After dawn, some went to sleep, while others had to keep living.
The Abandoned Guest Hall was open twenty-four hours a day. They took on any job here—dining, drinking, whoring, gambling, intelligence gathering, assassinations, artifact crafting, and talisman drawing. If you could think of it, they could do it. Day and night made no difference here; when the candles burned down, they were replaced, and when the lamp oil ran dry, another spoonful was added. People came and went; some entered, some left, some lay down and never woke up again, and some woke up swearing they would never return.
Du Qi had spent the entire night writing at his desk. The ink beside him had run dry long ago, but too lazy to grind more, he had switched to clean water. As the brush touched the paper, the water spread and quickly dried, leaving no trace behind. Yet, he kept writing. He wrote of honor and justice, of a clear conscience before heaven and earth, and of phrases whose meanings even he did not understand. He had written all night, yet not a single character remained.
Beside him, Hong Jiu yawned, spitting melon seed shells all over the floor, some of which were crushed and stuck to the soles of her shoes. She hadn't taken any clients last night and was supposed to be relieved halfway through the night, but that old geezer Yao Wu still hadn't shown up. She leaned back in her chair with her legs propped up on the table, swinging them back and forth, which thoroughly annoyed Du Qi.
“Why hasn't old Yao Wu shown up yet? We agreed he'd relieve me today.”
Du Qi's brush paused slightly. Halfway through a horizontal stroke, a small water blotch spread. Frowning, he crumpled the paper into a ball, tossed it at his feet, laid out a fresh sheet of Xuan paper, dipped his brush in water, and began writing again.
“He's always been like this. It's not like you don't know.”
Hong Jiu gnashed her teeth in anger. “What do you mean 'he's always been like this'? We clearly agreed on a midnight shift change, yet this lady here had to pull an all-nighter. If he doesn't give me two bottles of Face-Preserving Pills this time, I'll make sure he gets what's coming to him!”
Du Qi let out a soft chuckle, his brush never stopping. “Face-Preserving Pills? You'd have a better chance of getting them from Little Eleven than squeezing them out of Yao Wu. If you actually managed to pry a bottle out of him, he'd probably have already made back the cost of ten bottles from you.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Little Qi, badmouthing me behind my back again. The medicine I provide to my family at the hall is always the cheapest and most effective. It truly breaks my heart that you all think of me this way.”
The door was pushed open, and a gravelly, heavy-smoker voice drifted in before the person even appeared. Hong Jiu perked up the moment she heard it. Combined with such melodramatic words, even Du Qi, with his immense self-control, couldn't help but twitch the corner of his mouth. The brush in his hand trembled, ruining his newly written character once again.
Before Du Qi could flare up, Hong Jiu launched into a tirade.
“Yao Wu, you bastard—if you don't need your eyes, you can donate them to Little Eleven! Damn it, you only show up after the sun is up and we don't even need to light the lamps. Why didn't you just wait until we were both dead? If you had stayed away any longer, we were going to assume you kicked the bucket and remove you from the hall's registry!”
Yao Wu strolled in slowly. In complete contrast to his gravelly voice, the guy had a boyish, clean-cut face. He was short, not even reaching five foot seven, and wearing a Daoist robe made him look like an apprentice who hadn't finished his training yet—anyone who didn't know better would think he was a minor. He had been smiling when he walked through the door, but Hong Jiu's sudden outburst caught him off guard before he could even wipe the grin off his face.
Hong Jiu sized him up and spat a melon seed shell onto the floor. “Old geezer, pretending to be young.”
“Hey!” Yao Wu's eyes instantly went wide. You could insult him, accuse him of selling fake medicine, or call him black-hearted, but if you called him old, he would lose his mind. “Do you have any respect? Ever heard of respecting the elderly and loving the young? How can such cold words come out of a warm mouth like yours?”
Hong Jiu curled her lip and cracked open a melon seed. “See? You said it yourself, 'respecting the elderly.' You old geezer who eats Face-Preserving Pills like candy.”
“This is natural! Natural!” Yao Wu stood on his tiptoes, trying to make himself look taller, and pulled the skin of his cheeks outward. “You blind little brat, your grandpappy's face has been like this since I came out of the womb!”
Hong Jiu spat a melon seed shell at his feet. “Natural? Who are you kidding? You're old enough to be my father, yet your face is smoother than mine. You fake.”
Yao Wu clutched his chest in anger, his hand trembling as he pointed at her. “You... you!”
“Don't drop dead here. Cleaning up your corpse would be a pain.” Paying him no mind, Hong Jiu turned around, sat down next to Du Qi, crossed her legs, and grabbed the last remaining melon seeds from the table, cracking them noisily. There weren't many left to begin with, and as she cracked them one by one, the table was soon left with nothing but a pile of empty shells.
The bickering gave Du Qi a headache, his brow knitting into a tight knot. “Enough, both of you are well past childhood, yet you're still squabbling here. Shut up, both of you!”
Yao Wu sat down to the side like a defeated rooster, hanging his head. Hong Jiu curled her lip and continued cracking melon seeds, spitting the shells onto the blue brick floor, creating a scattered white mess.
Du Qi looked down at the floor covered in melon seed shells, his face darkening. “Clean that up before you leave.”
“It's not like I'm the only—” Hong Jiu was about to snap back, but the look on Du Qi's face forced the words back down her throat. Du Qi usually didn't speak much and rarely lost his temper, but when he truly became stern, everyone feared him. Hong Jiu shrank her neck back resentfully, the sound of her cracking melon seeds becoming much quieter.
“And you, Yao Wu,” Du Qi said, giving him an annoyed look. “Why are you late every single time? What was it today?”
Just as Yao Wu was about to speak, Hong Jiu stood up from her chair, stretched, and walked upstairs while yawning. Her cultivation technique didn't require quiet meditation; she still needed her sleep. There was a room on the second floor of the Abandoned Guest Hall reserved specifically for her—it wasn't large, just a bed and a table, enough space for her to turn over. As she went upstairs, she tossed back, “Call me when you're leaving, I'll sweep up the shells.”
After taking a few steps up the stairs, she poked her head back down to add, “Yao Wu, don't forget the Face-Preserving Pills you owe me.” Then she scurried up, the wooden stairs creaking beneath her feet until the sound quickly faded away.
Seeing that Hong Jiu had gone, Yao Wu finally came back to life. He wiped his face, cleared his throat, and his voice returned to normal. His gravelly, heavy-smoker voice wasn't actually due to a throat issue; he did it on purpose, using that tone when he was fooling around, but when it was time for serious business, his voice would deepen.
“I was out getting medicine for Little Eleven.” He pulled up a chair, sat down, drew a small cloth pouch from his sleeve, untied the string, and poured the contents onto the table. It contained a few dried spiritual herbs of average quality, though their roots were intact. “He ran out of Focus-Stabilizing Pills and came to buy medicine from me, but I happened to be short of two ingredients. I had to make a trip to stock up for him.”
Du Qi glanced at the spiritual herbs, said nothing, and pushed the pouch back.
Yao Wu packed up the herbs and suddenly lowered his voice. “Hey, is something going on with Little Eleven?”
“What do you mean?” Du Qi didn't even look up as he cleaned the crumpled paper from the table.
“Yesterday, my daughter sent me a message saying she tried to sell some medicine to Eleven. Guess what?” Yao Wu winked. “He bought Scar-Removal Ointment. Why would a grown man buy Scar-Removal Ointment?”
Du Qi's hand paused. He recalled what Hong Jiu had told him after Eleven left—“I smelled a scent on Eleven that doesn't belong to him. It smelled like a woman's.” Along with Eleven saying yesterday that “funds are tight, could you add a bit more?” He wondered to himself if Eleven really had something going on.
“I don't know,” Du Qi said, tossing the paper ball into the wastebasket with a flat, expressionless tone.
Seeing that Du Qi wasn't biting, Yao Wu didn't press further and changed the subject. Having stayed in the Abandoned Guest Hall for so many years, he knew what to ask and what to leave alone. “Fine, fine, go on with your work.” He leaned back in his chair and propped his legs on the table, mimicking Hong Jiu's posture from earlier, though his legs weren't as long, making the swing look rather awkward.
“By the way, the Central Continent Alliance's bounty board has been updated. Take a look and see if there's anything we can do.” Du Qi pulled a yellowed scroll from beneath the counter and placed it on the table.
Yao Wu perked up, quickly sitting up straight and taking his legs off the table. Du Qi infused a wisp of spiritual energy from his fingertip, and the scroll slowly unfurled, the densely packed text beginning to scroll. There were black names, red names, some crossed out, and others with bounty amounts that had risen by several fractions. Yao Wu swept his gaze across it and found a few familiar names.
“Ah Qi, your ranking actually dropped?” Yao Wu's tone was full of schadenfreude. Being high on a wanted list was hardly a badge of honor, but seeing someone else's rank drop was always amusing.
“Who's this one above you?” Yao Wu's gaze locked onto a name near the top of the list. Jiang Ci. He read out the small print following it.
“‘Jiang Ci. Traitor of the Azure Cloud Sword Sect, colluded with the Ice Spirit Cult, slaughtered fellow disciples. Reward of ten thousand spirit crystals for her live capture and delivery to the Central Continent Alliance. Five hundred spirit stones for any valid clues. Last seen in the Northern Border.’”
Yao Wu paused for a moment after reading it, and then his eyes lit up.
“Oho!” He slapped his thigh. “Heaven is practically handing us a fortune!” He turned to Du Qi, his eyes shining brightly. “Ah Qi, aren't you going to look for her? Ten thousand spirit crystals, that's a million spirit stones! With your Commanding Speech, finding her should be a walk in the park. With all the informants you've planted across the Northern Border, tracking someone down would be child's play, wouldn't it?”
Yao Wu leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “Besides, can you really stand having some little brat rank higher than you on this wanted list? Doesn't it rub you the wrong way to have your name squashed underneath hers?”
Du Qi shook his head helplessly, letting out a sigh that was half-amused and half-exasperated. A wanted list was hardly a source of family pride; anyone on it was a thorn in the side of the Central Continent Alliance. The higher the rank, the faster they died. He truly couldn't fathom why anyone would want to compete over this.
“This wanted list isn't some prized treasure. Why would I want a higher rank?” Du Qi pushed the scroll back toward Yao Wu, gesturing for him to roll it up now that he was done.
Yao Wu was still winking and nudging, muttering “ten thousand spirit crystals” under his breath. Du Qi ignored him. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment. Not because he was tired, but because he was thinking.
Looking at the name on the scroll, Du Qi felt a strange, inexplicable sense of unease. Ten thousand spirit crystals was no small sum, and with his methods, he was indeed confident he could find her. But he didn't survive on methods alone. He also relied on his Qi-Gazing Art. He had unearthed this ability from ancient Confucian texts, and though he had practiced it for half his life, he had only barely crossed the threshold. His visions were never entirely clear, often blurry like looking through frosted glass. But that blurriness was enough to tell him one thing—some things were not to be touched.
He stared at the characters for “Jiang Ci.” He could faintly sense that her aura was off. It wasn't malevolent, nor was it plagued by misfortune; it was tangled. Like a thread, it pulled on other things, stretching far into the distance. He didn't know who was at the other end of that thread, but he knew he shouldn't touch it.
He didn't need his Qi-Gazing Art for this; he relied on sheer instinct. Having survived in the Northern Border for so many years, this was what he depended on. His instinct told him—if he took this job, something very bad would happen.
He thought of the "woman's scent" Hong Jiu had mentioned, of the Scar-Removal Ointment Lu Yan had bought, and of Lu Yan's remark yesterday about "funds being tight." There might not be a connection between these things, but then again, there might. He didn't know. Nor did he need to. The rule of the Abandoned Guest Hall was—don't ask what shouldn't be asked, and don't meddle in what shouldn't be meddled in.
“We're not taking this order,” he said, rolling the scroll back up and tying it secure.
Yao Wu froze. “Really? Ten thousand spirit crystals, brother! That's over a million spirit stones. That's enough for you to buy so much fine paper and ink, or even buy a massive estate in Black Mountain Fort to retire in.”
Du Qi didn't reply.
“We'll decide after Lao Liu gets back,” he added after a moment of silence.
The moment Yao Wu heard the name "Lao Liu," he stopped cracking his melon seeds. “Lao Liu? His divination stuff is even more unreliable than your half-baked Qi-Gazing Art. Last time, he told me my forehead was dark and that I would suffer a bloody disaster within three days. And what happened? I went back and nicked my finger while chopping herbs.” Yao Wu held out his index finger to show Du Qi, a small plaster stuck to it. “What kind of bloody disaster is that?”
Du Qi didn't look up. “Blood is blood, and a mishap is a mishap. He was right.”
“You—”
“Besides,” Du Qi interrupted him, “Lao Liu has never made a mistake in his divinations. Nicking your finger is still a bloody mishap; he never said you were going to die.”
Yao Wu opened his mouth to argue but found himself speechless. In the end, he let out a huff, pulled his finger back, and went back to cracking melon seeds. Du Qi said nothing more. Lao Liu, how should one put it... he had never been wrong. But the things he divined were never the things you actually wanted him to divine. If you asked him if it would rain tomorrow, he might calculate that you owed someone two silver coins in your past life. If you asked him if a deal was worth making, he could figure out which direction your ancestral graves faced. The Qi-Gazing Art was originally Lao Liu's. Du Qi had only picked it up halfway, learning the bare basics and using it once he reached the threshold. But Lao Liu was different. Lao Liu's divinations were terrifyingly accurate. It was just that he never asked, and never rushed. When Lao Liu would return, no one knew. But Du Qi wouldn't take this job; he would wait until Lao Liu returned. It wasn't because he was worried he would die, but because he feared taking on a karmic tie he shouldn't touch.
We'll wait until Lao Liu gets back—he was only a half-baked practitioner himself, unable to see where that thread led. But Lao Liu could. He would wait for Lao Liu to return. Yao Wu cracked his last melon seed and patted his hands. “Alright, alright, you're Seventh Brother, you call the shots.” He stood up, stretched his neck twice, and glanced upstairs. “Is Hong Jiu asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Then I'm off. Still got a bunch of things to do at the apothecary.” Yao Wu walked to the door, then turned back to ask, “The money for Eleven's herbs, I'll put it on his tab?”
Du Qi nodded.
The door closed, and the room fell silent. Only Du Qi remained, sitting behind his desk with no one before him. On the blue brick floor lay the melon seed shells Hong Jiu hadn't swept clean; on the table sat the cup Yao Wu had used for tea; and in the wastebasket piled the crumpled papers from his night of writing. He stood up, picked up a broom, and swept the melon seed shells into a pile. His movements were slow and deliberate, as if he had done this countless times before.
This place still had to wait for every abandoned soul, providing them with a warm light to comfort their bodies.
Rate on N.U.
