Was the painting bad?
Did that scoundrel Yuan Liang really have the nerve to ask?
Gu Chi's facial muscles twisted unnaturally as he struggled to hold back. A cold laugh escaped through gritted teeth. "Yuan Liang, what in the world did you paint? Why was the Sovereign's letter tucked in the middle?"
Not only was it tucked in the middle, it was wedged between more than twenty Fire Avoidance Paintings of men together. Heaven knew how badly it had struck his mind, reputation, and even his body when he opened the thing in front of his colleagues, only to have Wu Xian's beautified face and youthful body leap into view without warning!
At the time, Gu Chi had wanted to strangle Yuan Liang with his bare hands!
When a man was enraged, three feet of blood would spray!
Today, he would make good on that threat!
Qi Shan said, "The Sovereign put it there while she was at it."
Gu Chi: "..."
One sentence left Gu Chi speechless.
His half-raised sword was stuck in limbo. He could neither lift it nor lower it.
Qi Shan was helpless about the whole affair, too.
Gu Chi didn't want his colleagues to know he wrote smut. Did Qi Shan want them to know he painted smutty pictures?
Quite a few colleagues knew that Five Elements Lack Virtue was Gu Chi, but very few knew that the Fire Avoidance Paintings in their own private collections might have come from Qi Shan's hand. How many years had he been back on dry land? Now he had made a name for himself, and was Director of the Secretariat and Grand Preceptor of Kang Country. With the Assembly of Gods as his moneybag, he no longer needed to paint Fire Avoidance Paintings for pocket money like he