Chapter 215: Rumor
Translator: Transn Editor: Transn
Zhong Heng told Gu Shenwei the whole story:
Wei Lingmiao came to Jade City three years ago, before his father, the current governor, had taken office. He hanged out with a group of dandies in the city and showed great interest in killers and their business. As he repeatedly expressed his desire to witness the process of an assassination, one of his friends, the Fourth Young Master Meng, decided to help him fulfill his wish and introduced him to the Eighth Young Master of Golden Roc Fort, Shangguan Nu. The details of their relationship were unclear, but what was known was that Wei Lingmiao partook in an assassination mission. Shangguan Nu intended to impress Master Wei with his perfect assassination skills, so he deliberately slowed down the process. Unfortunately, this decision allowed some of his targets to flee. Master Wei chased them along with Shangguan Nu, as the Eight Young Master promised to let him kill his own fiancée, Gu Cuilan.
“I don’t know if Master Wei knew beforehand that Shangguan Nu’s targets were his fiancée and her family, but I’m pretty sure that he didn’t do anything to save them. Gu Cuilan recognized Master Wei and cursed him viciously before her death, and her curse haunted him. After killing her, he had trouble falling asleep and kept having nightmares,” Zhong Heng told Gu Shenwei.
Three years ago, when Zhong Heng had arrived in Jade City with the Governor, Wei Lingmiao had not yet recovered from the incident. Commandant Zhong managed to piece the whole story together from the incoherent ramblings of the young master, which he overheard during the countless number of times spent trying to soothe Wei Lingmiao’s frayed nerves.
Since then, Zhong Heng had kept this secret buried in his heart.
Shortly after Wei Lingmiao came to Jade City again to help his father collect the “Protective Talisman”, an informant who worked for Commandant Zhong came to him with good news: Master Wei was in Jade City for another important purpose, which was going to Four Truths Temple to appease Gu Cuilan’s vengeful spirit.
“I’m sure that Master Wei hasn’t completely gotten over that incident. He wants to keep it secret forever to protect his reputation. I asked him to pay me 100,000 taels of silver as hush money. Compared to the ‘Protective Talisman’ and the money he gives to prostitutes, that’s nothing. I never expected that he would want to kill me for blackmailing him,” said Zhong Heng.
Gu Shenwei knew Wei Lingmiao’s secret now, but feigned surprise to hide his real emotions from Commandant Zhong. In the meantime, he thought, “I should count myself lucky for not telling Wei Lingmiao who I really am. However, why did he tell me that he still missed his fiancée? Did he think that I would tell it to Shangguan Ru and she would be moved by his love story? Or, perhaps, he just makes up this story to deceive himself and make himself feel less guilty about what he did.” A moment later, Gu Shenwei said to Commandant Zhong, “I see, that’s his secret, but the truth isn’t important. I guess I still have to kill you to solve my problem.”
Upon hearing that, Zhong Heng smiled ruefully at the killer, regretting that he had taught the killer to focus on solving a problem instead of digging out the truth. “Wait, that secret is just a gift for you. Now you also have something on Master Wei. My last bit of information is much more valuable than that,” he said.
Gu Shenwei waited for the commandant to continue telling him the last secret, with his saber in hand. Nevertheless, Commandant Zhong just shook his head and said, “That’s privileged information. I won’t tell it to you unless my safety is guaranteed. Even if you torture me, you still won’t get this information out of me. If you don’t believe, you can try.”
“Alright, I agree to let you go, but where should I find you to get that privileged information?” Gu Shenwei released his grip on his saber shaft and said.
“Go to find the Eighth Young Master of the Golden Roc Fort. I’ll stay with him, waiting for you,” Zhong Heng replied.
Upon hearing that Zhong Heng had already gotten in touch with Shangguan Nu, Gu Shenwei was stunned. “It looks like you’ve prepared yourself for such a situation, Commandant Zhong.”
“I’m just a minor official. My superiors always think that they have a complete control over me, but just like you, I don’t consider anyone my real boss. I have to rely on myself to survive,” said Zhong Heng.
Gu Shenwei stood up and went to knock three times on a wall. A moment later, three machetemen pushed the door opened and entered the room. Two of them carried something contained in a large cloth bag into the room, and the other one walked in with a small cloth bag in hand.
Commandant Zhang looked on as the machetemen emptied the contents of the bags. When he saw what was in them, he was so frightened that he nearly fell off the bed. The object in the large cloth bag turned out to be a headless body, while a human head was in the small bag. Under the dim light, he could see that the dead man looked just like himself. The cadaver seemed to be glaring at him with its mouth open, but its eyes were already dull and glassy. After a moment, Zhong Heng came back to his senses and said, “Brother Yang, it looks like you’ve prepared for such a situation too.”
“I give you thousands of taels of silver every month. I want to get my money’s worth, so I can’t let you die that easily,” said Gu Shenwei.
Zhong Heng and the killer looked at each other smilingly. They did not trust each other, but that did not prevent them from cooperating with each other.
In fact, Gu Shenwei had never planned to strictly carry out Master Wei’s orders. After he had gotten the young master’s order to assassinate Zhong Heng, he immediately hired a craftsman to make a human head with wax. When Zhong Heng drank in the brothel during the day, the craftsman was observing his features as he sat nearby.
Gu Shenwei knew that this wax head could not withstand close observation, but he was sure that Master Wei would never want to come close to a dead body.
Gu Shenwei decided to spare Zhong Heng’s life for the time being, but he would not hesitate to kill the commandant if he found out that he had been lied to.
After changing his official uniform for civilian attire made from blue cloth, Zhong Heng sneaked out of the brothel with the killer. The three machetemen chopped the headless body into pieces and then made some wounds on the dead prostitute’s body, turning the room into a scene of a crime of passion.
As Zhong Heng had to flee Jade City as soon as possible, Gu Shenwei provided him some money and a horse. Before leaving, Commandant Zhong stood on the avenue, looked back at the city and sighed. “I left nothing behind. Brother Yang, when Master Wei leaves the city, you should escort him.”
“I will.”
Even if Zhong Heng did not say that, Gu Shenwei would still find a chance to follow Master Wei when he left Jade City. As the young master and his entourage had to travel through the Iron Mountain Gang’s territory to return to the Central Plain, Gu Shenwei decided to take this chance to find Zhong Heng at Shangguan Nu’s camp to obtain the last bit of ‘privileged information’.
“Xu Yanwei is a good girl. Tell her not to follow Master Wei back to the Central Plain.”
With these words, Commandant Zhong mounted the horse and galloped away.
As Gu Shenwei had expected, the discovery of the ‘commandant’s’ corpse in a brothel gave rise to many rumors. Residents of Jade City believed that the one behind the assassination of the commandant must have been the Kun Society or the Meng family. No one suspected that it was Master Wei who wanted to kill Zhong Heng. However, after two days, public interest died down, and no one talked about the incident again.
Master Wei had no informants in South City and never got to examine Zhong Heng’s dead body. As a result, Gu Shenwei successfully fooled him with a wax head.
Compared to Master Wei, Gu Shenwei was much better informed about the things that happened inside Jade City. He quickly knew that three junior officers in the Governor’s Mansion were arrested after Zhong Heng’s death. Those three officers were accused of corruption and flogged to death.
Gu Shenwei was pretty sure that these unlucky officers had once worked together with Zhong Heng to blackmail Wei Lingmiao.
Wei Lingmiao, who had been brought up in a powerful family, always took his servants’ obedience as a natural thing. He had never expected that the killer would have colluded with the commandant to deceive him. When the killer returned to Bodhi Garden, he received him in a study and continued their negotiation.
“I’ll figure out what’s wrong with the Supreme King, but I want all of the one and a half million taels of silver,” Gu Shenwei told Wei Lingmiao.
He knew that the Governor was eager to know about the Supreme King’s current state of health and believed that the more greedy he appeared to be, the more Wei Lingmiao would trust him.
Master Wei agreed to the killer’s request. He then informed the killer that one of his trusted subordinates would be the killer’s future point of contact, as he was leaving Jade City. He also told the killer that his father, the Governor, would never want to meet him. This was so obvious that the killer could never have solid evidence as to who the mastermind of the entire plot was.
Everything went smoothly for the young killer, except for his conversation with Xu Yanwei. He met her again in Bodhi Garden and ordered her to stay. He knew that he could not tell her the truth.
Xu Yanwei was determined to leave with Master Wei. “I’ve worked so hard to get the opportunity to go to the Central Plain. I’ll never give it up.” She begged the killer, while bawling unabashedly and pitifully.
Gu Shenwei had no choice but to let her leave. He thought that by persuading her to stay, he had already fulfilled his duty as Xu Yanwei’s boss. “Even if you end up getting killed, you can’t blame me. It’s your own choice,” Gu Shenwei said in his heart.
Xu Yanwei was not the only prostitute that Wei Lingmiao brought back to the Central Plain.
It was rumored that Master Wei had bought hundreds of pretty women in Jade City with several million taels of silver, including prostitutes and even maidens who had yet to start working as prostitutes. People in the city believed that Master Wei would bring the women back to the Central Plain to distribute as gifts.
All the men in the city felt bitter at the mass exodus of working ladies, and complained that there would not be anymore left for the coming three years. For them, the only consolation was that Xiao Fengchai, the icon of Pleasure Alley, would not leave with Master Wei. Apart from spending one night with her, Master Wei had not received any special treatment from Lady Xiao during his stay in Jade City.
After investigation, Gu Shenwei discovered that the rumor was completely false. There were only 50 prostitutes, who volunteered to leave with Master Wei. Just like Xu Yanwei, most of them had bought their own freedom with personal savings. They were tired of their lives in South City and wished to seek for other opportunities in the Central Plain. In their eyes, serving Master Wei, a handsome and considerate gentleman, was much better than serving the abusive young masters that came from North City.
The Governor’s Mansion supplied Wei Lingmiao with 50 carriages to transport the women, and they were parked at an inn outside of the east city gate for all to see. The design of the carriages was exquisite and of high craftsmanship. It was said that craftsmen from South City had worked day and night to build them, and they had cost at least tens of thousands of taels of silver.
As residents of Jade City were focused on the spectacle of Master Wei’s return to his homeland, the news about a demonic giant roc appearing within the Golden Roc Fort’s territory quickly got buried. It was only when the last carriages carrying the women were completely out of their sight, the terror wrought by the roc started to spread among them.
The giant roc had been very active. It was first found in the wilderness attacking wild animals and eating their eyeballs. Soon, people discovered that the bird had a weird habit of exhuming graves and consuming corpses. This habit earned it the title of the “Demon Bird”.
Gradually, the Demon Bird started to attack living people, and thus Four Truths Temple sent out monks who knew kung fu to subdue it. However, they could not track it down, and news of the roc killing people started to spread to even more places. Someone recorded the time and place of each appearance of the bird and found out that it seemed to be circling Jade City, gradually drawing closer to its walls.
When most people in Jade City considered the news about the Demon Bird as a fictitious horror story, Master Wei showed a keen interest in the bird. “It’ll be great if I can catch the bird and give it to the emperor. I heard that the Stone Castle has two giant roc specimens. Is it true?” he asked the killer.
“It’s true,” Gu Shenwei replied. He had been on the scene when the two giant golden-crowned rocs got caught. Back then, the Supreme King had made every effort to catch the rocs, but now when another giant roc appeared, he seemed to have no interest in it. Gu Shenwei took this as a sign that the Supreme King was ill.
He wished that he could return to Stone Castle as soon as possible to get Wayless Book for himself, and also to figure out what had happened to the Supreme King. Nevertheless, before that, he had to find a chance to follow Wei Lingmiao to the camp of the Iron Mountain Gang, for Zhong Heng had hinted that he should go there to obtain the piece of valuable secret.
Out of courtesy to the family of the Governor, the Kun Society and the Meng family were required to send representatives to accompany the young master as he passed through the Golden Roc Fort’s territory on his way home. Meng Mingshi was chosen to represent the Meng family, but none of the young masters of the Kun Society wanted to take up the task. Shangguan Ru refused to meet Wei Lingmiao and Shangguan Fei declined to leave North City. As a result, Gu Shenwei got this chance to escort Master Wei without even having to request for it.
Apart from meeting Zhong Heng, he had another important reason to be accompanying Wei Lingmiao.
He hated Wei Lingmiao even more than he did Tie Hanfeng, who had raped his sister. He could not get over the fact that Wei Lingmiao had killed his own fiancée. He was determined to avenge his sister’s death at all costs. He did not care even when there was a possibility that his cover could be blown.
