The commode inside was fitted with a seated bench, sparing distinguished guests the numbness of squatting for too long.
A heavy incense burned around the clock within the private chamber, while incense ash and bamboo charcoal were layered beneath the basin to banish foul odors.
He Lingchuan waved a dismissive hand. "No need. I can... can go by myself." With that, he staggered to his feet.
He felt as though he were treading on cotton, lurching forward on unsteady legs. Though his center of gravity was wildly off, he managed to stumble his way inside.
Fang Canran waited outside for quite some time when a sudden thud came from within, as if something heavy had crashed against the inner door.
He rushed over to check, only to find He Lingchuan sprawled face-down on the floor right on his way out, flat as a board.
He crouched down and shook He Lingchuan’s shoulder. "Brother He?"
The young man did not respond.
Fang Canran called out twice more, but He Lingchuan remained motionless.
At that, the smile vanished from Fang Canran’s face. He retrieved a length of cord, muttered a two-line incantation under his breath, and slipped it around He Lingchuan’s wrists. The cord tightened on its own, coiling twice around him.
Fang Canran gave it two sharp tugs to ensure the binding held fast.
Just then, a wooden window banged open in a violent gust, letting the wind come howling into the hall.
A cold downpour had started outside at some unknown moment, and the driving wind whipped the frigid rain straight into the room, lashing heedlessly across their faces.
Terrified that the storm would shock He Lingchuan awake, Fang Canran lunged forward and slammed the window shut in two strides.
Right at that moment, someone knocked at the courtyard gate and called out, "Chief Manager Fang!"
Fang Canran called back, "Speak!"
The howling wind was loud, and the servant had already hurried through the courtyard to the door, leaning close against it to shout, "General Yang is entertaining guests at Wanxiang Courtyard, and all seven or eight of them drank themselves silly. They're about to leave, but the hundred taels of silver he produced to pay the bill is... is fake! Cut open, there's a lump of tin right in the middle. How should we handle this, sir?"
Fang Canran replied without hesitation, "Take it and see them off as usual. Bring the counterfeit silver to the Yang Residence tomorrow evening."
"Understood!"
Fang Canran listened until the servant's footsteps faded into the distance. Only then did he return to his captive, hauling him back to the small parlor and propping him up in a chair. Next, he produced a half-palm-wide ornament shaped like a golden toad looking up at the sky and dropped a tiny spark into its gaping mouth.
Before long, wisps of smoke drifted from the toad's maw—curiously divided into three distinct colors of red, blue, and black, each curling upward without mingling.
Holding his breath, Fang Canran held the golden toad right under He Lingchuan's nose.
As if drawn by an invisible guide, the tricolor smoke snaked directly into the captive's nostrils.
He Lingchuan stirred slightly in apparent discomfort, making Fang Canran’s expression tighten.
Fortunately, the captive soon fell still again, his breathing growing faint and even.
Had anyone been watching from the sidelines, their jaw would have dropped. The Jinjiao clan's most trusted chief manager, Boss Fang, who ran an ever-expanding commercial empire, was personally resorting to foul play!
An ordinary man could rack his brain and never divine his motive; one would assume it was nothing more than the pinnacle of cutthroat business tactics.
Fang Canran counted forty breaths, pulled the golden toad away, and extinguished the tricolor smoke. Then, pinching his fingers in a wind-calling seal, he summoned a gentle breeze to whisk the lingering vapors toward the rear parlor before finally daring to breathe freely.
He leaned close to He Lingchuan and murmured, "Young Master He?"
He Lingchuan gave no answer.
He asked again, and only then did He Lingchuan utter a groggy "Mmh."
Fang Canran’s voice turned as soft as silk. "Young Master He, where are you?"
"Don't... don't know," He Lingchuan mumbled.
"Don't be afraid. You are very safe, very comfortable. No one will hurt you... Do you know who I am?"
"Don't know."
Fang Canran asked again, "What is your full name?"
"He Xiao."
"Where are you from?"
"Fu Kingdom."
What Fang Canran had employed was tricolor calming incense, which reduced its subject to a limp trance between sleep and waking. Guided skillfully, it could draw answers to every question without the subject ever remembering what had transpired.
There was no better tool for interrogating a person of interest—completely undetectable.
Even Fan Sheng had been defeated by this young man, so Fang Canran had never imagined he could best him by force. But the young were usually fickle of mind and easily seduced by wine and pleasure, which gave him an opening to exploit.
After asking a few routine questions to disarm the captive's subconscious guard, Fang Canran cut to the chase: "What did you come to Lingxu City to do?"
"Bai Ziqi told me to come. I had no choice."
His tale was known across all of Lingxu City, so Fang Canran understood the meaning of those words at once.
"What else? What else do you plan to do?"
He Lingchuan's voice sounded utterly lost. "What else?"
"Do you have any other important business to attend to in Lingxu City?"
"I don't know." He Lingchuan sounded even more puzzled than he was. "Do I?"
How could Fang Canran possibly know? He was forced to change tack: "What is your relationship with Li Qingge, the Master of Songyang Mansion?"
"Friends."
"How did you meet?"
"We met when I asked Songyang Mansion to forge my blade."
Fang Canran frowned. "What did you two discuss when you met a few days ago?"
He Lingchuan shifted slightly. "The Marquis wanted to recruit me... to be a guest elder."
"Just that?" No other schemes?
He Lingchuan offered no reply.
Fang Canran pressed on, "Do you recognize a signet ring marked with five spirals?"
"I do."
Now came the crux of the matter: "How do you recognize it?"
"I've seen it."
Fang Canran’s heart leaped. "Where did you see it?"
"In the hands of Fang Canran, the chief manager of Dun Garden."
"..." Fang Canran felt a surge of helplessness. "Have you seen it before that?"
"Yes. In the west."
That answer caught Fang Canran entirely off guard.
This was the flaw of using tricolor calming incense for interrogation: the subject lost all capacity for logical reasoning, dangling like a puppet on strings and struggling to articulate complete thoughts.
"Where in the west?"
"West of Beijia. Further west."
"What is the name of the place?"
Only after Fang Canran pressed him repeatedly did the young man finally murmur, "Linhe City."
The moment those three words left his lips, Fang Canran’s face darkened completely. His chest heaved as though fighting down a swell of fury. "The current owner of that signet ring—what do you plan to do to him?"
"Fang Canran?"
"Yes."
He Lingchuan tilted his head. "Hard to say. Depends on what he wants to do to me."
"One last question." Fang Canran could barely keep his composure. "Are you talking utter nonsense?"
"Yes."
With that, He Lingchuan opened his eyes.
His gaze was sharp and clear, devoid of the slightest trace of stupor.
At that exact instant, Fang Canran pressed a dagger against He Lingchuan’s throat.
"Chief Manager Fang, is this how you treat your guests?" He Lingchuan shook his bound wrists. Fang Canran glanced down and saw that the cord was still pulled taut, which brought him a sliver of relief.
He Lingchuan could feign unconsciousness and play along with the questioning, but he had no intention of quietly swallowing this humiliation.
Falling onto the back foot in their very first clash would only invite Fang Canran’s contempt, making him think he could toy with him at whim.
While his exploits were widely talked about in Lingxu City, outsiders only knew that Cen Boqing had sent assassins after him, not the exact methods used.
Evidently, Fang Canran had failed to uncover those details. Had he known that even a curse master had failed to finish He Lingchuan off, he would have been far more cautious about relying on drugs and tricolor smoke.
Fang Canran let out a long, heavy sigh. "Wouldn't it have been wonderful if you had stayed out cold, answered truthfully, and woken up knowing nothing?"
Had the tricolor calming incense done its work, He Lingchuan would have awakened with no memory of what he had said or endured, chalking it all up to drunken haze. Wouldn't that have been a happy ending for all?
This special envoy of Chiyan had made quite a name for himself in Lingxu City, making it difficult for anyone to openly move against him. That was precisely why Fang Canran had sought to probe him covertly like this. Once the questioning was over, he could have snapped his fingers, and both of them could have gone right back to feasting and drinking, pretending nothing had ever happened.
He Lingchuan shook his head. "Your smoke was far too pungent. The moment I caught a whiff, it jolted me wide awake."
Fang Canran felt an edge of irritation. He had rarely used the tricolor incense; its effects varied from person to person, and calibrating the dosage was tricky.
Now that He Lingchuan had seen through the ruse and shattered their mutual pretense, well...
"Things are rather unsightly now."
"Aren't you going to untie me?" He Lingchuan looked at him, tilting his chin up. "So many people at Pianxiang Villa saw us leave together—all of them witnesses. If you untie this cord right now, I might just let bygones be bygones."
He seemed completely fearless. Fang Canran straightened his posture. "It's just as well that you're awake; now we can drop the evasive games. Just where did you learn about this spiral ring?"
He Lingchuan didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "Tying a man up over a petty detail like that? You've gone too far, Chief Manager Fang!"
He struggled twice, but the cord only tightened and bit into his flesh, drawing a sharp hiss of pain and contorting his face.
Seeing that he truly had no power to break free, Fang Canran lowered the dagger. "This is the Earth Immortal Rope. It suppresses true force."
Otherwise, with He Lingchuan’s strength, snapping ordinary cords would have taken seconds.
"I was only taking a casual look at that ring. Believe it or not, that's up to you," He Lingchuan said.
To Fang Canran, it sounded like sheer stubbornness. "I gave you multiple chances before this, and you refused to speak. You have only yourself to blame."
After several encounters, he had grown tired of circling around the topic; he had no intention of leaving such a ticking bomb behind.
He Lingchuan froze slightly. "What do you want to do? What do you dare to do?"
With so many witnesses, did Fang Canran truly dare to finish him off?
The chief manager of the Jinjiao clan had carried himself with impeccable poise until now. Was this fanatical, ruthless demeanor his true face all along?
Fang Canran poured a cup of wine and pushed it before him. "Take the toast: tell me the whole story from start to finish, and I can spare your life."
He Lingchuan watched as he unfolded a soft leather roll, laying out an assortment of polished metal implements: small shears, blades, tweezers, clamps, hammers, and several oddly shaped instruments whose purposes were impossible to guess.
Every single piece gleamed with a brilliant sheen.
"Or take the penalty: I have twelve superior tortures and thirty-six inferior tortures here. You will taste every last one before you die."
Was it fitting for a prominent merchant of his standing to keep so many implements of torture close at hand?
He Lingchuan scoffed. "So many of my enemies never dared to pull this off, and you want to do the job for them, Chief Manager Fang?"
"Those enemies have their own reservations and are too concerned with protecting their wealth and prospects, which gave you room to maneuver." Fang Canran held up the spiral signet ring and waved it before him. "You kept staring at this, so you ought to know: the master of this ring was never afraid to die!"
Those final words were delivered with absolute, resounding conviction.
Since he had already crossed He Lingchuan and laid bare his own anxieties, he was no longer afraid of taking things all the way.
Things had gone sideways, but he had to walk away with something, didn't he?
He Lingchuan ceased his struggles and began studying the ring with grave, unblinking intent.
Chapter 617