Slowly, Wen Kexing righted himself into a sitting position, looking at him without saying a word. Crossing his legs, fingers, tapping against his own knee, he only said in a quiet voice after half a beat. "My surname isn't Rong. I'm only bitter that I've never met that one surnamed Rong in my life, otherwise I'll slaughter him once for every one time i run into him"
Zhou Zishu's face was devoid of any surprise. Upon hearing this, he paused before his speech slowed as he said "Oh? Looks like I've guessed wrongly. Then I thought that....I thought tge current master of the Ghost valley is a Rong family descendant."
In the darkness, only Zang Chengling's light snoring could be heard. The distance between the two of them was not far, but was as silent as a graveyard. After a while, a smile slowly formed on Wen Kexing's face. This smile was different from his usual dumb squinty-eyed grin; there were no laugh wrinkles the corner of his eyes, his pitch black irises still as cold as ice, reflecting a weak light. He looked over sharply, slender eye brow cocked slightly giving off the impression of a false smile. "Oh?"
Zhou Zishu's voice was so quiet that it seemed like his lips did not move at all, but the speed at which he spoke was rapid. "The delighted mourning ghost spent money to hire the poisonous scorpion to stalk the kid throughout his journey, not because he wanted to kill him, but because he desperately wanted to know if he'd seen a man with a missing finger when the Zhang family tragedy had occured. According to what I know, the hanged ghost Xue Fang is missing a finger. But ever since we met those people in the run down temple that day, i knew that the extermination of the Zhang family was not carried out by someone from the ghost valley"
Like he was greatly interested, Wen Kexing continued asking, "How did you know this?"
Zhou Zhishu laughed lightly "Escorting that kid to Taihu unharmed, with all his limbs intact out of the snares of a hundred thousand ghosts-if my abilities were really that great, i would have ruled over the pugilist world years ago, what would i be here for?"
Wen Kexing looked at him with a burning gaze and said, "...You don't have to be so humble either."
Zhou Zishu continued, "But why would the Delighted mourning ghost chase after this kid so doggedly? I think that there will be only one explanation: no matter who committed the deed on the Zhang family there must have been a ghost from the bamboo ridge who left the valley on his own and got himself involved in this, and the delighted mourning ghost suspects that....or should I say want to let people suspect that, this person is the hanged ghost. Additionally, the man in black who Gu Xiang killed in the run down temple the other day said the word 'purple' right before he died. Purple what? Let me guess...it can't be purple danger, can it?
Wen Kexing nodded.b"indeed, the two of us followed them from Jiangnan all the way to Taihu, and then to Donating. We arrived coincidentally, and our appearance was suspicious. I even killed that little ghost in the underground cave, because i was wary of him exposing my identity, am I right?
Zhou Zishu said "This isn't difficult to guess Wen xiong. If you take a look at the entire Jianghu, there are too few people who i can't guess the background of. Discounting those of the southern border and the Northern desert, within the pugilist world of the central plains, i can count them on one hand. You and i have spent so many days together. If I still couldn't tell, wouldn't I be too stupid?
Wen Kexing was silent for a while neither confirming nor denying. Then a laugh escaped him and he nodded. "You really know too many things... Manor Lord Zhou? Lord Zhou?
Zhou Zishu smiled. "I'm no more than a civilian now, the valley master is too polite." When Wen Kexing had directly named the 'Three Autumn Nails of the Seven Acupunctures' earlier, Zhou Zishu had known that Wen Kexing had already guessed at his own background.
The two of them said nothing else. In that moment, Wen Kexing was no longer the glib-tongued Casanova who had an exclusive taste for men, an Zhou Zishu was no longer the broke, homeless wanderer who sang little tunes off pitch- The mysterious master of Fengya mountain and the unpredictable former master of Tiang Chung faced each other silently in an abandoned house, but it was more like a boundless sizing-up of the other.
The only witness was, unbelievably, sleeping like the dead off to one side.
Zhou Zishu glanced in the direction of Zhang Chengling, and lowered his voice even further. "Isn't the Ghost master following this child because you think he knows something? Such as... who the person who broke the rule and left the valley, and kept hunting him down after is?"
Wen Kexing asked in reply, all smiles, "How do you know that the one I'm following is him?"
Zhou Zishu let loose a laugh. "If you aren't following him, you can't be following me, can you?"
Yet Wen Kexing only smiled. His demeanor could have 🐝 easily mistaken for one deeply in love as they gazed at their lover, his smile giving Zhou Zishu goosebumps. Half a beat later, Wen Kexing asked, light, "A-Xu, don't you think we're becoming a better match for each other?"
Zhou Zishu said resolutely, "Not at all."
Wen Kexing gazed at him, his expression still one of hair raising gentleness. They looked at each other for half a beat before Zhou Zishu asked. "are you crazy or is this an after effect of qi deviation?"
But Wen Kexing caught his fingers lightly and caressed his palm. He lifted it, bent his head to press a gentle kiss to the back of his hand, and asked, "What do you think?"
Goosebumps instantly spread all over on Zhou Zishu's body. He snatched his arm back. That warm sensation of his lips and that persistent gaze, seemed to entangle into something inseparable; Zhou Zishu was starting to find that Wen Kexing was demented, and not lightly so. "Wen xiong's appetite is too good."
Wen Kexing said shamelessly, "Nicely put, except that my appetite is whetted once I lay eyes on you, what do you suggest I do?"
Immediately afterwards, before Zhou Zishu could say anything, Wen Kexing continued bullshitting endlessly, "Many years ago, i saw a corps by the roadside which hair had already withered, The mess clumped into a ball. The colours of its clothes had faded until I can no longer tell what they once had been. It had a face that was gory with blood and flesh, its nose sliced off, its features indistinguishable. A spear had pierced it from in front all through to its back coming out from under the shoulder blades. I glanced at it a few more times-one look at those shoulder blades and i knew this had to be an unparalleled beauty when they had been alive, and guess what?"
Zhou Zishu inhaled deeply but Wen Kexing interjected before he could speak, "I have yet to misjudge a person's beauty by their bones my whole life. So A-Xu, you might as well wash off the disguise on your face and let me kiss and hold you until my addiction is sated. Beautiful people are rare in this world, but they're also not too difficult to come across. I've embraced almost all of the beauties in this world, and have never pestered them afterwards. Who knows, perhaps after I've seen your true face,vwe develop passionate, torrid emotions for each other, have a one-night stand, and I won't think of you after wards again. But the way you are now....makes me want to live out the rest of my life with you instead."
Zhou Zishu wanted to say something, his words already on the tip of his tongue, but instantly forgot them once he heard this. He stared at Wen Kexing, eyes wide and tongue tied.
Then Wen Kexing cackled, rocking back and forth in his laughter and pointed at Zhou Zishu as he said, "Scared you to death, didn't I."
"Fuck you," Zhou Zishu evaluated simply, then paused. As though he had thought of something, he suddenly patted his shoulder, and said, "Forget it, my condolences."
Wen Kexing froze, and asked hesitantly, "What?"
But Zhou Zishu said nothing else, only leant against the wall, and closed his eyes to rest.
Why would someone remember a dead person's appearance so clearly that they could relate what they had been wearing and how their hair had been in such extensive detail, even after so many years had passed, he must have gone over it countless times until it had been carved into his heart, narrate it in a joking manner as if it was nothing to him,over and over again, only fearing that he would forget how the deceased had looked like.
Inexplicably, Zhou Zishu understood that feeling-they might have met in the ocean of strangers out of coincidence, ignorant of each other's background, but this did not stand in the way of them being kindred souls.
The next day, Zhou Zhishu left the abandoned courtyard with Zhang Chengling-of course, bringing an uninvited shadow with the surname of Wen along with them. Zhou Zishu was planning to pay another visit to the pingan bank to check in on the progress of what he'd asked them to investigate the last time. So that he could gain a better understanding on things. It afforded him to stuff information into Zhang Chengling's empty head, so that he didn't just dumbly practice kongfu and do nothing else.
Zhang Chengling discovered very quickly that learning from this cheap shifu of his was extremely painful: he only cared about reciting a whole bunch of tongue twisting and complex formulas, uncaring of whether others could understand him or memorise them, and treated that as imparting knowledge to Zhang Chengling. To give this practice a better sounding name, it was a shifu's responsibility to cultivate knowledge."
Zhang Chengling felt that Zhou shifu's expectations were too high. Higher than the halfway point up the mountain; amid the fog and clouds, his head was even more muddled, his eyes rolling back in his head as he falteringly recited the formulas. Zhou Zishu was very annoyed by his dumb look, and swatted him on the back of his head, scolding, "Are you reciting formulas, or hanging yourself?"
Zhang Chengling knew he was stupid, not daring to talk back. He gazed at him with a wronged expression and Zhou Zishu asked, "What?"
Zhang Chengling said "Shifu, i don't understand."
Zhou Zishu inhaled deeply feeling that since he had accepted Zhang Chengling calling him Shifu, logically, he should have some patience with him. And so he suppressed his temper, slowed his speech, and asked with what he felt was great patience, "Which part of it do you not understand?"
Zhang Chengling glanced at him, lowered his head silently and mumbled, "All of it..."
Without a word, Zhou Zishu relocated his gaze to look elsewhere. He held it in for a long time but finally could not hold it in anylonger. "Kid, is that thing on top of your head a neck or a chamber pot?!"
Off to one side, Wen Kexing was enjoying the show. Witnessing this situation, he went up to pull them apart, actively imagining himself to be the kind father beside a strict mother. Half pleased with the himself and half smug, he told Zhou Zishu merrily, "That's enough, do you know how to teach your disciple? Even the smartest disciple will turn dumb with how much you reprimand him."
Zhou Zishu said, "Why would i not know how to? I single handedly taught my shidi all he knew"
Wen Kexing's eyes widened slightly and he asked curious "So what did you do when your shidi couldn't recite the formulas, or get the techniques right?"
This was quite some time ago; Zhou Zishu frowned as he tried to recall, before he said, "I made him copy three hundred times the rudimentary formula for practicing qi that every new disciple accepted into our sect has to learn. If he couldn't get it, he could practice at his own pace. If he still didn't get it, he didn't get to eat. And if he still hadn't gotten it by then...he didn't get to eat. And if he still needed to sleep, I asked someone to lock his bedroom in the middle of the night, and told him stand in the snow to comprehend it better"
Zhou Zishu suddenly put forward a footstep, and said, "He's not dead." Both Zhang Chengling and Wen Kexing looked at him. His sickly face didn't show the slightest hint of regret then Zhou Zishu gave a not very gentle slap on Zhang Chengling's head and said flatly, "Study hard. If you want to survive a few more days, you must have the ability."
Then he threw Zhang Chengling to Wen Kexing "I'm going to see a friend, look after him for a while." Then he left without looking back, leaving only Zhang Chengling and Wen Kexing. They looked at each other incredulously
After a long while, Wen Kexing said deeply: "Your master is right. You must have the ability- forget it, he is not there, let's do something else. I will tell you the story of that red baby. the second part of it."
Zhang Chengling immediately regained his spirit as the two of them walked to the nearest Tavern. He listened to Wen Kexing as he continued his tale "What could those monsters do? Red child thought for a long time and tried countless ways until he finally came up with an idea to get a magic weapon-"
The two of them chatted well. One was very talkative, while the other was very happy on their way. As they were about to walk into a restaurant, they suddenly heard the voice of a girl shouting behind them, "Master! Master, I finally found you!"
Wen Kexing and Zhang Chengling turned around and saw Gu Xiang leaping up and down. Surprisingly, Cao Weining still followed behind her. Wen Kexing couldn't figure out how the two of them were sudddenly here together. Before he could ask, to Gu Xiang's had already reached them and said, "you went missing yesterday, so I went to find you and met this brother Cao who told me that you and Zhou Zishu took the kid from Zhang's house so he volunteered to help me look for you! "
Cao Weining smirked, and said, "I was only helping out."
Gu Xiang continued: "I tell you master, Brother Cao is not only righteous, but also very knowledgeable. ..."
Wen Kexing simply wanted to pretend he didn't know the two of them and pulled Zhang Chengling into the tavern.
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