Chapter 60

Chapter 60: Gong Shu Wu

“Saving a life is worth more than building a seven-story pagoda. When you see injustice, you draw your blade and help. That’s what people like us are supposed to do. Don’t be so polite, knight-errant.”

Shen Tang said it like she was some seasoned road hero.

If you ignored the sizzling flatbread in her hand, she really did have that wandering hero aura.

Even Qi Shan, whose tongue could slice stone, couldn’t be bothered to pick apart all the holes in her speech. Sure, the little young lord had “saved a life”… but how many lives had she ended with one clean cut to the throat?

The drunk didn’t even remember.

And as for “stepping in when you see injustice,” that was even funnier. It had been the little young lord throwing a drunken tantrum and sprinting straight into someone’s face to “help.”

Qi Shan saw enough to complain about for three days. The “thief,” however, didn’t.

Hearing Shen Tang speak so openly and naturally, the tension in the man’s shoulders finally eased. His brows smoothed. He even looked like he could breathe again.

He cupped his fists. “A great kindness needs no words. If you ever need my help in the future, benefactor, I’ll work like a dog or a horse for you.”

“Easy,” Shen Tang said, grinning. “Easy.”

She passed the baked flatbreads around.

Maybe she’d eaten too little at dinner. Maybe sprinting around while drunk had burned everything off. Either way, the hunger hit hard—an ugly hollow feeling, like the crash after going too far.

She didn’t care that the bread was still hot. She took a bite and left a neat crescent of teeth marks.

“Thank you, Brother Shen.”

Zhai Le had stopped hugging his knees like a lump. He accepted the bread politely. The surface was browned and crisp, the taste slightly rough with a faint sweetness. Hugging it like treasure, he sighed. “If we had fine wine with this, wouldn’t it be perfect?”

Wine?

The moment he said it, Qi Shan’s nerves snapped tight.

He pressed down the dull ache in his temples and gave Zhai Le a smile that looked friendly until you looked closer. “Young friend, I can’t stand hearing the word ‘wine’ right now.”

Mentioning wine made him see it all again—Young Master Shen swinging a sword in a drunken rampage while he chased after her through the dark. A nightmare you didn’t get often, but one you never forgot.

At his age, his legs couldn’t take that kind of abuse.

Zhai Le saw that smile and immediately shrank back like a turtle.

Shen Tang also broke out in a guilty sweat.

To keep the air from turning solid, she hurriedly changed the subject and turned to the “thief,” who was sitting with his eyes half-lowered, regulating his breath.

“I still don’t know your name, knight-errant.”

At that, the man’s expression froze for the briefest instant. He blinked, and it was gone so fast you’d think you imagined it.

“My surname is a compound one: Gong Shu. My given name is Wu. My courtesy name is Ban Bu.”

Gong Shu Wu.

Gong Shu Ban Bu.

Strange.

The compound surname alone was rare enough. The given name and courtesy name were even stranger.

In old measures, six chi made a ban, and Ban Bu meant “martial.” Whoever had named him had definitely put thought into it—just in a direction most people wouldn’t.

Shen Tang didn’t ask. The world was big. People were weird.

She’d heard of people with the surname Wang and the given name Zhe Rongyao, or the surname Gu and the given name De Maoning. Compared to that, this was nothing.

Zhai Le chewed and asked, “Do you know why they wanted to kill you? They even sent an eighth-rank gong cheng after you.”

Cultivating martial gall was easier than forging a literary heart, and the barrier to entry was lower. That didn’t mean an eighth-rank gong cheng grew in fields like cabbage. It was the ceiling for most warriors—seventy percent, at least.

Anything higher took talent, years of grinding practice, and luck.

Gong Shu Wu shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Zhai Le frowned. “You don’t know?”

Gong Shu Wu gave a bitter smile and didn’t answer.

Qi Shan sneered inwardly. Not knowing why you were being hunted? That excuse only fooled toddlers.

This “Gong Shu Wu” was a fake name.

The Thief Star meteorite records mentioned a man called Tai Shu Duan who fled into Gong territory after losing a war. He’d also been called Gong Shu Duan.

As his descendants passed the line down, the name changed bit by bit—Madam Duan, Madam Gong Shu, Madam Gong—until it became the Madam Gong everyone knew.

Put that together and it clicked.

Madam Gong Shu. Madam Gong.

Martial and civil.

Ban Bu for martial. Yi Li for civil.

So the man in front of them wasn’t some random “Gong Shu Wu” at all. He was Madam Gong’s exile—her ninth-rank Fifth Dafu, Gong Wen, Gong Yi Li.

Qi Shan’s face didn’t change. He acted like he hadn’t noticed anything and only asked with mild concern, “Those villains won’t stop. Sooner or later they’ll come again. Has Young Lord Gong Shu thought of a plan?”

Gong Shu Wu shook his head again.

A sickly flush colored his gaunt face.

Even a ninth-rank Fifth Dafu couldn’t shrug off a body full of wounds. He’d been running nonstop ever since they caught his trail, with no time to heal.

Some cuts had scabbed over, leaving long red marks. Others tore open again. Some were layered on top of older injuries. More than a few had been smeared with filth and turned red and angry, festering at the edges.

Qi Shan’s question was exactly what Gong Shu Wu feared most—and had the least answer for.

After a long moment, Gong Shu Wu let out a breath. “If there’s truly no way… then I can only flee to a neighboring country and seek refuge. Maybe I can win the slimmest chance to live.”

Qi Shan lowered his eyes as if thinking, then spoke like a man sharing his own heart.

“To be honest, I only recently finished studying in another country and returned. It wasn’t peaceful there either—harsh laws, heavy taxes, frequent wars. Whole stretches of land were scorched bare for a thousand miles.

Compared to that, Geng State is actually better.”

The war between Geng State and Xin State had already ended.

Every other place was either fighting or about to.

Gong Shu Wu went quiet. His face turned dead, and a bleak grief crept into his eyes—like the world was vast, and yet there wasn’t even a nail’s worth of ground for him to stand on.

Qi Shan understood that feeling.

Aside from Zhai Le, who came from the Southeast, everyone here had been people of Xin State. Xin State had fallen, and it had even been renamed Chong Tai.

In this era, states rose and fell like tides. Household registers got rewritten. People with sense didn’t cling to “nationality.” Still, there was no avoiding the loneliness of having your home wiped away.

Like a homeless dog, worn down and lost.

It fit the utterly exhausted Gong Shu Wu perfectly.

Zhai Le kept eating as if nothing in the world mattered but bread.

Shen Tang ate too, but her eyes kept sliding to Qi Shan and Gong Shu Wu. Her gut screamed that Qi Shan was brewing something.

That snake was shameless. In a fight, he saved [Wise Self-Preservation] for himself, hung at the edges to leech credit, and as long as his teammates didn’t die, he didn’t care.

A man like that didn’t suddenly start soothing wounded souls out of kindness.

When someone got nice all of a sudden, it was either lust or theft.

“Young Lord Gong Shu,” Shen Tang said, “have you heard the phrase ‘darkness under the lamp’?”

“Darkness under the lamp? Of course.”

“Then you’ve heard this too: ‘the most dangerous place is the safest place.’

The people chasing you know you escaped to Xiao City. Naturally, they’ll guess you’ll flee to another country.

They might even set an ambush on the road and wait for you to walk into the trap. You’d be better off doing nothing.”

“Doing nothing?” Gong Shu Wu echoed.

“Hide your identity and lie low,” Shen Tang said. “Right here in Xiao City.”

Qi Shan’s eyes flickered with approval. He picked up the thread smoothly. “Lately there’s been a rumor everywhere: ‘The Ziwei star rises in the Northwest, and the realm will be unified.’ Sibao Commandery has also gotten many unfamiliar faces from outside.

If you hide among them, the risk of being found is actually lower.”

Gong Shu Wu wavered.

Hidden in plain sight… staying in the most dangerous Xiao City…

He struggled, jaw tight, eyes flicking as if he could see the trap waiting for him. In the end, temptation won.

He nodded. “All right.”