AU Extra: A Young Man’s Illusory Dream (12)
When Gu Mang returned, Mo Xi was already awake. He was leaning against the edge of the bed with his eyes closed, resting. Hearing the movement, he did not open his eyes and merely asked in his usual indifferent tone, “Where did you go?”
“Me? I didn’t go anywhere.” Gu Mang put on that infuriatingly shameless grin of his, but his pretty eyes guiltily dropped as they darted from side to side while he searched for an excuse. “I was just bored, so I went out for a stroll. Looked at some pretty girls and whatnot.”
Mo Xi said nothing. His long eyelashes twitched once before he opened his eyes and looked coldly at him. His sharply carved brows and features looked severe, as though he could see straight through a person with ease.
Gu Mang felt even guiltier. His dark eyes blinked several times before he explained nicely, “Uh, I put a spell formation in the guest room. I didn’t just leave you here unattended.”
“Who cares about that?” Mo Xi said. “Where’s the ghost you caught?”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“Interrogate him.”
“Uh… didn’t we agree to interrogate him after you’ve rested?” Feeling the little wooden man wriggling uneasily inside his Qiankun Pouch, Gu Mang smiled at Mo Xi. “Let’s wait until tomorrow. I just checked. It hasn’t gathered its spiritual essence yet, so I’m afraid it won’t be able to answer any of your questions.”
Before Mo Xi could question him, Gu Mang grinned again. “Oh, right. Do you want something to eat? I’ll go downstairs and buy it for you. Fish-slice porridge?”
“No need.”
“Okay, then lean-pork porridge. You lie there obediently. I’ll be right back.”
With that, he walked out and even slammed the door shut with a bang.
Mo Xi: “…………”
After a while, the door opened again. Gu Mang came back into the room.
“Where’s your money pouch?”
Mo Xi frowned. “On the tea table. Why?”
Gu Mang walked over and, sure enough, saw Young Master Mo’s money pouch casually tossed beside the vase on the tea table. He reached in like a mole stealing fruit, pulled out a handful of shell coins, and stuffed them into his own pocket.
“…What are you doing?”
“Taking money to buy you porridge. Did you expect me to pay for it myself?”
Gu Mang said this with complete righteousness and swaggered away.
As he walked down the stairs, the little wooden man poked its head out curiously.
“Why didn’t you tell him about what we discovered? He looks pretty ruthless. Whatever you’re investigating, he could definitely help.”
Gu Mang pressed it back down with one finger.
“He is pretty ruthless. When I was cleaning his wounds, I counted them. Do you know how many cuts he made on his own hand just to stay conscious?”
The little wooden man shook its head.
“Twenty-seven.”
“His entire palm was practically cut to pieces. There were another three or four stab wounds in his leg, all of them deep enough to expose the bone.”
The little wooden man didn’t want to stay inside the Qiankun Pouch, so it struggled to poke its head out again and flattered him, “That Young Master Mo is truly terrifying.”
Gu Mang narrowed his eyes maliciously at it.
“And whose fault is that?”
“……”
The little wooden man immediately withdrew its head again.
Gu Mang swaggered downstairs, saying to himself, “I can’t let him participate in the next assignment. I failed to handle things properly in the first place, and that’s why he got dragged into this mess and suffered. His trial is already over. From now on, it’s just you and me. The two of us will settle this tonight. Understand?”
The little wooden man’s muffled voice came from inside the Qiankun Pouch.
“Oh. Got it.”
But when Gu Mang returned upstairs with the porridge, the wooden man still couldn’t resist grumbling.
“Immortal-Path Master, to be honest, that noble young master isn’t nearly as noble as you think.”
Gu Mang paid little attention and casually asked, “What?”
“I’m saying, that young master in the guest room is just like the nobleman who killed me. They’re all hypocrites in fine clothes.”
The little wooden man grumbled, “I’ve seen his true nature. He’s merely suppressing it. Or rather, no one has ever pushed him far enough to make him lose control and reveal everything inside him. He isn’t at all what he looks like. Yesterday, I tried to make him submit, but he was too stubborn and vicious, so I failed.”
“That noble young master has another face that isn’t noble at all. He just refuses to accept it.”
Gu Mang immediately thought of Mo Xi’s handsome face, those features made especially sinister by restraint and repression, and those eyes filled with a dangerous crimson hue.
Those eyes suddenly opened in his memories of the previous night, staring out at him with a mixture of agitation and restraint. Gu Mang felt as though a vicious vulture had locked onto him, and a powerful chill ran through him.
After a long moment, he gritted his teeth.
“Shut up.”
He punched the Qiankun Pouch.
The little wooden man let out an “Ow!” and immediately fell silent.
The porridge was made with japonica rice. And since it was Mo Xi’s money anyway, Gu Mang generously slipped the plump female cook a few extra shell coins and persuaded her to add more ingredients.
Thus, by the time it reached Mo Xi’s hands, it was a full bowl of thick, fragrant porridge. The minced meat had been finely chopped and was plentiful. The rice was smooth and tender, topped with fresh green scallions, white sesame seeds, and crispy bits of lightly fried rice crust. A soft-boiled egg, cut in half, sat on top, its golden yolk still runny.
It was quite an enticing bowl of porridge.
The ingredients weren’t particularly expensive, and the cook’s skill couldn’t compare with the chefs at the Mo estate, but Gu Mang was quite satisfied with it himself.
Who could have known that Young Master Mo would be so difficult to please?
He stubbornly refused to let anyone feed him, so he slowly tried to bring the spoon to his mouth with his hand, which was heavily wrapped in gauze. Not only was eating laborious, it was also rather humiliating.
After three or four spoonfuls, Mo Xi silently put the spoon down.
“You don’t want any more?”
“No.”
“You’re being… way too wasteful…”
Mo Xi frowned. “Wasteful of what?”
The little wooden man immediately became angry at those words. Clearly, it had thought of those days when fine wine and meat filled the homes of the rich while people starved in the streets. Inside the Qiankun Pouch, it stomped its little feet furiously.
Only then did Gu Mang realize that the young master in front of him was someone who had no idea how expensive food and daily necessities were. Trying to reason with him about money would be completely pointless.
He could only coax him.
“If you stay hungry, you’ll recover more slowly. At least eat a little more.”
But Mo Xi looked listless and clearly had no intention of picking up the spoon again.
Gu Mang had no choice. He stared at the bowl of porridge.
There was no way he could pour it out. There was so much meat in it that if he threw it away, his heart would ache.
So, in the end, he turned around, found a spot to squat down, hugged the bowl, and secretly began slurping up the porridge himself.
The little wooden man heard the noise, crawled out of the Qiankun Pouch to take a look, and was utterly shocked.
“What are you doing?”
Gu Mang didn’t even look up.
“Eating.”
“But that’s what the noble young master already ate!”
“You said it yourself—he’s a noble young master.” Gu Mang didn’t care in the slightest. “Besides, he eats very neatly. He doesn’t scoop here and there. Look, he only took two spoonfuls from the edge. It’s fine, it’s fine.”
“But that’s leftovers!”
“You’ve never eaten leftovers?”
“…But you’re a cultivator…” The little wooden man was thoroughly confused. “You cultivators are supposed to… supposed to…”
“Supposed to what?”
Gu Mang swallowed the soft-boiled egg that Mo Xi hadn’t even touched.
The little wooden man was speechless.
“…Noble and aloof…”
Gu Mang rapidly shoveled the porridge into his mouth until his cheeks were puffed out. He gave the little wooden man a look as if it were an idiot.
“Then you have a huge misunderstanding about cultivators. Not every cultivator from Chonghua Academy is a noble.”
With that, he lowered his head and continued eating like a starving ghost.
The little wooden man’s entire worldview had been overturned. Trembling, it climbed up and poked Gu Mang’s bulging cheek with its tiny hand, still unwilling to give up.
“If you’re hungry, why don’t you just go buy another bowl?”
“I have no money.”
The little wooden man nearly fell off his shoulder.
“You people aren’t supposed to be poor! Aren’t you all super rich? Killing people like they’re nothing, doing whatever you want, meat pools and wine forests, that… that thing!”
“Thanks for the blessing.” Gu Mang was completely unconcerned. “I also hope I can become rich and successful someday. Meat pools and wine forests.”
At that moment, a door at the end of the corridor suddenly clicked open.
The little wooden man immediately slipped back into the Qiankun Pouch.
Gu Mang was startled too. He hurriedly hid the bowl behind his back, quickly licked the grains of rice from the corners of his mouth, and stared wide-eyed at the person standing in the warm yellow light.
Mo Xi: “…Why are you squatting?”
Gu Mang silently swallowed the porridge in his mouth, his face completely calm.
“…Contemplating life.”
“Do you need to squat to do that?”
“Hahahahaha.”
Gu Mang’s laughter was extremely forced.
“Personal preference.”
Mo Xi said nothing. He looked him up and down twice, making no comment whatsoever on his “personal preference.”
He merely said, “There’s something I want to discuss with you.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll come in in a moment.”
After all, he hadn’t finished his porridge yet.
However, Gu Mang’s mouth was apparently a liar’s mouth.
When Gu Mang said “a moment,” Mo Xi ended up sitting at the table with his eyes closed for a very long time before the fellow finally dawdled his way inside.
He was also suspiciously licking his lips.
“What does Junior Brother want with me?”
Under the dim light, Mo Xi’s face looked extremely pale. There was very little color in his lips, and his cheeks were as translucent as ice jade.
He was no longer awkward around Gu Mang. The young man appeared to have an excellent capacity for psychological adjustment, behaving with composure, indifference, and a completely expressionless face—as though he had absolutely no idea who that young fellow beneath the gauze had been, the one who had kissed Gu Mang and done all those rough things to Senior Brother Gu.
Only the slender, pale fingers poking out from beneath the bandages unconsciously tapped against the corner of the table, betraying his inner agitation.
“Junior Brother?”
“One time is enough.”
Mo Xi opened his eyes and glanced at him from beneath his thick lashes.
“Sit.”
Although the other man was younger than him, his presence was oppressive. Gu Mang sat only half on the round stool opposite him and looked at him uncertainly.
Mo Xi said, “While you were gone today, I planned to go to Miss Su’s residence to return her umbrella.”
“Oh… and then? The village roads twist around so much. You still remember how to get to her house?”
“I didn’t. So I asked the innkeeper. I asked him how to get to the embroiderer’s house. He didn’t tell me immediately. Instead, he asked why I wanted to go there.”
Gu Mang said irreverently, “Maybe the innkeeper has a son who likes Miss Su. He saw a handsome guy like you coming to find her and was afraid you were going to steal his girl.”
“Stop joking,” Mo Xi said. “I told the innkeeper that I had borrowed an umbrella from Miss Su before and was going to return it.”
“Did he tell you where she lived?”
“Yes.”
“Oh… and then you went there yourself?”
Mo Xi shook his head.
“I didn’t return the umbrella.”
Gu Mang froze for a moment and asked strangely, “Why not? Were you afraid she’d find out you went to the Land God Temple and curse you out or beat you up?”
“……”
Mo Xi lowered his lashes.
After a long moment, he raised his eyes again.
“The innkeeper said that the embroiderer, Su, had only recently died.”
“……”
“The day we took shelter from the rain was her seventh-day memorial.”
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？？？ I absolutely, positively did NOT expect this chapter to have another twist. I’m completely dumbfounded, my jaw is on the floor, I’m staring in shock, I’m like a stunned chicken, and I was so shocked that even my orange cat stopped chewing on his little paws. WTF, I cannot even process this.