With nothing else to do after drawing the lottery, Zu An decided to drop by the Reflection Room to see how Cheng Shouping was faring. He was curious to see how many others he had hired.
When he finally arrived at the entrance of the Reflection Room, he saw Cheng Shouping gritting his teeth, the brush in his hand flying swiftly across a sheet of paper. He was all alone inside the room.
Zu An stared at him for a moment.
This fellow is really nut over money! He can’t even bear to use some of it to hire someone else to help him out. But since that’s what he wants, so be it.
Zu An left his study companion to his task and returned to his residence. He headed straight for his room, and was just about to enter it when he noticed a broken strand of hair on the wooden door latch. He froze.
Ever since he found out that someone in the Chu Estate was out to kill him, he had been keeping his guard up. Every time he left his room, he would set up a small mechanism to let him know if an intruder were to sneak in—and the mechanism had clearly been triggered.
Right now, the question was whether the person who had snuck into his room was still inside.
Zu An slipped the Poisonous Prick into his sleeves, then carefully nudged the door open and headed in. This would be a good opportunity to test out his newfound strength.
As soon as he stepped inside, a strong gust of wind assaulted him from behind, carrying with it a black figure that charged straight for him. Zu An had been well prepared, and quickly rolled away before stabbing with the Poisonous Prick toward the black silhouette.
The black-robed assassin was surprised that her attempt had failed, and her target was far faster than she’d anticipated. Her own attempt to evade him was just too slow, and the dagger made a solid contact.
Despite this, Zu An was less than pleased. He sensed that, while it had connected, the tip of the dagger had failed to pierce flesh.
“Hm?”
The black-clad figure had retreated several meters and was crouched on top of a table. Her exclamation revealed her astonishment. Zu An’s swift reflexes did not fit with his image as a wastrel, and the dagger he’d brandished had been sharp enough to pierce through her Ki Armor and slice right through the fabric of her clothes. Had she been just a hair slower, she would have been wounded by his unexpected riposte.
Zu An was himself assessing his would-be assassin. She was dressed in black cloth, and her hair had been carefully wrapped up to avoid giving away any hints of her identity. Nevertheless, from her crisp and pleasing voice, he could tell that the figure was a woman, and likely a beautiful one at that.
Her eyes were well hidden beneath a veil, but they seemed very familiar to him. A spark flashed across his mind, and he remarked instinctively, “Snow!”
The black-clad assassin gave a start. She slowly took off her veil. Her face was cold. “You’re actually a cultivator?”
Zu An’s earlier reaction had been faster than any ordinary mortal’s.
In response, Zu An chuckled softly and replied, “Aren’t you one too?”
“I always thought that you were a wastrel, but it turns out that you’ve been putting on an act all along. What are you scheming?” Snow growled.
Zu An sighed deeply and replied, “A powerful cultivator like you, serving as a mere maid in the Chu clan. I should be the one asking you what you’re scheming.”
“Forget it, it doesn’t matter. You’re going to die tonight anyway!” Snow fired back hotly.
Zu An retorted indignantly, “Aren’t you a vicious one? We might have our differences, but it doesn’t change the fact that we had once shared a night in bed with one another. As the saying goes, a day as a couple, a hundred days of gratitude—”
“Shut up!” Snow shrieked.
You have successfully trolled Qiao Xueying for 444 Rage points!
That matter was a constant thorn in her side. Every night, she would dream about how her pure body had been defiled by his vile hands, and she would jolt awake in revulsion.
Conditioned by all the verbal sparring that she’d exchanged with him over the past few days, she reflexively responded to Zu An’s provocation. “You aren’t even a man at all. Where do you find the courage to say such words?”
As she insulted him, she shot a disdainful glance between his legs, making sure to express her full scorn for him.
She had expected Zu An to fly into a state of fury or to wither in embarrassment, but he was somehow completely unfazed. “Even though we didn’t manage it in the end, I reckon that what we shared counts as half a day of couplehood, at least. That would equate to fifty days of gratitude. How can you be so heartless as to assassinate someone whom you owe fifty days of gratitude to?”
What the hell! Is that saying even supposed to work that way?!
1. One ‘li’ (厘) is five hundred meters, or just under a third of a mile.