Reunion with Chu Liuxiang

Chu Liuxiang really was the perfect friend.

Loyal, able to shoulder trouble, and capable of understanding and empathizing with you-even if he knew you were using him, he would still appreciate your position once he understood the whole story. Anyone else played by Fang Yunhua the way Chu Liuxiang had been would probably have fallen out with him long ago.

Yet now, Chu Liuxiang only said with a touch of resignation,

"Don't let there be a next time."

"As for next time..."

Although the Great Desert storyline was bound to change, Old Chu would still inevitably make a trip there. After all, the reason he went to the Great Desert was that he did not understand a woman's heart.

He did not understand Black Pearl, whose heart was wholly tied to him, and he kept pretending not to understand while ignoring the romantic entanglements between himself and Su Rongrong, Li Hongxiu, and Song Tian'er. So the four women put their heads together and staged a fake kidnapping.

But Chu Liuxiang believed Black Pearl was a man from beginning to end. That made him instinctively regard her as an imagined rival, directly throwing countless twists and turns into what should have been a smooth pursuit of the women.

Then Wuhua noticed this and began pulling strings in secret, leaving Chu Liuxiang beset by danger at every turn. Of course, the wild speculations of his friend Ji Bingyan, who accompanied him, could not be overlooked either.

So, after some time had passed, Fang Yunhua would very likely meet Chu Liuxiang again in the Great Desert.

With such a useful fighter and walkthrough team practically delivering himself to Fang Yunhua's door, Fang Yunhua naturally could not bear to give him up just yet.

And when Chu Liuxiang saw Fang Yunhua about to agree, only to suddenly swallow the rest of his sentence and merely smile, fall silent, and rub his nose,

He laughed in exasperation.

"You don't think I have no temper, do you?"

"Then here, take this. Don't be angry."

Fang Yunhua took out the Thousand-Mile Mirror and tossed it to him. Once its principles were understood, something like this was fairly easy to make. After turning it over in his hands, Chu Liuxiang understood its purpose.

The next moment, he sprang up to the very top of the pine tree behind them. Raising the Thousand-Mile Mirror and looking upstream, he could clearly see the scene beside the little stream where he had fought Wuhua earlier.

When he landed beside Fang Yunhua again, he simply stared at him with an expressionless face.

"Yes, I saw everything," Fang Yunhua admitted with a nod. "After all, I deliberately tipped you off so you could expose that famous fake-death scene. If I didn't watch the whole thing, wouldn't my tip-off have gone to waste?"

"Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh..."

Chu Liuxiang suddenly discovered that Nangong Ling and Wuhua's cold laughter was quite good for venting one's feelings, especially when directed at Fang Yunhua, the mastermind behind it all.

He genuinely felt that Fang Yunhua was his nemesis.

He had originally thought that, if he saw Fang Yunhua again, he would have to ask him exactly how he had predicted every step of events. Now, however, his enthusiasm had waned, because he was certain Fang Yunhua would never tell him the truth.

In the end, he might only wind up half-dead with anger himself.

Chu Liuxiang was not a hot-tempered man. In fact, his good temper surpassed that of ninety-nine percent of the world. Yet even so, he still felt a weight in his chest.

Of course, part of the reason was Wuhua.

He had, after all, once been a friend Chu Liuxiang treasured deeply.

"What will happen to him?" Chu Liuxiang stared straight ahead, his eyes unfocused. Fang Yunhua, standing beside him, had no idea what he was thinking, but could hear how much reluctance those words contained.

"He'll die." Fang Yunhua's answer was as decisive as a blade cutting through iron.

"Must he die?"

"He must."

Then Fang Yunhua took a small booklet from inside his robe and tossed it to him.

This booklet had been hidden inside a wooden fish in Nangong Ling's home. It contained Wuhua's handwritten accounts of his deeds and could be considered his diary.

In the original storyline, Dai Duxing, the Beggar Gang elder who made his presence insistently felt throughout The Painted Brow Bird Arc, had exposed this matter. Naturally, as the Book Turner who already knew the plot, Fang Yunhua had to prepare early.

Fortunately, he also had a friend with quite a talent for theft.

That friend was Situ Liuxing, the lone master thief whom the King of Kucha invited to a banquet during the Great Desert storyline. He operated around the Yellow River and frequently appeared along the border between the Central Plains and the Western Regions. After receiving Fang Yunhua's letter,

He had taken advantage of the chaos in the Beggar Gang to steal the wooden fish containing Wuhua's diary.

While traveling south to Putian Shaolin Temple, Fang Yunhua had also met with Situ Liuxing along the way and obtained it.

Now, the more Chu Liuxiang read, the more unfamiliar his former friend Wuhua seemed.

It not only recorded in detail how he had gotten Situ Jing of the Divine Water Palace pregnant, but also the amorous encounters he had enjoyed with the daughters of renowned families while visiting their homes to expound Buddhist scriptures.

If the contents of this diary were leaked, the turmoil in the martial world would likely dwarf the current campaign against the Beggar Gang's villains. Who knew how many families would be torn apart, or how many women would choose to end their lives?

"Autumn Clouds, Spring Blossoms; the Fragrant Thief; the Peerless Monk..."

This inevitably reminded Chu Liuxiang of the names the martial world had given the three of them, and how they had been ranked as the top three dream lovers in the hearts of women everywhere.

He felt an inexplicable sense of irony.

"Quite a shock, isn't it? Who would have thought the one who looked the best-behaved was actually the wildest? Meanwhile, my title of Amorous Young Master sounds the least trustworthy, yet I'm actually the most devoted of the three."

Fang Yunhua was not boasting. Wuhua's case went without saying, while with Old Chu, former lovers generally never returned after a single night together. Only Little Fang diligently maintained his several relationships.

In response, Chu Liuxiang could only perform his three-part routine: silence, a wry smile, and a rub of his nose.

Then he looked at Fang Yunhua seriously.

"If this gets out, it will cause enormous trouble."

"So?"

"It should be destroyed!"

"First promise that everything between us is water under the bridge. Then you can destroy it however you like." Fang Yunhua raised his eyebrows at him.

Although the diary held many secrets that could be exploited-if Yuan Suiyun got his hands on it, it would probably supply Bat Island with three to five years' worth of business-Fang Yunhua had no interest in it. He was the dignified young sect leader of Mount Hua, a thoroughly upright man, all right!

Besides, Southern Shaolin had already paid him something for it.

"It's water under the bridge." Chu Liuxiang smiled wryly again, yet could not suppress the sense of approval he felt toward Fang Yunhua.

He thought he was being rather pathetic himself. Despite being used like this, he felt little anger. Instead, because Fang Yunhua had handed the booklet straight to him to deal with, he felt the trust between friends, and an inexplicable warmth welled up in his heart.

Perhaps his two old friends, Nangong Ling and Wuhua, had hurt him so badly of late that he desperately needed a new friend to restore the balance and help him believe true friendship still existed in this world!

And just as he took out the Fire Tinder to burn Wuhua's notebook, Wuhua came stumbling back again.