A Presumptuous Request

The night deepened. Inside the study of the Tianqi Gang, Gu Qiying and Shen Youran sat across from each other, sipping tea and talking. For the moment, they had not bothered to check on the progress of interrogating the captured jianghu figures. They knew that tonight's upheavals had unfolded too fast and too violently; those people needed time to digest what had happened. Further coercion and torture could wait until tomorrow. For instance, tomorrow they could drag out those fellows from the Water Transport Gang and subject them to severe torture to kill the chicken and scare the monkeys. Or they could pick a few inconsequential surrenderists who gave up their information quickly and release them early as a gesture of conciliation. They could even bring out some of the heroines and threaten to ruin their virtue to break them or coerce the other chivalrous men. With the Bliss Gu as their ultimate leverage anyway, they could employ any and all such methods as they pleased. The human mind and body were fragile after all. Whether physical agony or psychological pressure, there was always a breaking point. As long as one exerted relentless pressure around that threshold, ninety-nine percent of people would eventually submit. Those without morals or principles would yield, and those laden with morals and principles were even surer to yield... Gu Qiying was a master well versed in this art. Shen Youran was still young. Shrewd and scheming as he was, he remained far behind this Venerable Master. "Youran... there is something I must ask you." When it was just the two of them, Gu Qiying spoke in a much more casual, warm tone, his expression softening with a rare glimmer of sincerity. Gu Qiying was human after all; if he could not relax even before the only person in this world he trusted, he would have lost the last shred of his humanity long ago. "Uncle Ying, are you asking about Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai?" When no outsiders were present, Shen Youran addressed Gu Qiying as his uncle, whereas he referred to the late Gu Qizong as his "foster father," even though the Gu brothers were only a dozen or so years older than him. "Indeed," Gu Qiying said. "I only learned of it when you mentioned it at the banquet just now..." He paused, his expression shifting slightly. "Did those two... not ingest the Bliss Gu?" Shen Youran nodded in confirmation. "Ah, it was like this, Uncle Ying..." He then gave a brief account of what had happened on the fourteenth of the eighth month. According to his gang members, those two bastards had gotten drunk the night before and fooled around in the courtyard until midnight. Consequently, they slept well past noon the following day and failed to show up when Shen Youran offered tea to the assembled heroes. In truth, Shen Youran had known they were absent, but he did not go out of his way to send someone to wake them. In his view, first, given their wretched character, even if messengers were sent, they would likely drag their feet or make excuses not to come. If their bed-rotting and bowel-movement delays made him miss the auspicious moment to offer tea to the gathered heroes, it would only spoil the greater enterprise. Second, Sun and Huang had long since publicly thrown their lot in with Shen Youran and even handed over their family's divine martial art. They had already done things that not even those afflicted by the gu had done. Third, to take a step back, even if they had surrendered purely for personal gain, Shen Youran had no fear that they could stir up any trouble. Given Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai's martial arts, what threat could they pose even without ingesting the Bliss Gu? Moreover, since moving into the headquarters of the Justice Sect—now the headquarters of the Tianqi Gang—they had done nothing each day but feast, drink, make merry, and wander around causing ruckuses, acting like two free-loading local ruffians. Even many underlings of the Tianqi Gang could no longer stomach the sight of them, and Shen Youran's ears were filled to the brim with complaints about their nonsense. What extraordinary schemes or depth of mind could such individuals possess? Aside from that, there was the most crucial point: Bliss Gu could not simply be used on a whim. Once the vessel holding the male worms was unsealed, that batch had to be ingested within an hour; if the male worms failed to enter a human body within an hour, they would die naturally. Cultivating Bliss Gu was also an extremely tedious process prone to failure, and between Shen and Gu, they possessed only a handful of finished batches. All things considered, expending a fresh batch of Bliss Gu solely on two scoundrels like Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai would have been a terrible waste. "Mm... true enough." Gu Qiying nodded in understanding after hearing Shen Youran out, but he added, "Let it pass this time. However, when we administer the gu in the future, it is best to include them as well." "Rest assured, Uncle Ying," Shen Youran replied. "Youran naturally understands... Shameless petty men like Sun and Huang, who care only for profit and have no bottom line, can be trusted for a time. But the moment the winds shift, they will betray us just as readily as they betrayed those 'righteous orthodox sects' today." He chuckled. "How could Youran ever truly consider such people brothers? It is merely mutual exploitation for now." Hearing this, a faint smile played at the corners of Gu Qiying's mouth. "Mm, exploiting them is certainly fine... In any case, the Three Wonders of the Huang Clan, especially their use of poison... have real merit. In all the world, if any sect stands a chance of unraveling the Bliss Gu on their own, it is the Huang Clan. At present, while the young master of the Huang Clan did not ingest the Bliss Gu, his voluntary submission to us is an unexpected blessing... If we can use Huang Donglai to draw the Huang Clan over as our supporters, our next steps will proceed much more smoothly." At this point, he paused slightly, took a sip of tea, and continued, "That Sun Yixie, however... has disappointed me somewhat." "Oh?" Shen Youran asked, puzzled. "Uncle Ying, what do you mean by that?" Gu Qiying showed a hint of disdain as he replied, "Over the years, the disciples of Youying gathered various street rumors in the jianghu. Among them was one intelligence report that caught my attention: 'For several generations, the ancestors of the Sun family of Jiangdong dominated the jianghu, and they are suspected to possess an ancestral divine martial art.' That was why I had you make a special trip to Hangzhou to invite Sun Yixie, an untalented fellow accomplished in neither letters nor martial arts..." He shook his head and sighed. "I originally thought this Sun Yixie might be hiding his true strength. Yet that day at Bugui Tower, You Jing told me that his internal strength was indeed mediocre. Later, he gave you that manual of 'Reversing Heaven and Earth' which no one can decipher... Considering his actual martial prowess, it seems what he said was true: not even he can read the writing on the paper..." From Gu Qiying's perspective, since Sun Yixie could produce the Reversing Heaven and Earth Formula, it proved the Sun family had possessed this martial art all along. But why had the Sun family held onto a divine skill yet stayed out of the jianghu for so long? Factoring in Sun Yixie's cultivation, Master Sun's status as a merchant, and the script on that transcript of Reversing Heaven and Earth, Gu Qiying reasoned... for several decades, due to some unknown reason, the method of deciphering that script must have been lost to the Sun family. Thus, although the Sun family possessed a divine technique, they were unable to cultivate it. Viewed this way, Sun Yixie offering Reversing Heaven and Earth to Shen Youran with the proposal that they share it once Shen Youran cracked it was entirely reasonable. How could Gu Qiying have known... that the Sun family's absence from the martial world was simply because their ancestors several generations back had realized that doing business was far more peaceful than fighting and killing? That was all. Pity Gu Qiying and Shen Youran. Neither was a fool, yet they were thoroughly hoodwinked by Sun Yixie's ploy of "surrendering the book to pledge allegiance" using a Simplified Chinese version of Reversing Heaven and Earth. "Yes, Youran thought so as well," Shen Youran said. "Regardless, keeping him around is still useful for now. Perhaps their Sun family hides other secrets waiting to be uncovered, which we can slowly seek out through him later. Even if nothing can be dug up... his family's immense fortune will still be of great use to our grand scheme of vengeance." Sitting there drinking tea, the two had already neatly arranged the fates of Sun Yixie, Huang Donglai, and their entire families. In truth, not even Shen Youran and Gu Qiying themselves realized that at this very moment... they were no longer the two men who purely sought to avenge Gu Qizong. Now, they resembled puppets manipulated by the lust for power, standing beneath the banner of "revenge." Their goals and thoughts had shifted from the initial "destroy the twelve sects and revitalize the Tianqi Gang," to "those righteous sects are all hypocrites; only by having the Tianqi Gang unify the jianghu and restore order can Gu Qizong rest in peace," and finally to "any means can be justified to achieve our ideals; the righteous sects do the same under the banner of righteousness anyway, so why be courteous? Winners become kings and losers are bandits; as long as we win in the end, no one will question our methods." Step by step, their humanity had warped, and the name Gu Qizong had become a placebo used to appease whatever conscience they had left. A sect needed a facade, and it needed a lining. Yet if the lining lost all scruples and conscience, whether the sect had a facade no longer mattered. What mattered was that such a sect should not exist at all. *** At the same time, in the back courtyard of the Tianqi Gang, inside Huang Donglai's room. "We're done for, done for, done for, done for..." Huang Donglai chanted the words at lightning speed, sitting by the table with his legs bouncing rapidly. "We're in deep shit this time..." "Damn it all to hell..." Sun Yixie paced back and forth across the room with his hands behind his back. "I guessed early on that this Shen guy had some plot cooking, but I thought he just wanted to use the occasion to mess with the Water Transport Gang he hated. Who would have thought he'd make such a massive move..." Neither dared raise their voice too loudly. When they took their leave from Shen Youran to return to their quarters, Shen Youran had deliberately assigned two subordinates to "escort" them. At this moment, those two underlings of the Tianqi Gang were still standing guard right outside their door, clearly keeping them under surveillance. "Sigh..." Huang Donglai paused his muttering and sighed. "If not for my inability to use lightness skill, I'd find an opening to slip away right now and head straight for the Shaolin Temple to fetch reinforcements. If Shaolin is willing to issue the call and have the Flying Pigeon Gang spread the word across the whole martial world, those sects would swarm over within three days to flatten this Tianqi Gang just to keep their sect secrets and martial arts from leaking." "What's the damn point of saying that now?" Sun Yixie said. "Besides, distant water can't put out a nearby fire. Forget three days... by my estimate, they'll likely start brutally torturing the prisoners tomorrow... Even if you managed to escape tonight, the earliest you could reach Shaolin would be tomorrow at noon. By the time Shaolin gathers men and marches here, it'll be the day after tomorrow at the earliest. By then, more than half the people might have surrendered their information... Furthermore, are you certain Shaolin would charge in and slaughter everyone with so many hostages at stake? Can you guarantee the people Shaolin sends can handle that Venerable Master?" Huang Donglai pondered it. "That's true..." He slapped his forehead. "And listening to you, even in the worst-case scenario, as long as Shen and that Venerable Master escape with the secret manuals and intelligence they've already collected, they can make a comeback at any time. So long as they hold that drug that functions like remote-controlled heroin, they can have as many subordinates as they want. Right now, through this Youth Heroes Assembly, they've already brought the entire younger generation of martial talents under their control, along with several vice-sect-leader-level masters from almost every righteous sect... Once they get their hands on this batch of intelligence, there's no telling what they might do in the future." "Mm..." Sun Yixie's beady eyes darted around, and he muttered, "How about... we turn our act into reality and genuinely defect to them?" "Get lost!" Huang Donglai snapped without hesitation. "Are you even human? You can't beat them, so you join them? Do you have any principles left? Any sense of justice?" "Hey, I was just testing how firm your stance was, no need to get worked up." Sun Yixie raised his brows and quickly followed up, "It seems Brother Huang is indeed deeply righteous, passionate in love and hate, clear on right and wrong, with loyalty reaching the clouds—" "Save it, save it... I'm not Shen Youran, cut that crap." Unable to listen any further, Huang Donglai cut him off immediately. Sun Yixie shrugged and shifted gears. "Since you're so resolute, Brother Huang, I can safely entrust this matter to you..." "What are you up to?" Huang Donglai knew Sun Yixie too well; the moment he heard those words, he knew the man was stoking the fire again to push him into the line of fire. "Are you trying to morally blackmail me again and send your brother to his death? If so, just say it straight." "What do you mean by sending your brother to his death? I'm taking risks too, all right?" Yet the tone of Sun Yixie's reply clearly betrayed his lack of confidence. "Hear me out first..." With that, he sat down as well, leaned close to Huang Donglai's ear, and whispered a flurry of insidious schemes, explaining this and detailing that... *** That night, at the second quarter of the Hai hour—around ten in the evening by modern reckoning. Shen Youran and Gu Qiying were still in the study, drinking tea and conversing. Suddenly, footsteps came from outside. An underling knocked twice on the door and announced in a measured voice, "Venerable Master, Young Gang Leader, Young Hero Sun and Young Hero Huang request an audience." Hearing this, Shen and Gu exchanged glances without speaking. Through that silent exchange, they confirmed how to proceed. After a brief silence, Shen Youran spoke: "Show them in." A moment later, the door was pushed open. Sun Yixie stepped inside first, with Huang Donglai closely following behind. After exchanging polite pleasantries, Shen Youran asked, "You two virtuous brothers said earlier that you were retiring to rest. What brings you back at this hour?" "Ah, it is like this..." Sun Yixie said with a fawning smile. "...There are two matters." Huang Donglai picked up the cue smoothly: "The first matter concerns me..." Huang Donglai then recounted how he had refined the Xie Gallbladder Pill and found himself unable to channel inner energy after swallowing it. Because this was the truth, and the whole affair carried an aura of utter absurdity and foolishness, it did not sound fabricated in the slightest, so the two readily believed him. Hearing Huang Donglai's explanation, Shen Youran belatedly realized: *So that was why this brat surrendered during the martial exam without making a single move.* As for Huang Donglai's purpose in revealing this... he wished to plead with his Big Brother Shen and the esteemed Venerable Master to devise a way to cure his condition. His motive was quite reasonable—since they could create something like the Bliss Gu, they were surely accomplished in chemistry. Everyone was on the same side now, so asking for a small favor like this was hardly excessive, right? After hearing Huang Donglai's request, Shen Youran expected Gu Qiying to find an excuse to decline. To his surprise... Gu Qiying broke into a smile and replied straightforwardly, "Oh, so that is it, haha... Donglai, there is no need to worry. This is a trivial matter. I can cure you tonight." This answer stunned even Shen Youran. Even if Gu Qiying was a master of poisons and gu, it was impossible for him to know the cure simply by hearing a vague description of the effects of some randomly refined pill. Yet a few seconds later, Shen Youran understood... Gu Qiying had no intention of curing Huang Donglai's condition at all. On the contrary, he intended to exploit this opportunity to poison Huang Donglai. Naturally, Bliss Gu was not the only gu or poison in the world capable of controlling people; it was just that many others were difficult to trick someone into ingesting, or their effects were neither as potent nor as reliable as the Bliss Gu. Now, since Huang Donglai trusted them so deeply and came seeking "treatment," Gu Qiying was more than happy to go along with it. If he could plant a gu in Huang Donglai under this pretext, Gu Qiying could set his mind at ease sooner. Thus, Gu Qiying had agreed without hesitation and insisted on "curing" Huang Donglai "tonight." "You Jing," Gu Qiying called out in a loud voice right after giving his promise to Huang Donglai. Barely a few seconds later, You Jing's figure appeared outside the study door. Speaking through the entryway, he said, "Subordinate is here. What are the master's orders?" "Take Young Master Huang back to Bugui Tower and have him take a 'Baishun Pill' to see if it can dispel the anomaly in his body." The "Baishun Pill" Gu Qiying mentioned was undoubtedly a code phrase unknown to outsiders; in truth, it was a different variety of gu from the Bliss Gu, yet one that could still exert control over a person to a certain degree. Understanding the command, You Jing replied evenly, "Subordinate obeys." Just like that, Huang Donglai temporarily took his leave from the three in the study and followed You Jing out of the Tianqi Gang, heading straight for Bugui Tower. Only at this moment did Sun and Huang realize that this "Venerable Master" was the "boss" of Bugui Tower, and that You Jing, the kitchen hand they had met once before, was actually the Venerable Master's subordinate—and apparently a trusted confidant at that. For a moment, many puzzles that had previously plagued them unraveled naturally... Of course, none of that mattered... The overarching direction of the pair's plan remained unchanged; they had long prepared themselves for this level of improvisation. Once Huang Donglai departed, Sun Yixie began to raise the "second matter." "Brother Shen, Venerable Master..." The moment the study door closed, Sun Yixie turned around, his face breaking into a lecherous grin. "Hehehe... As for this second matter, consider it a presumptuous request of mine." To be frank, men being men... from the expression on his face at that moment, Shen Youran and Gu Qiying had already guessed what kind of request this fellow was about to make. "Heh..." Shen Youran's contempt for Sun Yixie reached its peak at this instant, yet he was also pleased. He found Sun Yixie to be an utterly transparent, laughably vulgar petty man. Such people were easy to control and posed no threat to him whatsoever. "...Yixie, whatever it is, feel free to speak plainly." "Big Brother Shen." Sun Yixie leaned in a little closer. "To be honest with you, at this Heroes Assembly, there was one person... who stole my heart at first sight and haunted my dreams. Alas, their martial arts and standing in the jianghu far surpassed mine, so I had no way of approaching them before... But now that this person has become Big Brother Shen's prisoner, I was thinking..." "You were thinking..." Shen Youran smiled as well, finishing his sentence, "...you could go have a good chat with her tonight? To offer her some guidance on my behalf?" "Hehehe... You truly know me best, Big Brother Shen." At that instant, the smile on Sun Yixie's face grew several degrees more shameless. "Naturally, if the conversation goes well, to the point where the two of us share the clouds and rain and spend a spring night together, I also hope..." "You hope the brothers of the gang won't rush in to disturb you just because they hear a little noise outside the room, is that it?" Shen Youran interjected. "Yes, yes, exactly..." Sun Yixie laughed. Hearing such shameless dialogue, even Gu Qiying inwardly spat in disgust. Outwardly, however, he said nothing and merely sipped his tea in silence. Shen Youran still had to humor him, so he continued, "Very well, this is hardly a big deal. Since you fancy her, virtuous brother, I shall naturally grant your wish." He paused, picked up his teacup, and asked offhandedly before taking a sip, "By the way... is the person you speak of Heroine Song, Song Zhixiu?" It was only natural for him to ask this, as Sun Yixie had explicitly stated that the person's martial arts and jianghu status far exceeded his own. Looking at the roster, only Song Zhixiu fit the description. Unexpectedly... "No," Sun Yixie replied. "I'm talking about young Master Chun Kong." *Pfft—!* For the first time in his life, Shen Youran sprayed out an entire mouthful of tea. "Ahem... cough, cough, cough..." The Venerable Master did not spray his tea, because he had already swallowed it when Sun Yixie uttered those words, resulting in him nearly choking to death. "Virtuous brother... you..." The next second, the look in Shen Youran's eyes toward Sun Yixie changed completely. "What, you couldn't tell, Big Brother?" Sun Yixie said, leaning his upper body forward another few inches. "Actually, I am..." "Understood! Understood, understood..." For reasons neither could explain, Shen Youran and the Venerable Master instinctively leaned back against their chairs, putting some distance between themselves and Sun Yixie. Shen Youran thought frantically to himself: *Damn it, how did I not see it earlier... Now that I think about it... so he and Huang Donglai are in that kind of relationship! No wonder. If he can stomach even someone like Huang Donglai, then young Master Chun Kong with his delicate features, clear brows, and crimson lips... Wait, come to think of it, the way he looks at me is pretty weird too...* "Big Brother Shen? What is it? Is there any difficulty regarding my request?" Seeing him remain silent, Sun Yixie pressed further. "None! None at all!" Shen Youran's eyes widened, and he stood straight up from his chair. "Think nothing of it, virtuous brother! Men... someone come quickly, fetch an access token!"