Xin Hexue and Ren Ke walked together for half the way.
They finally parted near Dongyulin Alley, close to Nanmenfang.
Ren Ke’s expression held a trace of reluctance. After some hesitation, he gathered his courage and said, “Young Master Xin, until the Spring Festival, I’ll be staying at the Yanzhu Nan Residence near Nanmenfang. If you need any help with anything, and if I can be of assistance, feel free to come find me.”
Xin Hexue nodded and smiled. “Alright.”
The two exchanged a few polite words before parting ways.
Ren Ke walked back distractedly.
The Yanzhu Nan Residence got its name because it was situated south of the bamboo forest near the southern city gate of Lustin. Its location was remote, so lodging there was cheaper than staying near the inner imperial city.
For xianggong, such a secluded lodging house was indeed a good choice.
When Ren Ke entered the inn, he happened to run into another scholar who also resided on the second floor, right at the wooden staircase in the main hall.
They weren’t very familiar with each other. They merely nodded in greeting as they passed.
But just as they brushed past each other, Ren Ke suddenly stopped on the stairs, turned around, and asked, “Gongzi, is your surname Zhou?”
He vaguely remembered that during a previous brief conversation, they had exchanged names. The other party was a xianggong from Jiangzhou, and since Jiangzhou bordered Shuzhou, even though there were four or five other candidates staying at this inn, Ren Ke had a particularly distinct impression of this one.
The xianggong from Jiangzhou stopped on the stairs, gave Ren Ke a slight nod, and answered modestly, “Yes, my name is Zhou Shanheng.”
………
By the time Ren Ke rushed out onto the long street, Xin Hexue was already gone.
Instead, the people on the street all looked back repeatedly, surprised to see someone rushing out of the inn with such a panicked and flustered expression.
Ren Ke’s face burned with embarrassment.
Xin Huexue had only mentioned that if he happened to encounter a xianggong with the surname Zhou, he should send him a message. But he hadn’t left any address.
Ren Ke actually wasn’t even sure if the surname Xin Huexue had mentioned was Zhou, or Zhou as in “boat”, or perhaps some rarer “Zhou.” He was worried that he might have misheard and ended up giving the other party false hope.
He hadn’t managed to be of help. Otherwise, he could have used the opportunity as a reason to talk to Xin Huexue again.
Ren Ke walked back with a lonely expression. He had originally planned to find Zhou Shanheng for confirmation, to ask whether he knew the junior disciple of Master Du at Taichu Temple. But he had rushed out to the long street in such a hurry that he hadn’t told Zhou Shanheng to wait. Now Zhou Shanheng had already gone out, and there was no telling when he would return.
He asked the innkeeper about him. The innkeeper stroked his long beard and said, “I saw him leave with papers and a bundle. Maybe he went to the Ministry of Rites to register.”
—-
After turning through a few alleys, Xin Huexue suddenly felt someone grab the wide sleeve of his embroidered robe.
He subconsciously stepped back two paces, his sleeve fluttering as it slipped out of the other person’s grasp.
Xin Hexue’s eyes scanned the man. “Do you know me?”
The man wore a dark blue brocade robe lined with mink fur and had handsome, refined features.
Xin Hexue had never seen this face before and found it completely unfamiliar. Or rather, after having his memory wiped, aside from Hen Zhen and Ren Ke, he hadn’t seen the faces of the truly important poor scholar and great monk in the script.
The young master surnamed Li caught sight of Xin Hexue out of the corner of his eye and thought he was dreaming.
When their eyes met, he spoke nervously, “You… you don’t remember me?”
Xin Hexue glanced at his clothing…silk and brocade, clearly not a poor scholar’s outfit.
So Xin Hexue lost interest but still smiled perfunctorily. “Have we met before?”
Hearing that, Li Gongzi seemed flustered. He gestured wildly and said, “You forgot? Jiangzhou, Changjin County, cockfighting, you even won thirty taels of silver from me!”
Xin Hexue became a little interested at the mention of Jiangzhou.
He had looked into it. Jiangzhou was located along the Yangtze River, and had also suffered from severe drought this year.
This man knew him, which meant he had been to Jiangzhou?
Xin Hexue touched his lips with his knuckle, looking thoughtful. Li gongzi thought his words were triggering Xin Hexue’s memory and tried to keep prompting him.
With just a few sentences, he was almost spilling all his personal details.
Li gongzi’s name was Li Leshan, son of the county magistrate of Changjin County in Jiangzhou.
Though fond of chasing cats and dogs and cockfighting, he was still a student of the county academy and had come to the capital to take the imperial exam.
According to him, Xin Hexue had won thirty taels of silver in a cockfighting pit in Jiangzhou.
For the son of a magistrate, that shouldn’t have been a large sum, but he remembered it so clearly and had been searching for him ever since?
Li Leshan had no idea that in Xin Hexue’s mind, he had already been labeled as petty and narrow-minded. He continued, “You didn’t leave a name that day. Rooster Head only asked for your surname during registration. You’re surnamed Xin, right? Xin gongzi?”
He was speaking in a bit of a muddled way.
Xin Hexue realized the “Rooster Head” he was referring to must have been the person managing the fight.
Li Leshan: “I’ve been looking for you ever since…”
Li Leshan continued, “But there are very few people surnamed Xin in Changjin County. I happened to run into a poor scholar also looking for someone, his target happened to also be surnamed Xin.”
“So, your name is Xin Tian, right?”
He looked at Xin Hexue with hope in his eyes.
Xin Tian had indeed been his previous name.
Xin Hexue’s mind stirred. It turned out this young man had come to deliver a clue. Rarely, he showed a genuinely pleasant expression. “You’ve seen him? The poor scholar looking for me…what’s his name?”
—-
Night dew was heavy, and the winter snow had yet to melt.
The breath from his lips turned to pale white mist in the cold night wind.
The Minister of Rites’ residence was a grand four-courtyard estate bestowed by the emperor, located in Xing’anfang. With pavilions, curved eaves, and blue-tiled roofs, the symmetrical three-path layout was meticulously arranged.
Past the hanging-flower gate was a looping veranda. By the garden’s pond were banana plants, purple bamboo, and tall pine trees. When the wind blew, you could hear a thunderous rustle.
Xin Hexue had been to the main hall but hadn’t seen the examinee register. Perhaps the minister had taken the documents home.
With a light tap of his toe, Xin Hexue leapt onto the outer wall. He used an illusion technique to remain hidden not only from passing watchmen but also the household servants inside the compound.
He followed the outer wall to the front courtyard’s study.
The large study was still lit, its candlelight bright in the winter night. On the oiled paper windows, the silhouette of someone writing at a desk was visible.
Xin Hexue glanced at the moon. It was now the hour of Hai, the second watch.
By the time it reached midnight, the candles should be extinguished.
He sat on the branch of a tall tree beside the tiled roof, waiting.
A man approached from the far end of the courtyard. Xin Hexue used his spell to remain invisible to ordinary people and wasn’t worried about being spotted.
But the man seemed to see him clearly and walked straight toward the tree.
“Benefactor!”
Xin Hexue heard a low, urgent voice calling out.
Their eyes met.
The man looked gentle and dignified, with a scholarly demeanor. He called out earnestly, “Benefactor!”
As he shouted, a long red fox tail suddenly appeared behind him, wagging happily like a dog’s tail toward Xin Hexue.
Xin Hexue: ?
‘Who was this now?’
His spell only worked on humans, not on fellow demons like this fox demon.
Seeing Xin Hexue remain up in the tree, the fox demons spread his arms. “Benefactor, don’t worry! I’ll catch you if you jump!”
Xin Hexue’s eyelids twitched slightly. He got straight to the point. “Have I met you before?”
The fox demon’s tail puffed up in agitation at being seemingly forgotten by him so thoroughly. In the blink of an eye, the scholar who had been standing there vanished.
Leaping up onto a tree branch was a fiery red fox.
It looked just like those fox demons in strange tales. But usually, they would charm scholars and then literally tear them apart and eat them.
In any case, a fox demon like this shouldn’t be transforming into a scholar, then back into a fox, then wagging his tail and begging for attention.
The touch under his palm felt damp and warm. The fox nudged up to Xin Hexue affectionately. “Benefactor, I finally found you.”
Seeing that Xin Hexue didn’t recognize his true form at all, the fox demon had to explain, “Benefactor, that day in Xushou Village, Jiangzhou, you saved me from a mountain hunter. Have you forgotten?”
The fox’s expression turned indignant. “It must’ve been that bald donkey from Taichu Temple! I heard from other small demons that some Master Du Zhi was taking the koi demon to the capital, and I immediately thought of you. That damned bald donkey must’ve made you forget me!”
Xin Hexue listened quietly.
Only after hearing the full story did he realize the rooster who had defeated Li Leshan’s was, in fact, this fox. He had transformed him into a rooster using an illusion spell.
Xin Hexue asked, “So that’s what happened.”
In that case, this fox’s spiritual consciousness had indeed been awakened by him.
He hadn’t expected Dacheng to be so small, after all, they had all run into each other in the capital.
Jiangzhou, Changjin County, Xushou Village.
A local scholar surnamed Zhou.
The scope of the target had been narrowed down as much as possible.
Xin Hexue’s gaze fell upon the window of the study, still lit by candlelight.
He asked the fox, “Why are you here?”
The fox drooped its ears and tucked its tail. “Benefactor, I followed your words…I didn’t harm anyone.”
It looked very much like someone trying to cover up something.
Xin Hexue gave him a calm but warning look.
The fox shrank back slightly. “Really, I didn’t! I had just found the target and hadn’t even revealed myself when the scholar missed a step on the mountain path, slipped on a rock, and tumbled all the way down the cliff. That’s when I picked up his belongings and disguised myself as him to enter the capital.”
“This person was a distant nephew of the Minister of Rites, a scholar from Xuzhou, coming to take the exam…”
Xin Hexue suddenly said, “Keep quiet.”
The fox immediately stopped talking.
The front gate of the study opened, and the Minister of Rites, now in his sixties, stepped out from the room. A household servant followed after him, then turned back to lock the study door.
Xin Hexue glanced at the Minister of Rites’ expression. Thanks to the koi demon’s ability, he could tell that although he looked spirited and hearty, in fact, the aura of nearing death had already enveloped his entire body.
Signs of a life about to end.
He lowered his gaze. After the servant helped the Minister of Rites away, Xin Hexue instructed the fox, “Can you get into the study?”
The fox nodded vigorously.
Xin Hexue; “Then help me… find the registry and documents of a scholar surnamed Zhou from Xushou Village, Changjin County, Jiangzhou, and bring them to me.”
The fox accepted the order and leapt down from the tree.
Not long after, the sound of rummaging softly echoed from the study.
The fox finally found the documents Xin Hexue had mentioned.
He ran out excitedly.
But the tree was empty. The night wind blew, and the tree shadows swayed.
——
Xin Hexue pressed a hand to his temple and woke up with a groggy head.
What he saw was a simple bedroom, not overly luxurious. Just a bed and a couch, a table and a chair, and an incense altar.
The only thing that could be considered elaborate was the embroidered lotus flowers on the canopy of the canopy bed.
A monk in a golden-red kasaya was looking down at him, his expression as calm as still water.
Xin Hexue realized his left ankle was once again restrained by a pair of bangles.
These jade bangles were even linked with a fine golden chain, and the other end was fastened to the cloud-shaped railing at the foot of the canopy bed.
Why did he subconsciously use the word “again”?
Had he been restrained by this monk with such a bangle on his ankle before?
Xin Hexue had already guessed the monk’s identity. “Why are you locking me up?”
Du Zhi remained silent for a moment, then replied seriously and slowly, “… Because it’s interesting.”
Xin Hexue: ?
A monk also knows this kind of thing?
Xin Hexue raised his eyebrows slightly. “Aren’t you a monk? How do you even know about this…do you intend to break your vow of celibacy?”
Du Zhi pursed his lips into a thin line.
He had received guidance from the fortune-teller. He pointed to the scroll by the bedside. “It’s written in the book.”
Xin Hexue followed the direction of his finger and looked toward the closed book beside him.
He casually flipped through two pages, and was immediately stabbed by the obscene illustrations and vulgar text. His eyes stung, so he simply tossed the scroll and smacked it against Du Zhi’s face.
Compared to covering up a little cat’s ears, this was something he was powerless about so K had to explain: […You flipped too fast. I didn’t have time to process the visual shielding.]
Xin Hexue: “…” He took a deep breath.
Du Zhi was confused by his reaction. “You don’t like it? But…”
That fortune-teller had said the young man refused to change his heart, and only found pleasure with others because he was too boring.
So he told him to study more, and even sold him this book.
Du Zhi said earnestly, “I’ve already read and memorized it thoroughly.”
Xin Hexue didn’t want to listen to this kind of nonsense. He thought of the fox waiting for him at the Ministry of Rites official’s residence to hand over the document. The moonlight outside the window showed it was already the third watch of the night.
He only wanted to cut through the mess quickly and deal with the trouble in front of him.
His memory had been cleansed. Even if the love value from the other party was 100, Xin Hexue still didn’t understand the disposition of the monk before him.
However, since he was a man of cultivation, the things he feared were nothing more than precepts and commandments.
Xin Hexue leaned against the head of the bed and smiled sarcastically, his gaze idle and casual. “Holy Monk, what are you trying to prove by saying all this to me?”
“You haven’t even spilled a single drop of your yang…”
Xin Hexue could smell the clean scent of agarwood, coming from the dark brown agarwood prayer beads hanging on Du Zhi’s chest.
The skin on the top of his foot was white, the nails rounded and tinged with a soft pink flesh color.
The tips of the toes gently nudged and stirred the agarwood prayer beads on Du Zhi’s chest. The collision of the large beads sounded solid and deep, while the pair of delicate jade bangles at his ankles let out crisp, tinkling chimes.
Xin Hexue lowered his eyelashes. Wherever his gaze landed, so too did the sole of his foot.
He curled his lips and stepped down. “Since that’s the case, Holy Monk, you might as well break the precept of lust first.”
Xin Hexue commanded, “Now, masturbate in front of me.”
