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 that the current Master of the Ghost Valley is a Rong family descendant."
In the darkness, only Zhang 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 at the corners of his eyes, his pitch-black irises still as cold as ice, reflecting a weak light. He looked over sharply, slender eyebrow 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 all 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 occurred. 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 of the Ghost Valley."
Like he was greatly interested, Wen Kexing continued asking, "How did you know this?"
Zhou Zishu laughed lightly. "Escorting that kid to Taihu unharmed, with all his limbs intact out of the snare of a hundred thousand Ghosts--if my abilities were really that great, I'd 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 this humble, either."
Zhou Zishu continued, "But why would the Delighted Mourning Ghost chase after this kid so doggedly? I think that there might 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, wants to let people suspect that, this person is the Hanged Ghost. Additionally, the man in black who Gu Xiang killed in the rundown 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. "Indeed, the two of us followed them from Jiangnan all the way to Taihu, and then to Dongting. 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, and 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 leader of Tian Chuang faced each other silently in an abandoned house, but it was more like a soundless 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're not following him, you can't be following me, can you?"
Yet, Wen Kexing only smiled. His demeanour could have been 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 suddenly asked, "Are you crazy, or is this an aftereffect of a 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 rose all over on Zhou Zishu's body. He snatched his hand 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 corpse 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 the chest 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 that this had to be an unparalleled beauty when they had been alive, and guess what?"
Zhou Zihu inhaled deeply, but Wen Kexing interjected before he could speak, "I have yet to misjudge a person's beauty, having told 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 hug 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, we develop passionate, torrid emotions for each other, have a one-night stand, and I won't think of you afterwards again. But the way you are now...makes me want to live out the rest of my life with you instead."
Zhou Zishu had 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 still 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 had 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 Zishu 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 gongfu 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 mantras, 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 accept disciples, and a person's own responsibility to cultivate knowledge."
Zhang Chengling felt that Zhou-shifu's expectations were too high, higher than the halfway point up a mountain; amid the fog and clouds, his head was even more muddled, his eyes rolling back in his head as he falteringly recited the mantras. 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 so 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 somewhere else. He held it in for a long while, but finally could not hold it in any longer. "Kid, is that thing on top of your neck a head, or a chamberpot?!"
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 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 mantras, or get the technique 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 mantra 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 sleep either, I'd have people lock his bedroom up at midnight, and order him to stand in the snow to gain an understanding of the concepts on his own."
Hearing this, Zhang Chengling shivered in secret. Wen Kexing paused for half a beat, then sighed, "Your shidi…truly has great fortune in surviving things."
Zhou Zishu paused in his steps. Out of the blue, he said, "He didn't have great fortune. He's dead." Zhang Chengling and Wen Kexing looked at him, but that sickly yellow face of his did not reveal the slightest hint of emotion. Zhou Zishu patted Zhang Chengling's head not too gently, and said straightforwardly, "Learn it properly. If you want to survive for a few days more, you need to be capable."
Then he threw Zhang Chengling to Wen Kexing's care, said, "I'm going to see an old friend. Help me look after him for a bit," and left using qinggong without a single glance back, leaving Zhang Chengling and Wen Kexing to look at each other incredulously.
After half a beat, Wen Kexing said, with deep feeling,"Your shifu's words are extremely true, you need to be capable--forget it, he's not here, let's swap brains. I'll continue with the second half of the tale of the Red Child I was telling you the previous time."
Zhang Chengling was a good-for-nothing; he instantly brightened up, and the two of them headed towards the nearest tavern as he listened to Wen Kexing narrate, "But what should he do with all those monsters? The Red Child thought for a very long time, tried many things, until he finally thought of an idea. He only needed a magical artefact--"
With one of them making things up as he went along, and the other an enthusiastic audience, the journey was extremely enjoyable. Just as they were about to enter a tavern, out of the blue, they heard a girl from behind them call, "Master! Master, I've finally found you!"
Wen Kexing and Zhang Chengling glanced back to see Gu Xiang skipping towards them. Oddly enough, following behind her was Cao Weining. Wen Kexing could not come up with an explanation for these two had ended up together, but before he could even ask, Gu Xiang chattered on like beans spilling from a cup, "I couldn't find you yesterday, so I went to look for you, and I heard this Cao-dage say you and Zhou Xu brought that Zhang kid away, and he volunteered to take me out to look for you!"
Cao Weining grinned dumbly, and repeated, "It's my pleasure, it's my pleasure."
Gu Xiang continued, "Master, Cao-dage isn't only righteous, he's also well-educated, let me tell you…"
Wen Kexing wanted to pretend that he didn't know the two of them, and pulled Zhang Chengling into the tavern.