AU Extra — “Young Boy’s Illusory Dream” (9)
Xingxiang City. Rouge Tower.
It should have taken only a little over half a shichen to get here, but Mo Xi had spent far longer than that.
His heart was being scorched by flames, his desires were intertwined and out of control, his body was being eroded and forcibly dragged to the place he hated most. The evil ghost residing inside his body even wanted to make him commit acts of unrestrained debauchery. If he had not resisted with all his might and repeatedly fought to regain control of his body, he would probably have already fallen into the abyss of desire by now.
Yet in the end, he still arrived at this brothel in the neighboring city.
—Although at this moment, he had once again regained control of his own body and had not yet done anything outrageous.
But he did not know how much longer he could hold on.
“Young Master, where are you from?”
“Hehe, Young Master, why don’t you look at us? Is this your first time here? Aren’t you used to it yet?”
His vision was blurred. Around him, figures swayed amid the fragrance of clothing and the shadows of hair ornaments, while the scent of rouge and powder seemed to have intensified several times over, seeping into his lungs.
Every moment, he was engaged in a tug-of-war with that evil ghost. Yet whenever he managed to wrest back control of his body for even a brief moment, the pain inside him would viciously corrode him, crushing his consciousness and causing excruciating, bone-deep agony.
After this happened several times, the women in the brothel were finally completely bewildered by his erratic behavior—the evil ghost inside him wanted him to possess these bodies, while his struggling consciousness roared in rage and disgust at everything.
“Get out! Get out! All of you, get out!”
“No… Come back… All of you, come back.”
The torment grew more and more intense. Sometimes Mo Xi’s consciousness had the upper hand, and sometimes the evil ghost’s did. His erratic behavior left the poor women terrified and confused.
Mo Xi suddenly grabbed one of the women. She merely assumed that he was one of those strange customers and, after letting out a startled cry, naturally pressed her voluptuous body into Young Master Mo’s arms. The other women around them giggled, and she smoothly wrapped her arms around Mo Xi’s neck, naturally moving in to kiss his lips.
A violent tremor was forcibly suppressed.
Mo Xi’s eyes were blood-red. He suddenly turned his face away, raised his uninjured hand, and violently crushed the porcelain cup on the table. Without a word, he grabbed a shard and slashed it across the palm of his other hand!
“Ah—!”
The woman screamed, her beautiful face turning pale with terror as she stared at him.
“Young Master, you, what are you…”
Mo Xi’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His eyelashes trembled, and his pale face was tinged with a sickly flush. Clutching the blood-soaked shard of porcelain, he forced a single word out as though dragging it up from the abyss of desire.
“Get… out…”
“Young Master?”
“All… of you. Get out.”
Sensing that the evil desire was about to invade him again, he gritted his teeth and stabbed his palm once more.
As blood streamed down his hand, he suddenly raised his scarlet eyes. His thin lips had already been bitten open by himself, the bloodstains horrifying.
Mo Xi slammed his palm down on the table, making the cups and bowls clatter, and roared furiously,
“Why aren’t you all getting out already?!”
The women scrambled toward the door, only to discover in horror that it was covered by a layer of sinister evil energy.
They cried out in panic.
“What happened?”
“Why can’t the door be opened?!”
“Waaah…”
Mo Xi had never expected that the evil ghost would have such a trick. It had actually forcibly locked him inside the room together with this group of women.
Another wave of intense rage and disgust surged through him.
At that moment, a buzzing suddenly filled his ears, and that sticky voice once again emerged, like a wet, slippery tongue probing its way out.
“Young Master, you should just give up. Why put yourself through all this suffering?”
“…”
“Look at these girls. Aren’t they beautiful? Aren’t they pleasing?”
Mo Xi shouted angrily, “Get lost!”
“You’re telling me to get lost? Hehehe… What gives you the right to tell me to get lost? Do you know? I’m attached to your body, and I can smell the… violence… and brutality… that you’re born with, deep in your bones. Young Master, you have an intense desire to conquer and control. You long to forcibly possess the things you set your sights on…”
Mo Xi closed his eyes because of the intense pain racking his body. His hand trembled slightly as he gritted his teeth.
“…You… insolent…”
“You’re still young. There are so many pleasures you have yet to experience. As for me, I’ve possessed hundreds and thousands of men. The moment I enter your flesh and blood, I know every hidden sickness and desire in your hearts. Young Master, you haven’t realized it yet, but the darkness inside you is far deeper than you imagine.”
“…”
“Come. A gentleman and a demon are only one step apart. Come, let me help you take that step. You’ll thank me. Hahahaha! Let me help you taste the human heart and lust. Let me tear apart your innermost thoughts and make you recognize your true self.”
The evil ghost’s voice echoed through the room, like black crow feathers drifting down from the heavens.
“You’re actually the same kind of person as me. No. You’re even more terrifying than I am.”
“Does it hurt? Is it burning? You want to vent it, don’t you? As long as you stop resisting, I can let you experience the most wonderful sensations in this world—the woman’s… lust… desire… indulgence…”
That ethereal, smug voice abruptly stopped!
Mo Xi summoned every last bit of his strength and suddenly stood up. He tore the glass beads hanging from the corner of the table and, desperately maintaining his clarity of mind, flung them toward the five sobbing women—
Every bead struck an acupoint that rendered its target unconscious with perfect precision. They did not last long before collapsing limply onto the floor one after another.
After doing all this, Mo Xi’s strength was completely exhausted. Supporting himself against the corner of the table, he staggered down into a sitting position.
The world spun before his eyes, and his consciousness drifted farther and farther away.
With his blood-covered hand, he once again gripped the sharp porcelain shard and viciously stabbed it into his palm and thigh!
It hurt, but it allowed him to maintain the last remnants of his clarity.
Once.
Again.
His gaze slowly scattered. He could no longer see what was in front of him clearly, and all he could hear was a constant buzzing in his ears. He could no longer make out the sounds around him.
He did not know how much time had passed. In the end, he was not even sure whether he was still truly conscious, or how much longer he could maintain control.
Before his consciousness completely sank, he vaguely heard an anxious shout from outside the door—
“Mo Xi!”
Who was it?
Who had found him so quickly?
Who had come all this way to find him…
.
Half a shichen earlier. Mass Grave Slope.
The moment the restraint spell lost its effect, Gu Mang immediately broke through the thunder barrier. Ignoring the numbness in his hands and feet, he swiftly formed a tracking seal.
“Spirit Hound, guide the way!”
Golden-red light shot through the talisman held between his raised index and middle fingers, gathering into the shape of a hunting hound.
Gu Mang said to the spirit hound, “Go. Track down Junior Brother Mo.”
The spirit hound barked twice. It circled around the spot several times, sniffing the air, then suddenly spread its golden paws and sprinted toward the outskirts.
Gu Mang followed the spirit hound for ten li. They crossed rice paddies and wilderness, passed several small villages, and eventually followed the trail all the way to the nearby Xingxiang City.
This was the nearest major city to the site of the incident. Although its scale was nowhere near as magnificent as the imperial capital, it was still quite prosperous.
Although it was already deep into the night, the streets were still crowded with people. Young men and women walked together along the main thoroughfare, while groups of three or five burly men sat by the roadside drinking and eating late-night snacks. There were also quite a few cultivators stopping here to rest during their travels.
The spirit hound darted left and right through the crowds, leaving behind little golden paw prints wherever it went.
Finally, it stopped in front of a brightly decorated building.
“Woof, woof!”
“I know. This is the place, right?”
“Woof!”
Gu Mang nodded and raised his hand to return it to the talisman.
He was just about to enter when a slender, fair arm suddenly stretched out from the side and blocked his way.
“Hey, miss, wait a moment. Rouge Tower isn’t a place a young lady like you can enter.”
A woman wearing a jade-green ruqun with a plain gauze outer robe walked out gracefully. She cracked pumpkin seeds between her teeth, her delicate brows and eyes filled with unmistakable sarcasm.
“I’m going in to find someone.”
“Of course you’re going in to find someone. Men come to our place looking for pleasure, while women come looking for revenge. Oh, my dear girl, we’re only a small business. We can’t afford to have you people making a scene here. If you start fighting and smashing tables and chairs, won’t our establishment be the one paying for it?”
Gu Mang froze for a moment. His beautiful black eyes shifted from the woman to the building behind her.
“…”
He had been so desperate to rescue someone that he had not paid any attention to what kind of place this actually was.
Only now did he realize that it was one of the city’s brothels. The woman before him was dressed in the uniquely flamboyant style of a courtesan from a pleasure house, yet he had somehow failed to recognize it at first glance.
“Go home, go home. If little sister really wants to settle accounts, wait until daytime and have a proper talk with your sweetheart then.”
Gu Mang had never imagined that things would turn out like this.
Normally, he loved joking around and rarely acted serious. Even when he spoke, his words were usually seventy percent nonsense mixed with thirty percent sincerity.
But that did not mean he was actually an irresponsible person.
He simply… had never thought that someone would take every single one of his jokes seriously.
He had casually said, “I can’t do anything. You have to protect me,” just for fun.
Yet that young master had actually believed him.
Gu Mang could not help becoming angry with himself.
Why had he joked around with someone so serious?
Lu Zhanxing had been right. If another senior brother had accompanied Junior Brother Mo this time, someone like Jiang Yexue, this accident absolutely would not have happened.
Gu Mang bit his lip and glanced at the brilliantly illuminated pleasure house.
Amid the giggling mockery of several courtesans soliciting customers, he suddenly turned around and hurried toward the nearest deserted alley…
“Sigh, what’s gotten into these little girls lately? They aren’t charming enough to keep their men interested, and then they all come here looking for trouble.”
After driving Gu Mang away, the woman in green spat out a pumpkin-seed shell and chatted merrily with her sisters.
“How many have we talked out of coming in this month?”
“This is the seventh, I think. To be honest, that girl was quite pretty. Hehe, how did she fail to keep her sweetheart from wandering off?”
“That’s because all the sisters in our house are too beautiful!”
“Hahaha, that’s true. Every one of us is overflowing with charm. That girl’s eyes and brows were nice, but if you look closely, her face was too heroic. She didn’t even know how to dress herself, and she wasn’t wearing a speck of makeup. Of course she loses to us!”
“Don’t you think she was also a little too tall? A body like that probably wouldn’t be comfortable to hold.”
“No wonder her lover ran off to our place.”
The group of beautiful women chattered away for a while before breaking into laughter.
They were having too much fun to notice someone emerging from the narrow alley beside them.
It was not until that person stopped in front of them that the women casually raised their heads.
Then they all froze.
Standing beneath the red silk lanterns was an excessively handsome young man.
He was tall and straight, with long legs and broad shoulders, a prominent nose, and slightly pursed lips. His beautiful black eyes shone with anxious unease as he lowered his gaze toward them.
Those features looked strangely familiar.
It seemed as though they had just seen him not long ago.
But where had they seen him?
A man this handsome should have been impossible to forget at first sight.
“…Can I go inside?”
Only then did the women recover one by one.
Then they immediately rushed forward to solicit his business.
“Of course! Of course! Why wouldn’t you be able to?”
“Please come in, Young Master. Is this your first time here?”
“Is there a girl you like, Young Master? What do you think of me? I’ll waive the tea charge for you.”
“Uh, I’m not…”
“Don’t be shy, Young Master. The first time is unfamiliar, but the second time will be easy.”
The young man surrounded by these colorful butterflies was none other than Gu Mang, who had dispelled the effects of the Illusory Form Powder and changed back into men’s clothing.
While dealing with the women and walking into the building with them, Gu Mang quickly swept his eyes across the entire main hall.
He did not see Mo Xi.
He immediately looked up toward the staircase leading to the second floor.
Silently reciting an incantation, he focused his senses and immediately detected a powerful ghost aura emanating from one of the private rooms upstairs.
Gu Mang turned around and smiled apologetically at the women.
“Sorry, ladies. I won’t need your company for the moment. I have a friend waiting for me upstairs. I’m going to find him.”
“Your friend? So Young Master already has a girl he knows here?”
“Oh my, are we not pretty enough to catch Young Master’s eye?”
Gu Mang was so worried about Mo Xi’s safety that he felt as though his heart were being roasted over a fire.
He avoided the women’s gazes, wishing he could simply turn invisible and hurry upstairs to drag Mo Xi out.
He broke free of them, then turned back and smiled at their disappointed pretty faces.
“How could that be? You’re all beautiful too. It’s just that I already have an appointment tonight… Next time. Next time, I’ll definitely come back and visit you all myself.”
Although the courtesans were rather disappointed, since he had spoken so kindly, they could only unhappily say, “Sigh, all right.”
“I really envy the girl he came to see. I wonder which sister she is?”
“No idea. How could we pry into a customer’s affairs that much…”
Following the evil aura, Gu Mang arrived in front of a private room with its sandalwood doors tightly shut.
He raised his hand, but before he could touch the wooden door, he sensed that it had been reinforced with a ghost spell. An ordinary customer could not approach it at all.
His heart jumped.
He immediately gathered his spiritual power, raised his leg, and kicked the door open with all his strength.
“Mo Xi!”
The private room was saturated with an overwhelmingly sweet fragrance of rouge and powder. Everywhere he looked was an eye-searing crimson—the carpet, bedding, silk curtains, and candles were all red.
The five women who had come to attend to the customer were dressed in red with flushed cheeks, yet all five now lay collapsed on an embroidered carpet decorated with colorful butterflies. It was obvious that someone had struck their unconsciousness acupoints, and every one of them was completely unconscious.
Mo Xi was slumped over the table.
He was the only pale, subdued color in the room.
He was still desperately trying to maintain the last remnants of his clarity, but he had no way to respond to Gu Mang’s voice.
“Junior Brother Mo!”
“…”
“Junior Brother Mo!”
The world around him seemed hazy, as though someone were calling to him from across mountains and seas.
Mo Xi moved his eyes, trying to determine whether such a person truly existed, whether there really was someone calling his name.
He was not sure.
Ever since his father had passed away, no one in this world had ever called his name with such anxious concern.
“Mo Xi!!”
Suddenly, someone lifted him from the table.
Through his hazy vision was a blurry figure.
He thought it was another woman from the brothel and instinctively shook his head, trying to break free.
But this “woman” was far too strong.
Without giving him any chance to resist, she supported him and helped him to his feet, the two of them staggering along together.
Mo Xi’s pale lips, stained with blood, murmured,
“Where… are we going?”
“I’ll help you lie down on the bed. It’s all right now. It’s all right.”
The moment Mo Xi heard the word “bed,” he immediately said,
“No… Don’t go to the bed… Let me go… Get away…”
“It’s all right, Mo Xi. Don’t move. You’re bleeding so much…”
“I won’t go… Go away. Don’t provoke me. Stay… cough… stay farther away from me!”
But that person did not listen to him at all.
In his dazed state, Mo Xi was supported into the room and collapsed onto the soft couch.
He swung his hand, trying to push the other person away, resisting so fiercely that he nearly fell off again.
But his battered hand was caught by another strong, powerful hand.
Then the person embraced him.
The arm was so strong that it did not feel like a woman’s.
It felt more like…
Before Mo Xi could finish the thought, he felt the person stroking his hair and coaxing him.
“All right, all right. It’s okay. I’m here. I came.”
“…Don’t go to the bed.”
“I’m not, I’m not.”
Although he said that, his arm tightened and helped Mo Xi onto the couch anyway.
Gu Mang kept coaxing him.
“All right, all right. It’s okay. It’s all my fault, Junior Brother. Senior Brother shouldn’t have joked around with you.”
“…”
His blood-covered hand was carefully held.
Gu Mang looked at the palm that had been slashed until the flesh was a bloody mess.
He did not even know what he was feeling.
His voice suddenly softened.
“It’s all right now, Junior Brother. You’ve already done very well. Leave the rest to me.”
Mo Xi, broken down to the very limit, stared with unfocused pupils.
Before his eyes were the scarlet silk curtains, swaying strings of beads, and a blurry reflection.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not make out the other person’s face.
Just as he could no longer distinguish any of the voices around him, certain sensory stimuli were being magnified again and again.
He could not see clearly what the person holding his hand looked like.
But he could clearly smell the person’s scent and feel the warmth of their body.
That comfortable heat and the touch of skin caused a kaleidoscope of colors to flash rapidly before his eyes.
He suddenly tilted his head back and gasped heavily.
“Let go…”
“Mo Xi…”
Whether it was because the scent of this body was too pleasant to him, or because the sensation of skin against skin was too stimulating, or perhaps because the evil ghost’s desire had finally eroded his heart, he only knew that a surge of evil fire was scorching him more fiercely than ever.
He slammed his fist down onto the bedding.
But the fist sank into the soft brocade quilt, and he could not feel even the slightest pain.
Mo Xi only felt his mouth go dry and his sanity approach madness.
Almost desperately, he rasped,
“Let me go—you stay away from me… Get away!”
The person did not leave.
Instead, they quietly recited an incantation.
Wisps of blue light curled upward from their interlocked fingertips.
The blue light made Mo Xi feel unbearably irritated and anxious.
His throat felt as though it were being roasted by fire. He gritted his teeth in agitation.
“You…”
“It’ll be over soon.”
“…If you don’t leave… I…”
“I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you. Before, I only wanted to joke around with you.”
The person’s voice was low, magnetic, and gentle.
“I should have protected you, but instead I made you foolishly come and protect me. Look at me, being your senior brother…”
Another hand touched his burning-hot cheek and gently stroked it.
“I apologize to you.”
But Mo Xi could not hear what he was saying at all.
The agitation in his chest was too intense.
It was a calamity unlike anything he had ever suffered before. He did not know how to suppress it or how to extinguish it.
And so the flames burned through the heavens, while the primordial flood drowned everything beneath it.
At one moment, that terrifying instinct finally seized the high ground amid his collapsing rationality.
Mo Xi gasped for breath, his eye sockets red.
Suddenly, he exerted tremendous force with his hand.
Still in their interlocked position, he violently pulled that person toward himself.
“!”
Before Gu Mang could react, the world seemed to turn upside down.
He had already fallen onto the bedding, staring wide-eyed at the young man above him.
Although the youth was not yet as large as Gu Mang, his strength was astonishing.
His chest rose and fell violently, and Gu Mang could even hear the frantic pounding of his heartbeat below.
Those black eyes were both bewildered and ferocious as they stared down at him in confusion and disorientation.
“Junior Brother, you—!”
Before he could finish, all his shocked words were sealed away by a young, inexperienced kiss that allowed no resistance.
It was forceful and restless, like a river of molten lava surging forth after being suppressed for far too long.
Rather than a kiss, it was more like a vicious bite.
Gu Mang’s lips were soon bitten open, and the metallic scent of blood spread between their lips and teeth.
This was far too sudden.
Completely beyond his expectations.
It took Gu Mang quite some time to react.
He cursed inwardly, forcibly suppressing his shock. With one hand hidden from view, he quietly formed a seal and silently recited an incantation.
In his hazy consciousness, Mo Xi heard the evil ghost’s voice emerging from deep within his heart.
It whispered smugly into his ear,
“See? Haven’t you experienced it now? You’re not a saint, and you’re not a gentleman either. Everyone has a vicious beast in their heart. The one you’ve locked away by nature is even darker and more twisted than anyone I’ve ever encountered. It’s just that you haven’t released it yourself yet.
“But now that you’ve tasted it, one day, hehehe, you will…”
But it did not finish.
Gu Mang’s spell had already taken effect.
The fierce ghost suddenly let out a shriek, like a cat being strangled.
“Ah! Who is it?! Who?! You people! How dare you capture me?! What pure-blooded noble family, what prestigious young master—you’re all the same! When faced with desire, how much cleaner are you than me?!”
It shouted those final words at him like a curse, its voice filled with madness.
After that, Mo Xi lost consciousness.
He knew nothing more…