When people are overwhelmed with anger, the first thing they usually forget is how to control their volume. So Xie You Lan’s furious accusation carried clearly on the spring wind, drifting from front to back, passing through every sharp pair of ears before leisurely floating off into the distant horizon.
“Heartless and faithless?” Cheng Yu looked like he suspected he’d misheard. “Who? Me?”
Yu Gong Zhao Ye was equally stunned. “Huh? You?”
Ying Yue: “Huh? Him?”
Xie You Lan: “…”
What a bunch of bastards!
Everyone desperately held back their laughter, terrified of ending up on Beizhu Palace’s kill list for the rest of their lives. Xie You Lan hurled an embarrassed, furious “Hmph!” at Cheng Yu, cracked his whip, and galloped off alone in a huff.
Yu Gong Zhao Ye watched the trail of dust with heartfelt emotion, thinking that these brothers truly were disasters. Of all people, they just had to torment Longsha’s assassins specifically. Had they grown tired of peaceful lives? Was living on the edge of a blade really that addictive?
“Brother Cheng.”
He urged his horse forward to ride alongside Cheng Yu and teased him with a smile. “I truly never expected that this was your type.”
“It was all a mis…” Cheng Yu forcibly swallowed the final word and let out a heavy sigh from the depths of his lungs. “It was all a series of unfortunate misunderstandings. I never expected him to seriously pursue the matter afterward.”
Yu Gong Zhao Ye looked at him several times as if wanting to say something, but eventually failed to hold back. As tactfully as possible, he reminded him, “Brother Cheng, actually, you could simply say he was talking nonsense and deliberately slandering you. After all, in the eyes of the world, Xie You Lan’s reputation was never exactly spotless to begin with…”
There was really no need to admit it so readily.
“…” Cheng Yu fell silent for a long while before giving a bitter smile. “One matter is one matter. In this particular issue, I’m not exactly innocent either.”
Yu Gong Zhao Ye deliberately cleared his throat, nudging his horse closer and assuming a posture of “I’m all ears.”
Admitting something to oneself was one thing; speaking of it aloud to others was another entirely. The embarrassment of the two could not be compared. Cheng Yu gave him a strange look. “Your Highness never used to take interest in these irrelevant matters.”
“Cough cough cough.” His Highness suddenly seemed to choke on a feather in his throat, producing several uncomfortable noises. “I’m concerned about—”
Cheng Yu’s expression clearly said that if he dared utter the word “you,” he would draw his sword immediately and exorcise whatever spirit had possessed His Highness in the simplest and most direct way possible.
“—Palace Master Xie’s lifelong happiness.”
Yu Gong Zhao Ye swerved sharply around the danger. “No matter how he acts, there are still relatives and friends who care about him.”
Cheng Yu accepted the first half of the statement and questioned the second. “He’s the only son of Xie Jing, the previous Palace Master of Beizhu Palace. Where would he get relatives and friends?”
“How domineering, Sect Master Cheng,” Yu Gong Zhao Ye sighed. “Are you planning to control how many relatives Palace Master Xie is allowed to have as well?”
Cheng Yu: “…”
“His younger brother Wei Fu is Xiling’s Assistant Chancellor stationed in Longsha. I went to enormous trouble to bring him here.” Yu Gong Zhao Ye lowered his voice. “Though the brothers don’t appear especially close, if something happened to Xie You Lan and I dared keep it from him, the consequences would be unimaginable…”
Cheng Yu was shocked. “Your Highness brought an ancestor home for Longsha?!”
Yu Gong Zhao Ye half-covered his mouth with one hand and said mysteriously, “He and Xie You Lan share the same mother—blood brothers bound by blood. What do you think?”
Cheng Yu understood immediately. Completely understood. He nodded in sudden realization. “Your Highness has worked hard.”
Yu Gong Zhao Ye: “Likewise.”
Cheng Yu: “…”
The two stared at each other with wide eyes, seeing identical indescribable suffering reflected on the other’s face. After a while, Cheng Yu was the first to turn away.
“Your Highness still remembers the Moyun Sect that fought the Changchu Sect over territory, right? They’re subordinate to Beizhu Palace. Back then, the two sects fought endlessly, so the Moyun Sect ran to Beizhu Palace to complain and seek reinforcements. They managed to invite Young Palace Master Xie You Lan personally to avenge them.”
“I crossed hands with Xie You Lan several times. We won and lost in equal measure. He probably never expected this fishbone of mine to actually stab someone, so he was somewhat dissatisfied. Still, he was reasonably fair-minded and ordered the Moyun Sect to withdraw to Liufang Mountain and stop harassing us.”
“I see,” Yu Gong Zhao Ye said with a smile. “His temperament is eccentric, but judging from the way he conducts himself, he possesses a bit more humanity than Xie Jing did. It seems you don’t actually dislike him.”
“Being sentimental isn’t necessarily a good thing,” Cheng Yu replied. “Xie You Lan and I could be considered acquainted through fighting. Of course, given the Changchu Sect’s status in the martial world, trying to befriend him would’ve been reaching far above my station, so no one ever knew we were acquainted.”
“At the end of last year, Xie Jing passed away and Xie You Lan inherited the position of Palace Master. But Beizhu Palace wasn’t united internally. Some elders thought him young and easy to manipulate and secretly plotted to seize power. On the fourteenth day of the second month this year, in Golden Lantern Valley, Xiangzhou, two elders suddenly revolted. They dragged out some illegitimate son from who-knows-where and accused Xie You Lan of murdering his own father and harming his siblings to seize the Palace Master position, declaring him unworthy of leading Beizhu Palace.”
“By sheer bad luck, I happened to run into the chaos just as they made their move. I couldn’t very well stand there and watch Xie You Lan die, so I had no choice but to wade into the mess. Unfortunately, my skills fell short, and after taking some injuries, I could only flee for my life with that unlucky fellow.”
At this point he paused slightly, omitting all the heart-stopping dangers, hardships, and struggles, and summarized lightly, “Beizhu Palace’s people pursued us from behind. We hid for several days in the cellar of an abandoned Daoist temple. Thankfully, we eventually found a way to escape.”
Yu Gong Zhao Ye knew perfectly well things could not possibly have been as simple as Cheng Yu described. But if he continued pressing, he would inevitably touch upon matters too personal, so it was inconvenient to pry further.
Yet Cheng Yu seemed to see through his concerns and voluntarily explained, “When trapped in desperate circumstances, people tend to develop certain irrational dependencies on their companions. Xie You Lan calls me heartless because he mistook that dependence—and the assistance given when there was no other choice—for some other kind of emotion…”
Those words struck directly at the very point Yu Gong Zhao Ye had been hesitating over. Something in his heart tightened inexplicably, and he blurted out, “Then what do you think?”
Cheng Yu was silent for a moment before answering, “A moment of impulse. What grounds is there to speak of forever? It was too rash.”
Their gazes met, and suddenly Yu Gong Zhao Ye revealed a slightly crafty smile. “Only… rash?”
He did not think mutual affection between men defied heaven’s principles, nor did he care about differences in status or the divide between righteous and evil paths. What mattered to him was whether the feeling was pure, whether it came from genuine sincerity, and whether enough careful thought had been given to ensure it was not simply a misunderstanding.
What Cheng Yu feared was “not lasting.” In other words, wasn’t that simply another way of saying he hoped it would last?
After thinking it over, Cheng Yu answered seriously, “Those of us in the martial world do not stand on ceremony, but our actions must still answer to heaven’s principles and personal morality. One must not indulge too recklessly. Blades and swords may wound without intent, but emotions depend entirely upon self-restraint. Injuries to flesh can heal, but if one wounds another’s heart, it may become a grievance carried for an entire lifetime. It’s better to proceed cautiously.”
“Sect Master Cheng speaks wisely,” Yu Gong Zhao Ye said. “Since you already understand your own heart, I won’t meddle further. For Xie You Lan to fall into the hands of an upright gentleman like you is ultimately fortunate—for him, and for the sake of his younger brother as well.”
He lifted his eyes in search of Xie You Lan, who had vanished somewhere ahead, and casually asked, “How are Palace Master Xie’s injuries? Has he fully recovered?”
After waiting a long while without receiving a reply, Yu Gong Zhao Ye turned back to look.
Cheng Yu sat frozen atop his horse, lost in thought. Whatever had crossed his mind had left a flush spreading above the neatly folded collar covering his neck, creeping up toward the ears and cheeks hidden beneath his bamboo hat.
Yu Gong Zhao Ye: “Hm?”
Very few people had ever called him an “upright gentleman.”
After all, in the past he had been an assassin who harvested heads more easily than fruit, coming and going like the wind while committing deeds that were practically the opposite of what an “upright gentleman” stood for. Even later, after “abandoning darkness for the light” and taking over the tattered Changchu Sect, spending every day worrying over raising a flock of troublesome youngsters, people still didn’t call him a gentleman. To his face they called him a “greatly benevolent man”; behind his back they called him a “big fool.”
Aside from Yu Gong Zhao Ye, the last time Cheng Yu had heard that phrase had been from Xie You Lan himself.
At the most humiliating and unbearable moment of his entire life.
The elder ordered to hunt down Xie You Lan was Madam Xiang Yan Bo, known as “Lady Qingxiao.” No one knew exactly how Xie You Lan had offended her. Though she turned a blind eye and refrained from driving them to absolute ruin, leaving them a slim chance at survival, she also wickedly pumped enough “Three Branches Nine Flowers Powder” into the cellar to knock out a bull.
The two hid deep within the pitch-black cellar. Cheng Yu sat with eyes closed, regulating his breathing and enduring the restless heat surging through his body, while Xie You Lan lingered beside him like a heart demon, murmuring darkly:
“Hey, did you hear what she said? If someone who’s taken the drug doesn’t sleep with another person, eventually their blood and qi will boil over and they’ll explode to death…”
“I’m not deaf,” Cheng Yu replied.
“There are only the two of us here right now.”
“I’m not blind either.”
“Things have already reached this point. If you don’t want the worst outcome, then you’d best kill me now, carry my head out there to claim the reward, and perhaps your shabby little sect will rise to glory alongside you.”
“A person shouldn’t become a mad dog biting others just because he was bitten once himself.” Cheng Yu remained seated with eyes shut. His heart-fire was already blazing from the drug, and Xie You Lan’s incessant chatter only fanned his temper further. Restraining himself, he said, “Palace Master Xie, could you quiet down for a while? If you don’t want this, then you don’t need to force yourself.”
Cheng Yu did not know how others behaved after taking an aphrodisiac, but in Xie You Lan’s case it seemed to magnify his terrible personality tenfold, making him wildly temperamental and impossible for anyone to deal with pleasantly.
“Force myself? Why would I force myself?” Xie You Lan stared coldly at Cheng Yu’s expression of detached serenity, feeling as though his teeth were about to shatter from grinding them. “Wouldn’t humiliating an upright gentleman like you be rather interesting?”
He glared fiercely at Cheng Yu and said bitterly, “We of the demonic path don’t care about things like this. But if word spreads afterward, the whole world will mock and ridicule you. Your reputation for the rest of your life will be ruined.”
Cheng Yu opened his eyes, raised his brows toward him, and sighed. “Palace Master Xie, one matter is one matter. If you’re asking whether I regret saving you, the answer is no.”
Xie You Lan: “…”
Suddenly he flipped upright and stepped forward. With a sharp shing, the sword in Cheng Yu’s hand instantly left its sheath and pressed coldly against his throat, forcing calm upon him through iron and steel.
“Palace Master Xie,” Cheng Yu warned, “one matter is one matter. I advise you to behave yourself.”
Under the effects of the drug, Cheng Yu was nowhere near as calm as he appeared. His hand trembled weakly beyond his control. He had no desire to truly injure Xie You Lan, and after the warning intended to withdraw the blade.
But Xie You Lan neither retreated nor dodged. Instead, he stepped forward into the sword.
The peerlessly sharp blade sliced instantly across the skin of his neck, carving a wound two inches long.
Blood immediately welled out, streaming down his neck. Xie You Lan paid it no attention at all, casually wiping at it with the back of his hand before staring fixedly at the crimson staining his fingers. For some inexplicable reason, he suddenly laughed.
This disheveled madman walked step by step until he stood before Cheng Yu. Dropping to one knee as though worshipping a Buddha, his movements strangely reverent, he then leaned close in blasphemous intimacy and gently smeared the blood from his fingertips across Cheng Yu’s lower lip.
“Who would’ve thought I’d end up like this one day?”
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