feng’s household male concubine, Huo Fenghua. His qualification to compete is hereby revoked. Expel him from the tournament grounds.”
Huo Fenghua couldn’t help lifting his head, but he didn’t see Wen Heyi or Shao Feijie on the viewing stand. He knew there was no room left to maneuver. Seeing Feng Tianzong’s face like ice, he didn’t dare provoke him again and could only fall docilely silent.
At this moment, Pan Yan suddenly called out clearly, “General Feng, please take your person with you.” His manner was courteous and he gave Feng Tianzong plenty of face.
Feng Tianzong cupped his fists and thanked him, then gripped Huo Fenghua’s wrist and led him out of the arena.
Even after the two of them left, the spectators inside continued to buzz with discussion. Hardly anyone paid attention to the martial heroes still competing.
Huo Fenghua stumbled along under Feng Tianzong’s grip. Once they were out, he saw two men waiting. One was Cong Wenhao, the other Song Wei. Both wore plain cloth, traveling in disguise.
Cong Wenhao stepped forward and cupped his fists. “General, you found him?”
Feng Tianzong’s voice was icy. “Back to the inn first.”
Huo Fenghua was dragged the whole way, pleading, “General, ease up a little.”
Feng Tianzong didn’t answer. He hauled him straight into his room at the inn and slammed the door shut.
Huo Fenghua lurched into the square table inside, nearly knocking it over. He steadied himself with effort, turned around, and hurriedly said, “General, please calm down. We can talk this through.”
Feng Tianzong said, “Where did Su Zeyang go?”
Huo Fenghua took a breath. “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me when he left.”
Feng Tianzong let out a cold laugh. “Didn’t you leave the inn together? You even rode only one horse.”
Seeing the fury in Feng Tianzong’s eyes, Huo Fenghua rushed to explain. “General, listen to me. It’s complicated, but Young Master Su leaving on his own was entirely for your sake, not mine.”
“For my sake?” Those words only enraged Feng Tianzong further. He stepped in, seized Huo Fenghua’s wrist, flipped him over, and forced him face-down on the table. He grabbed the already-torn clothes on his back and ripped them even more. “Then who is this brand for?”
Huo Fenghua had nothing to say.
Feng Tianzong pressed his fingers against the poplar-leaf mark, drew a deep breath, and closed his eyes briefly as he tried to steady his emotions.
Goosebumps rose across Huo Fenghua’s waist. At this point he couldn’t care whether he was betraying Su Zeyang or not. Keeping himself alive came first. So he said, “He insisted on branding me. I didn’t agree. From start to finish, he forced me. I haven’t wronged you, General.”
“What did you say?” Feng Tianzong’s tone turned abruptly colder.
Huo Fenghua was still sprawled on the table, not yet realizing he’d triggered a towering rage. He kept talking. “General, Young Master Su’s the one who’s being unfaithful. Don’t blame me. I’ll help you find him and drag him back. Next time you should use iron chains to keep him leashed up so he can’t run again.”
Feng Tianzong clamped a hand around Huo Fenghua’s throat and lifted his head. “What did you say? Say it again.”
Huo Fenghua couldn’t breathe smoothly. Only then did he realize Feng Tianzong was even angrier. He didn’t dare babble anymore. He grabbed Feng Tianzong’s hand with both of his, trying to pry a small gap between those fingers and his neck.
Feng Tianzong said, “He seduced you? Then I’ll see just how many of his marks you’re carrying!” As he spoke, he yanked Huo Fenghua’s clothes with his other hand, tearing through layers in an instant.
Huo Fenghua was stripped bare. This body had taken plenty of injuries, but the skin was naturally smooth. Given time, most wounds healed without leaving much trace. Only the two brands on his lower back remained starkly visible.
Feng Tianzong released his grip on Huo Fenghua’s throat.
Huo Fenghua coughed a few times and shoved Feng Tianzong away as he retreated to the corner of the room. He didn’t care that he was completely naked. He just rubbed his neck and said, “General, there isn’t anything else. Between him and me, it really isn’t what you’re imagining. The one he truly loves is you. With me it was just playing along.”
Feng Tianzong stared at him. “You said he was unfaithful and seduced you.”
Huo Fenghua’s head felt dizzy and swollen. “I was talking nonsense. If Young Master Su were going to stray, it’d be like a white plum blossom straying*, pure and cold, lofty and untouchable. Other than you, General, who could possibly tame him? This time he left because he went to find someone to remove your curse.” He rushed the words out, afraid that if he spoke any later he wouldn’t get the chance.
*He’s referring to the idiom “A red apricot branch reaching over the wall”, which is a metaphor for a wife having extramarital affairs. However, he replaced red apricot with white plum blossom (allusion or purity, coldness, restraint), highlighting how absurd it is for Su Zeyang to be unfaithful to Feng Tianzong.
Feng Tianzong asked, “What curse?”
Huo Fenghua said, “A curse to make the Feng family line die out, no sons, no heirs.”
Feng Tianzong gave a cold laugh. “To save your own life, you’ll do anything. Any despicable trick, you’ll use.”
Huo Fenghua froze. “I’m telling the truth.”
Red tinged Feng Tianzong’s eyes. He was furious beyond measure. Suddenly his right hand flicked, snapping out the Fulong Whip. The long whip lashed up, and the tip coiled around Huo Fenghua’s neck, dragging him back to the table.
Once again, Huo Fenghua was pinned down on it, but this time Feng Tianzong pressed his whole body down over him. In his ear, his voice was cold as winter. “I want to see exactly what you taste like, to make him—” He didn’t finish, as if unwilling to say that name. One hand stroked Huo Fenghua’s smooth, soft waist, fingers pinching his faintly pink nipple until desire flared. Then he stripped down his pants and pressed his hard length against the cleft between Huo Fenghua’s ass.
Huo Fenghua sat down and was handed a wooden tag with a number on it. It was his number. He casually hung it around his neck, when he suddenly heard an uproar ripple through the whole tournament ground. He looked up and saw that the city lord, Pan Yan, and his daughter Pan Zishu had appeared on the second floor viewing terrace at the front.
Pan Yan was lean and solid. Though he wasn’t young anymore, his eyes were still sharp, and he was full of energy. Pan Zishu wore a veil, so her face couldn’t be seen clearly, but her skin was snow-white and her figure slender. She ought to be a stunning beauty.
Huo Fenghua couldn’t help standing up, wanting to get a better look at Pan Zishu. In an instant, another idea formed in his mind. If Pan Zishu really was a great beauty, why didn’t he simply go along with it and use Shao Feijie’s support to marry her?
If he did that, he’d have the city lord of Zhuyue City as his father-in-law, and a gorgeous woman like Pan Zishu as his wife. Then he could dig in his heels and refuse to follow Shao Feijie in restoring the kingdom. Could Shao Feijie really just seize him and drag him away? That would be far better than being at Shao Feijie’s mercy and unable to escape.
With that thought, the unease that had been haunting him finally settled. He sat back down and suddenly laughed.
A few people beside him were looking at him. He found it odd and glanced around, only to realize everyone else had hung their number tags on their chairs, and he was the only one wearing it around his neck. He quickly took it off and hung it on the left armrest of his chair.
When he looked up again, Huo Fenghua vaguely felt Pan Zishu was looking in their direction, amusement in her eyes. He didn’t know if it was his imagination, but he lifted his chin and smiled back at her.
After waiting a little longer, the marriage competition officially began.
There were three platforms in the center of the arena. Each round called up six people. The numbers were split into three pairs, and each pair fought. The loser left, and the winner stepped down to prepare for the next round, then another pair went up to fight.
Huo Fenghua sat below and watched, his heart pounding. Every participant seemed highly skilled. If he went up with his pitiful, half-baked tricks, he figured he wouldn’t last even two exchanges.
Of course, there were weaker ones too. When they ran into real experts, the match ended in two or three moves. They retreated, and the next pair quickly filled in.
After half an hour, Huo Fenghua heard his number called. He stood, took off his cloak, and went up by the steps beside the platform. His entrance lacked a bit of swagger. He knew plenty of people simply leapt up onto the stage, but the platform was high, and he was afraid he wouldn’t make it and would embarrass himself, so using the stairs felt safer.
In the end, his opponent went to the edge and tried to leap up, but came up just short, tripped at the lip, and pitched forward.
Laughter burst out all around. Huo Fenghua felt secondhand humiliation for the man too, thinking, why would you even do that?
They faced each other, cupped their fists in greeting, and took their stances.
Huo Fenghua always set his stance beautifully, but the moment they traded blows, his weakness showed. They went back and forth for more than ten exchanges, and he suddenly realized his opponent was just as mediocre as himself.
And that man liked to roar low in his throat whenever he attacked, sounding terrifying, but his moves were clumsy, his strength lacking, and his reactions slow. After more than twenty exchanges, the man backed up to the edge of the platform, tangled his own feet, and fell off.
The referee immediately declared Huo Fenghua the winner.
Huo Fenghua looked dazed and confused. He lifted a hand and waved, then went down, still not understanding how he’d just won his first match.
The second match would be the next day.
That night, Huo Fenghua asked Wen Heyi whether his opponent had been arranged in advance, since he’d been so weak. Wen Heyi only smiled and told him to guess.
Huo Fenghua was convinced something was fishy about this whole tournament. Maybe Pan Yan really had been persuaded by Shao Feijie and was taking the chance to marry his daughter off to him. If so, then he could probably win tomorrow’s match with his eyes closed.
The next day, Huo Fenghua climbed onto the platform full of confidence. This time his opponent was an elderly man with hair already gone white.
In the viewing seats, people were murmuring to each other. Huo Fenghua couldn’t help turning his head toward the second-floor terrace again. He kept feeling Pan Zishu was looking this way.
He turned back and saluted the old man.
Yesterday, that old man had looked vigorous. He’d fought dozens of exchanges and defeated his opponent. Today, though, he looked sickly and listless. Either he hadn’t rested well, or he’d suddenly come down with an acute illness at this critical moment.
Huo Fenghua couldn’t help finding it a little funny. He raised a starting posture and was just about to strike when someone suddenly shouted, “Hold it!”
The noisy arena fell instantly silent. With that shout, a tall, slender figure leapt lightly from the spectator stands. In a nimble flip, he landed on the very platform Huo Fenghua was on.
The arena steward pointed at him and bellowed, “Who are you? Why are you barging onto the platform?”
Who was he? Huo Fenghua, in shock, stumbled backward again and again. The man was Feng Tianzong.
The Feng Tianzong he’d seen yesterday hadn’t been an illusion at all. Somehow, he’d slipped away from the garrison in Xichou and chased him all the way to Zhuyue City.
Feng Tianzong had taken off his armor and changed into a brown cloth outfit, but his presence was undiminished. He seized Huo Fenghua’s wrist and called out, “City Lord, wait. This man’s identity is fraudulent. He shouldn’t be allowed to continue competing.”
The steward hesitated and didn’t dare decide on his own. He looked up toward the city lord’s stand.
The entire arena had gone quiet, and Feng Tianzong’s voice carried clearly to Pan Yan.
Huo Fenghua immediately whispered urgently, “General, you can’t joke about this.”
Feng Tianzong didn’t even look at him, only letting his lips curve faintly.
Pan Yan stood and walked to the edge of the terrace, looking down at Feng Tianzong. He murmured something to a servant at his side, and the servant shouted, “Who are you, sir? If this man isn’t Huo Fengnian, then who is he?”
Feng Tianzong tightened his grip on Huo Fenghua’s wrist and lifted his chin. “I am Feng Tianzong, the Great General of Donglin’s Expedition Army. This man is not Xichou’s eldest prince Huo Fengnian. He is the male concubine of my household, named Huo Fenghua.”
The moment he said it, the arena erupted. Spectators, and even contestants still fighting on the platforms, began murmuring. Even Pan Zishu could no longer sit still. She stood and went to Pan Yan’s side, looking in their direction.
Cold sweat poured down Huo Fenghua’s forehead. He shouted, “This man is spewing nonsense. None of it is true. City Lord, you mustn’t believe him! Huo Fenghua is my younger brother, a hostage in Donglin. We’re simply twins, and we look alike!”
Pan Yan’s brows knit tightly as he murmured some instructions to his servant.
The servant shouted, “General Feng, you claim this man is your male concubine Huo Fenghua. Do you have proof?”
Feng Tianzong smiled slightly. “Of course.” Before the words had even finished leaving his mouth, he yanked Huo Fenghua into his arms, pressing chest to chest. With his other hand, he tore open the cloth at Huo Fenghua’s left lower back, exposing a phoenix-shaped brand. “Among Donglin nobility, wives and concubines must bear the husband’s household brand on the lower back. City Lord, you may have someone inspect it closely. Is that not the phoenix mark of my Feng family on his waist?”
Huo Fenghua froze. He instinctively reached to touch his lower back, but Feng Tianzong caught his wrist and murmured into his ear, “Behave and you’ll suffer less. Don’t move.”
Pan Yan sent someone down to examine the mark on Huo Fenghua’s lower back.
Up in the viewing stands, Shao Feijie’s expression was hard as stone. He gripped the Blood Drinking Saber at his waist and looked ready to leap onto the platform, but Wen Heyi stopped him. “If you go now, it won’t change anything. Pan Yan will definitely hold you to account over this. We should leave Zhuyue City as soon as possible.”
Shao Feijie slowly loosened his grip on the saber hilt and replied coldly, “We leave.”
Meanwhile, Pan Yan’s servant had come down onto the platform and bent to examine the brand carefully. He suddenly let out a soft “Eh?” and said, “Why is there another one?”
The torn edge of the cloth on the right revealed a reddish trace. He hooked the fabric aside to look and found there was another brand there too.
Hearing that, Feng Tianzong lowered his gaze. He saw a poplar-leaf-shaped brand on Huo Fenghua’s right lower back. His expression turned icy. He clamped down on Huo Fenghua’s wrist so hard that Huo Fenghua couldn’t help crying out in pain.
Of course, Salaar wasn’t about to let him go so easily.
The golden shield forced open a slit, and the great hero yanked Myss out by sheer force. Salaar pulled too hard; Myss crashed straight into him, and the two of them toppled together toward the base of the city wall.
Salaar twisted in midair so that his back faced downward. The instant they hit the ground, he wrapped Myss up and rolled across the mud, stemming off most of the impact.
The price was that both of them were caked in mud. With Myss’s long hair, he suffered the most.
Salaar: “Mom, are you okay?”
Myss shuddered, a chill running down his spine. “You wacko, shut up!”
“Oh, that’s what you are hung up on,” Salaar said breezily. “Relax, my three hundred years of memory are fine. But Mina’s emotional attack was too strong, so I need a living anchor. With a real ‘mother’ within arm’s reach, it’s much easier to steady my mind.”
“So I planted a bit of suggestion in myself. You know I’m very good at that sort of magic.”
He was, in fact. Myss subconsciously looked at Hailey.
Hailey was staring at them with hollow eyes, devoid of any emotion.
“Can’t you choose Hailey?”
Myss was truly baffled. Species issues aside, at least her gender matched.
Salaar stared at him in astonishment. “What nonsense are you talking about? Hailey is still a child.”
“What nonsense are you talking about? I’m your enemy!”
Salaar: “Exactly, which is why I picked you—if I chose Hailey as the ‘mother’ anchor, I would feel completely sick. Picking you also feels awful, but at least you would have to be disgusted along with me. That is a win, right?”
A breath caught in Myss’s chest. He wanted nothing more than to bite off this man’s nose.
For a second, he even felt a twinge of nostalgia for his time inside the seal. At least back then Salaar never pulled such ridiculous mind games. Would this guy really defile the memories of his own mother just to make Myss sick?
Myss glared at Salaar with venom, hoping to find guilt, resistance, or turmoil on his face. All he found was calmness, like a pool of stagnant water.
… Forget it. Salaar had gone toe to toe with him alone for more than three hundred years. The man wasn’t normal. What else could he expect?
“Don’t call me ‘Mom’. I have a name. And absolutely don’t act like a spoiled child towards me.”
Finally, the Demon Lord rasped a warning. “…Otherwise, I’ll show you the cruelest mother–son breakup in human history.”
Salaar snorted a laugh. “Got it, My~ss~”
Myss flicked his mud-smeared braid back, blew out a hard breath, and shot everyone a look of deep dissatisfaction.
His gaze quickly locked onto Hailey. “If we all got hit, why’s she perfectly fine?”
“I saw Mina’s figure as my mother, but that means nothing. My mother has been gone a long time,” Hailey replied coolly, as if the topic had nothing to do with her.
Her Magibase tit didn’t move. A few pale red strands of magic wriggled near it, trying to wrap around it, but it was like climbing a porcelain statue greased with oil; they could only slide back down in vain—the strange disease’s infection had suddenly failed.
Huh?
Myss couldn’t help taking a longer look. He hadn’t been mistaken. The pale red threads had no effect on the tit.
“Are you sure you only took her emotions and did nothing else?” he asked, suspecting Salaar had meddled.
Salaar tilted his head in confusion.
Myss had no choice. He wasted a few more words and roughly explained Hailey’s situation.
“Her infection stopped? …That figures. The sickness is closer to a spiritual plague.”
Salaar didn’t look very surprised, as if he had already guessed.
“‘Mina’ went to great lengths to become the perfect mother because her infection depends on emotion.”
“Covington and Barlow both cried for ‘Mom’ as they were dying. I think in that moment they subconsciously accepted Mina, and their Magibases dropped all defenses.”
… And then Mina sliced off their Magibases and ate them, Myss thought.
By now, the mechanism of the mysterious plague was crystal clear.
Mina’s magic distorts memories and stokes dependence. The instant the infected open their hearts, Mina would devour their Magibases.
Great. It looked like Mina couldn’t do anything to the three of them for the time being.
Hailey had lost the emotions that could be shaken, so her condition could no longer worsen.
Myss had no concept of family to begin with; zero multiplied by ten thousand was still zero.
Salaar was even more ruthless. He pre-twisted his own subconscious and forcibly designated his mortal enemy as “mother”, ensuring he wouldn’t feel any soft spot when facing Mina.
Thinking of what Salaar had done gave Myss goosebumps. He shook his head hard and decided to change the subject. “Knowing the infection mechanism doesn’t help. We’re trapped here.”
Salaar: “Wow, that really is breaking news.”
Myss grounded his molars. Had Salaar really anchored him as “Mom”? The brat’s attitude hadn’t changed at all. He was still as nasty as if he had been chewed up by a dog.
While Demon Lord was griping internally, Salaar had already turned to Hailey. “Based on what you know, where might Huey have gone?”
“If that priest doesn’t interfere, Uncle Huey would go to the Hammer Tavern. Even if the interior has completely changed, he would go there first to look for me.”
Hailey’s tone was calm and unruffled, nothing like a child.
“If he can’t find me, he’ll do everything he can to escape. Uncle Huey said he must see me grow up safe and sound.”
“All right, we will check the Hammer Tavern first,” Salaar said.
Myss thought for a few seconds and couldn’t come up with a better plan. Besides, the darkness around them was so thick he couldn’t see his hand. He didn’t remember the roads at all, so he could only keep following Salaar.
In the thick darkness, the three of them moved forward slowly.
They drew farther from the city wall covered in flesh-membranes, yet that strange sickly-sweet smell grew stronger.
Myss sniffed. After a while his nose went numb. The scent had a half-raw, half-cooked quality. He wasn’t sure it even counted as a pleasant food smell.
Beyond the scent, the buildings around them looked more and more out of place.
They had started in the slums, where the houses were a mess to begin with, so nothing seemed wrong. But as the buildings became more orderly, the oddities stood out.
In those unremarkable corners of walls and gaps beneath the eaves, layers of foreign matter had grown. Their texture was like cobwebs caked with dust, or like the skin that forms on spoiled meat broth. Their colors were vivid, and the “patterns” on their surfaces flowed slowly.
No, those weren’t patterns.
Myss narrowed his eyes. It seemed to be countless fragments of images stitched together.
Women’s smiling faces stuck to sunlight, fresh milk and bread steamed with heat. Hundreds of mothers hummed as they held their children, each lullaby different…
Strangely, simply looking at them wrapped him in soothing smiles and sweet aromas. He felt as if he sank into warm embraces one after another. Gentle humming echoed softly in his ears.
Myss recognized the sensation. When he was first stuffed into this human body, he had experienced similar sensory shocks. There was no doubt these were memories—memories that belonged to different humans.
They curled up in the corners of this bizarre space, lit by windowlight, everything like a fantastical dream.
Salaar clearly recognized them too.
“All right. Now we know where Mina’s concept of ‘mother’ came from. She just fused the populace’s memories of their mothers. She doesn’t have much creative ability herself,” he said briskly.
“So what?”
Myss poked those memories. They felt soft and springy, very strange.
Salaar: “So she may not be very intelligent, like Fabian’s exorcism-and-consecration array—she’s simply mechanically repeating the same routine.”
Fine, Mina wasn’t bright. That still didn’t explain what was going on with this strange world.
Myss wordlessly withdrew his hand and stopped prodding the memories.
The weird phenomena in the dark didn’t leave them alone.
Doors and windows they passed would occasionally act up, screeching with ear-splitting creaks or being gently tapped by unseen hands.
Sometimes they would just round a corner, and when they looked back the sign on the corner had turned, pointing toward some alley. A few seconds earlier, that alley didn’t exist at all.
Occasionally, at the edge of the light, Myss saw Mina’s feet. He recognized that burlap skirt and those dust-stained shoes.
“Mina” would stand ahead of him, not far yet not near, her upper body swallowed by darkness. When Myss stared straight at her, she vanished again.
If Hailey’s emotions were normal, who knew how badly she would be frightened. Just thinking about it sounded like a headache. Myss glanced at the quiet, well-behaved girl and, for once, agreed with Salaar’s decision.
Salaar himself was on high alert. Even if the noises couldn’t hurt them, he still moved with patience, stopping to investigate from time to time.
“They’re just memory scraps. No danger for now,” the great hero reported.
During the dull march, Myss gradually grew sleepy.
The roads in the Lower City were hard to walk. Wet mud caked his shoes, cold and heavy. He hadn’t eaten dinner, and his stomach was rumbling. He didn’t even have a warm cup of mead to sip.
Amidst his drowsiness, Myss found the ghostly noises more and more unbearable.
When he passed a wooden door, it let out an especially loud creak. Salaar was just about to stop when a streak of black light sliced past the tip of his nose.
The door disintegrated on the spot, as if it had never existed.
No door meant no door noise. Perfect. Myss grunted, convinced he was a genius.
Salaar shot him a helpless look. “Someone’s cranky. Hungry?”
“Grrr-rrr.” Myss’s stomach answered for him.
“No,” Myss himself firmly denied. “You’re not hungry, so how could I be?”
Salaar raised an eyebrow. “But there was a very, very big growl just now.”
“They’re just memory fragments. No danger for now,” Myss said with a straight face, imitating his tone.
Salaar only smiled. He dug in his little travel pouch and fished out two candies. He tossed one to Myss. Myss sniffed it and caught the raspberry scent he liked.
Salaar pushed the other piece into Hailey’s hand, and she obediently took it and ate it.
“I have salted butter and jerky too, but we need to ration them. Let us use this to tide us over,” Salaar said.
Myss looked at the candy, then at Salaar. Fine, this didn’t count as conceding. This was him claiming spoils from his mortal enemy.
He popped the candy into his mouth and crunched it with his teeth.
The human body really was a marvel. As the sweetness spread across his tongue, the edgy restlessness in him eased a lot.
He stopped wrecking those poor doors, focused all his attention on the candy, and even forgot the sleepiness fogging his head.
Its taste was even better than Myss had imagined, and he had no idea where Salaar had gotten it. Myss eased up with his teeth, and his tongue cautiously licked at it, eating especially slowly.
Just as the candy sphere was almost gone, they finally found the Hammer Tavern.
The tavern was still crooked as ever. The once enormous windows had all turned into the tiny panes they saw in SScintilla’s house. Behind the conspicuous tavern entrance was still that shabby little room, and the size contrast was quite comical. They couldn’t even find the way up to the second floor.
All around was silence. The priest and Huey weren’t there.
Hailey stood without a word. Who knew what she was thinking, or perhaps she was thinking nothing at all.
“You’ve failed. Next, it’s my turn to choose the route… route?”
Myss was halfway through declaring this to Salaar when the ambient noise suddenly changed pitch.
He saw a gutter rat totter past the tavern, a few pale red threads coiled around it. The rat was half transparent overall, its outline drifting in and out of focus, as if it walked along the edge of a dream.
… No, how had a Magibase left its person?
Myss abandoned Salaar on the spot and ran toward that Magibase rat, only to discover with some displeasure that the Magibase was still connected to a human. At the very least he could feel the fluctuations of human magic.
Too bad this wasn’t a wild Magibase delivered to his doorstep. He simply couldn’t see the Magibase’s owner.
“Hey, can you hear me?” Myss stepped on the rat’s tail.
The rat bounced under his foot and turned its head in a daze. “Mm, mm? Mom?”
“Shut up, I’m not your mother.” Myss felt his mood dip the moment he heard that word. “What exactly is your situation?”
“I, hiccup, I just finished drinking. I might have mistaken you,” the rat said drunkenly. “Sorry, I had too much, had too much… I had a dream about my mom…”
“Making a living hasn’t been easy lately. I miss her so much… Mom…”
The rat squeaked its sentiments. The pale red threads on it wrapped tighter and tighter, and its form grew more and more solid, as if someone had bitten it straight off from the ‘real world’ and swallowed it into ‘this side’.
The red threads squirmed without pause. The rat’s tail tip and toes had already been consumed by the pale red magic, yet it felt nothing.
Could this world be Mina’s stomach? Myss studied those brazen pale red threads. He suddenly realized that the magic threads which were extremely hard to distinguish in the real world were much clearer here, not just the ones packed inside the city wall, but also the ones that ate people’s Magibases.
Myss’s gaze immediately swung to Hailey. Sure enough, even without looking too hard, the red threads twined around the tit were still clearly visible. Their shapes were unusually stable, and their tips trailed faintly into the depths of the darkness.
“What? You’re seeing Magibases again?” Salaar asked, sweeping his eyes toward the rat.
“I’m seeing something even more impressive than a Magibase.”
Myss announced triumphantly, “What did I just say? You failed. Now it is my turn to choose the route.”
He puffed out his chest, ready to engage Salaar in a grand debate. Salaar only gave him a long look. “All right, you lead.”
“?”
“I have to be filial once in a while too, My~ss~.”
The great hero deliberately called his name with sincerity and warmth, and it made Myss’s whole body itch. Yet Salaar had agreed to his plan, so he had nowhere to vent his anger.
Fine, for the sake of that candy sphere.
Myss drew a deep breath and focused on Hailey. Under his full concentration, those pale red threads grew even clearer. Myss cautiously reached out and grabbed one of them.
This bizarre space was closely tied to Mina, and the pale red threads were Mina’s means of siphoning magic. The end of a thread must connect to something important —perhaps Mina’s true body, or the core of the space, something like that.
In short, as long as they took care of that thing, they would definitely find a way out.
Myss gripped the slippery strand of magic and led the other two into the darkness.
……
Pale red threads coiled all over the floor. Huey leaned weakly against a bench, already unconscious. If Myss had been on the scene, he would have seen it at a glance. Huey’s Magibase had almost been devoured by the red threads. Only the final absorption step was left.
If Huey woke up one more time and wavered one more time, he would immediately fall ill and die.
Father Kalen sat at the other end of the bench, head tilted up toward the skylight. Night had grown deep, and the sky were dotted with stars.
“Sleep. Don’t worry.”
Kalen lowered his gaze and spoke to the unconscious Huey as if the man could still hear him. “This is the place where it’s least ‘ominous’. Everything will be fine.”
After saying this, he touched his chest lightly with one hand, bowed his head, and prayed a few silent lines.
When Kalen lowered his head, the gap between his collar and the back of his neck widened a little, revealing an ugly old scar. It was rough and hideous, as if someone had cut a full circle around his neck.
Opposite the bench was the site of the Magibase summoning ritual.
Yes, the two of them were sitting in the Lower City’s church.
The time was past midnight. Strictly speaking, the Summoning Ritual would begin tomorrow. The site was already fully prepared. The broken steps were carpeted in red, and torn statues were draped with satin. A massive magic array was drawn in the center of the hall, a structure a hundred times more complex than the most ornate jewelry.
Warm candlelight flickered without cease, lighting the entire hall as bright as day. The nave was empty…was it truly empty?
At the edge of his vision, there was always a figure that seemed there yet not. When Kalen turned his head, the shadow had vanished. From time to time a swath of skirt flashed in the corner shadows, and a seat retained a faint hint of warmth, as if someone had just risen from it.
Now and then a whisper came from near a statue, and in the quiet he would catch a breath. The church was clearly empty, yet Kalen kept having the illusion of companionship. The hair on the back of his neck stood slightly as someone’s gaze was stealthily scanning his surroundings.
In the growing sickly sweetness, he tightened his grip on the lantern and took a long, deep breath.
By the God of Shadows, he had been too rash after all. When did things start to go wrong?
Not long ago, he had the crows tail those two suspicious people. They obviously intended to interfere with the Summoning Ritual and had deliberately asked about Scintilla. So Kalen rushed to Scintilla’s place first to clear away potential dangers, just as he always did.
Finding that the house had been abandoned for a long time and nothing was amiss, Kalen relaxed. So when Huey entered the room under the pretext of concern, he didn’t stop him in time.
…Then they were trapped here, in this bizarre world without light.
After a brief panic, Huey insisted on checking the Hammer Tavern. Naturally Kalen went with him, but they found nothing. The strange thing was that Huey became less tense instead.
“Father, I have no other requests. From here on I will fully cooperate with you. We will definitely get out of here, right?”
He forced down the fear in his voice and mustered a smile. “The Summoning Ritual is about to begin. I have to take the child to see it…”
“I’ll do everything I can to get you out of here,” Kalen said firmly.
Before long, guided by the God of Shadows, he succeeded in finding the place closest to the outside world—this church where the summoning ritual was to be held.
When he stood at the church door, Kalen almost thought they had found the exit. The place hadn’t been swallowed by “Scintilla’s home”. Inside the church the lights were bright and the candles flickered, indistinguishable from the real world.
Through the little skylight beside the spire, he could even see a sky full of stars and the bright moon.
The night was dark like murky water. Facing the open church doors, he unconsciously let out another sigh of relief. That was the second time he lowered his guard.
In that instant, Huey suddenly slammed into his back. Kalen stumbled a half step forward and quickly regained his balance. He hadn’t even shifted his gaze yet when he saw Huey fall at his feet.
A deep wound had opened on Huey’s shoulder. The flesh was rolled back and bleeding nonstop. Countless strange red threads bored into the wound and seeped into his body.
It was the first time Kalen noticed these pale red threads, and he followed them outward with his eyes. Then he saw… that thing.
The moment he saw it, Kalen immediately understood what had happened.
To protect Huey, Kalen had been walking in front. The thing had patiently waited for them to draw near the church and for their attention to be caught by the scene before them. Then it launched a stealthy attack from behind.
When the strike came, Huey had shoved him aside with all his strength and hadn’t managed to dodge in time himself.
Kalen clenched his jaw, hefted Huey onto his shoulders, and ran toward the radiance inside the church. As expected, the thing didn’t follow them in. It seemed unable to enter the church interior.
Kalen set Huey down on a bench and bandaged him with practiced hands. The bleeding stopped quickly, yet Huey remained dazed. The red threads seemed to have blended into his flesh, and Kalen couldn’t get them out no matter what he did.
Huey let out a muddled groan that sounded like “Mom.”
His eyelids drooped as his unfocused gaze drifted into empty air, and he smiled. The next moment Huey frowned and muttered “Sister.”
“You shouldn’t have done that. I’m the one who dragged you into this. I ought to protect you.” Kalen wiped the cold sweat from Huey’s forehead.
“No, no, Father,” Huey mumbled. “I’m not that noble. I don’t understand those things. If I lose you, I definitely can’t get out…”
Suddenly his voice rose, his emotions surging with a strange manic edge. “I must get out of here. Someone is waiting for me… Mom…”
Kalen unhooked the water bag at his waist and gave Huey a little herb-soaked water.
“Shh, shh,” he whispered. “Don’t talk anymore, Mr. Huey.”
Huey was clearly not right.
He was young and strong. A shoulder wound like that, with bleeding that wasn’t severe, shouldn’t have left him so quickly delirious. His current state looked more like a sudden flare of the strange illness.
Kalen chopped the side of his hand down and knocked Huey out cleanly. In his experience, all patients fell ill while awake. Sleep helped slow the progress.
Sure enough, once Huey slipped into unconsciousness, the red threads in his wound quieted somewhat.
But the source of those pale red threads, that terrible giant thing, was still guarding the door, a constant reminder.
What a pity, Kalen. This place felt like reality, yet it wasn’t true reality. Outside the door was still that pitch-black, warped world.
Watching the thing crawling at the threshold, Kalen wiped the blood from his hands and pressed his lips together.
The longer he stared at it, the more a fine ringing built in his ears. In under two minutes, a warm trickle ran beneath his nose. Kalen swiped it away without thinking. It was blood.
Kalen considered himself well-seasoned in strange affairs, but he had never seen a creature or a space so abominable. As the ringing sharpened, a long-buried word surfaced in his mind.
“Divine Kingdom…”
His older brother had once whispered it to him as a bedtime story.
“A God can construct a special space and use it as a nesting place. Inside a Divine Kingdom there will be many things that defy common sense. It’s more like a dream than a dream.”
“But I have never heard of a ‘Divine Kingdom’,” young Kalen had said. “Everyone says there are many gods in the city, but no one has ever mentioned that term, and it’s not in the books.”
His brother tucked the covers around him and smiled. “Not every god needs a Divine Kingdom.”
“Some gods are lies made up by people, so naturally there is no such thing as a Divine Kingdom. And some…”
“And some of them?”
“And some gods are so powerful that the entire world is their playground,” his brother whispered. “Only ‘juveniles’ and ‘the weak’ need a Divine Kingdom.”
“I see.” Young Kalen worked hard to remember it all. “Brother, how do you know everything? Have you seen a god?”
Kalen couldn’t remember how his brother answered back then.
He remembered only his brother’s smile, and the two terrifying scars on his brother’s face.
If this bizarre space really was the “Divine Kingdom” his brother spoke of, he feared he wouldn’t be able to leave easily.
Boom.
The whole church shuddered. Something blocked the sealed skylight. The red threads on the floor writhed like mad, and the sleeping Huey let out two groans of pain.
Kalen raised his eyes. The giant thing at the door had vanished. At some point it had climbed to the top of the church and was peering in through that tiny skylight.
The front doors stood empty, like an invitation, or like a provocation.
If they kept waiting like this, Huey would only be dragged to death here. Since the suspected culprit was right before his eyes—
Kalen stood up, took off his coat, and laid it over Huey, who was drenched in cold sweat. Then he slowly put on his gloves, the bone-white pair of rings completely hidden beneath the black fabric.
“We’ll meet again shortly.” Kalen bowed his head to Huey. “May His Veil shroud you, unseen and unharmed.”
Before he moved, he had carefully confirmed that the “ominous” for this action wouldn’t be fatal. Since that thing had offered a sincere invitation, he would give it a proper response.
…After all, the God of Shadows had never deceived him.
……
Outside the church, not far away.
Myss stared in shock at the church that looked both familiar and strange.
From the outside it was the same as ever: a damaged spire reinforced, outer walls decorated with laurel branches and little silver bells. Even the red carpet on the stone steps was there, shining the color of dead meat in the night.
The good news: Myss had found the end of the pale red threads, the source of Mina’s magic, the place where the disappearing Magibases went. He was staring straight at it.
The bad news: It was staring straight at him too.
The thing was enormous, clinging to the church like a dragon wrapped around a tower from a fairy tale. Yet it looked nothing like a dragon.
At first glance, it resembled a lanky rag doll covered in patches.
It had a vaguely womanly shape, but the proportions were utterly wrong, with limbs long and thin like some kind of insect.
Its surface was stitched with a riot of overlapping patches. On closer look, the patches were fragments of memories, and the “red stitching” along their edges was made of the pale red threads Myss knew all too well.
Thousands of threads poked out their ends and extended everywhere, wriggling like living things. At that very moment, Myss was holding one of them between his fingers.
By now, what Myss cared about wasn’t the threads, but the thing’s head… if that could be called a “head”.
The deformed monster had no neck. Where the neck should have been, a meat-red umbilical cord jutted out. The cord connected to a fetus wrapped in fetal membrane. Curled up and plump, it floated above the rag doll’s shoulder, just about the size of a human head.
The cord looped into a perfect circle above the fetus, like some kind of halo.
In that second, it stretched out its neck—no, that umbilical cord—tilting its body toward Myss. Even without showing so much as half an eye, it still made Myss feel a fierce stare.
What are you looking at? Myss shot back with a hard glare.
The sickly sweetness made his head swim. The thing was clearly the source of the smell. Up close, the blood-reek grew faint, while the sweetness became overpowering.
—Myss was hungry, hungrier than he had ever been.
The monster’s scent wasn’t like the fragrance of a Magibase, and Myss couldn’t find any food to compare it to.
It wasn’t the scent of flowers or fruit or anything that actually existed. It was more beautiful, more enticing, more dreamlike… Even that annoying metallic tang became harmless. Of course, without it would be even better…
If he took a bite of this thing, Salaar probably wouldn’t give him trouble for it. No, why should he care what Salaar thought? He had to find the source of that smell and eat it, every last bit.
“…s.” Someone was calling him.
“…Myss…” The voice drew closer, breath brushing his ear. “My~ss~”
“Are you out of your mind?”
Myss snapped back to himself. Then he noticed his voice was a bit thick, as if his mouth were full of saliva.
Wait, not as if. It really was. A little drool had even leaked from the corner of his mouth.
“Right back at you,” Salaar said. “Normal people don’t drool at that thing.”
Myss scrubbed the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m not normal.”
Salaar: “… Fair point.”
He gazed at the monster on the church, the smile in his voice thinned. “So then, Lord Myss, who’s not an ordinary person. Do you recognize that thing?”
The ritual dagger was already gripped in his right hand, dazzling golden light dancing along the blade.
Myss thought it over seriously. “It seems like it would taste very good.”
Salaar: “I am only a human without pica. Please describe it another way.”
“Ordinary humans are like chicory. They have a very bland smell. I have no desire to eat them.”
“Segmented Magibases are like fresh pastries, very fragrant. I want a taste—not from hunger, just a nibble for the craving.”
At that, Myss gazed at the monster with longing. It didn’t look so strange to him now. Crabs looked very strange too, and humans still ate them with delight.
“This thing… I can’t describe its smell. If I have to, it’s something like the aroma of a feast when you are on the verge of starving to death.”
“…” Salaar said.
He let out a short laugh. “It seems the purer the magic, the greater the temptation for you.”
Is that not normal? Myss sneered. Humans also like energy-rich sweets, or meat that sizzles with fat. No one likes unsalted bitter soup.
“In other words, this thing is even more dangerous than I thought.”
Unaware of Myss’s thoughts, Salaar stared at the gigantic monster. Most of its body was sunk in darkness, and the church lights only traced a blurry outline, which made it look even more terrifying.
What a thrill. Salaar could swear that more than three hundred years ago there was absolutely nothing like this in the world.
He wasn’t sure why, but the longer he looked, the itchier his eyeballs felt. He took a deep breath and blinked hard. In his double-imaged vision, he suddenly realized the thing seemed… not in great shape.
It was too thin, its movements unsteady. The red stitching on its body hung loose, split open in many places, and the stuffing bulged out. From the texture alone, it looked exactly like clumps of brown-yellow hair.
Atop the church spire, a small human silhouette was faintly standing.
That silhouette—dressed as a curate—leapt high and charged the monster with bare hands.
The monster raised a limp arm to block. The figure vanished in place, then reappeared in front of the monster’s “head” the next second.
His fist was half a step from the fetus when countless pale red threads sprayed out like blood, fusing into countless “Minas” before him. They hovered in midair and rushed at the figure like ghosts.
Yet the instant they touched him, the Minas recoiled as if shocked, jerking back their clawed hands. Even the pale red threads that had lunged forward snapped back and drifted hesitantly.
Even so, the figure still took a solid physical hit and was knocked flying. He tucked his body and slammed into the church spire with a thump, kicking up clouds of dust.
“It’s the priest,” Salaar said.
“That is the bird-beak demon,” Myss said. “He has a very distinctive scent.”
“Which means Uncle Huey is nearby.” In a rare instance, Hailey spoke up. She had no interest in the twisted monster, only a searching gaze for the church. The stained glass was still normal. It hadn’t turned into Scintilla’s windows.
Salaar: “We need to help that priest.”
Myss: “We need to help the bird-beak demon.”
They both couldn’t help looking at each other, and in each other’s eyes they both saw shock.
“…He might know something,” Salaar stressed.
“That monster would taste better,” Myss said with perfect fairness.
Hailey: “……”
Hailey: “Do not talk at the same time. I can’t make out what you’re saying.”
Salaar let out a chuckle and tossed Myss a look that said “stay here for a second,”. Then he bolted first.
He didn’t attack the monster directly but rushed to the priest who had crashed into the spire. A golden shield flared up right on time and perfectly blocked the monster’s follow-up strike.
The moment the priest recognized who it was, his eyes opened a touch wider, but he wasn’t foolish enough to pause mid-battle to question him. He grabbed Salaar’s outstretched hand without hesitation and forced himself to his feet.
As soon as he had pulled the man up, Salaar pivoted.
Golden light surged along the ritual dagger’s blade and condensed into a brilliant golden longsword. The edge sank into the monster’s patch-covered skin, and Salaar sprinted up along its arm.
From its wrist to its shoulder, Salaar carved a long gash. Before he could pull the sword free, the monster’s wrist had already begun to heal.
The patchwork memory fragments writhed and fitted back into place, a new layer sealing tight. Pale red stitches sewed themselves, and the wound vanished almost instantly.
A muffled shriek rang from inside the monster. Salaar stumbled in place and nearly lost his balance. Right then a dozen Minas floated up around him and lunged in a frenzy.
Salaar raised the golden shield at the perfect time, but perhaps because he wasn’t at full strength, the barrier was as thin as a cicada’s wing and shattered in an instant under the Minas’ blows.
While the Minas swarmed him there, the monster lifted its huge palm and slapped down hard like swatting a mosquito.
—Swoosh!
A streak of black light cleaved across the gold and lopped off that twisted palm.
The monster’s shriek multiplied severalfold. Its severed hand wasn’t corroded by Myss’s magic. The memory patches and pale red threads began repairing themselves again, only much more slowly than before.
Seizing the moment, Myss hoisted Salaar onto his shoulders and nimbly wove past the Minas one by one. His movements were as light as the wind, like a beast slipping through deep forest.
In only a few heartbeats, Myss had carried Salaar up to the top of the church.
“It’s my prey.” Myss bared his teeth at the monster.
In answer, clusters upon clusters of Minas sprouted across its skin. Wearing gentle smiles, they opened their arms and ran toward the group.
Salaar slid off Myss’s shoulder. “Something’s off. Pull back for now.”
Their attacks were doing nothing to the monster. The enemy’s condition was unknown, and their supplies were limited. Forcing the fight would only waste their strength.
At the very least, they needed to exchange information with this enigmatic priest.
Seeing the priest still standing where he was, Salaar added in a rapid rush, “I know you came with Huey. Huey’s niece is down below. She needs a safe place.”
Only then did the priest tear his gaze from the monster. He coughed twice, his voice a little hoarse. “Get inside the church.”
“Huey is there.”
The author has something to say:
Subscribers before the 25th can join a lottery. One hundred people will split 10,000 JJ coins.
These days every subscription matters a lot to me. Those of you planning to stockpile chapters, could you wait a few days before you keep stockpiling?
————
The first supporting character has finally joined the party.
This time it truly is a formidable foe (for the current two). Time to reveal a few little secrets about the two of them.
The bathtub in the third-floor bathroom was exceptionally large. No one knew how many people had died there, but fresh blood actually filled it to the brim—and, for some unknown reason, the blood was now bubbling.
After the soft, steady “glug-glug, glug-glug” went on for a while, there was a sudden splash: crimson blood poured over the rim, soaking the shower curtain and then flowing across the yellowed ceramic tiles toward the door.
Before the blood reached the doorway, the three of them had already backed into the corridor.
Even the dim light could not hide the pallor of Xu Feiyu’s face.
Hidden Blade glanced sideways at her, scimitar in hand. “This is what you people meant by ‘no danger’?”
“Nothing like this happened when the place was full of people…” Xu Feiyu frowned. Clearly, she also found the scene incredible.
He Xiaowei swallowed hard. “No kidding. When you came in to scout before, you had a whole crowd. So many people means strong yang energy—no ghost would dare show themselves. But now there’re just the three of us, so of course the things in here are coming out to play! Damn it… Why do I keep running into ghosts?”
Xu Feiyu clenched and unclenched her fists, then said doubtfully, “Something’s off. Blue Harbor City is a semi-open instance. It’s a bridge you use to reach other sub-instances. Some sub-instances are supernatural, some are fantasy… but Blue Harbor itself was never a place with paranormal events.
“Take Purple Mist Mountain, for example—you’ve heard of it, right? It’s one of the hardest trial instance linked to Blue Harbor. Players think they’re ascending Purple Mist Mountain, but once they enter the sub-instance they’re already in another space. That space has monsters, but Blue Harbor proper doesn’t.
“After Blue Harbor collapsed, the system severed its portals to every sub-instance… The monsters on Purple Mist Mountain still exist, yet players who go there now won’t meet them. The system also announced that Blue Harbor had become a closed-off instance in its own right and lost its bridging function…”
“Blue Harbor is sealed, yes—but whether it harbors supernatural events is another question.”
Hidden Blade guided her train of thought. “Remember that office building where you found us? Your men told you there were a lot of headless skeletons down below.”
The basement stretched eighteen floors deep, crammed with countless headless skeletons. When Hidden Blade and the others went down, Zhou Qian had already wiped the numbers off several bone piles. With the human traces erased, everything could be neatly written off as feudal superstition.
Xu Feiyu was still wavering when something in the corridor suddenly changed.
A dense rustling—like something scrambling—erupted. She instinctively swung her flashlight toward the wall and saw the brown, aging wallpaper cracking inch by inch like a spreading spiderweb.
The web of fissures quickly turned scarlet, exactly the same hue as the blood in the bathtub. Clearly fluid, the cracks seemed to burst. With a wet rush, some substance broke its shackles and began to pour down the wall—
The wall itself was bleeding!
In the air, the scent of roses abruptly thickened, so rich it almost smothered the iron stench of blood.
Anyone not standing here could never imagine the very walls were bleeding. Eyes closed, you’d think you were in a rose garden.
By earlier conjecture, the killers existed in a previous timeline and most of the murders had happened hundreds of years before Blue Harbor 2301.
In that era Blue Harbor’s forensics were primitive, and many serial killers were only caught after long strings of crimes.
Some power in 2301 had connected timelines to keep them from capture, triggering history’s collapse.
Judging by that—and by the mansion’s décor—this place was a genuine relic three or four centuries old.
With such an ancient house, however much blood a crime left behind, it should have long dried to black stains. So why were the bathtub and walls still bleeding fresh blood?
The flowers in the garden had long since withered, so where was the strong fragrance of roses coming from?
The weirdness peaked when a phonograph somewhere in the mansion started up by itself—
Its hoarse, stuttering tune seemed to herald a dreadful ball. At the same time, amid the rose scent came faint aromas of wine and food, while blood gushed from deep inside the walls and swept across the floor…
As if instinctively knowing they mustn’t touch the blood, Hidden Blade, He Xiaowei, and Xu Feiyu dashed down the creaking wooden stairs to the first floor before a drop reached their toes.
But the ground floor was just as horrifying. The walls and floor were already drenched.
By the time they reached it, blood was unavoidable underfoot, and they left three sets of footprints, each a different size, as they sprinted toward the garden.
Once in the garden, all the sights and sounds abruptly fell away.
They paused to catch their breath and looked back at the building.
Under the eternally gray sky, the castle-like structure resembled a colossal beast lying in wait, ready to swallow passers-by.
Luckily the garden seemed protected by some barrier. The blood stopped dead at the threshold, not a drop flowing outside.
Still staring at the mansion, He Xiaowei thumped his chest and stomped, trying to flick the blood from his shoes.
Then he exhaled long. “At least we’re safe for now.”
He had no idea that, having fled ghosts, he would face a threat from another player—
Catching something in her peripheral vision, he turned—and found Xu Feiyu aiming her gun at him.
He Xiaowei blurted, “What’re you doing?”
Xu Feiyu glanced around. Seeing her three subordinates guarding the gate far off—too far to hear—she told Hidden Blade and He Xiaowei, “You two go back inside and keep investigating. I have wristbands of other colors—if you don’t cooperate, I can kill you at any time.”
“You’re not afraid I’ll run over and tell those three you plan to kill them in the end?!” Even the mild-tempered He Xiaowei clenched his fists in rage. “What the hell!”
Xu Feiyu’s eyes narrowed.
Hidden Blade gave her a glance, then told He Xiaowei, “They came in ready for a massacre. If only five of a hundred players can survive, they’ll slaughter the other ninety-five without blinking. Don’t expect them to be decent.”
He Xiaowei echoed loudly, “Master, you’re right! They’re indecent!”
Xu Feiyu’s face flushed red, then green, but she opened her mouth only to find she couldn’t refute them.
A moment later, as if she’d found her argument, she raised her gun higher. “Both of you—march back in. Figure out everything about this place. If the mansion really is haunted, we’ll have to reassess the entire instance’s risk.”
She drew a breath. “Yes, I’m threatening you, pushing you into danger. In exchange, I’ll keep my word and won’t kill you in the end.
“This mansion holds clues we need. If we can’t crack its secrets and end up unable to clear, you’ll die anyway. Seen that way, I’m saving you.”
Hearin this, He Xiaowei spat. “Murderers always dress up their killing with grand excuses to fool themselves and lighten their guilt. But even so, what you just said is shameless. Never seen anyone like you!”
Hidden Blade patted his arm. “Enough. Go in. Any more talk with her is a waste of breath and time.”
“But, Master—” He Xiaowei was still furious.
Hidden Blade remained calm. “Come. Today I’ll teach you: when you’re under someone’s roof, you must bow your head.”
Grumbling, He Xiaowei followed Hidden Blade back into the house.
His anger was less fear of ghosts than indignation.
He was used to being a coward and was often despised and threated by others, so he didn’t think it was a big deal, but he felt aggrieved for his Master.
How powerful is Hidden Blade? He’s a bona-fide god-level player!
Ever since hearing tales of his exploits from a teammate, He Xiaowei had worshipped him, eventually tracking him down in the system and using every ounce of wit to beg apprenticeship.
Someone that powerful shouldn’t be bossed around at gunpoint.
Cursing inwardly, He Xiaowei glanced aside—only to see Hidden Blade utterly unruffled.
After closing the door, Hidden Blade turned to him and gestured.
He Xiaowei: “Huh?”
Hidden Blade murmured, “From the moment that blood started bubbling in the tub, I felt something off. Since coming in, I haven’t sensed any negative force. So—does any ghost really mean us harm?”
“Uh… the ghosts here don’t hurt people?” He Xiaowei asked.
Hidden Blade smiled. “There are no ghosts.”
“No ghosts? Then what is—”
He Xiaowei never finished, because he suddenly heard three voices call “Master” in unison.
He Xiaowei: What??
He turned and saw two men and a woman step out of the shadows, all wearing blue wristbands.
Hidden Blade waved cheerfully and gave them a thumbs-up. “Hiding the code in the bloody wall cracks—smart.”
He Xiaowei had nearly forgotten—his Master was a consummate “sea king,” collecting countless disciples to cultivate the perfect Shepherd. He’d never expected to be accidentally bound to Hidden Blade himself.
Staring at the three remarkable newcomers, He Xiaowei blinked and blurted, “Master, if they and I fell into water together, who would you save first?”
Hidden Blade shot him a baffled look. “Zhou Qian has some issues—don’t pick up his habits.”
He Xiaowei fell silent, blinking again.
Hidden Blade suddenly thought of something and gripped his shoulder solemnly. “And don’t repeat what I just said to Bai Zhou.”
“…Okay! Then can I tell Qian’er?”
After a pause, Hidden Blade sighed. “So if Zhou Qian and I fall in together, you save him first, right?”
He Xiaowei: “……”
Hidden Blade had proved a point: casting a wide net and taking many disciples really paid off—you never knew when they’d be useful, like now.
After quick introductions, He Xiaowei learned the whole story.
The house had existed before Blue Harbor collapsed. The three disciples had cleared an instance called “Bloody Manor” here.
When they left the instance, they were dropped straight into the collapsing Blue Harbor—still inside the same house.
Because they knew the layout, they quickly discovered the secrets: the mansion was riddled with hidden spaces and passages, including a control hub full of mechanisms that could move furniture—perfect for faking hauntings.
The bathtub blood and bleeding walls were all produced by these disciples via those contraptions.
Of course, in the original run they’d actually entered another space, three hundred years in the past. Now the mansion served only as the instance’s login/logout point. Unsure if the structure matched exactly, they’d begun exploring when they heard a commotion outside.
Through a window they saw a whole troop—members of one legion—heading toward the house.
Knowing the instance allowed player-killing, they instinctively hid, going to the second-floor study. In the Bloody Manor instance, that study linked to the secret hub, and sure enough it worked here.
Inside, they found jars full of fresh blood and preserved rose fragrance, plus familiar mechanisms, confirming the layouts matched. They also found four blue wristbands and took three.
Most wristbands appeared in stacks, but a few were scattered elsewhere. Around Zhou Qian’s camp there were twenty-four yellow bands and one yellow one had been destroyed. In this estate’s area most bands were violet, but a few blue ones were stashed in the secret hub.
The hub’s passages led everywhere, giving them views across the grounds. They watched Feidu don violet wristbands, force others to join and even killing some.
Moments earlier they’d seen Hidden Blade coerced into the mansion, so—knowing the mechanisms—they staged the haunting to scare Xu Feiyu off and, by bleeding walls at set intervals, send Hidden Blade a signal.
After recounting their experience and receiving Hidden Blade’s praise, his lone female disciple—He Xiaowei’s sole senior sister—explained, “The hub is underground. It’s cool down there, full of sealed iron drums, each packed with blood. Open one, and the blood’s still fresh. Pour it into a pipe and it feeds straight to the third-floor tub. Oh, the rose scent is in the drums too—some special aromatic mixture.”
He Xiaowei asked, “What kind of person installs so many secret mechanisms at home, and stores all that blood and rose scent? To scare people? And that blood—is it real or fake?”
“Real, of course. Xu Feiyu’s no fool. Fake blood wouldn’t fool her, and we couldn’t risk exposure,” the senior brother said, then looked at him. “Ever heard the legend of Bloody Mary?”
“Fuck!” He Xiaowei blinked. “Yeah! So the owner was Bloody Mary?”
There are many legends about Bloody Mary.
One version says a woman named Mary slaughtered over two thousand maidens, drinking and bathing in their blood to stay young.
Thinking of the huge bathtub upstairs, He Xiaowei felt goosebumps. “So the manor’s owner was Bloody Mary—the serial killer we’re hunting?”
His second senior brother shook his head mysteriously. “No. Guess again.”
“I—I can’t. You’ve cleared the instance. Just tell me.”
And so he got the answer:
The manor’s lady really was named Mary, a duke’s wife of very high rank.
When the disciples entered as players, regardless of age or gender, they were all “maidens” in Mary’s eyes.
As girls kept dying, everyone naturally suspected Mary would kill them.
But they learned Mary was indeed murderous and cruel—yet the mastermind wasn’t her.
At Mary’s side was a man claiming to be a sorcerer.
It was he who told her that bathing in maidens’ blood would restore youth.
After each bath Mary smelled a strong rose fragrance laced with something that made her euphoric. Gazing in the mirror, she believed the sorcery worked and she truly looked younger.
But it was all a con.
Youthful blood baths, bleeding walls, boiling blood, rose scent without blossoms—every marvel was engineered by that “sorcerer”.
He faked hauntings to make Mary think vengeful spirits were after her, then would “exorcise” them, making her rely on him all the more.
The sorcerer’s true identity was a magician.
His father had been a famed local magician, and this house had belonged to him, its mechanisms built by his hand.
During a public show, the father enlisted an audience member for an underwater escape trick. A device failed and the volunteer drowned.
The family name was ruined and their fortunes declined.
Wracked with guilt, the father swore off magic for life. He sealed every mechanism and sold the mansion.
Many years after that, the now-impoverished young magician found his way back. Masquerading as a “sorcerer”, he duped Mary and wormed his way in.
He fabricated tales of sorcery and used the hidden mechanisms to stage all sorts of eerie tricks—Duchess Mary believed them all.
For the rest of her life, Mary likely never knew her own house was riddled with secret devices and passageways.
“Holy crap—”
The human heart is always scarier than ghosts. He Xiaowei suddenly felt a chill. “But … why? Was the magician just some psycho who wanted to kill young girls? His father at least felt guilty—he was clearly a good man!”
“No,” the senior sister replied. “He grew up wealthy and couldn’t accept poverty afterward. He came back simply to live in luxury again. By fooling the duchess he could rake in lavish rewards and stay here. More importantly, with Mary he could pass as an aristocrat instead of the son of a murderer. He didn’t care how many people got hurt.”
On the side, Hidden Blade, having digested the story, turned to his disciples. “So when we have to deal with these killers later, our real target isn’t Bloody Mary at all, but the magician lurking behind her?”
“Exactly,” the eldest senior brother said. “He’s the one who picks Mary’s victims, carries out the murders, and collects the blood while hiding the evidence. In other words, he’s the real culprit.”
……
On the other side, in Blue Harbor City, Chayun Road, in front of the Ancient Coin Museum
Two groups were locked in a standoff.
On one side stood Yin Jiujiu, wearing an indigo wristband, with three unfamiliar players she’d just met—each also wearing indigo bands.
Opposing them were two members of the Peach Blossom Legion, both sporting green wristbands.
One, a man of about forty, was leveling a pistol at the three players behind Yin Jiujiu.
Beside him stood Yun Xiangrong, her gun trained on Yin Jiujiu’s forehead.
“You and the three behind you—switch to green wristbands and join us. Now.”
Yin Jiujiu blurted out, “Yun Xiangrong, I really don’t get you. You don’t have to do this. Have you really betrayed everyone? How can you just kill people at random?”
“Enough talk.” Yun Xiangrong raised the muzzle a little higher. “You have three minutes.”
At that moment Yun Xiangrong noticed a small blue creature flicker past the museum entrance—something ordinary eyes would never catch, but she recognized it instantly.
A heartbeat later, a translucent soul-form materialized in the same spot, visible only for a few seconds before fading from sight.
She stared for a long moment at the seemingly empty doorway, her eyes faintly reddening.
Then she looked back at Yin Jiujiu. “Do I have to repeat myself?”
Zhuyue City lay in the southwest, but it was built on a plateau. The closer they got, the colder the weather became, while the sunlight grew harsher and more intense.
In the mornings, Huo Fenghua would wrap a sable-fur cloak over his clothes. By noon he’d be sweating from the heat and had to take it off, and at the same time he still needed to wear a bamboo hat to shield himself from the blazing sun.
As they traveled, they kept pushing Huo Fenghua to practice martial arts.
They spent nearly a month on the road. By the time they reached Zhuyue City, Huo Fenghua had at least managed to acquire some rudimentary kung fu. He could strike a pose that looked convincing enough, and he could barely block two or three of Wen Heyi’s moves. Any more than that and he was done.
When they arrived, Huo Fenghua sat on horseback and stared at the towering walls and the lofty bronze city gates, finally understanding what “rich enough to rival a nation” really meant.
It was midday. The gates stood open. Guards in white fur-lined jackets held spears and stood on either side, and they didn’t conduct strict searches on those entering or leaving.
After Huo Fenghua entered the city, he instinctively looked back up at the walls. Only then did he realize the gate was in fact heavily defended. Dozens of elite soldiers were stationed along the top, longbows in hand, carefully watching every person who passed through.
Zhuyue City was vast and densely populated. Unlike war-torn Xichou, the city bustled with prosperity. Shops lined the wide streets, and countless vendors called out as they hawked their goods. Walking along, you didn’t see a single beggar. Everyone looked well-fed and at ease.
They rode at a slow pace. It took nearly half an hour before they reached the guest lodge Zhuyue City had prepared for the young martial artists coming to compete in the marriage competition. The lodge was spacious as well. Huo Fenghua asked the steward who received them and learned that one lodge housed twenty to thirty contestants, and with their attendants, a single lodge could accommodate fifty or sixty people.
And because Huo Fenghua was entering under the identity of Huo Fengnian, his status was special. The steward arranged for the four of them to stay in a small side courtyard.
They had only just settled in when Shao Feijie left the lodge with Jia Duo, leaving Huo Fenghua and Wen Heyi in the courtyard. Wen Heyi picked up a long bamboo pole from somewhere and used it to rap at Huo Fenghua, urging him to hurry up and practice.
Huo Fenghua caught two of Wen Heyi’s moves barehanded. Then the bamboo pole snapped down on his palm. He shuddered in pain and tried to snatch the pole, but Wen Heyi flicked his wrist. The end of the pole slipped lightly out of Huo Fenghua’s grasp, and with a turn he smacked Huo Fenghua on the backside.
“I’m done,” Huo Fenghua said, annoyed as he walked over and sat on a stone bench, rubbing his stinging palm.
Wen Heyi said, “With those flowery punches and embroidered kicks, how are you supposed to marry the city lord’s daughter?”
“It’s not like I want to marry her,” Huo Fenghua said. “You’re the ones forcing me. Besides, even if I spend these last few days training without eating or sleeping, do you think that means I’ll be able to marry the city lord’s daughter?”
Wen Heyi twirled the bamboo pole and sat down on the stone bench beside him.
Huo Fenghua glanced at him and lowered his voice. “Martial Uncle, is Marshal Shao off greasing palms?”
“Greasing palms?” Wen Heyi’s gaze drifted over.
Huo Fenghua smiled. “With my skills, what marriage competition could I compete in? Shao Feijie brought me all this way, so it can’t be just for show. If he’s got some other plan, then he must be going to pull some strings.”
Wen Heyi smiled back. “So who do you think he’s gone to pull strings with?”
Huo Fenghua propped his chin on one hand. “Shao Feijie is the Grand Marshal of Xichou’s armies, a high-ranking general. He must know some powerful figure in Zhuyue City, like a general or something…”
“He went to see the city lord,” Wen Heyi suddenly said in a quiet voice.
Huo Fenghua was a little surprised. “So he really does have ties with the city lord.”
Wen Heyi’s fingers slowly rubbed along the slender bamboo pole. “Ten years ago, Zhuyue City wasn’t as prosperous as it is now. It was still a vassal territory of Xichou. Back then, the city lord, Pan Yan, personally went to Xichou’s capital Huijing with his daughter Pan Zishu to present tribute. That’s when Marshal Shao met Pan Yan. And by coincidence, your brother Huo Fengnian got along well with Pan Zishu. Pan Yan even joked about marrying Pan Zishu to Huo Fengnian. This time, Marshal Shao rushed here to ask whether Pan Yan still remembers what he said back then.”
Huo Fenghua froze. “Was it just something he said in passing, or was it an actual betrothal?”
“Marshal Shao said it was just in passing,” Wen Heyi replied. “But the late emperor held a banquet in the palace to receive Pan Yan and his daughter, and he said it in front of all Xichou’s civil and military officials. After all, a gentleman’s word is his bond.” As he finished, he tapped Huo Fenghua’s hand lightly with the bamboo pole.
“So that’s what this is about,” Huo Fenghua finally understood the purpose of the trip. “But Xichou’s fallen. If I were Pan Yan, I’d never marry my daughter to a prince of a ruined nation. Helping Xichou restore itself would be too hard, and the price would be too high.”
Wen Heyi watched him for a while, then sighed. “That’s what’s boring about you. Isn’t doing what can’t be done the fun of life? If I were Pan Yan, I’d marry my daughter to Huo Fengnian, then march east under the banner of restoring Xichou. First recover Xichou’s lands, install Huo Fengnian as a puppet emperor, and once the timing is right, strike down Donglin in one go and unify the Central Plains. Then find a chance to assassinate Huo Fengnian and take the throne myself. Wouldn’t that be far more interesting than clinging to a tiny Zhuyue City?”
After hearing that, Huo Fenghua suddenly felt a chill crawl up his spine. “Martial Uncle… are you planning to do the same? Help Xichou restore itself and then kill the puppet emperor and take the throne?”
Wen Heyi smiled gently. He lifted Huo Fenghua’s chin with the bamboo pole and said softly, “Good Disciple, what do you think?”
Huo Fenghua slapped the bamboo pole away, shivering with goosebumps. “Martial Uncle, stop joking.”
They waited at the lodge until after dinner before Shao Feijie returned with Jia Duo.
The first thing Shao Feijie did was call Wen Heyi into his room. He shut the door and spoke with him in private for nearly two hours. During that time, Jia Duo kept watch over Huo Fenghua, giving him no chance to eavesdrop. Afterward, Huo Fenghua tried to ask Wen Heyi what Shao Feijie had said, but Wen Heyi kept dodging the question and never told him a single honest word.
So the days passed in a blur of training, eating, and sleeping. One morning, Huo Fenghua woke to find Wen Heyi already sitting in his room. A brand-new set of clothes lay on the round table.
Wen Heyi said, “Put on the new clothes. Today you’re going to the marriage competition.”
Huo Fenghua took a deep breath and realized he was actually nervous.
Pan Zishu’s marriage competition was set at a drill ground in the south of Zhuyue City. Earlier, Huo Fenghua had asked the lodge steward and learned that nearly four hundred contestants had submitted name cards to participate, from the Central Plains and from the borderlands and foreign tribes alike.
To ensure fairness, the city lord himself drew lots to assign each contestant an opponent and a round. Only by winning your round could you advance.
Matches were held on the central platform. Because blades had no eyes, and this was supposed to be a happy occasion, each bout would stop at “a touch is enough.” If the weaker fighter insisted on clinging stubbornly, they only needed to be forced off the platform for the other side to be declared the winner. When the final victor emerged, he would still have to spar once with the city lord’s daughter, Pan Zishu. Only if he won could he take her hand.
The matches began at dawn that day. Huo Fenghua changed into a new light-yellow outfit. Feeling it was too cold, he still wrapped himself in the sable cloak, a ring of soft white fur around the collar that made his skin look like gleaming snow.
On the way to the drill ground, Wen Heyi remarked, “With how frail you look, if I were the city lord, I wouldn’t marry my daughter to you either.”
Huo Fenghua pulled his cloak tighter and replied with, “Cold.”
When they reached the drill ground, Huo Fenghua saw a sea of people. Besides the contestants, Zhuyue City’s citizens had come from the surrounding areas to watch. They had to dismount while still far away and proceed on foot. By the time they squeezed their way inside, they were sweating all over.
The grounds were enormous. For this marriage competition, tall viewing stands had been built all around to accommodate spectators. Directly in front stood a newly built two-story pavilion. On the second floor was a viewing terrace. In the middle sat a broad chair, and beside it was another chair draped in pale pink gauze, presumably for the city lord and his beloved daughter. Neither had appeared yet, and the terrace was guarded only by many strong young soldiers.
As someone who had submitted a name card, Huo Fenghua was separated from Wen Heyi and the others after entering and was led to the front-row seating for contestants.
Alone, he felt uneasy. He looked up and scanned the stands, trying to spot Wen Heyi. But after searching left and right, he didn’t see him. Instead, in a corner of the stands, he caught sight of a familiar face, handsome and sharp.
Feng Tianzong!
Just then, someone behind him shoved him. He stumbled and turned around to see a poorly dressed young contestant pushing him aside, telling him not to block the way.
Huo Fenghua moved away a little. When he looked up again, the spot was already empty. The Feng Tianzong he’d seen a moment ago seemed like a phantom, but it still gave him a vicious fright.
Su Zeyang left just like that, catching Huo Fenghua completely off guard. Huo Fenghua had been thinking that as long as he stayed by Su Zeyang’s side, he’d still have a chance to slip away, but Wen Heyi showed him not a shred of mercy. He grabbed the shackles on Huo Fenghua’s wrists and dragged him back out the way they’d come.
Huo Fenghua had spoken to Wen Heyi without the slightest courtesy before. Now he was uneasy, and he asked carefully, “Martial Uncle, where are you taking me?”
Wen Heyi let out a cold laugh. “Where would you like me to take you?”
Huo Fenghua forced a smile. “How about nowhere. Once we’re out of this cave, you and I go our separate ways.”
“In your dreams!”
Huo Fenghua said, “Martial Uncle, you’re someone so capable. Why follow Shao Feijie? Why don’t you and I start our own faction? No, we don’t even need to. Let’s go back to the Xianyuan Sect, recruit troops, and rebel.”
Wen Heyi looked at him. “Rebel against who?”
“Obviously rebel against Donglin,” Huo Fenghua said. “You like fighting wars. I’ll appoint you Grand Marshall of all the armies under heaven. You lead the troops and fight to your heart’s content. Who cares about Donglin or Xichou, we’ll beat them all into the ground. Then we’ll establish the Xianyuan Kingdom. I’ll be emperor, and you can be whatever you want.”
“We rebel against Donglin,” Wen Heyi drawled. “Do you think Feng Tianzong would let us off? Wouldn’t your Senior Brother come after you then?”
Huo Fenghua snorted. “He doesn’t want me anymore, so why should I care?” The words came out sounding even to himself a little plaintive. Then he added, “Fine, then we kill Feng Tianzong, tie Senior Brother up and take him back. I’ll chain him in my room so he can’t go anywhere.”
Wen Heyi said, “You’re really devoted to him.”
Huo Fenghua laughed. “Devoted, not exactly. If I become emperor, I’ll have three thousand beauties in my harem. If he behaves, I’ll spoil him. If he doesn’t, I’ll make him watch me favor my consorts every day.”
By then, they’d crawled out of the cave. The sudden light stabbed into Huo Fenghua’s eyes and made him lift a hand to shield them.
There was only one horse left outside. Su Zeyang had already ridden off on the horse they’d come on.
Even though he’d known that would be the case, Huo Fenghua still stood there dazed until Wen Heyi grabbed him by the back of the collar and tossed him onto the saddle.
Wen Heyi swung up behind him, made Huo Fenghua sit in front, and urged the horse forward.
Seeing they weren’t going the right way, Huo Fenghua said, “Martial Uncle, weren’t we going back to the Xianyuan Sect to recruit troops? Where are we going now?”
Wen Heyi answered lazily, “Recruiting troops doesn’t happen without money. I’m taking you to raise silver first, so we’ll have the means.”
“Where are we raising it?” Huo Fenghua asked.
“Of course we’re going to find Shao Feijie,” Wen Heyi said. “You’re a Xichou prince. Who knows if the Xichou royal house has some hidden trove or secret treasure. Once you and Shao Feijie reunite, we dig up the treasure, then we kill Shao Feijie and go back to the Xianyuan Sect and set ourselves up as kings.”
Huo Fenghua thought it over. “That’s a great idea. Martial Uncle, you really are something.”
After that, both of them fell quiet, with only the pounding hoofbeats of the horse.
A moment later, Huo Fenghua said, “Wait. Martial Uncle, you’re lying to me, aren’t you?”
Wen Heyi chuckled twice. “Guess.”
Huo Fenghua didn’t actually think his nonsense would persuade Wen Heyi, but the thought of being dragged back to Shao Feijie’s side, forced to live as “Huo Fengnian,” exhausted him.
He let out a heavy sigh, stared at the jagged mountains around Luofeng Ridge, and went silent.
Along the way, Wen Heyi stayed extremely guarded, leaving him no chance to run. The wrist shackles were also a huge nuisance. The moment he raised his hands even a little, they clinked.
They traveled for three days and linked up with Shao Feijie’s forward scouts. After that, Huo Fenghua was watched even more tightly. He gave up on trying to escape and decided he’d figure it out once he was back at Shao Feijie’s side.
If Shao Feijie still wanted him to impersonate the Xichou crown prince, then he couldn’t keep guarding him like a criminal forever. When the time came, Huo Fenghua could put on an act, make Shao Feijie believe he truly meant to follow them and restore the kingdom, and eventually they’d loosen their vigilance.
But when Huo Fenghua saw Shao Feijie again, it wasn’t at Tiantou Stronghold.
Feng Tianzong had led troops to attack Tiantou Stronghold. Shao Feijie caught wind of it and didn’t want a head-on clash, so he withdrew the garrison ahead of time, retreating into the endless primeval forest along Xichou’s border. This time, it would be even harder for Feng Tianzong to track them down.
Yet Huo Fenghua didn’t meet Shao Feijie in that forest camp either, but in a remote border town in Xichou. The place hadn’t been touched by the war, and no Donglin troops were stationed there. It was poor, but the people’s lives were still relatively peaceful.
Wen Heyi brought Huo Fenghua into a tavern in town. The two went in one after the other. The iron shackles on Huo Fenghua’s wrists were conspicuous, but in wartime ordinary people didn’t dare meddle, so no one had asked questions along the way.
Inside the tavern, Shao Feijie had changed into a merchant’s outfit, reining in the murderous aura he usually carried. He sat drinking at a table in the corner. Only one attendant was with him. When Huo Fenghua looked closely, he recognized him as someone familiar: Jia Duo, the man who’d gone to Yujing to bring him back to Xichou.
Back then, between Jiang Yuan and Jia Duo, Jia Duo had actually been quite polite to him.
Wen Heyi took Huo Fenghua forward and sat down at an empty spot at Shao Feijie’s table.
Before Shao Feijie could speak, Huo Fenghua placed both hands on the tabletop and smiled. “Marshal Shao. Long time no see.”
Shao Feijie looked him up and down. “What are you trying to do, Huo Fenghua?”
Huo Fenghua put on a startled look. “What did you call me, Marshal Shao? I’m Huo Fengnian. Why are you calling me Huo Fenghua?”
Hearing that, Shao Feijie looked to Wen Heyi.
Wen Heyi sneered. “This brat wants to play tricks. Ignore him.”
Huo Fenghua said, “Mr. Wen, that’s not right. You said you wanted me to cooperate with Marshal Shao. Isn’t Marshal Shao’s whole plan for me to pretend to be Huo Fengnian? Am I not acting convincingly enough?”
Shao Feijie didn’t bother with him. He said to Wen Heyi, “The lord of Zhuyue City is holding a martial-arts competition to choose a husband for his daughter a month from now. I’ve already had someone submit the Crown Prince’s name card. If we set out now, we’ll arrive right around early next month.”
“Huh? What?” Huo Fenghua cocked an ear. “A martial arts competition for marriage?”
Wen Heyi picked up the wine jug on the table and poured himself a cup. “Yep. We’re planning to get you a wife.”
Huo Fenghua was genuinely shocked. His mouth fell slightly open as he swept his gaze over the three faces in front of him, then landed back on Wen Heyi. “Mr. Wen, it’s not like you don’t know. I… prefer men. How am I supposed to marry a woman?”
Shao Feijie frowned faintly.
But Wen Heyi didn’t change expressions at all. “The Crown Prince has four secondary consorts. I’ve never heard anything about you preferring men.”
Huo Fenghua said, “Those four were just a smokescreen. The one I truly like is still a man. If you and Marshal Shao don’t believe me, I, Huo Fengnian, can swear to Heaven.”
“Enough!” Shao Feijie finally couldn’t take it anymore. “You will behave yourself and take part in Zhuyue City’s marriage competition, and you will marry the city lord’s daughter!”
Zhuyue City was a major city in southern Xichou. Though it was called a “city,” it actually covered a vast area. Beyond the main city were several smaller satellite cities, essentially like a small southwestern kingdom, and the lord of Zhuyue City was effectively a king.
This time, the city lord’s daughter’s marriage competition had been announced widely: regardless of birth or status, any man who submitted a name card to Zhuyue City could participate. The only condition was that the participant could not already have a lawful wife. Huo Fengnian had several secondary consorts but had never married a principal wife, and with the chaos of war, those consorts had all died in the flames of conflict. So now his participation could be considered proper and legitimate.
At this point, Huo Fenghua still didn’t understand all of Shao Feijie’s calculations. He leaned forward slightly and asked, “Marshal Shao, I don’t know martial arts. How am I supposed to enter a martial arts competition?”
Shao Feijie said, “Starting now, you train relentlessly day and night.”
Huo Fenghua let out a short “Ha,” thinking it was absurd beyond belief.
But Wen Heyi said seriously, “Don’t you have the internal cultivation manual sect leader Senior Brother gave you?”
Huo Fenghua looked at him.
Wen Heyi said, “Starting today, I’m teaching you martial arts.”
That day, Shao Feijie and his men didn’t rush to leave the town.
That night in the guest room, Shao Feijie used his Blood Drinking saber to chop off the shackles on Huo Fenghua’s wrists. Huo Fenghua crouched on the floor with his wrists resting on a stool, watching Shao Feijie lift the long blade with trembling nerves. “Marshal Shao, can you actually do this? Don’t cut my hands off too.”
Shao Feijie didn’t even look at him. Before Huo Fenghua could react, the blade fell in a sudden flash, severing the shackles perfectly without nicking his hands in the slightest.
When Huo Fenghua pulled his hands back, his legs went weak and he nearly couldn’t stand. He rubbed his wrists lightly and exclaimed, “What a blade. What a technique!”
Wen Heyi sat on a stool nearby, holding the internal cultivation manual he’d confiscated from Huo Fenghua’s chest. “Now that the shackles are off, starting now you train properly.”
Even without Wen Heyi forcing him, Huo Fenghua had always wanted to learn martial arts. Otherwise he wouldn’t have apprenticed himself to Gu Guangji in the first place. After Gu Guangji gave him the manual, he’d studied it for a long time on his own, but he could never find the correct path for many of the acupoints and qi-circulation methods. Su Zeyang never guided him either, so up to now he’d learned nothing and couldn’t keep up with internal training.
If he could truly take this chance to learn, then escaping in the future would naturally become much easier.
So he nodded at Wen Heyi. “Please give me guidance, Martial Uncle. I’ll study seriously.”
From that day on, they traveled slowly toward Zhuyue City, and Wen Heyi taught him the sect’s martial arts along the way. At night they practiced the internal cultivation method, and during the day Wen Heyi taught him a basic set of fist techniques.
With someone teaching him, Huo Fenghua got started quickly, but his progress was slow. Wen Heyi said Huo Fenghua was smart and his bones were well suited, but it was a pity he was already too old. Starting now, it would be hard for him to truly achieve much.
While holding a horse stance, Huo Fenghua asked Wen Heyi, “Martial Uncle, do you think if I train like this for a month, I’ll be able to enter that marriage competition and marry that city lord’s daughter?”
Wen Heyi was sprawled on a low tree branch nearby, lazily flipping through a book. “Do you think you can?”
“I don’t,” Huo Fenghua said. “That’s why I’m telling you early. I’m afraid you’re wasting your effort.” As he spoke, he glanced at Shao Feijie, who wasn’t far off, making a fire and roasting meat.
Wen Heyi closed the book. “Marshal Shao has his own plan. You don’t need to worry so much.”
Huo Fenghua thought for a moment, then lowered his voice. “Does Marshal Shao already have ties with the lord of Zhuyue City? Is sending me to the competition just a pretense, and the real plan is to borrow Zhuyue City’s wealth and troops to restore the kingdom?”
Shao Feijie had heard him. He lifted his head and shot him a look, saying in a low voice, “Don’t talk nonsense!”
Huo Fenghua quietly pursed his lips.
Wen Heyi smiled at him. “You’re not completely wrong, and not completely right. Once we get to Zhuyue City, you’ll know what it’s really for.”
When Su Zeyang heard the name Feng Tiansheng, he lifted his head and looked toward Wen Heyi.
Wen Heyi’s expression didn’t change much. He only glanced in Huo Fenghua’s direction, then walked the other way. At the spot directly opposite Huo Fenghua, he lowered his head and felt around until he found Feng Tianzong’s name, then said, “Come here.”
Su Zeyang stood up and walked to Wen Heyi’s side. Bending down, he saw the name: Feng Tianzong.
“What does it mean?” Huo Fenghua raised a hand and scratched his chin.
Su Zeyang crouched again and, following the dark red lines on the ground, roughly traced the formation with his finger. Then he stood and fell into thought.
Gu Guangji liked to study these unorthodox arts. When Su Zeyang was young, he often taught his disciple things like this, but Su Zeyang’s interest wasn’t there. He’d stayed single-mindedly devoted to swordsmanship. Even so, from what he’d seen and heard over the years, Su Zeyang still understood formations and talismans far better than Wen Heyi did.
Wen Heyi asked, “Well?”
Su Zeyang stepped along one of the lines to the center of the formation, crouched, and used his finger to mark out the ground. He shifted only two small steps, then stopped, rubbing the dirt with his fingertip. “This spot’s been dug up.”
Even though several candles were lit, the cave was still dim. The ground had been dug and then carefully filled back in. If Su Zeyang hadn’t searched closely, you wouldn’t be able to tell at a glance.
Wen Heyi walked over and crouched beside him. “Dig it up and take a look.”
The three of them dug into the dirt. When they’d gone nearly a foot down, Huo Fenghua’s fingers touched a wooden box first. He said quickly, “There’s a box.”
Su Zeyang brushed away the soil around it, lifted the box out, set it on the ground, and opened the lid.
It wasn’t large, only one layer inside. Three slips of paper lay on top, each with a talisman pasted over it.
Su Zeyang peeled off all the talismans at once and saw that each slip bore a different person’s birth data. His finger touched the one on the far right. “This is Tianzong’s birth data.”
“Oh?” Wen Heyi asked. “What about the other two?”
Su Zeyang looked at the middle one, then the far left. “I’m not completely sure, but judging by the year and month, the left one should be Tianzong’s elder brother’s birth data. I don’t recognize the one in the middle.”
Wen Heyi propped his cheek on one hand. “I thought this formation was only aimed at Feng Tianzong. Now it looks like it targets the Feng family. So what kind of formation is it?”
Su Zeyang’s eyes narrowed slightly, his voice icy. “A curse formation.”
“A curse?” Huo Fenghua was startled. “Cursing him with what? Cursing him to die?”
“I’m not sure,” Su Zeyang said. “But I have a guess. Based on how the lines run, I think someone may be trying to curse the Feng family into having their line die out.”
Huo Fenghua froze. His first instinct was to say that if Feng Tianzong married Su Zeyang, wasn’t that already “dying out,” but then he remembered Feng Tiansheng. He also recalled something and grabbed Su Zeyang’s sleeve. “Senior Brother, didn’t Feng Tiansheng’s wife miscarry recently?”
Su Zeyang’s expression turned even colder.
Wen Heyi said, “Maybe it’s just a coincidence. That kind of formation-cursing nonsense isn’t something I believe in.”
Huo Fenghua thought about it and felt Wen Heyi had a point. He’d grown up with modern scientific education and didn’t believe in this either, so he said, “Senior Brother, are you sure? I also think it might just be a coincidence.”
Su Zeyang said, “Either way, this is definitely a curse formation targeting the Feng family.”
Huo Fenghua had ridden hard for days and trekked through the cave passage for a long time. He was tired now, so he simply sat down, resting his shackled hands on his knees. “This is Xichou. Feng Tianzong brought troops and destroyed Xichou. It’s normal for Xichou people to curse him.”
“Cursing a whole family to die out is too vicious,” Wen Heyi said, lowering his head and tracing the carved patterns on the wooden box with his fingers.
Huo Fenghua gave a short, mocking laugh. “Don’t your emperors wipe out nine clans? If one day Feng Tianzong’s whole family fell into Shao Feijie’s hands, you think he’d dare spare even one?”
“That’s different,” Wen Heyi said. “This sort of curse is sinister and poisonous. It can’t be tolerated.”
Su Zeyang hadn’t spoken. He stared at the middle slip, trying to recall whose birth data it was. But the Feng brothers were orphans. As children, they’d drifted in from elsewhere to Yujing and been taken in by the Grand Tutor* He. One went into civil office, one into the military, and together they rose through the ranks. The person on that slip was still young, judging by the year and month. Grand Tutor He had no sons or daughters. Feng Tianzong had no other brothers besides Feng Tiansheng. So what connection could this person possibly have to them?
*[Taifu] (太傅) One of the Three Ducals, the Grand Tutor is charged with educating the monarch (princes and crown prince).
“Wait,” Wen Heyi suddenly said. “This curse formation might not have been set by Xichou people at all.”
Huo Fenghua asked at once, “What do you mean?”
Su Zeyang also looked over.
Wen Heyi smiled, tipped the wooden box over, and said to Su Zeyang, “Look at the patterns on the box.”
Su Zeyang ran his fingers over them. After a moment, he said, “This is a box made by the Yu family, Donglin’s famous master woodworkers.”
“And these patterns aren’t something ordinary households can use,” Wen Heyi said. “It should be tribute.”
If it was tribute made by the Yu family of Donglin, then the only possible recipient was the Donglin royal house.
Wen Heyi suddenly burst out laughing. In the cave, his laughter sounded especially sharp and grating. He laughed until tears came out, then pressed a hand to his chest and said, “Feng Tianzong fights south and north for Donglin and earns countless military merits. The Donglin emperor can’t kill him and shouldn’t kill him, so he uses this method to curse the Feng family into dying out. Hahaha. Isn’t it hilarious?”
As he laughed, he lifted a hand and slapped Huo Fenghua on the shoulder, almost knocking him sideways where he sat.
Huo Fenghua said irritably, “Martial Uncle, stop acting crazy.”
Su Zeyang’s expression was icy.
Huo Fenghua was afraid Su Zeyang might get too worked up, so he said, “I don’t think so. If the Donglin emperor wanted to kill the Feng brothers, it’d be easy. Why make it this complicated? And if he was setting a formation, why deliberately use royal tribute? Isn’t that asking to be found out?” Then he suddenly grew suspicious and looked at Wen Heyi. “Martial uncle, this isn’t some scheme of yours to sow discord, is it?”
Wen Heyi kept that gentle smile on his face. “It’s just a wooden box. Who would notice something like that? And this valley is so deep. When the formation was set, they never expected it would be discovered.”
“And yet you discovered it,” Huo Fenghua said. Wen Heyi still felt dubious towards him. He edged closer to Su Zeyang and said, “You pretend you found it by accident and bring us here, then you want my Senior Brother to tell Feng Tianzong. Feng Tianzong gets furious and switches sides, and you and your lover Shao Feijie sit back and reap the profit.”
Kinky Translations 