Murong Lian was lounging on a spring daybed in the small inner courtyard, smoking waterpipe tobacco. A few idle books and a small pot of wine sat on the little table beside the bed.
When he saw Gu Mang enter, he unhurriedly took a large sip of A Dream of Floating Life, slowly exhaled the smoke, and instructed the people around him, “You can all leave for now.”
“Yes.”
The servants withdrew, leaving only the two of them in the courtyard.
Murong Lian lay lazily on the bamboo daybed. He did not even look directly at Gu Mang. He merely tapped the ashes from his pipe, then put it back between his lips and sneered, “Fireball really is interesting. He sends a Special Envoy to my manor, and it happens to be someone wearing a veil and wrapped in a cloak at that. Well? What do you want?”
“It’s me.”
The moment Murong Lian heard his voice, he choked on the smoke he had just inhaled.
“Cough, cough, cough!!”
A moment later, he rose. A great many emotions flashed rapidly across his face—shock, anxiety, hatred, hesitation… and even some complicated feelings that outsiders could never have deciphered.
“You? Why have you disguised yourself as a Special Envoy and come here? Looking to get beaten?”
Apart from a very small number of people in Chonghua, no one knew that Gu Mang had recovered his memories. Naturally, Gu Mang would not show too much lucidity in front of Murong Lian.
He had spent five years undercover in Liao, and pretending was hardly difficult for him. So he feigned a dull expression and said, “Don’t be angry. I came to return something to you.”
“……”
“My master said that you shouldn’t casually accept things from other people. So I came to return this ring.”
As he spoke, he slipped off the sapphire thumb ring and handed it to Murong Lian.
“Thank you for giving it to me, but it’s completely useless. I don’t like it.”
“……”
Murong Lian looked as though he had suffered a tremendous insult. He nearly jumped to his feet.
“Do you even know what you’re saying?”
“There are hundreds of thumb rings like this at Xihe Manor. If you like shiny little rings, I can give you a few more.”
“Bullshit! How can those compare to this one?!”
Furious, Murong Lian snatched it away.
“This is—”
Gu Mang calmly waited for him to finish.
“This, this is… this is…”
Murong Lian seemed to choke on the words. After a moment, a flicker of uncertain light passed through his eyes. Then he viciously said, “…Forget it. Why am I even telling you this? This was originally only lent to you. When did it become a gift? Even if you hadn’t come to return it, I would have gone to Xihe Manor in a few days to take it back. Don’t flatter yourself!”
As he spoke, he slipped the thumb ring back onto his own thumb.
Gu Mang sighed inwardly. As expected, Murong Lian would not so easily reveal the secret of this ring to him.
But he had only wanted to test him in the first place.
His real purpose in coming to Wangshu Manor was simply to walk around and take a look for himself. After all, there were still traces of this residence that he missed far too much.
Seeing that Gu Mang remained silent, Murong Lian stared at him for a while before asking, “What’s wrong? Zhou He tortured you stupid? At least make a sound.”
Gu Mang said blankly, “I’m not stupid.”
After a pause, he glanced at Murong Lian’s pipe and said, “People who smoke this are the stupid ones.”
“You—!”
Gu Mang said, “You’re getting angry again. You’re always getting angry. Fine, I’m a good wolf. I won’t make you unhappy. I’ve returned your stuff, so I’m going home. Goodbye.”
Murong Lian watched him turn around. His narrow eyes suddenly narrowed.
When Gu Mang had reached the moon-shaped gate of the courtyard, Murong Lian suddenly said ominously, “Stop.”
He walked over to Gu Mang and circled him once, then enunciated slowly, “Gu Mang. Why do I remember that before you went to Bat Island… you had already recovered quite a bit of your consciousness?”
“……”
The slender golden-stemmed pipe extended forward, its curved mouthpiece pressing against Gu Mang’s chin and forcibly lifting it.
Murong Lian narrowed his peach-blossom eyes.
“You don’t still think you’re a wolf, do you?”
“……”
“Let me think… You came here today. Could it be that you came to mourn your Auntie Ni?”
Gu Mang abruptly froze.
Then he turned his face away.
“Who’s that?”
“……”
Murong Lian said nothing. His gaze was strange and inscrutable as he stared at Gu Mang for a while.
The two remained locked in a silent standoff. A cool breeze rose in the courtyard, sending the sleeves of Gu Mang’s cloak fluttering wildly.
Murong Lian said, “You really can’t remember who she is?”
Gu Mang shook his head.
“You’d better not lie to me. You’ve been with me for so long. You should know perfectly well what the consequences of deceiving me are.”
“I don’t know. I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
As Gu Mang spoke, he raised a hand and pushed away the pipe pressing against his chin, wrinkling his nose.
“It smells awful. How can you possibly like this?”
He sneezed twice, then turned around and walked out of the courtyard without looking back.
He appeared calm on the surface, but his heart was pounding.
—Why had Murong Lian suddenly brought up Auntie Ni?
Only a handful of people knew that he had recovered his memories. Had someone leaked the secret to Murong Lian? Or did Murong Lian have no certainty at all and was merely testing him?
His heart pounding anxiously, Gu Mang made his way out of Wangshu Manor. He stood there for a while, thinking, but could not make sense of anything.
In the end, he sighed and decided not to dwell on the matter for now. Instead, he took a detour to the Jiang Residence.
He truly could not stand seeing Murong Lian so addicted to smoking these days. Murong Lian was a wild sort of person. He had grown up without a father, and after Madam Zhao died, there had been no one left who could keep him in check. He still had not married, either. In name, he was a richly dressed aristocratic lord; in reality, he was just a single man with no one to stop him from doing whatever he pleased.
Gu Mang felt that he could not go on like this. So while he was still lucid, he intended to visit Apothecary Jiang and ask for a prescription that might help Murong Lian quit smoking.
When he arrived at the Jiang Residence, however, he discovered that the person dispensing medicine and seeing patients in the main hall today was not Jiang Fuli, but his wife, Su Yurou.
As usual, Su Yurou wore a gauze-covered bamboo hat, concealing the peerless beauty that was said to rival the beauty of a fallen kingdom.
After seeing off a patient, she looked up and saw Gu Mang enter.
In a calm voice, she asked, “Are you here for a consultation?”
“I need some medicine. Is Apothecary Jiang here?”
“My husband went traveling a few days ago. If yours is not a difficult or unusual illness, I can examine you as well.”
“Why has he gone traveling again…”
Gu Mang could not help lowering his head in thought.
Jiang Fuli really was elusive. Of the three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, he spent most of them away from home.
People always said that a hero’s ambitions were buried in the land of beauty. Yet Jiang Fuli had married an unparalleled beauty and still left her alone at home every day.
But then, on second thought, Gu Mang realized that perhaps he was not much better than Jiang Fuli himself.
With such a beautiful man as Mo Xi right in front of him, had he not also wasted more than ten years of his life?
Su Yurou asked, “Does your prescription absolutely have to be written by my husband?”
“Not necessarily.”
Gu Mang sighed and said, “Sorry to trouble you, Madam. I just wanted to ask whether there is any way to quit smoking something like A Dream of Floating Life.”
“…”
“You’re from Wangshu Manor?”
“Sort of.”
“Then you should leave.”
Gu Mang’s eyes widened.
“W-Why?”
Su Yurou said, “You should know that the Lord of Wangshu has no intention of quitting this tobacco himself. When it comes to breaking an addiction, medicine has always been secondary, while the mind is primary. If he wants to smoke, no matter how good the medicine is, it will be useless. Why should I ruin my Apothecary Manor’s reputation for nothing?”
“……”
Gu Mang opened his mouth, wanting to argue, but after thinking about it, he realized that Madam Su was not wrong.
If Murong Lian himself wanted to smoke this stuff, who could stop him?
Gu Mang was anxious, but there was nothing he could do. He could only sigh heavily, thank Su Yurou, and leave the Apothecary Manor.
In truth, Gu Mang’s feelings toward Murong Lian were complicated.
On the one hand, he genuinely disagreed with many of the things Murong Lian did. On the other hand, he understood Murong Lian’s heart fairly well and could not help but pity him.
Murong Lian’s father had died young. His mother, Madam Zhao, had probably hoped that he would become someone like the former Lord of Wangshu. So she completely suppressed Murong Lian’s natural talents, stubbornly laying out a path for him to follow—a path whose destination was to turn him into someone exactly like his father.
Gu Mang remembered very clearly that Murong Lian had loved illusions when he was young.
He would often sit in the courtyard and conjure a whole garden filled with fluttering butterflies and swaying seas of flowers—
But Madam Zhao would not allow it.
“What can illusion arts do? They can only serve as military support! They’re all useless things! Your father was skilled in musical spellcraft. You’re his son, so a music cultivator is what you ought to be. Stop taking the wrong path!”
“Look at Mo Xi! He has the exact same talent as Lord Fuling. He has more talent than you and works harder than you, too. Don’t you know how to reflect on yourself?”
“Murong Lian! You dare buy more of those illusion scrolls and bring them back here? I’ll tear every last one of them up!”
After days upon days of scolding, beating, and shouting, the Wangshu Manor never again saw those butterflies and flowers conjured by illusion arts.
The things Murong Lian considered beautiful were worthless in his mother’s eyes—nothing but vulgar things that could never be displayed in public.
When Madam Zhao was still alive, the sentence most often heard throughout the manor was:
“Murong Lian, learn properly and follow your father’s example. Don’t bring shame to Wangshu Manor.”
It was as though he had been forced to live inside the mold of his father.
No one cared that he was an entirely different human being. They simply forced him into that mold, and whenever he did something that exceeded its boundaries, they cruelly cut away his flesh and blood without the slightest concern for the pain of having his dreams castrated.
Whenever he failed to do something well enough, what awaited him was another stern and furious reprimand.
“What nonsense are you making? Why aren’t you going to cultivate properly?”
“You get tired after suffering that little hardship? Murong Lian, can’t you amount to something?”
“Everything you have is the best there is. If you still can’t make something of yourself, how will you ever face anyone?”
Gu Mang remembered that, at first, Murong Lian had fought back fiercely. He had argued with his mother and even cried as he ran out of the residence.
“But I really like illusion arts! I don’t like the qin! Why do you keep forcing me like this? I don’t want to be Murong Xuan’s son anymore! Whoever wants to be his son can do it!”
Those words brought down Madam Zhao’s thunderous fury.
It was the only time Murong Lian had ever been beaten until his skin was split and his flesh was torn.
Such a small child had been beaten into a bloody mess. He lay on the bed, sobbing weakly, barely breathing…
He had looked utterly pitiful.
Gu Mang had watched him grow up all the way, watching him become like a diseased plum tree—stripped of the things he loved, his nature carved away, his fate twisted, and forcibly molded into a replica of his father.
Throughout that process, Murong Lian went from resistance to endurance, and from endurance to numbness.
In the end, the child who had once sat proudly in the sunlight of the courtyard, delighted by the butterflies he had conjured throughout the garden, was gone.
All that remained was the ancient qin in the music room, its notes ringing like flowing water, and the jade flute’s melodies drifting throughout the royal city—in bitter winters and scorching summers, amid banana leaves and nighttime rain, entwining themselves day after day, year after year.
Everyone said those melodies were exquisite.
Only Gu Mang knew that they were not.
Amid all those sounds of zithers, flutes, gold, and jade, Murong Lian was holding funeral after funeral for his butterflies and seas of flowers.
Murong Lian had ultimately become twisted.
Before, Gu Mang’s memories had been missing, so when he faced the present-day Murong Lian—drunk on pleasure and spending every day inhaling intoxicating smoke—he had not sensed anything particularly wrong.
But after his childhood memories were restored through the Mirror of Time, he felt that things were not so simple.
Perhaps other people did not understand Murong Lian and thought he was rotten to the core.
But Gu Mang had served him since childhood. He knew very well that Murong Lian’s particular kind of corruption had absolutely not been like this.
The way Murong Lian had been treated as a child had made his personality extremely vicious.
He knew how to cause trouble. He knew how to use underhanded and malicious tricks to defeat his rivals.
For example, back when they were at the academy, he had used a slave brother and sister to gain Mo Xi’s sympathy, causing Mo Xi to be whipped.
And then there was the time he had used Gu Mang to threaten Mo Xi, forcing Mo Xi to lose to him at the Great Competition of Masters.
His methods had certainly been despicable, but without a doubt, they revealed one thing—
Murong Lian liked to win.
How could Murong Lian not like winning?
He had been harshly criticized and scolded from childhood, becoming like a stray dog that had grown accustomed to being beaten. The moment it heard a stick strike, its teeth would chatter and its entire body would tremble.
His competitiveness had become instinctive. Even though his mother had been dead for so many years, he had never been able to rid himself of it.
But what was A Dream of Floating Life?
It was a fragrant substance smoked by the weak to deceive themselves.
Anyone with a clear mind knew that once someone became addicted to this kind of hallucinogenic smoke, that person was practically ruined.
So how could someone like Murong Lian—someone who would sharpen his head to get even with others—have suddenly started smoking something that would rot a person to the core during the five years Gu Mang spent as a traitor?
And then there was that ring.
Although its purpose was unknown, it should not have been something harmful.
Gu Mang could sense an extremely strange aura within the ring. He could almost be certain that when Murong Lian had slipped it onto his finger back then, he had been trying to help him.
Murong Lian…
Murong Lian…
What exactly did this man know?
What was he hiding?
And what had he endured?
Gu Mang’s brows furrowed deeply. No matter how hard he thought, he could not make sense of it. In the end, the headache became unbearable, and he could only let the matter go for the time being.
By the time he returned home, it was already noon.
It was right around lunchtime. Gu Mang entered the main hall, only to find no food on the table and no one else in the room.
Just as he was wondering what was going on, a servant girl entered from the courtyard carrying a fruit platter.
Gu Mang went over and asked her, “Miss, where is Lord Xihe?”
The servants at Xihe Manor had once treated Gu Mang rather coldly, but many people were adept at reading the wind.
Mo Xi had been treating Gu Mang so well these days that even a blind person could see there was some deeper meaning behind it. How could they possibly fail to pick up on even the slightest hint?
The maid immediately smiled ingratiatingly.
“Oh, Mr. Gu, you really don’t need to call me ‘Miss.’ Just call me Xiao Su.”
Gu Mang had not even had time to get used to being addressed so respectfully as “Mr. Gu” when she placed the fruit platter on the table, wiped her hands, and cheerfully directed him:
“His Lordship was just under the orange blossom tree in the back garden. You can look for him there first. If you can’t find him, then try the little kitchen.”
Gu Mang was startled.
“The little kitchen?”
“Yes.”
“What’s he doing there???”
Author’s Note:
Your favorite meat-loving author San is back!!!
《No One in the Murong Family Has It Easy》
Murong Lian: I miss the days when I’d just appeared and the comments section hated me so much they kicked me out of the group. Sigh. Ever since I put on Pinru’s clothes, I don’t attract any hate anymore. My heart hurts.
His Lordship: I miss the days when, no matter how much I screwed up, the comments section always hated Murong Lian. Sigh. Ever since I learned public-speaking skills, all the hate has come my way instead. My heart hurts.
Murong Mengze: I miss the days when I hadn’t appeared yet. Sigh. Ever since I appeared, people curse me every time I open my mouth. My heart hurts.
Murong Chuyi: I miss the days when the comments section thought I was the top.
Gu Mang: ??? Fourth Brother-in-law, wake up. There have never been days like that, okay?!