The Emperor and General Gu having a massive row outside the Hall of State Affairs quickly spread throughout the entire imperial palace, and then traveled at the speed of light to the ears of various nobles. Meanwhile, Geng Nuo was still bitterly and laboriously practicing how to smile. After about two hours, he finally achieved some meager results. He Fei felt the task was essentially complete and finally began to relax a bit.
The two of them lapsed into a bit of idle chatter.
He Fei asked with no small amount of confusion, “How on earth did you offend General Gu? This was clearly just an excuse, as he simply wanted to teach you a lesson.”
Geng Nuo shook his head with a chopstick clamped between his teeth; how could he possibly know?
Pacing back and forth within the narrow bedroom, He Fei earnestly helped him analyze the situation. “In front of guests, no matter how unhappy you are, your smile must look sincere. How could they not know that everyone is just putting on a superficial act of false affection with one another? But they still demand that you act like it is real. Did you fail to control your expression and smile too fake?”
“How could that be!” Geng Nuo took the chopsticks out of his mouth to defend himself. “I have never even smiled at him!”
“Huh?” He Fei was dumbfounded. “When you were serving General Gu… you didn’t smile? How is that possible?”
He muttered to himself in contemplation. “Could it be that General Gu likes the cold and aloof type?”
Geng Nuo felt that Gu Chengayan simply enjoyed watching people cry, but he had no intention of sharing that with He Fei, as it was too humiliating for a Beta. A full-grown, upright Beta being brought to tears and frightened to tears by an Alpha, how could he ever speak of such a thing?
He glossed over it vaguely, and He Fei didn’t probe further, shifting instead to another analysis.
“Then there is only one possibility.”
“What?”
“You must have smiled at someone else, and General Gu happened to catch it.”
“Huh?”
He Fei reasoned, “Just think about it. Since you never smiled in front of General Gu and he didn’t care about it for all these days, he certainly wasn’t bothered by the fact that you never smiled at him. But if he happened to run into you smiling at someone else, and he stopped to think about it—you don’t even smile while serving me, yet you actually smile at other people—of course he would get angry.”
“If you ask me, this is purely a matter of service attitude. But thankfully General Gu wasn’t too angry, otherwise how could you still be sitting here in one piece?” He Fei consoled Geng Nuo. “If you want to know what the consequences of truly angering General Gu look like, just look at Yuan Bingqing.”
Geng Nuo finally found an opportunity to ask, “What happened to Yuan Bingqing later?”
“Oh, he died,” He Fei said casually.
Geng Nuo stared wide-eyed. “What? He died!”
Sure enough, being smashed against the table with that kind of terrifying force…
Seeing that he was frightened, He Fei corrected himself. “Ah, not literally dead, but it is pretty much the same thing. His current state is what we generally refer to as being dead, and it is going to happen sooner or later anyway.”
Though still shaken, Geng Nuo couldn’t help laughing when He Fei suddenly remarked, “You didn’t actually think General Gu hits that recklessly, did you?”
He clicked his tongue twice. “You, you’re clearly someone who has never seen the world. With General Gu’s strength, if he wanted to kill someone, he could have splattered their brains all over the place right on the spot. The injuries taken out for medical treatment that day were actually just minor scratches; a little rest and they would heal right up. But who told him to rashly offend the boss’s valued guest? Now look at him—Boss Pei treated him like an abandoned pawn and demoted him to those low-class entertainment dens. Whether he manages to survive is entirely up to his own fate.”
Hearing the end of it, Geng Nuo felt a wave of nausea rise in his stomach.
“You don’t need to be afraid either. General Gu is a golden thigh—cling tightly to him, and you will have a good life ahead of you. You probably don’t know this, but if a guest takes a fancy to you here and takes you home, you get to enjoy endless wealth and glory. Following them home is completely different from staying here; even without a formal title, you are still half a master, and they will treat you like family. Besides, even if the romance fades down the road, they will still give you a massive sum of money to help you regain your freedom. If you ever want to leave this place, you must seize the opportunity.” He Fei looked straight into Geng Nuo’s eyes as he spoke earnestly.
Geng Nuo was startled, fearing he might have given something away.
Fortunately, the other person seemed merely to be introducing him to a favorable destination.
Nodding vaguely to indicate he would think it over, He Fei considerately left him some space and departed first.
There was no surviving here; Geng Nuo recognized this reality. Seizing the opportunity while he had time, he immediately set to work combining the components he had scavenged previously, attempting to assemble a detector capable of hacking into the main system. With Pixiu’s chip, it would be enough to accomplish twice the result with half the effort.
He spent the entire afternoon putting it together, and just as he was debating whether to strike while the iron was hot and go test it out today, a knock sounded on his dormitory door once more.
Hurriedly hiding the detector away, Geng Nuo went to open the door.
Outside stood three unfamiliar waiters.
“Something the matter?”
The group replied, “Boss Pei wants to see you.”
Geng Nuo felt a twinge of doubt—why would Pixiu be looking for him right now? Could it be that he was worried he hadn’t served his distinguished guest properly and couldn’t resist coming to give him another lesson?
Stepping out and pulling the door shut behind him, he followed the three men.
As they walked, he pondered: if it were in Pixiu’s office, it would give him a convenient chance to scope out the interior layout once again and find an opportunity to steal the contract.
During his previous visit, he hadn’t paid close attention to the structural layout.
Where exactly had Pixiu pulled his contract out from back then?
Halfway there, Geng Nuo felt something was amiss; this didn’t seem to be the path toward Pixiu’s office at all.
“Where is Pixiu?”
The three men in front turned their heads in startled suspicion, seemingly surprised that he had dared to address the boss directly by name.
One of them frowned. “Just follow us.”
Looking around, Geng Nuo realized they had been walking for nearly ten minutes while leading him in circles around the building, specifically steering him through areas rarely frequented by guests so as not to disturb them.
This certainly didn’t look like Pixiu wanted to see him.
Halting his steps, he gazed at the three of them with guarded vigilance. “Where on earth are you trying to take me?”
Realizing their ruse was exposed, the three exchanged glances before lunging forward without another word to pin down Geng Nuo’s limbs.
“You asked for this!”
As Geng Nuo struggled violently, the middle man lunged forward to deliver a vicious kick to his abdomen, but due to Geng Nuo’s resistance, the blow landed instead against his waist.
“Ugh!”
Even so, the impact forced a sharp gasp of breath from Geng Nuo.
A bunch of lunatics!
Gritting his teeth hard to swallow the pain, Geng Nuo gave no further opportunity for these people to strike. Reaching out with a reverse grip, he flung the person holding his arm straight into the one who had just kicked him. The two tumbled to the ground in a heap, letting out a shriek of pain. Seeing the last man remaining about to step in, Geng Nuo grabbed that person by the hair and kicked him straight down onto the other two.
All three lay on the floor groaning in agony.
Geng Nuo demanded sharply, “I don’t recall offending any of you. Who sent you, and what are you trying to do?”
Seemingly taken aback that the seemingly frail Geng Nuo could take on three people single-handedly, the group flashed expressions of intimidation.
Stepping forward as though to interrogate them further, Geng Nuo watched as the men scrambled up in a panic and fled helter-skelter.
Their parting threat as they ran was: “Just you wait. Don’t think you can stay in General Gu’s good graces forever.”
Standing in place, Geng Nuo found the entire situation inexplicably bizarre.
Were they jealous because he had been chosen by General Gu to serve him?
What kind of mental issue was that…
Hiss.
Clutching his waist, Geng Nuo spotted a clear footprint left behind on his white shirt; the spot was bound to bruise before long.
Walking back slowly, he suddenly remembered something. Ignoring the pain, he broke into a frantic run.
Returning to his dormitory door, he saw that the door he had just closed was now left ajar.
A wave of chill washed over Geng Nuo as he rushed inside.
The dorm was tiny to begin with, containing nothing more than a bed, a simple table, chairs, and a wardrobe—and now everything was in absolute shambles.
It had indeed been a diversion tactic. What were they looking for?
Hanging on the wall was a coat that clearly did not belong to Geng Nuo—it was the outer garment Gu Chengayan had left behind in the billiards room the other day. With the coat hanging safely on the wall, Geng Nuo dashed over in a single bound to check the pockets.
The detector was still there.
Using Gu Chengayan’s cigar box as the exterior casing and applying some tech to make it exceptionally difficult to open, Geng Nuo had given it a highly deceptive appearance; anyone who picked it up would likely just assume it was a broken cigar box.
He had hidden it inside Gu Chengayan’s coat just moments before, figuring that ordinary troublemaking thugs wouldn’t dare tamper with a valued guest’s belongings.
Thank goodness, thank goodness.
It seemed it hadn’t been discovered.
Then what were they looking for by breaking in here?
Suddenly snapping to his senses, Geng Nuo dropped to his knees beneath the bed.
The zipper of the black cloth bag stood wide open, and the inside was utterly empty.
They had even mockingly left behind two Galactic bank notes for him.
As if terrified he wouldn’t realize he had been thoroughly looted.
A ringing sensation buzzed inside Geng Nuo’s head—those people had actually stolen his money!
Furious to the extreme, he knew this was meant as a psychological warning from that gang. Out of jealousy because he had caught General Gu’s eye, they had probably never taken him seriously from the start, viewing him merely as a disposable toy for Baron Percy’s amusement—only to watch him leap into General Gu’s favor overnight, with the potential, as He Fei put it, of being taken home by the general and transforming straight from a sparrow into a phoenix.
And so they had stolen his money—his money earned through utter humiliation, the money he had saved to pay for his father’s medical treatments!
This was an open provocation. He ought to hunt them down right now, beat them to a pulp, and snatch his money back. Since they weren’t afraid of making a scene and affecting other guests, neither was he.
Driven to absolute fury, Geng Nuo didn’t care anymore whether their intent was simply to bully him or to trap him into making a mistake so he could be kicked out from by General Gu’s side.
Right now, he just wanted to tear those thieves to pieces!
Such were Geng Nuo’s thoughts, yet his tears welled up and spilled over before his anger could, cascading down like broken beads.
Clutching the empty black cloth bag for dear life, his shoulders trembled slightly.
These people, these people…
Were simply too vicious!
“I was wondering where the little rat had scuttled off to; turns out it crawled back to its hole.” A magnetic voice echoed from the doorway. Gu Chengayan gave a perfunctory knock against the half-open door. From behind, Geng Nuo appeared somewhat novel dressed in his little suit today.
Hearing the voice, Geng Nuo stiffened his posture without offering any response.
Narrowing his eyes with mild dissatisfaction, Gu Chengayan was just about to step forward to swivel this impolite little fellow around and properly admire him face-to-face when Geng Nuo finally turned his head at the sound of approaching footsteps.
Only then did Gu Chengayan get a clear view of his face.
His eye rims were red, his nose was red, and the tear tracks across his cheeks were plainly visible, while anger and hatred were steeped within those tear-filled eyes. Giving a humiliated look over his shoulder, he immediately turned back to present his back to Gu Chengayan once more.
His slender spine trembled softly as he choked back aggrieved sobs.
Gu Chengayan’s expression turned somewhat peculiar.