This Miao person had some strange affliction — help him out once, and he’d pay you back with three sarcastic remarks; treat one of his fingers, and he’d make you groan in pain so hard you couldn’t straighten your back from the pain.
But in the end, Qi Yan said nothing. Whether it was because last night had been too intense, or because that Gu worm had just drained his energy again, he now only felt hunger gnawing at him — all he wanted was to eat, with no room to think of anything else.
The white snake, having been fed a chicken leg, still didn’t seem full. It slithered around the table shamelessly hunting for more food, opening its bloody maw wide again, only to get its head rapped by Miao Shuang’s chopsticks. “The plate isn’t food.”
The white snake sulkily closed its mouth.
Lai Fu soon brought over the copied ledger. Miao Shuang waved him off and began looking through it while eating.
Looking at the figures in the ledger, he couldn’t help but sneer. “A set of wedding clothes and two chests of jewelry — that’s all it took to marry you off. Your wedding really was shabby.”
Qi Yan: “You could have chosen not to marry.”
Miao Shuang glanced at him, picking up a pen and marking things off in the ledger. “This little bit of money is barely enough for daily expenses. His Majesty let you out, but he didn’t restore your official position, and your salary is gone too — how are you supposed to live from now on?”
“I don’t know,” Qi Yan said calmly. “Rather than ask me, you should ask him.”
Miao Shuang ignored his veiled probing and stood up. “This household is missing far too many things. Winter is coming soon, and there isn’t even any cold-weather clothing. Treating your injuries will require a lot of medicinal herbs, and they aren’t cheap… Procuring all this will be a problem too. Although Lai Fu helps keep an eye on things, there are too many hands involved, and I still don’t trust those people.”
He pondered for a moment, weighing which would be more convenient — placing Gu on all the servants in the household, or replacing them with a new batch entirely. Hiring people also cost money, and given the current situation, naturally the more he could save, the better.
Suddenly he remembered something and turned back. “Where did the servants who originally worked in your household go?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, Qi Yan abruptly stilled.
He didn’t speak, and his face showed no expression, but the hand gripping his chopsticks tightened until the knuckles went white. Miao Shuang couldn’t see his eyes clearly, but even from a distance he could still sense the churning undercurrent beneath those lowered eyelids, the gloom between his brows thick enough to wring water from.
It lasted only an instant, then he returned to normal.
Qi Yan didn’t answer, and Miao Shuang didn’t ask again.
He already knew where those people had gone — the crime of treason, punishable by the extermination of nine generations of kin. Even old General Qi, who had long since retired to his hometown, couldn’t escape death, let alone servants whose lives were worth no more than weeds.
The Qi family had been loyal and virtuous for generations, and now, today, only Qi Yan remained — a solitary, lonely man.
Miao Shuang couldn’t quite name his own feelings. He walked to the doorway. “No wonder this place always has this lingering smell of blood that won’t go away — aside from this bridal chamber, everywhere else is completely empty, like a plague of locusts had passed through. So it was raided and confiscated — how much silver did they seize from your household?”
Qi Yan furrowed his brow. “I don’t know.”
Qi Yan had spent years campaigning abroad and rarely concerned himself with household affairs, so not knowing was normal — but Miao Shuang knew exactly. The book had written it plainly: the emperor ordered the deaths of over three hundred members of the Qi family, and the confiscated household yielded tens of thousands of taels of silver. The number seemed like a lot, but thinking carefully, this was military merit earned with the lives of three generations of the Qi family — it really wasn’t much at all.
Moreover, most of it had originally been rewards bestowed by the emperor himself. Now that the household had been raided, that money had simply returned, untouched, right back into the emperor’s own pocket.
Miao Shuang narrowed his eyes slightly, an intense displeasure rising within him. If his fellow demon cultivators took something from someone, there was no reasoning by which they’d ever give it back.
This debt, sooner or later, would be collected back from the emperor’s own hands.
“How long has this batch of servants been in your household?” Miao Shuang asked again.
“Some time now. It’s been over ten days since I got out of prison — they came around then.”
“Ten days? But when I had someone take me around the household this morning, that person couldn’t even recognize the paths. Seems that although they came to work in your household and take the silver, they haven’t put any real effort into it.”
Qi Yan lowered his eyelids. “I’m a convicted criminal — it’s only natural.”
Miao Shuang added a few more notes to the ledger. “This batch of people still needs replacing. Money shouldn’t be spared in matters like this. Besides that, we’ll need to refurnish the place entirely — everywhere being so empty, what does that even look like… There are too many places that need money.”
“I can’t give you anything,” Qi Yan said. “If you’ve only come at His Majesty’s order to inquire about the whereabouts of the Sacred Gu, there’s no need to trouble yourself with all this. But if not…”
“If not?”
“If not, whatever your purpose here may be, I advise you to give up on it. This imperial capital, under the Son of Heaven’s very feet, is not somewhere you can turn upside down with just a few insects. Better to leave the Central Plains early and return to your homeland — with your skills, protecting yourself shouldn’t be difficult.”
Miao Shuang fell silent.
He studied Qi Yan’s eyes carefully, but the other man wasn’t looking at him.
In the original novel, Qi Yan had never said any of this to the original host.
A Great Shaman chosen since childhood, spending his days in the company of poisons — someone had taught him how to use poison, but no one had taught him how to be a person, how to conduct himself in the world.
If only someone had been willing to say such words to the original host, perhaps the ending would have been different.
Miao Shuang chuckled, and after a long pause said, “Why tell me all this?”
“Call it the fact that you and I are, for now, husband and wife.”
“Husband and wife?” Miao Shuang leaned in close to him, his gaze sweeping over his hand. “General, surely it isn’t that I treated a few of your fingers and tied together a pair of chopsticks for you, and now you’re so grateful you want to be good to me?”
Qi Yan didn’t answer, and his chopsticks didn’t stop moving either.
“Too much kindness of heart only brings great losses on oneself. All those victories you’ve won over the years — surely they weren’t achieved by moving your enemies to tears with a soft heart?”
Qi Yan still said nothing. Miao Shuang, finding this dull, sat down beside him. “Going back to the Miao Territories isn’t impossible, you know.”
Qi Yan finally looked up at him, reaching to scoop more rice, but Miao Shuang took the bowl from him first and filled it himself. “But you can’t go back empty-handed.”
Qi Yan was somewhat taken aback by the unexpected kindness. “…Thank you.”
Miao Shuang simply sat beside him, watching him eat with a smile. “You’re too thin. Eat more — if you’re going to be made into a human puppet, you ought to at least look good doing it, otherwise it won’t be comfortable to use.”
Qi Yan: “Cough, cough...”
A mouthful of rice caught in his throat, neither going up nor down. He hurriedly reached for the sweet soup to take a sip, but Miao Shuang beat him to it — right in front of him, he took out a small jade-green bottle, dripped two drops of green liquid into the soup, and stirred it with a spoon.
The doctored sweet soup was brought before him, and Miao Shuang said with a smile, “Drink up.”
Qi Yan: “…”
“Don’t worry, if I wanted to poison you, I’d do it without anyone ever knowing,” Miao Shuang said. “This is medicine to treat your throat — they forced you to swallow charcoal, didn’t they? Unfortunately it’s been left too long, so I can’t promise I can restore your original voice, but at least I can make you less hoarse. Listening to it for too long is wearing out my ears.”
Qi Yan, half-believing, scooped up a spoonful of soup and smelled it — it really didn’t smell like poison, so he took a sip. The sweet soup now carried a faint bitterness of medicine, and after swallowing, a cool sensation spread through faintly.
He drank half the bowl of soup, then suddenly asked, “How do you know this isn’t my real voice?”
Miao Shuang paused.
Before he could answer, Qi Yan continued. “We met at the Miao Village, didn’t we? I don’t know by what method you changed your appearance, but if I had been able to recognize you as the Great Shaman back then, I certainly wouldn’t have let you come to the Central Plains alive.”
“But the reality is, not only did I come here alive, I’ve also become the General’s wife,” Miao Shuang said, touching his face. “We Miao people aren’t like you Han people with your houses full of wives and concubines — whether marrying in or marrying out, we recognize only one person for life. Now that you’ve married me, don’t even think about running away. At worst, I’ll make you into a human puppet and bring you back to the Miao Territories.”
Qi Yan dodged away with some disgust, and didn’t speak again for the rest of the meal.
Miao Shuang took the ledger and went to find Lai Fu to assign him tasks, leaving only Qi Yan alone in the room… and a snake.
The white snake, having been fed several times by Miao Shuang, still didn’t seem full. It crawled back and forth across the table, unwilling to leave, and now turned its attention to the only remaining dish that wasn’t empty.
Qi Yan’s hand wasn’t very functional, and using the modified chopsticks, he could manage other foods well enough, but eating fish was genuinely difficult. Because of this, the plate of fish had been left until the very end, still half-full.
Miao Shuang, on the other hand, hadn’t touched it at all — presumably he didn’t like it.
The white snake flicked its tongue, facing off with him across the plate, looking as if it wanted to eat but didn’t dare — rather pitiful to look at.
Qi Yan’s hand gripping the chopsticks tightened slightly.
Miao Shuang wasn’t in the room.
At this distance, with these chopsticks, he had a ninety percent certainty he could kill this snake.
Letting that Miao person return to the Miao Territories would be trouble in the end. The current chieftain of the Miao Village was ambitious and had long harbored intentions of rebellion, even intending to defect to Nanzhao and help Nanzhao invade Great Yong. The matter of the Sacred Gu was merely the fuse — although the chieftain was already dead now, there was no guarantee there wasn’t a backup plan, such as this Great Shaman who had secretly infiltrated the imperial capital and successfully won the emperor’s trust.
His defection seemed suspicious no matter how you looked at it. If it wasn’t a genuine surrender, then his motives were deeply intriguing. If he really had managed to pry out some intelligence and successfully bring it back to the Miao Territories, the aftermath would be endless trouble.
Better to just kill him now while he had the chance…
Qi Yan clenched the chopsticks tightly, the veins on his arm bulging, and slowly he extended his hand—
And pushed the plate of fish toward the white snake.
…Never mind.
Bullying the weak was not something a man of honor would do. Even if he truly meant to kill, he’d wait and find a chance later to kill Miao Shuang himself instead.
Having received permission, the white snake happily enjoyed the meal, expertly finding the fish head and swallowing it down from there.
Qi Yan scraped the last grain of rice clean from his bowl and set down his chopsticks.
Great Yong right now was just like this fish.
Half of it bright and glossy, but flip it over to the other side, and you’d find it had already been eaten hollow.
Even if he suppressed the Miao Village rebellion this time and blunted Nanzhao’s aggression, the threats facing Great Yong were hardly limited to just this one matter.
The emperor was foolish, tyrannical, suspicious, and easily swayed by slander. In recent years, Great Yong had suffered constant internal turmoil, and the surrounding nations had long been eyeing it like hungry tigers. No matter how many bandits this general killed, no matter how much unrest he quelled, it would only ever be a drop in the bucket — nowhere near enough to save Great Yong from its crisis.
Killing one Great Shaman probably wouldn’t change anything.
Qi Yan turned his wheelchair and, somewhat absentmindedly, went to the washbasin to wash his hands. Just as he was washing, something alive was suddenly thrown at him, landing directly in the water basin.
Caught off guard, he was startled, and upon closer look discovered it was actually the white snake — its belly slightly bulging, apparently full.
Miao Shuang appeared in the doorway, saying with a look of disgust. “Ate itself greasy all over and then comes crawling up my sleeve — go get washed before you come near me again.”
Qi Yan was speechless for a moment: “…So you just threw it into the basin I was washing my hands in?”
“Well what else was I supposed to do? Not throw it in your hand-washing basin — throw it in your bathing basin instead?”
Qi Yan found his unreasonable demand utterly baffling — that someone would actually ask another person to help wash a snake.
He worked up some soap and cleaned both his hands and the snake. The snake, apparently quite uncomfortable with the scrubbing, bolted the moment he let go, slithering swiftly out of the basin, crawling over the towel rack, and giving itself an automatic dry-off.
Only then did Miao Shuang reach out and take it. Qi Yan paused for a moment, then flipped the towel over to wipe his hands, and turned his wheelchair back to the bedroom.
He faintly heard Miao Shuang’s voice behind him. “Treat what? Not treating it.”
There was no one else in the room — was he talking to the snake?
“He’s already trying to kill you, and you still want me to treat his hand? Don’t you believe that the moment his hand heals, the first thing he’ll do is strangle you to death?”
Qi Yan: “…”
He glanced at the already-made bed, chose to lie down on it, and lowered the curtain.