Servant Fu was a middle-aged man. His name was weird, but he hadn't had a choice. Back when he had been sold to Golden Roc Castle, the steward had named the servants with characters from the Thousand Character Classic(1. Thousand Character Classic is a Chinese poem used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children from the sixth century onward) in the order that those characters appeared in in the book. When it was his turn, the character that was supposed to assigned to him was "Fu"(2. Fu in Chinese means women). Servant Fu, who hadn't been able to speak the Central Plains Chinese yet at that time, had dociley accepted his new name, mistaking the laughs of those around him as a nice gesture.
After he learned Central Plains Chinese and realized what kind of place Golden Roc Castle was, he had even less courage to request a new name.
Like most of the other servants, Servant Fu advanced very slowly in his professional career. And it was not until he was in his forties that he finally managed to get a slightly decent position: purchasing outdated cosmetics.
He could barely collect any profit in this job, and the only perk was a monthly opportunity to go downhill into southern Jade City where he could spend his petty salary finding some comfort in inferior wine.
As a result, when five shiny silver ingots were offered to him, he immediately decided to betray the castle. Apart from the temptation of money, the things that he had to provide were not confidential at all in his opinion. "How… How much is this?"
"Each ingot weighs ten taels. There are fifty taels in total," Xu Xiaoyi said with a smile. Now, he was a rich merchant who had a strong curiosity for information and who was willing to buy some inside information at the cost of some small amount of money.
Servant Fu swallowed hard, trying hard to imagine how much of his favorite wine he could buy with this large sum of money. After quite a while, he collected himself, lowered his head, and moved his eyes away from those silver ingots before saying in a somewhat timid tone, "I saw the Waning Moon Hall break into the inner chamber with my own eyes, and they killed everybody in sight. My legs still quiver every time I think of that scene. That Master Commander – I can barely mention her name. I need a moment to collect myself."
After taking another quick glance at the silver ingots on the table, Servant Fu regained some of his courage. "She walked towards me, and I thought that I was about to be killed. But she didn't even give a glance at me. Someone suddenly sprang out of the ground, but she was not afraid at all. With a single palm strike… No, with a single finger, that guy was killed. And then the King Lord walked over… "
"You saw the King Lord?"
"I didn't. How dare I look at him? Besides, the King Lord was behind me, and I knelt down on the snowy ground the moment the King Lord spoke."
"What did the King Lord say?"
Servant Fu was trying very hard, but he still added some of his own interpretations into the dialogue, which made it sound less and less like the original conversation between the Unique King and Lotus.
Xu Xiaoyi knew the limits of money. It could bring him information, but it could also bring him lies. A man like Servant Fu wasn't inclined to lie, but in order to please his employer, he would say anything. To make it worse, he didn't know the difference between the truth and lies at all.
Xu Xiaoyi didn't want to encourage this kind of inclination, so he interrupted Servant Fu's imitations and bluntly asked, "Did the Master Commander fight with the Unique King?"
"I don't know."
"Weren't you there?"
"But my head was buried in snow, and I didn't see anything. The Master Commander and the King Lord didn't talk much afterwards. Uh, I heard some sounds. It sounded as if they were fighting. They must have been fighting. Yes, they fought each other. The fight was really intense. I even thought that the stone castle was going to collapse at some points. That was a really rare scene… "
"Who won?"
"The King Lord, of course. The Master Commander is just a woman. I don't mean to degrade her, but how could she compare with the King Lord? She lost, so she pleaded for mercy and then requested a truce."
"You heard them talking about a truce?"
"Somebody else told me this. When I raised my head, the Master Commander and the King Lord had already left. But I'm not making this up. Everyone in the castle says that the Master Commander admired the King Lord's matchless kung fu skills, and that the King Lord also admitted that it was not easy for a woman to become this proficient in kung fu, so he decided to spare her. Did you know that the Waning Moon Hall actually used to be affiliated with Golden Roc Castle?"
Servant Fu intended to talk more about this rumor, but the rich employer became uninterested at this point. "That's enough. Take the silver and go have some fun. I'm a little tired and I want to rest."
Servant Fu answered "Yes" repeatedly and stared at those silver ingots for quite a while, as if he couldn't believe that they now belonged to him. He suddenly stretched out his arms, wrapped them around the silver ingots, and then held them like he would a newborn baby as he ran out.
Xu Xiaoyi shook his head, mumbling, "I hope that he has enough self-control to not spend the money too fast. If the killers found out… Never mind. It doesn't concern me anymore. Somebody get me the next guest!"
Zeng Jian was in his sixties but still very robust. Upon entering the room, he vigilantly looked around and seemed to be very concerned about the inner room, the doorway of which was covered by a curtain formed of beads.
He was a killer who had retired from Golden Roc Castle many years ago, but he had never let go of his former habits.
Pointing at the five big silver ingots on the table, Xu Xiaoyi said with a smile, "These are yours. Those in there are mine."
Zeng Jian was an experienced man who had seen much of the world when he was young, so he barely paid any attention to the five hundred taels of silver. "I know that you work for the Dragon King. Please tell him that I'm not here for the money."
Xu Xiaoyi widened his eyes, as if he were humiliated, with one hand still on the silver ingots. "If you're not here for money, then please leave here the same way you came. There's only money here, no Dragon King. I don't have time to send messages for you."
Zeng Jian stared at the stout rich merchant coldly. He knew that this merchant was in disguise. Suddenly, he said, "A few old fellow killers and I were the first batch of people to rush into the inner chamber to help out. Those young killers were running around like headless chickens trying to stop those insignificant minions. A Sabrelord ordered us to stand by where we were."
"So you didn't see the kung fu competition between the Master Commander and the Unique King?"
"I did, but it doesn't count as a kung fu competition. Lotus threw a palm strike. The King Lord exchanged a move with her. And then they both stopped moving. That's it."
"And what happened next?"
"Lotus and the King Lord each brought three men and went to a nearby separate courtyard. We were still outside confronting the Waning Moon Hall's men, so we didn't see what happened in there."
"Surely you heard something about it afterwards, right? Didn't three people go inside?"
"I'm only telling you what I saw with my own eyes. With regards to those rumors, you can buy as many as you want with a lot less money."
Zeng Jian believed that he had offered enough information, so he fished out a piece of black cloth, wrapped it around the five silver ingots, and put it inside the waist of his clothes while also drooping his arms to make the bump less obtrusive.
"Hu Shining knows my name. The Dragon King may ask him about what kind of man I am."
"I told you…" before Xu Xiaoyi could finish speaking, the old killer had already turned around and started walking towards the doorway. "Wait."
"What else do you want to know? I've already told you everything that I saw."
"You said that you saw the Master Commander and the Unique King exchange a palm strike."
"Um. Many people saw it."
"You put it too simply. What kind of palm strike? Which one of them seemed to have the upper hand? You're a killer. You should have noticed some of the details, which is what I am paying for."
Zeng Jian hesitated for a while. "Lotus surprised me," he said, but there was no surprise in his face. "Neither she nor the King Lord made any fancy moves. They attacked each other head-on, and they were competing in terms of internal energy. I have to admit that Lotus' internal energy is far more powerful than that of any killer in the castle given that she managed to stay unharmed after exchanging a palm strike with the King Lord. However, it was still very wise of her to agree to a truce. The King Lord has practiced kung fu for decades. No matter how weird her secret arts are, by no means can she surpass him in such a short time."
"How good do you think Lotus is compared to the Green-faced killers?"
"I don't judge people I've neither seen nor dealt with."
Zeng Jian pushed the door open and left without even saying goodbye. He was old enough, and though he retained some of his killer habits, he had lost his killer mindset, which was why he wasn't willing to pledge his heart and blood to anybody anymore. He had rushed into the inner chamber to offer help, but after he didn't receive the reward that he deserved, he had chosen to get the reward by himself in another way.
The old killer regarded these five hundred taels of silver as what the stone castle owed him.
Xu Xiaoyi turned his head back, glanced at the inner room, fished another five silver ingots out of a chest beside his feet, and then shouted out, "Next!"
His surname was Shangguan and his given name was Yinghao. He was in his thirties, the prime of his life. Since he was neither distantly nor closely related to the Unique King, he had been given a position in the White Clothes Yard. From an outsiders' eyes, he was one of the Unique King's henchmen.
A high price had been paid to bribe a man like him. If it were before the battle of Thousand Horsemen Pass, Xu Xiaoyi wouldn't even have tried. Even now, with thousands of troops stationed outside the city, he still had to place five flawless gold ingots on the table.
"The Dragon King said that he wouldn't necessarily kill all the members of the Shangguan family, so as long as you don't make an enemy of the Dragon King, there's no need for you to be afraid of him. And if you're willing to offer the Dragon Army some help, then you can even become our friend." It was unnecessary for Xu Xiaoyi to deny that he was the Dragon King's subordinate. No merchant, however rich they were, would be able to bribe Shangguan Yinghao.
"I'm not a traitor." Shangguan Yinghao was sitting opposite Xu Xiaoyi. He was the only one of the three guests who had sat down on this chair, "I heard that the Dragon King is still the Dragon King, and that he is uninterested in the Unique King's title."
"Um. The Dragon King is indeed uninterested, but there are a lot of other people who are." Xu Xiaoyi dropped a faint hint.
But Shangguan Yinghao didn't disclose his ambition. "I'll be okay with it as long as the title of the Unique King still belongs to a member of the Shangguan Family. The King Lord… is old. His kung fu is improving, but his judgement is getting worse. A pedantic teacher that the King Lord trusts has dedicated himself to chasing illusory fame, convincing the King Lord to breach the commandment that has been followed by the people of the stone castle for over a hundred years: abandon the tradition of assassination, downsize the killer army, and change the stone castle drastically. The White Clothes Yard used to be one of the most important areas of the stone castle, but now it has been sidelined, and we have all became common lackeys. I'm trying to stop the destruction of the castle, so I'm not a traitor. It is the King Lord and Zhang Ji who have betrayed the stone castle."
Xu Xiaoyi was in frequent contact with the people of Golden Roc Castle. Among all the excuses that people had given when they sold intelligence to him, this was the most righteous one he had ever heard. Admiration spontaneously rose within him, and he took another five gold ingots out of the chest besides his feet. "You followed the Unique King into the courtyard and saw everything?"
Shangguan Yinghao's eyes were not on those gold ingots. "Mm. Lotus had another kung fu competition with the King Lord in the courtyard. This time, they exchanged three palm strikes. Then the King Lord said, 'Both of us will suffer if this competition continues, and the Dragon King will be the only one benefiting.' Lotus said, 'That's true. What's the point of causing destruction to both our sides? Waning Moon Hall just wants an acknowledged identity.'"
"And then what?"
"The negotiator was Zhang Ji, not me," Shangguan Yinghao said in a jealous tone. In most cases, jealousy was more effective than greed in motivating people to take risks.
"If you had to make a judgement, then which one's kung fu do you think is better – the Master Commander's or the Unique King's?"
"One of them is the Unique King whose name is known to everybody in the Western Regions. The other one is a killer who betrayed and fled from the stone castle to become the Master Commander of the Waning Moon Hall which has been decaying for many years. You tell me which one of them is better. But the King Lord was unable to kill Lotus on the spot. Instead, he let an enemy, the first one to intrude into the castle for decades, leave unharmed. Judging from this fact alone, he suffered an overwhelming defeat."
Shangguan Yinghao had no qualms about taking all ten gold ingots. He believed that he deserved them.
Gu Shenwei walked out of the inner room. There was no need for Xu Xiaoyi to retell the stories, as Gu Shenwei had heard all the conversations. "It seems that they were both seriously wounded."
"Really? So Shangguan Yinghao deliberately hid the truth? Then I wasted five hundred taels of gold."
"What he said was probably true from his viewpoint. It was Lotus and the Unique King who hid the truth."
Gu Shenwei was now certain that under only one circumstance would two people, both of whom always tried to kill each and every one of their enemies during a battle, stop fighting.
He believed that the wounded Lotus was probably close to finding a compelling reason for cooperating with the Dragon King.
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