Chapter 41

Chapter 41: This Is an Expert (Part 2)

Shen Tang assumed today would be like yesterday. She waited outside the Moonlight Tower, feeding Moto a couple pieces of malt candy whenever he looked at her with those big, hopeful eyes.

Honestly, though—why could Moto even eat malt candy?

The question sat in her head as she stroked his sleek, glossy coat. The more she looked at this mule, the more she liked him.

Moto licked her palm clean and still wasn’t satisfied. He nudged her stomach with his head, then stared pointedly at the pouch on her waist.

He knew exactly where the candy was.

Shen Tang grabbed his big face with both hands and stared him down like a strict teacher. “No. No more.”

She frowned. “You’re a mule. Being this obsessed with sweets is not normal. And no means no. Pouting won’t work. Begging won’t work. Licking my face definitely won’t—holy shit, take it easy! Don’t stick your tongue out. I am not washing my face with mule spit. Keep licking me and I’ll turn you into mule-meat buns!”

She dodged again and again. Moto took it as a challenge.

That flexible tongue came whipping out like a weapon, trying to slap her right in the face.

The shopkeeper came out of the Moonlight Tower just in time to see one person and one mule wrestling for dignity. He smiled despite himself, then cleared his throat to remind her she had actual business.

“Little lady, please come upstairs.”

Shen Tang and Moto froze at the same time.

She patted Moto’s neck. “Go play. I’ve got work. We’ll mess around later.”

Moto seemed to understand. He picked up the reins and trudged obediently to a wooden post nearby.

Shen Tang looked at the shopkeeper. “I go in?”

She blinked. “I don’t have to wait in a private tea room today?”

“Not today,” the shopkeeper said.

Shen Tang didn’t press for details. She followed him inside.

If you ignored the thin gauze swaying softly, the flirtatious figures carved into the window screens, the beauty paintings on the walls, and that sweet powdery scent hanging in the air, the place almost looked like an ordinary inn.

In daylight, the Moonlight Tower was quiet. No giggling voices, no teasing laughter. Now and then a maid carried hot water up the stairs, and a menial wiped down tables and swept the floor.

Everything ran smoothly, but there was a strange emptiness to it—only the perfume and powder in the air, clinging like a ghost, hinting at last night’s noise.

Shen Tang looked around at first, curious.

Two glances later, she’d already lost interest.

A clean-cut servant waited in the main hall. He led them to the innermost room on the second floor, then pushed open the carved wooden door with exaggerated care, like any loud sound might disturb the person inside.

In a hushed voice, he said, “Young Lord is inside. Please.”

Shen Tang pulled her mind back from drifting.

The moment she stepped in, the first thing she saw was a huge round screen painted with a wide, open desert sunset.

She blinked. A screen like that in the Moonlight Tower? Shouldn’t it be a beauty painting?

A desert sunset felt wildly out of place.

Even stranger—the room held a clean, quiet scent of incense, nothing like the gaudy powder outside. The scent in the hall was sweet and thick, but after a while it turned cheap and suffocating. This incense was the opposite: light, restrained, like an orchid growing in a hidden valley. Not loud, not sharp, yet impossible to ignore.

Beyond the screen was the male courtesan’s “boudoir.” Shen Tang and the shopkeeper could only sit on cushions in front of it.

“This painting—did you draw it?”

The voice that came through the screen was young, male, unfamiliar. It wasn’t the boy from yesterday.

Shen Tang shot a doubtful look at the shopkeeper.

He didn’t seem to know either. He just gave her a hard look that said: Answer honestly.

Shen Tang put on a shy stammer. “N-not me. My brother.”

She hurried on, as if mortified. “I started painting last night and he caught me. He scolded me—said I’m too young to be messing with… with that sort of thing. I didn’t have time to tell you or the employer before he took the brush and finished it for me…”

Silence.

Then a sharp clack—a game piece dropping onto a board.

The young man behind the screen said, “Mm. Not bad.”

Shen Tang almost rolled her eyes.

Qi Shan’s work was only “not bad”?

So this world really didn’t have anyone with her taste. For a second, she felt the lonely misery of having no kindred spirit.

She asked, “So the employer is satisfied?”

“Satis—” The word didn’t even finish before the young man erupted into violent coughing. One harsh cough after another, tight and brutal, like he was trying to cough his lungs up.

With a body like that, her so-called “brother” was still holding his post. Dedicated, all right.

Shen Tang’s attention drifted again before she could stop it.

After a long moment, the boy’s voice she’d heard yesterday came from behind the screen. “Sir Gu, are you all right?”

The young man answered, weak but steady, “I’m fine.”

Shen Tang’s thoughts immediately took a hard turn.

So the sick young man wasn’t the Moonlight Tower’s male courtesan. He was a customer.

A customer coughing like he had one foot in the grave, yet still dragging himself here for entertainment.

Was this the kind of idiot who’d die smiling under the peonies?

The room fell quiet.

After a while, the young man said, “Young Lord misunderstood.”

Shen Tang went blank. “…”

The shopkeeper looked just as confused.

The young man took a slow breath, voice edged with amusement. “Some things don’t need to be spoken aloud for others to hear them…”

Shen Tang’s spine went tight. The hair on her arms prickled.

He was talking to her.

But she hadn’t spoken. She’d kept her mouth shut the whole time. She’d only thought a couple lines in her head.

Damn it… he can hear my thoughts?

The young man behind the screen fell silent for three heartbeats.

Then he asked, tone oddly sharp, “Did the sir who taught you never tell you what a strategist must learn?”

Shen Tang stopped thinking altogether and asked out loud, “What?”

“Don’t let joy or anger show on your face.”

There was a soft rustle of fabric. Footsteps came closer. The shadow on the screen sharpened—then the young man stepped out from behind it.

He was tall, straight-backed, but his complexion was terrible. Handsome, sure, but his cheeks were hollow, dark shadows sat under his eyes, and his lips were pale with a faint bluish tint.

He looked like the kind of sickly man who didn’t get old.

While Shen Tang studied him, he studied her right back, eyes cool and thin as a blade.

Unlike his own obvious illness, the young lord before him had a strikingly pretty face—almost too pretty. Brows open, features deep, with a faint hint of something foreign.

If he had to sum Shen Tang up in a phrase, it would be: young and full of vigor—literally.

Even from a few steps away, he could feel the heat of literary qi rolling off “him” in steady waves, like a blazing fireball.

The young man curved his mouth, half mocking. “I really am sickly. But the fortune-teller says I can still drag on for another twenty or thirty years.”