Zhang Yang deliberately ignored the reminder in the system log.
What was this nonsense about recruiting carefully?
There was no need to be careful at all!
Recruit without thinking, no hesitation!
To Zhang Yang, even if the Mysterious Bloody Person scored perfectly in loyalty, morality, and ambition, he would be nowhere near as appealing to her as someone who scored zero in all three.
In the words of an observation sample, getting zeroes on every exam was just as difficult and rare as getting perfect marks across the board.
Something that rare?
She absolutely had to see what he was like!
Though Zhang Yang kept her expression blank, Xie Shu didn’t miss the slightest change in her pupils.
“Are you interested in him, young friend?”
Zhang Yang suppressed her excitement.
“He’s so interesting.”
Xie Shu lowered her eyelids serenely, her gaze discreetly sweeping over the unconscious Bloody Person.
Then she let out another sigh, its meaning unclear.
“As long as you like him, young friend. Perhaps it’s his good fortune, too.”
Zhang Yang poked the Bloody Person’s cheek.
She stared at the HP Bar above his head, which looked as if it could run out at any moment.
“Where’s the hospital? I’ll take him there to get checked out and have the bleeding stopped.”
“Someone is already waiting outside the courtyard.”
Xie Shu had sent for the best doctor long ago.
When the doctor stripped the Mysterious Bloody Person of his clothes, Shen Zhi drew in a sharp breath.
“…These wounds look strange. The old wounds have healed and scabbed over, and you can tell at a glance they’re lash marks from torture. But these new wounds… I can’t quite make out what caused them.”
Some wounds looked as though someone had pried them open and torn them apart with their fingers; others looked as though they’d been cut open again and again with a sharp, blunt instrument.
It wasn’t just his chest.
Both arms and legs were covered, too.
There was hardly a patch of uninjured flesh left on the body wrapped in prison clothes.
Shen Zhi quickly noticed that Xie Shu seemed quietly moved as she looked at the unconscious, bloodied man.
Zhang Yang, by contrast, was strangely calm.
She showed neither fear at the sight of all that blood and mangled flesh, nor sympathy for his wretched state.
It was as if the person lying there were an inanimate object.
Shen Zhi cupped his hands.
“Forgive me for asking, but who inflicted these wounds? A murderer only needs one blow to the head. Why subject him to such torture?”
How much would you have to hate someone to come up with such vile methods?
Zhang Yang’s attention was immediately drawn to Xie Shu.
“He did it to himself? Why would he hurt himself?”
No wonder he’d managed to score zero in all three categories.
He even had a tendency toward self-destruction and self-harm.
His mental state must be quite a spectacle, too.
“Does Your Ladyship mean that he is…” Shen Zhi didn’t understand at first.
Then, as a thought suddenly struck him, a guess quietly surfaced in his mind, and his expression shifted to one of sympathy and regret.
Zhang Yang asked, “You know what’s going on with him?”
“…I have a vague idea, but I don’t know if I’m right.” Shen Zhi didn’t know where to begin explaining.
After all, Zhang Yang lacked even some of the most basic knowledge.
“I told you before: for stars that have lost their respective Star Officials, it isn’t impossible to defy fate and change their lot. It just comes at a great cost… His condition is probably related to this so-called ‘cost.'”
“This ‘cost’ can’t be settled all at once.”
“It’s a curse that stays with you for life, following you like a shadow. If you’re unlucky, you might have to bear more than one in a lifetime.”
Zhang Yang was baffled by what she heard.
She didn’t really understand, but she knew what to focus on.
“What do you mean, bear more than one?”
Shen Zhi sighed.
“The world’s powers are ever-shifting. No one knows whether a regime still standing yesterday will be overthrown tomorrow. The struggle between earthly dynasties is a struggle between Star Lords, and the defeated are doomed beyond redemption. Suppose I defy fate and change my lot today, paying the price once to join this Star Lord’s camp. Then tomorrow this Star Lord falls, and I still want to defy fate and change my lot. What can I do but pay the price again and pledge myself to the next one? Every time you change allegiance, you have to bear another ‘curse.’ That’s why there can be more than one.”
The one small blessing in all this misfortune was that— most “curses” simply grew heavier and deeper on top of the original one, rather than another appearing out of nowhere.
“So his ‘curse’ is self-harm?”
“No.”
“No?”
Zhang Yang looked at Xie Shu, waiting for an answer.
Xie Shu said, “It’s lust.”
Shen Zhi drew in a sharp breath.
“Seriously?”
He thought of something and hurriedly signaled to Zhang Yang with his eyes.
Zhang Yang looked at him, baffled.
“Is your eye twitching?”
Shen Zhi: “…”
Xie Shu naturally knew what Shen Zhi meant.
“Don’t worry. You saw for yourself, he hasn’t chosen to give in and succumb.”
Shen Zhi retorted, “What good does that do?”
Some robbed you of one of your five senses; others left you with the five misfortunes and three deficiencies.
Those were relatively normal.
Some were designed specifically to torment people, making them lose whatever they wanted most.
For example, turning someone who prized their looks into a decrepit old person in an instant; forcing someone who loved cleanliness to endure filth and stench; or making an upright, steadfast person commit petty, dishonorable acts…
Others plunged the desireless into a swamp of lust until they were utterly ruined.
Some people of iron will could suppress their desires through sheer force of will.
But once something stirred those desires, they burst forth like a breached dam.
The harder they’d been repressed, the faster and more completely the person would collapse in the end.
Shen Zhi had heard of one such person, who’d become utterly consumed by wine and women, living in a daze.
“No one can hold out forever.”
He briefly explained to Zhang Yang what was going on.
Zhang Yang rubbed her chin, staring at a point three inches below the Bloody Person’s navel.
“If that’s what this is, why not just eradicate it at the source?”
If the Bloody Person couldn’t do it himself, she could do it for him.
She’d be quick, ruthless, and precise.
It would only hurt for a moment.
After a long pause, Shen Zhi managed to say, “It won’t work.”
“Even that won’t work?”
“If it were that simple to suppress, people wouldn’t be so terrified to even talk about it.” Could the ruthless people who knew exactly how high the price was, yet still chose to take that step, really have failed to think of Zhang Yang’s idea?
Not only had they thought of it, they’d planned it through.
And yet it still didn’t work.
This desire was a malignant growth, entwining the soul and the flesh.
Cutting away its source might purify the flesh, but the soul would remain bound.
With no outlet for relief due to the body’s mutilation, it might even become more twisted and tormented.
Destroying the body was only an insignificant part of it.
The curse reached its end only when the soul itself was destroyed.
“Besides…”
Shen Zhi quickly glanced over the Bloody Person.
The physician had wiped the grime from the bloodied man’s face, revealing a handsome, refined young face.
The only discordant features were the pain-creased furrow between his brows and his ghastly pallor.
“…People afflicted with this kind of curse push their boundaries one step at a time. As the curse grows stronger, men can become women, and women can transform into men. So long as they can feel pleasure, even if their bodies suffer while their souls are briefly numbed, instinct will drive them to do it… This man is beyond saving. Keeping him by your side will only drag you down with him.”
Zhang Yang was far too straightforward and innocent by nature.
A blank slate is easiest to color.
Most importantly—
“People with divided hearts are despised by the world. The curse on them is only one reason. The other is that their liege may have to share their burden… Even a liege with few desires may become consumed by lust, muddled, and tyrannical…”