Chapter 16: Suspicion

BLOOD DRIPPED DOWN.

Murong Lian clamped a hand over his arm, but his silk robes were soon soaked through. Scarlet seeped between his fingers. The attendants paled at the sight of it, stuttering, "M-my lord…"

No one had expected that Murong Lian would be the one injured. The crowd in Wangshu Manor erupted.

"Go get medicine! Quick, get the healing powder!"

"Hurry! Tourniquets! Tourniquets!"

Murong Lian's face was ashen. Somehow, in the instant he stabbed down with his dagger, a red lotus sigil had flickered to life at the side of Gu Mang's neck. An explosive flow of spiritual energy swiftly followed as a dozen swords of light lanced toward him. Not only had they jolted the dagger from his hand, they'd thrown him bodily several yards back.

Murong Lian was briefly unable to speak. He bit his lower lip, his face flushing and paling in turns. At length, he collected himself enough to summon a blue light in his palm and more or less stop the bleeding. "Gu Mang!" he shouted, his voice shot through with embarrassment and fury.

In the chaos, Gu Mang had scurried behind a table to hide. He was now rubbing his bare feet together, baring his teeth as he stared at Murong Lian in a manner both extremely wary and extremely innocent. Those swords of light continued to swirl without pause; they completely surrounded him and protected him within the heart of the array.

One of the young masters in the crowd had once gone to Luomei Pavilion to visit Gu Mang. After a moment of thought, he realized what had happened. "Aiya! It's that array!" he cried.

"What array?" Murong Lian said angrily. "If you know something about it, then hurry up and speak!"

"This array… This subordinate also found out by accident… It's a little embarrassing to speak of…"

"Speak!"

Once the young master saw how angry Murong Lian had become, he responded with all due haste. "Wangshu-jun, I answer you with all I know! The array isn't triggered by magic or high-level weapons. However, if you summon an ordinary weapon, or kick or punch Gu Mang, he'll get scared, and a bunch of those light swords will burst from his body. And that's…" Having reached this point, he was somewhat sheepish, but he braced himself to finish. "That's why despite how long Gu Mang's been at Luomei Pavilion, no one can really lay a hand on him."

Murong Lian was still enraged. He glared malevolently at Gu Mang across the table. "What kind of idiotic, ridiculous array is that?!"

That young master shook his head. "Gu Mang used to be a goddamn genius with magic. Who knows how many spells he invented back in the day? Many of them had no purpose other than to make girls giggle. This… might be something he made for fun way back then."

When the young master said this, the rest of the crowd remembered.

To this day, one could find scrolls covered in Gu Mang's randomly scribbled spells within the cultivation academy's libraries. The spells were all for things like instantly warming a cold plate of food, turning yourself into a cat for as long as a stick of incense took to burn, and even conjuring a ball of flame to hold in your arms for warmth in winter. The one most wellknown spell was named "I Agree with the General." It was said that when Gu Mang first enlisted, he had liked to skip out on those tedious military meetings. To stop the general from finding out, he'd devised a spell that transformed a piece of wood into his spitting image. This wood would sit there and listen to the general blather while the man it resembled escaped without a trace, haring off on some cheerful adventure or another…

"Come to think of it, that sounds about right."

"Right? It protects against punches and kicks, but it doesn't block magic. It's totally absurd, obviously not a serious protective array."

"That rascal Gu Mang just liked to mess around. But you've really got to hand it to him—that pointless little spell actually did end up protecting him," someone laughed. "Without it, he'd have been fucked to death ages ago. There are tons of people in Chonghua who want him on his back, after all. Too bad no one can break through this array."

Yue Chenqing scratched his head. "Damn, what kind of array is that?" he mumbled. "Array of the Untouchable Flower?"

"Give me a break, Gu Mang the untouchable flower?" Another young master started laughing and quietly quipped at Yue Chenqing. "Why not go ahead and make it a couplet?"

"'Gu Mang the untouchable flower,'" Yue Chenqing repeated, fully invested. "Then what's the second line?"

"'General Mo the faithless philanderer.'"

Yue Chenqing slapped his thigh and burst out laughing. "That's not right at all, but it's still—"

"What are you laughing at?!" Murong Lian cut him off. "You're so undisciplined—see if I don't take it out on your father as punishment!" he snapped in humiliated rage.

"I'm not laughing! How would I dare?" Yue Chenqing hastily replied. "Let me just say that as long as it makes Wangshu-jun happy, you can take whatever you want out on my dad—you can even take my dad out on a date!"

Murong Lian glared at him. Not only had he failed to show off at the feast tonight, he'd suffered wounds to both his flesh and his dignity. He found this very hard to take and turned to bark out, "Where are the attendants?!"

"Awaiting my lord's orders!"

Murong Lian pointed at Gu Mang with a sweep of his sleeves. "Take this stupid pig away. I don't want to see him again. And go get some more sensible and intelligent people from Luomei Pavilion. As for his punishment…"

Murong Lian ground his teeth, shooting a sidelong glance at Mo Xi. For some reason, ever since Mo Xi had seen the array, his expression had been a little strange. His eyes had returned to the side of Gu Mang's neck several times.

"General Mo… Have you nothing to say?"

Mo Xi returned to his senses and looked away from Gu Mang, crossing his arms. "Didn't Wangshu-jun plan to give in and relinquish Gu Mang to my care?" he asked indifferently.

Murong Lian was momentarily startled. Then he said, without an ounce of shame, "I didn't mean it. His Imperial Majesty decreed that I would be the one to punish him. How could he so easily change owners?"

Mo Xi had already known that Murong Lian never kept his promises. The saying "a gentleman's word is worth its weight in gold" was more or less bullshit when it came to this man. Besides, that promise had been farcical from the start. Unless the emperor personally retracted his decree, no one could move to change it.

Mo Xi looked up and met Murong Lian's overbearing gaze. "If that's the case," he said, "Wangshu-jun should deal with his own people. Why bother asking me?"

"As you say." Murong Lian smirked, and turned to give instructions. "Take him away. Give him eighty lashes as a reward, and reduce his food and drink for a month." After a pause, he added another malicious sentence: "If he starves to death, well, whose fault is that?"

Gu Mang was escorted away, and the servants of Wangshu Manor came to clean up the table that had been thrown into disarray. They laid out a few fresh platters of food, allowing the feast to resume.

Amid the murmurs of discussion, only Mo Xi said nothing. When the wine cups and chips for drinking games once more rose around him, he looked up again, staring in the direction Gu Mang had been taken with a complicated expression. In the shadows, where no one else could see, his fingers slowly clenched into a fist.

Mo Xi didn't like to drink and hated being hungover. But after returning from Wangshu Manor that day, he sat in the empty courtyard of his house and opened a jar of good wine that had been stored for many years. Cup by cup, he drank until the jar was drained. He looked up into the empty sky, where the clouds were clearing after snowfall.

"Li Wei," he said to the housekeeper standing beside him. "How many years have you been with me?"

"Seven years, my lord."

"Seven years…" Mo Xi murmured.

Seven years ago, Mo Xi had pursued the traitorous Gu Mang. After crossing enemy lines, he had been stabbed in the chest and his life had hung by a thread. While Mo Xi lay in bed unconscious, the emperor had ordered Li Wei to go to Xihe Manor to look after him.

So it had already been seven years.

Dissatisfied, Mo Xi wondered why he couldn't let go. Why couldn't he forget?

Drinking so much wine inevitably leads to a degree of inebriation. Mo Xi wanted to remain clear-headed, so when Li Wei moved to top up his cup again, he shook his head. Li Wei complied. Those who were undaunted by beauty and unintoxicated by fine wine were rare. Few men could hold back with ease in the face of desire, but Mo Xi was one of them.

"What do you think about me and Gu Mang?" Mo Xi suddenly asked.

Li Wei startled. "You two aren't…a good match?" he hesitantly replied.

"Why are you talking about matches between two men? Seems you've also had too much." Mo Xi shot a glare at him. "Try again."

Only then did Li Wei react, smiling. "Oh, the relationship between you? Everyone knows it's bad."

"And how was it before?"

"Before…" Li Wei thought this over for a while. "In those days, I hadn't yet had the fortune to be assigned to my lord's side, but I heard that my lord and General Gu were martial brothers at the academy, comrades in the army, and the twin generals of the empire, as well as… Oh, I don't know. To be honest, I can't think of anything else. Some said that you used to be quite familiar with General Gu, and some said it only seemed that way because General Gu was warm to everyone, like sunlight, so perhaps he wasn't truly that close to you. That's about it."

Mo Xi nodded without comment.

Martial brothers, comrades-in-arms, two generals of the empire. This was the impression most people had of Mo Xi and Gu Mang's relationship. It didn't seem to be wrong.

"Then what was it actually?" Li Wei asked curiously.

"Between him and me?" Unexpectedly, Mo Xi smiled very slightly and lowered his long lashes. Something bitter was hidden in that smile. "Hard to say. Can't be said." He paused. "Nor should it be said," he finished slowly.

No one in Chonghua would believe that Gu Mang had been to Mo Xi what a clear spring might be to a traveler dying of thirst.

Before Mo Xi met Gu Mang, he'd had ambition, duty, unyielding willpower, and no fear of hardship, but the most potent sentiment in his heart had, in fact, been hatred.

In Mo Xi's youth, he had treated everyone with earnest sincerity, but what had he received in exchange? His father's death in battle, his mother's betrayal, his uncle's usurpation—and every one of the servants better at taking his uncle's hints than the last. They'd called Mo Xi "young master" to his face, but they'd all acted under his uncle's orders. He'd had to be constantly on guard; there had been no one he could trust.

He didn't know what he had done wrong, to make fate treat him so harshly.

That was when he met Gu Mang.

In those days, Gu Mang had been so kind, so righteous. Although he was a slave, his status as low as dirt, he never resented or criticized anything. When he and Mo Xi first started exorcising demons and monsters together, Mo Xi had been ill-tempered and often rude, but Gu Mang had forgiven it all with a smile—he had always empathized with other people's difficulties, even though he had led such a difficult life himself.

He always strove to breathe in every wisp of kindness in life, and then did all he could to get a little flower to bloom.

That time Gu Mang impersonated Murong Lian to buy medicine, he knew he would be punished—that he might even lose the right to cultivate at the academy—but he had still been determined to do it. And afterward, as he knelt in the cultivation academy's penitence pavilion, Gu Mang hadn't defended himself at all, had only shamelessly said that he felt it would be fun.

But what slave would throw away such a hard-won opportunity to succeed for fun?

Clearly Gu Mang had done it because he had seen with his own eyes that this village was plagued by illness year-round.

He had been unable to bear it.

But Gu Mang was so lowly that even if he used the most obliging manner and softest voice to say, "I wanted to save people," he would be met with merciless derision. Even if he carved his chest wide open to reveal the unbearable anguish of his heart, he would still be met with sneers at his passion, doubts of his kindness, mockery of his audacity, and ridicule of his trembling sincerity.

Gu Mang knew all of this, so he didn't argue.

It was said that "In prominence, one should focus on the people; in obscurity, one should focus on oneself." Gu Mang's circumstances were fundamentally bleak and obscure; he was nothing but a slave from Wangshu Manor. But instead of worrying over where he'd get his next meal or how to win the favor of his lord, he took up the burden of helping the dying and healing the injured—what an audacious fool.

But it was this cockiness of his, that sincere heart overflowing with burning passion, that had pulled Mo Xi, who had lost his faith in humanity, back onto the right path.

"My lord." Li Wei's urging voice broke through his daze. "The night is cold and damp. You should go rest."

Mo Xi didn't immediately respond. His hand was still over his brow, covering his eyes. At the sound of his housekeeper's voice, he turned slightly, and flicked his fingers once, as if to wipe something away. After a several more seconds, he spoke, his voice very low and very soft: "Li Wei."

"I'm here."

"Say…" he muttered. "Could it be that Gu Mang…never lost his memories? That he's only pretending?"