What was going on…? How could it be empty?
It was as though someone had poured a ladleful of ice water into boiling water. The bubbling subsided, and steam began to rise.
Amid the hazy confusion clouding his mind, Mo Xi thought indistinctly:
Why, when customers had clearly entered Gu Mang’s room, had not even a single shell coin been left behind in that earthenware jar?
—Captain Mo was a serious, stern, self-disciplined man, like an impregnable fortress. Nothing could ever set the beacon fires blazing atop its walls.
Nothing, except Gu Mang.
Ever since long ago, whenever something involved Gu Mang, Mo Xi would lose control of himself. He would become irritable, impulsive, restless, until his defenses crumbled and his reason deserted him entirely.
It was only after becoming a police officer, after years of enduring life-and-death situations and tempering himself through ruthless experience, that he had finally learned to restrain this one weakness of his.
But now, in this world, he and Gu Mang were no longer on opposite sides of the law. He was just an ordinary young man again, increasingly unable to control himself in front of someone he cared about, increasingly desperate to know how Gu Mang had spent these past two years.
Had those people humiliated him? Had they even refused to pay him?
And why was he so calm about everything, so indifferent that it was almost frightening? Could a person really become this composed in the face of life’s ups and downs, its honors and humiliations, simply because he no longer cared about anything?
“You good-for-nothing money pit!”
A furious shout suddenly came from outside, interrupting Mo Xi’s thoughts. Footsteps followed, and a woman approached, cursing as she walked.
“You can’t do anything right! All you know how to do is piss off the customers! That traitor should’ve been hanged ages ago. I really don’t know why Lord Wangshu insists on sparing his worthless life!”
Mo Xi frowned slightly. Who was that?
The setting guide’s prompt sounded in his mind.
Li Junlei: [That is Matron Qin, the manager of Plum Blossom Courtyard.]
Mo Xi remembered. A long time ago, Lord Wangshu had wanted to cultivate a friendship with Lord Xihe and had sent Matron Qin to select and arrange for more than ten beautiful women of various types to be delivered to his military camp. At the time, Matron Qin had tried every possible way to persuade him, making the women sound like heavenly beauties. Lord Xihe had refused to keep any of them, but he had remembered that woman’s shrill, piercing voice. Just thinking about it gave him a headache.
“He can’t cry, can’t smile, can’t charm anyone, can’t even do his job in bed! Every time a customer walks out of his room, they curse me out until I’m covered from head to toe in abuse!”
The woman was seething. Her shadow had already appeared on the paper-covered window as she continued to rant.
“An absolute money pit!”
Li Junlei: [Severe warning!! Lord Xihe has entered Plum Blossom Courtyard without permission to patronize Gu Mang—]
“I’m not patronizing anyone!” Mo Xi snapped angrily.
Li Junlei: [Lord Xihe has entered Plum Blossom Courtyard without permission, intending to patronize Gu Mang—]
“I’m not intending to patronize him either!” Mo Xi was even angrier.
Li Junlei: [Lord Xihe has entered Plum Blossom Courtyard without permission, possibly intending to patronize Gu Mang—]
“…”
Mo Xi was speechless, feeling as though anger had clogged his chest.
Li Junlei: [This behavior constitutes a severe violation of your character setting. If discovered, your character fidelity will be reduced by 50%. You will—]
“Fall gravely ill and wish you were dead! I know! Shut up already!”
Li Junlei: [Your freedom of movement and speech will be restricted for ten days. All developments will revert to the original novel’s plotline. You will be trapped inside your body, unable to move, until your punishment is complete.]
“…”
Apparently sensing Mo Xi’s fury, Li Junlei sensibly added an explanation.
[If your character fidelity drops below 60%, you will suffer a serious illness and wish you were dead. If it drops below 30%, your movements will be restricted. Your current character fidelity is 77.5%. After deducting 50%, you will have only 27.5%, which falls into the latter category. Please understand.]
Mo Xi had not expected things to develop this way. But Li Junlei was right. The mere news that Lord Xihe had visited a brothel was enough to horrify the entire Chonghua Kingdom. If Lord Xihe had secretly climbed over a wall to visit one, the whole kingdom would be left dumbfounded.
And if he had secretly climbed over a wall to visit a brothel specifically to select the services of his sworn enemy, Chonghua might very well explode.
Mo Xi abruptly turned Gu Mang’s face toward him. His heavy breathing brushed against Gu Mang’s cheek as he lowered his voice and asked, “How do I get out of here?”
Gu Mang coughed several times before managing to draw a breath.
“When there’s a customer in the room, the writing outside the door changes color. She won’t come in.”
“I’m not a customer here.”
Gu Mang’s eyes widened slightly.
“Then…”
As the two exchanged a few words, Matron Qin’s crooked shadow appeared at the doorway. She was just about to push the door open when, in a split second, Mo Xi glanced sideways and suddenly said to Gu Mang, “Don’t tell her I’m here.”
“…”
The door opened. Almost at the same instant, Mo Xi released his grip on Gu Mang, slipped away, and concealed himself behind the folding screen.
Matron Qin entered the room with a water pipe in her hand. She pursed her red lips and exhaled, instantly filling the room with a thick, pungent cloud of smoke.
Gu Mang could not help sneezing softly.
“Ten times I’ve come into your room, and ten times you’ve been coughing and choking like this. I was practically hoping you’d choke yourself to death one of these days.” Matron Qin rolled her eyes. “But after keeping you alive all these years, you still haven’t had the decency to die.”
She sat down at the round table and took several forceful drags on her water pipe.
“General Gu, there are only three days left in this month. The other rooms have earned thousands of white shell coins. Even the least popular ones, even the ugliest, have managed to earn enough to feed themselves just by using their mouths, smiling, and making the customers happy.”
She shot him a sideways glance.
“Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”
“…I have no money.”
“I knew you had no money!” Matron Qin sucked noisily on her pipe. “You’re useless at everything. Apart from that face of yours, you have absolutely no redeeming qualities.”
Gu Mang sneezed softly again.
“Stop pretending to be frail and pitiful!” Matron Qin raised her voice, growing even angrier. “Look at yourself! What have you saved in that broken jar of yours? I’ve been supporting you, and at the end of the year, I’m still losing money instead of making any!”
“…”
“If this keeps up, then even if I can’t lay a hand on you because Lord Wangshu ordered me to spare you, I’ll still butcher that dog you keep in your courtyard!”
Gu Mang had been silent, but at the mention of killing the dog, he finally spoke.
“I did everything you told me to do.”
“Everything I told you to do, my foot! You think I’m an idiot?”
“They’re the ones who refuse to pay me. Because they say I’m…” Gu Mang paused before forcing out the two words. “A traitor.”
Behind the screen, Mo Xi listened.
He could not see Gu Mang’s expression, but Gu Mang’s voice remained calm and steady, as though he were simply stating an unremarkable fact. There was not even the slightest trace of guilt or shame. The word traitor seemed to weigh no more than a feather to him.
“Traitors shouldn’t ask for money,” Gu Mang said. “They say that whatever I do for them is what I deserve to do.”
Through a narrow gap beside the folding screen, Mo Xi could see Gu Mang’s lonely, solitary figure from behind.
“I owe them.”
Matron Qin choked for a moment before snapping irritably, “Yes, that’s right! You’re a traitor. But what does that have to do with me? You owe them, fine, you’re not wrong about that. But I run a brothel, not a charity! How am I supposed to keep losing money like this? And as if that weren’t enough, those distinguished guests curse me out every single time!”
“How many times have I told you? When you serve noble gentlemen, I can’t just reach out and demand payment. You have to coax the money out of them yourself! No matter how little, you should at least be able to persuade them to give you something. But you, General Gu—have you ever even tried?”
Gu Mang said nothing.
After a moment, Matron Qin’s voice rang out even more shrilly, almost piercing the heavens.
“What are you glaring at me for? You think you’re in the right?!”
“Kneel!”
Mo Xi had assumed Gu Mang would refuse to kneel. At the very least, he thought Gu Mang would not do it immediately.
But once again, reality exceeded his expectations.
Gu Mang seemed not to care, as though he did not even consider it particularly humiliating. He actually knelt down in front of the woman.
“…”
Mo Xi raised a hand and braced it against the cold wall beside him. A roaring sound filled his ears—the rush of blood surging through his veins.
Gu Mang had actually…
Before he could finish the thought, the sharp crack of a whip suddenly rang out.
Mo Xi had endured showers of arrows and rainstorms of bullets, yet that single sound made him shudder. His pupils contracted, and cold sweat broke out across his back.
Through the narrow gap in the folding screen, he saw Gu Mang kneeling before Matron Qin. The shrewish woman had risen to her feet, spiritual power gathering in her palm. A scarlet whip materialized, and she began lashing Gu Mang viciously across the back.
It was as though the woman had decided to pour all her frustration over her failing business, all the resentment she had nowhere else to vent, onto Gu Mang. She whipped him with all her strength, delivering twenty or thirty lashes before finally stopping to catch her breath.
Throughout the entire ordeal, Gu Mang did not utter a single sound. He did not even groan. It was as though he cared neither about humiliation nor pain.
After satisfying herself, Matron Qin withdrew the spiritual whip and picked up her water pipe again. She took several drags, calming her heaving chest.
“You know perfectly well that a traitor is more disgusting than an enemy, don’t you? Then put some effort into making them happy! Make them willingly hand over their money!”
Gu Mang repeated the word, as though trying to understand what it meant.
“Charm them…”
“If you still don’t bring in any money next month, then not only will the customers beat you, but I won’t go easy on you either! Think carefully about that!”
With those words, Matron Qin stormed out in a fury.
When Mo Xi emerged from behind the screen, Gu Mang was still kneeling on the floor, his back turned toward him.
His silhouette looked terribly quiet. The neckline of his robe was wide, exposing a strip of pale skin. Above it, his neck curved downward like a wisp of smoke; below it, vivid red marks spread upward like the scorched remnants of a calamity.
There were too many mysteries surrounding this Gu Mang. He seemed too unfamiliar, too quiet, too indifferent to life and death, honor and humiliation. Mo Xi felt he had countless questions he wanted to ask.
But as he stared at the blood still slowly seeping from Gu Mang’s wounds, the only words that finally escaped his lips were:
“…Were all the wounds on your body inflicted by her?”
“Not all of them.” Gu Mang rose from the floor. “Most of you who come here beat me.”
“…”
“She beats me the most.”
As he spoke, Gu Mang did not even look at Mo Xi. He simply walked over to the washbasin.
Mo Xi was just about to say something else when he saw Gu Mang remove his inner robe and toss the bloodstained garment aside. Then Gu Mang picked up the basin and poured the entire contents over himself with a loud splash.
That back seemed to hold some kind of spell, bewitching the undefeated Marshal Mo and leaving him utterly motionless.
In Lord Xihe’s memories, Gu Mang’s back when he was young had been covered in fair skin, as smooth as jade moistened by a mountain stream.
Later, as Gu Mang matured, his back became straighter and broader, its contours sharper, like the taut string of a drawn bow.
Later still, they went to war. Through wind and rain, beneath the blazing sun, Gu Mang’s skin gradually took on the warm hue of honey. When he bathed by the river in the evening, his shoulder blades shifted beneath his skin, and droplets of water ran over the two rising ridges like cavalry charging across sand dunes. They streamed downward along the bold, untamed lines of his back, only for those lines to narrow abruptly at his lean waist, disappearing beneath the waistband of his military uniform and trousers.
Back then, there had rarely been scars on Gu Mang’s back. Most of his injuries had been on the front of his body—his chest, his abdomen, his waist.
But now, under the dim yellow lamplight, the back Lord Xihe had known was almost unrecognizable. Whip marks, knife wounds, and charred, mangled burns from magical spells covered nearly every inch of skin. It was difficult to find a single patch of uninjured flesh, let alone account for the fresh, bloodied wounds left by the beating just now\…
How much must it hurt?
Mo Xi’s heart was a tangled mess of emotions. He could not tear his gaze away.
He closed his eyes briefly, but in the end, he still asked, “Where’s your wound medicine?”
Gu Mang looked bewildered, as though he did not understand what Mo Xi meant.
“Wound medicine?”
“Then what about bandages?”
“Bandages?”
Mo Xi himself no longer knew whether what he felt was anger, hatred, resentment, or some inexplicable ache.
“At least you should have a bottle of hemostatic powder.”
Gu Mang stopped what he was doing and turned to look at him. After a moment, he finally understood, but shook his head.
“Not necessary. It’ll heal.”
Then, as though nothing had happened, he continued rinsing the blood from his wounds with cold water, carelessly and without any thought for his injuries. He roughly wiped himself down with a towel, then went to a low camphorwood cabinet and rummaged around until he found a wrinkled inner robe, which he put back on.
Seeing how casually Gu Mang treated his injuries, Mo Xi felt the agitation inside him swell into an even more violent storm.
Lord Xihe had seen countless prisoners of war: the defiant, the submissive, those who sought death, those who betrayed their masters for glory.
He himself had also dealt with plenty of criminals of similar sorts.
But the Gu Mang standing before him bore no resemblance to any prisoner or criminal he had ever encountered. He was even different from the Gu Mang he knew—the man who had clutched at him, collapsed into his arms covered in blood, and laughed like a madman as he said, Officer Mo, come die with me.
Mo Xi did not know what this Gu Mang resembled.
There was not even a trace of the familiar warmth of humanity about him.
He did not cry, did not bow his head, did not fear, did not resent.
He seemed not even to feel pain.
After a long silence, Mo Xi gritted his teeth and asked, “Gu Mang, what exactly is going through your mind?”
He had not expected Gu Mang to answer. He had only asked because the weight in his chest was unbearable.
Who would have thought that Gu Mang actually did answer?
And he answered with complete seriousness.
“I want shell coins.”
“…”
“Everyone else here has them. I’m the only one who doesn’t. No one has ever given me any.”
Mo Xi stared at him, studying the expression on Gu Mang’s face as he spoke. The strange feeling in his heart grew stronger and stronger.
“Everyone says I shouldn’t ask for any.” As Gu Mang spoke, he glanced toward the broken pieces of the earthenware jar on the floor. Then he walked over, gathered the fragments, and stacked them on the table.
He still appeared calm, but Mo Xi gradually noticed something in his expression: a blank, puzzled look, as though he were genuinely confused and could not understand why things were this way.
Gu Mang turned to look at him.
“You’re the first person who’s ever given me shell coins.”
Mo Xi was silent for a moment before replying stiffly, “You know perfectly well why I gave them to you.”
Gu Mang did not answer immediately. Instead, he studied Mo Xi from head to toe several times.
Since Mo Xi had entered the room, this was the first time Gu Mang had examined him so carefully. He was no longer looking at him with the detached, perfunctory gaze he used to dismiss customers.
Then Gu Mang held out his hand.
“You want more?” Mo Xi looked down at him. “Weren’t you just trying to give it back to me?”
“I do.”
Mo Xi felt another surge of irritation. To avoid arguing with him any further—and getting even angrier in the process—he took out another gold shell coin and handed it to him.
Gu Mang did not thank him. He accepted the coin, cupped it in both hands, and lowered his head to examine it for a long time. Then he looked back at the broken jar on the table.
After thinking for a while, he went to the bed and rummaged beneath the soft mattress, eventually finding a small scented pouch.
He was just about to open it and put the shell coin inside when Mo Xi suddenly realized something. His heart turned cold, and he abruptly rose to his feet.
“Wait.”
“…”
“What is that in your hand?” Mo Xi’s voice was low and dangerous. Every syllable sounded perilously close to shattering, as though the slightest increase in force would crush the words between his teeth.
“Take it out. Give it to me.”