An Acquaintance

Chapter 402: An Acquaintance

“They were tricked out of them from elsewhere, of course! Isn’t the Zuowandao supposed to cheat heaven, cheat earth, and cheat the Siming themselves?”

Zhuge Yuan smiled faintly. With a snap, he opened his folding fan and began to fan himself gently. “Who told you that? You’ve been deceived by them. That saying does circulate in the jianghu.”

“They simply don’t want anyone to know the truth, so they spread rumors that all of the Zuowandao’s divine abilities are swindled.”

“But consider this, Brother Li. Do you truly believe a mere mortal could swindle a divine ability from another Siming?”

“A Siming of the Zuowandao? Then wouldn’t that one govern all falsehood?” The thought surfaced in Li Huowang’s mind.

After mulling it over carefully, Li Huowang spoke again. “Brother Zhuge, what is the name of the Zuowandao’s Siming?”

“Doumu Taiyin.”

“Doumu Taiyin? Is this Siming the one who rules over the falsehood in this world?” Li Huowang’s mind began to churn even more.

“Was it in the White Jade Capital too? Did I see it?” He clutched his head, straining to recall memories from a year ago.

As if sensing something, Zhuge Yuan looked up at the sun, then directly reached out and snapped his fingers in front of Li Huowang’s face. Li Huowang’s mind instantly cleared, and he suddenly couldn’t remember what he had just been thinking about.

“Brother Li, matters of the Heaven Beyond Heavens—it’s best for us mere mortals not to meddle with them. We must avoid disturbing our own karmic fate.”

Li Huowang held his head and nodded, his voice tinged with exhaustion as he asked, “Not even one?”

“It’s best not to think about any of them.”

Li Huowang had many more questions about the Siming, but upon hearing this, he could only swallow them back down and change the subject.

“Brother Zhuge, could you teach me that technique of yours? If I could learn something like that, the Zuowandao would no longer be a threat.”

Zhuge Yuan fanned himself again, about to speak, when a low sneer came from the side.

“Hey, look at that—the pedantic scholar is still fanning himself in the dead of winter. The guy’s really got a screw loose.”

The expression on Zhuge Yuan’s face froze. With another snap, he closed his fan and said to Li Huowang, “This kind of thing is determined by fate as a Heart-Pan; it can’t be learned. But you can learn your own. As long as a Heart-Element masters the method of Cultivating the True, the Zuowandao will run faster than a rabbit the moment they see you.”

A bitter smile crept onto Li Huowang’s face. From the way Zhuge Yuan put it, it sounded like a successful version of himself would become the Zuowandao’s natural predator. “I hope so. I just want to get rid of those hallucinations. Nothing else really matters.”

“Hehehe, noodles are here! Three bowls of steaming hot fish soup noodles. Try this old man’s craftsmanship!”

Li Huowang picked up his chopsticks, took a few bites from each bowl, and tossed them onto the ground beside him. Mantou immediately stuck his tongue in and out, lapping up the noodles.

“Brother Zhuge, wait a moment. Let Mantou eat first.”

Zhuge Yuan, who had just taken out his silver needle, nodded in understanding. “Not a bad method. I was wondering why you’d keep a dog for no reason. But what if the knockout drug is slow-acting? By the time you’ve finished your meal, the dog could already be dead.”

“No matter. If I see Mantou poisoned, I can cut open my stomach and scoop out everything I’ve eaten.”

Zhuge Yuan looked at Li Huowang in astonishment as he said this, as if he wanted to say something but ultimately held his tongue.

Seeing that Mantou had finished eating and was now wagging his tail beside him, Li Huowang picked up his chopsticks again. “Brother Zhuge, no poison. Let’s eat.”

The old woman was right. The fish soup noodles were incredibly fresh and delicious. The soup was dotted with milky-yellow fish roe, and washed down with the creamy white broth, it was pure comfort on this winter day.

Just as Li Huowang was hesitating about ordering another bowl, he suddenly looked up, his brow furrowed as he stared toward the woods on his left.

Zhuge Yuan, who had been leisurely rolling noodles onto his chopsticks and putting them into his mouth, chewed and swallowed slowly before asking, “Brother Li, what’s wrong?”

“There’s a commotion to the south. Sounds like some kind of fight.”

“Brother Li, where did you learn that Celestial Ear technique? To be able to hear so far?” Zhuge Yuan shook his long sleeves, stood up, and followed Li Huowang as they hurried toward the woods beside them.

Leaves rustled as they rushed backward. The two of them drew closer and closer to the source of the noise. Soon, they stopped, taking in the thick stench of blood as they stared at the chaotic scene ahead.

Two factions were locked in battle, and it looked like it had reached a critical point. Everyone had bloodshot eyes, killing with methods Li Huowang had never even heard of, with people dying every moment.

Scanning a waist token on one of the corpses, Li Huowang said to Zhuge Yuan, “One side is from the Supervisory Heavenly Office. I don’t recognize the other side. Do you, Brother Zhuge?”

As he watched one person pull out a white maggot and smear it over a wound that went down to the bone—the wound instantly healing as they counterattacked—Zhuge Yuan shook his head. “I don’t know them either. But I think one of them belongs to the Zuowandao.”

“Zuowandao? Who?!” The word triggered an instinctive reaction in Li Huowang now.

“That Miao woman with the purple lips.”

Hearing this, Li Huowang stared at the flashing silver headdress, his eyes growing cold.

But after thinking it over, he didn’t take a step forward. “Brother Zhuge, this one looks like a small fry. If we rush in recklessly, we might scare off bigger prey.”

Li Huowang’s goal had never changed: capture North Wind and force him to reveal how to get rid of the hallucinations. He didn’t want to get involved in anything else. “Brother Zhuge, let’s go back. We don’t want to stir up any unnecessary trouble.”

Zhuge Yuan nodded and turned to leave with Li Huowang.

But just then, someone spotted them. A masked man among the combatants shouted toward Li Huowang: “Lord Zhuge!”

The instant he heard that familiar voice, Zhuge Yuan’s fan snapped open with a flick. He slammed his foot against a tree trunk and charged without hesitation toward the man in black.

Seeing that Zhuge Yuan had already engaged them, Li Huowang couldn’t just stand by. He drew his Purple-Tasseled Sword and rushed in.

With Li Huowang and Zhuge Yuan joining the fray, the stalemate instantly tipped into a rout. The enemy of the Supervisory Heavenly Office soon fled in defeat.

Wiping the blood from his face, Li Huowang walked over to Zhuge Yuan. As soon as he arrived, he saw the other survivors kneeling on one knee before Zhuge Yuan. “We pay our respects to Lord Zhuge!”

The sight before him startled Li Huowang. Is Zhuge Yuan really that highly regarded in the Supervisory Heavenly Office? Then why did the Chief Recorder look at him like he was a plague god back then?

“Ah, Brother Li, come here.” Zhuge Yuan helped a masked man up from the ground and introduced him with a smile. “This man is a close friend of mine, despite our age difference. Though he serves in the Supervisory Heavenly Office, he is also a National Hand of the Great Qi!”

“A National Hand of the Great Qi?”

“Oh, ‘National Hand’ means he is among the strongest players of the game of Go in all of Great Qi. ‘Go’ is that game with the black and white stones we played before.”

“A National Hand!”