AS GU MANG ASKED this question, an indescribable apathy came over his face. His mischievous smile had disappeared, but the sharp viciousness within him was yet to be unsheathed. He looked at Mo Xi the way he'd look at a stranger.
Of course Mo Xi couldn't ask if he had thought of defecting. He closed his eyes and murmured, "I know you're still greatly displeased with Chonghua and His Imperial Majesty. I—"
"Don't." Gu Mang raised a finger to Mo Xi's lips. He stared at Mo Xi, then broke into a grin, a touch of sweetness surfacing on his features, along with a profuse danger. "Sleeping around is one thing, gorgeous, but running my mouth is another entirely. Now that I've lost my rank, my remaining soldiers are imprisoned, and my brother is set to be executed at the eastern market in three days' time—now you come ask me whether I'm displeased with His Imperial Majesty? Do you want to saddle me with yet another sentence and see me even more hopelessly damned?"
"I've never wanted to do that to you."
"You don't want to now, but that doesn't mean you won't in the future. A beauty's favor always comes with danger, to say nothing of one as beautiful as you." Gu Mang traced Mo Xi's lips with a finger, then down to his chin to tilt his face upward. "I can't help but be wary."
"Gu Mang." Mo Xi looked at him through somber, sorrowful eyes as he said roughly, "My feelings for you are sincere."
"You nobles have gotten too used to doling out rewards. You gift jewelry to please women and power to please men. When that no longer works, you decide to make a gift of your sincerity as well. How could I dare accept it?" Gu Mang sighed. "People's hearts are ever-changing. Even His Imperial Majesty was devoted to me once. Back when I was fighting to expand Chonghua's borders, I never imagined that the next ruler would treat me like this after taking the throne." He paused. "I can't understand you people."
"Including me?"
Another pause. The corners of Gu Mang's mouth deepened into a smile. He had an uncanny ability: when he was happy, the traces of his smile made others feel they were bathed by a warm spring breeze. But when he was upset, that spring breeze became a wintry rain.
He patted Mo Xi's face. "Including you, darling."
Mo Xi grasped his fingers before he could move them away. Gu Mang looked up slowly, lashes fluttering. "Let go."
But Mo Xi didn't. He was undoubtedly hurt and despairing. But these emotions were like darkening storm clouds, lending his aura a deep stubbornness and shadow.
"How would you like me to prove it?" Mo Xi tightened his grip on Gu Mang's fingers, light flickering unsteadily in his eyes. "Gu Mang, at this point, are you only willing to believe people of common birth like you? Would you listen if Lu Zhanxing were the one standing before you?"
Gu Mang's expression didn't change. "Surely Xihe-jun jests," he said lightly. "I am no more than a lowly slave. You're all the ones who never believed my words—when was it my choice to believe or not?"
As Mo Xi studied him, it dawned on him that, right now, Gu Mang already wore the same expression as the traitorous general who had turned on his nation. In the depths of his eyes, his departure was a sure thing. He was like a man standing at the edge of a cliff, ready to throw himself into the boundless dark below at a moment's notice.
Mo Xi swallowed—it turned out that there had been many signs. He had just been too young to understand Gu Mang's true feelings, to the point that he'd missed all these hints that foretold the future. He closed his eyes and slowly released Gu Mang's hand. "I'm sorry," he murmured.
"Why are you apologizing to me?"
"For not being at your side the day you and your troops returned."
Gu Mang said nothing for a moment, then smiled. "You were still fighting on the front lines at the time, so I understood. Anyway, what would you have done even if you'd been there? Could you have changed anything?"
He sat down at the table covered with vibrant Shu-style embroidery and poured two cups of tea. Gu Mang's arms were still golden and firm with muscle, not bone-pale as they would later become. He pushed one cup toward Mo Xi and took a sip from the other. "Xihe-jun, this punishment was the new emperor's idea. It's not something you could change by pleading on my behalf. I've never resented you for not being there that day. But to be honest, our paths were never the same. Different people walk different roads, that's all. You don't owe me an apology."
"This apology isn't for you alone," Mo Xi said. "Will you let me finish?"
Gu Mang tossed him a careless smile. "Sure, go ahead. If it's not just for me, who else is it for?"
"The seventy thousand souls at Phoenix Cry Mountain."
Gu Mang fell silent.
"I'm sorry, Gu Mang. Chonghua owes you seventy thousand named graves."
The smile on Gu Mang's face faded. His lashes fluttered, then lowered as he sighed. "It's been so long since that happened, Mo Xi. I've already gotten over it. Why bring it up again?"
Mo Xi looked at this man who spent his days in a brothel making songstresses play the soul song, this man who claimed to have "gotten over it." After a few beats of silence, he said, "I will petition His Imperial Majesty for the gravestones you asked for."
Gu Mang had been toying with the cup in his hand, but his head shot up when he heard this. For some reason, a change came over his face. "Who asked you to meddle?"
"I'm not meddling," Mo Xi said.
Gu Mang scowled, a look that gave every impression of a wary beast. "Listen up, Mo Xi. Even if my army's been disbanded, they're still men that I led. Dead or alive, they are my people, not yours. You have no right to act on my behalf!"
"It's what they deserve, what each martyred hero is due. You were right to ask for them. If your plea goes unanswered, I will ask in your stead."
The room was silent, like they had sunk to depths of the sea. Gu Mang glared at Mo Xi, but he didn't utter a word.
After a moment, he lowered his head and closed his eyes. For the first time since Mo Xi entered the room, he saw a crack in Gu Mang's cold mask, the sorrow behind it surging forth like a tide. Cast in shadow, Gu Mang hung his head and chuckled. "Xihe-jun, you must be kidding. What martyred heroes…? They were no more than ants."
Mo Xi made no reply.
"How could ants be worthy of gravestones? Even if they were erected, it would be an awful joke. Who would make offerings to them? Who would honor them?" Gu Mang gripped the cup in his slender fingers. He stared at the tea inside, at the reflections on the surface. "Even if they were erected, they would be glorified heaps of rubble. I've long stopped demanding it."
Mo Xi watched him carefully.
"There's no need for you to involve yourself. This is a matter for us lowborn; it's nothing to do with Xihe-jun."
"Gu Mang…" There seemed to be something stuck in Mo Xi's throat. After a long interval, he asked, "What can I do so you stop being like this?"
"You don't have to do anything at all." Gu Mang set the cup back down on the table. "Just be good and leave me alone. Time heals all things."
But time can't heal hatred. Time can't unpick the knot in your heart, nor can it stop you from staking it all and tossing yourself off the cliff. It will only wear you down into something unrecognizable, bleach your black eyes to blue, cover your body in scars, and grind your reputation into the mud.
Time can only bring me your ruins. Gu Mang, I've come from the future. I've already seen how this ends.
Each breath pained him like the twist of a knife. Mo Xi endured the agony, his nails sinking deep into his palm as he whispered, "What about, after…"
"After?"
"What are you going to do after?"
"What else can I do? Revel in the pleasures of the flesh," Gu Mang said. "His Imperial Majesty stripped my rank, but he at least let me keep my money. From now on, I'll live however I please. It's not a bad deal."
"There's nothing else you want?"
Mo Xi parted his lips but didn't speak. He wanted to recklessly blurt out: Stop lying to me. I know everything that happens in the next eight years. I know what kind of doomed path you'll take if I leave you be. But he couldn't. The ancient books recorded that if a traveler in the Time Mirror were to reveal they had come from the future, they would be trapped there forever, unable to escape.
Mo Xi wanted so very much to understand the truth of the past and what Gu Mang had been thinking then. He wanted to know what he could have done to stop Gu Mang from stepping into the darkness.
How many weights pressing on Gu Mang's heart needed release? His Imperial Majesty's cruel words, Gu Mang's own despair. What else was there? Were there other burdens Mo Xi didn't know of, or that he had overlooked—
In the warm, dimly lit room, Mo Xi stood beside Gu Mang from eight years in the past, mind racing like a trapped beast.
Weights on his heart… Were there any others he didn't know of…?
Realization dawned, striking cold into Mo Xi's heart. He suddenly recalled an old matter he had forgotten.
Back then, when he had returned from the northern frontier and heard of Gu Mang's treason, he couldn't believe it. As if mad, he had questioned anyone who might know anything. Someone had told him this: "After you left, His Imperial Majesty summoned Gu Mang to the palace. He saw Gu Mang idling in such low spirits and thought it a shame to waste someone like him, that he could still be of use. So he gave Gu Mang a mission. Gu Mang accepted and left Chonghua, but he never returned to make his report."
Mo Xi had made relentless interrogations, trying to uncover what the emperor had asked of Gu Mang. But no one knew for sure.
"I heard it was some minor matter, something about getting back on his feet, but Gu Mang didn't want to listen and left quite quickly. He didn't even stay in the hall for the time it takes a stick of incense to burn."
"It should have been a very small assignment, really."
In the end, the only answers he got were about how the emperor wanted Gu Mang to pull himself together, but Gu Mang turned a deaf ear. Mo Xi had taken note of this at the time, but as the years passed, that detail gradually faded from his memory. Yet now, as he recalled it, his hands grew sweaty, fingers curling into fists. He had just witnessed for himself His Imperial Majesty's attitude; the emperor meant to test Gu Mang's loyalty. Why would he so solicitously ask after Gu Mang's welfare at a time like this? It couldn't possibly have been the real reason behind the mission.
Mo Xi examined Gu Mang's face in the rosy candlelight. If Gu Mang hadn't yet decided to defect, then Lu Zhanxing's death and the emperor's assignment could very well be the two things that finally pushed Gu Mang to jump into the abyss of vengeance. His heart galloped in his chest. The more he spoke with these people of the past and considered the course of events, the more he sensed strange clues everywhere. Something else must have happened back then—there must have been a piece he had missed. What was the last mission the emperor had given Gu Mang?
The only stroke of luck was that time passed differently in the Time Mirror. One or two days in the Mirror corresponded to a much briefer period on the outside. Murong Chuyi and Jiang Yexue couldn't defeat the shangao and rescue them that quickly.
He still had time. He could investigate what happened eight years ago.
In the end, Mo Xi left the brothel. Despite how deeply he longed to talk with Gu Mang in his right mind, his rational judgment still won out. He stepped back into the street, seeking out a third person from the past.
Within a cell in the deepest recesses of the imperial prison, a single oil lamp burned, its flame a dark blue glow. There was no other source of light. Lu Zhanxing lay on the icy stone bed with one leg jauntily propped up, humming as he tossed a pair of dice he'd gotten from who knew where. He wore a set of loose, clean prisoner's robes, the snowy-white lapels setting off his tanned and chiseled face.
Possibly because his execution was at hand, or perhaps because he had a knack for making friends, the jailers hadn't abused him. The cell was furnished with a little table, on which a pot of wine had even been placed. By the look of it, it was likely the flower wine issued to all the jailers in Chonghua.
The first person Mo Xi had needed to see when he entered the Time Mirror was the emperor—an inexperienced new ruler. The second person was Gu Mang—an old friend who hadn't yet lost his souls.
The third person he had to see was Lu Zhanxing—a dead man from his memories.
Mo Xi stopped outside his cell and turned to the warden who led him there. "You may go."
"Yes sir."
Lu Zhanxing hadn't yet recognized Mo Xi's voice. He thought the prison guard had gotten bored and come to chat with him, so he pulled himself up to a sloppy seat on the bed. He propped a cheek on one hand, tossing the pair of dice in the other. "Divination 7 and fortune telling, the journey of fate—the words of a man on his deathbed always strike true. Your Lu-ge can part the veil of the heavens with just two dice. Twenty silver cowries to have your fortune read, double if you're asking about your fated other half."
As Mo Xi entered his cell, he pulled back the hood of his black cape. Lu Zhanxing flicked a lazy glance up, only to freeze at the sight of Mo Xi's face. He missed the dice as they fell; they tumbled to the edge of the bed. "Xihe-jun?"
Mo Xi swept a glance over the dice and the wine on the table. After a pause, he said, "This is the first time I've seen someone imprisoned in such conditions."
Lu Zhanxing lay back down on the bed, limbs askew, and grinned. One hand groped for his fallen dice. "Would you like your fortune told? This stall of mine is closing up for good in three days' time. You'd better not miss this chance."
Mo Xi sat down across from him. "Why don't you read your own fortune?"
"I already have." Lu Zhanxing waggled his stinky feet. "I, Phony Prophet Lu, am a general whose successes cost ten thousand withered bones, but I can wither ten thousand bones even in failure. I've spent most of a year in this cell and have read my fortune hundreds of times. Nothing much to see there."
Mo Xi raised a hand and cast a soundproof barrier in the cell.
"What are you doing?" Lu Zhanxing asked.
"I've come to ask you a question."
As usual, Lu Zhanxing never took things seriously. "About your fated match?"
"About injustice."
Lu Zhanxing fiddled silently with the dice in his hands. Only after a long beat did he chuckle. "How noble of you."
"Gu Mang doesn't want to see you go. So I'm here to ask— Lu Zhanxing, is there some injustice regarding the battle at Phoenix Cry Mountain that you wish to make known?"
Lu Zhanxing tossed the dice onto the stone bed. Displeased with the result, he picked them up and tossed them again. Only after many repeated tries did he finally roll a pair of sixes and stop. Looking up, he bared his teeth at Mo Xi in a grin. "Yes. His Imperial Majesty arrested me because I killed the envoy. I'll fucking take the blame for what I did, but because of my mistake, Chonghua punished Gu Mang and thirty thousand survivors. Why is that, if I may ask?"
There were not many people who could stir Mo Xi to anger with a few words, but Lu Zhanxing was one of them. What did he mean, take the blame? This impertinent man only understood instant gratification; he'd never cared for strategy or collaboration. He did as he pleased, and his last hotheaded impulse had sent Gu Mang into impossible circumstances. Mo Xi gritted his teeth. "Why couldn't you control yourself? Regardless of how improper or suspicious that envoy's actions were, did you have the right to execute him?"