Ji Nanshu glanced behind him without drawing attention and said to Chu Mo, "Do they really think they're being sneaky about following us?"
Chu Mo's face darkened. "Lose them." Why wouldn't these people leave them alone?!
"Exactly what I was thinking."
So the two suddenly sped up. A few minutes later, they abruptly turned into an alley, giving the people behind them a makka pakka akka wakka mikka makka-boom-
A disappearing act!
By the time their tails reached the alley, they were dumbfounded.
Could Chu Mo and Ji Nanshu fly?? In the blink of an eye, where had those two grown men gone?!
Surely they couldn't scale walls and leap across rooftops?!
Absurd. Absolutely absurd!
Jian Yuanjia pouted and cursed, "Brother Chu must have led my Xiao Nanshu astray! Why else would they ditch us?"
"...Could it be that he just finds you annoying?" Cen Yan remarked mercilessly.
"No way! If he found anyone annoying, it'd definitely be those two!" Jian Yuanjia refused to accept it. He was so handsome! And so cute. How could anyone find him annoying? Did they think he was Bai Nanyu?!
Yu Lu said, "Then should we head back?"
Bai Nanyu looked dejected. "Then... let's head back... Brother Jingyi, I'm still so worried about Third Brother... Nothing will happen to him, right?"
Hah, it'd be best if something happened and he dropped dead already!
He and Ji Nanshu were natural enemies. He had originally thought that if the man knew his place, keeping him in the Bai Family like a pet cat or dog wouldn't be out of the question. But since he didn't appreciate the favor, he couldn't blame him!
"He'll be fine. He's a grown man. If something happens, it's his own problem." He Jingyi comforted him gently.
He Jingyi didn't like Ji Nanshu, but he was low enough to lust after his body.
Even if something happened to him, it should at least wait until he'd had his fun, right?
The two fiancés had different thoughts, but both were equally shameful.
Ji Nanshu looked at the table full of ingredients for God-Inviting Incense and clicked his tongue in admiration. "These are good ingredients. The age, the quality... Hmm, can you sell me the leftovers?"
The corner of Fu Yu's mouth kept twitching. "If you can make it, that whole pile of ingredients is yours."
Ji Nanshu's eyes sparkled as he nodded like a chick pecking grain. "Now that's great! Then I'll throw in three more for free!"
He got straight to work. After Fu Yu transferred her own merit to Ji Nanshu, he finished making the God-Inviting Incense in less than two hours-nine sticks in total.
Fu Yu and Xianggu were utterly dumbstruck.
Fu Yu raised a trembling hand and pointed at Ji Nanshu. "Th-that's it? It's that easy?!"
Holy shit!
Why did it feel like she'd given him too much with half her merit?! Give her ingredients back, you bastard!!!
"Do you feel like you could do it yourself?" Ji Nanshu saw right through Fu Yu and Xianggu's thoughts and asked with a half-smile, "Do you think my price was a little steep? Do you even want me to give your ingredients back?"
Fu Yu was too embarrassed to say it, but that was exactly what she thought!
"I thought it'd be difficult..."
"You need to understand that scarcity makes things valuable. I might be the only person in this era who can still make top-grade God-Inviting Incense. And the most important thing about making incense is..." Ji Nanshu bared his teeth. "First, you have to be human. Second, you have to be a celestial master. Finally, your cultivation has to reach the Innate realm."
She strongly suspected that Ji Nanshu was insulting her by saying she wasn't human!
Ah, no, wait. It seemed she really wasn't human?
Damn it, he'd nearly led her down the wrong path!
"Also... do you know why the recipe for God-Inviting Incense is common knowledge, yet so few people can make it?"
Xianggu said, "I know. The proportions are wrong."
Fu Yu didn't understand, but as an incense maker, Xianggu did. After learning that what she had made was God-Descending Incense rather than God-Inviting Incense, she had spent a very long time studying God-Inviting Incense.
Whether it was the literature or the recipe, she could claim to know more about God-Inviting Incense than anyone other than celestial masters.
The recipe was one thing; the proportions were another. God-Inviting Incense required twelve ingredients in total, each in a different quantity. If there was a little more of one ingredient, the other eleven had to be adjusted accordingly, or it would be impossible to make true God-Inviting Incense.
And all the so-called "God-Inviting Incense" currently circulating on the market was defective, precisely because their proportions had never been correct.
"Clever," Ji Nanshu praised. "If your master back then had properly taught you to cultivate before making incense, I'm sure you would have accomplished something. What a pity."
"That's fate..." Bitterness showed in Xianggu's eyes. How could she not have wanted that? How could his adoptive father not have wanted it? They had simply been born at the wrong time, toyed with by fate.
Ji Nanshu scoffed. "You should know that fate isn't set in stone. At the very least, meeting me proves your luck isn't bad."
It was hard to judge whether their luck was good or bad.
Gathering ingredients wasn't easy. Yu-Yu sighed.
Call it good luck, and a century or two's worth of stock was gone.
Call it bad luck, and they had met Ji Nanshu at the most critical moment.
He had ripped them off rather spectacularly, but overall, things were still a little better.
"All right, consider this today's... free gift." Ji Nanshu drew a talisman in the air and sent it into Xianggu's body. "We need to head back."
Xianggu's originally ashen skin gradually grew lighter and rosier, until it looked just like a living person's.
Fu Yu covered her mouth in disbelief. Her eyes reddened, and her shoulders trembled uncontrollably with excitement. "X-Xianggu!!!"
Xianggu couldn't believe the changes in her body either. She spread her hands and stood frozen in place.
Just as Ji Nanshu and Chu Mo stepped out through the gate, she cried out, "Mr. Ji!!!"
With their fingers interlaced, Ji Nanshu and Chu Mo headed back toward their own courtyard without looking back.
A faint voice drifted through the air. "No need to thank me. I can only suppress it for a year... Cultivate diligently. Remember what I said, and things will turn out well!"
Fu Yu and Xianggu exchanged a glance, then bowed deeply in the direction Ji Nanshu had left.
When Ji Nanshu and Chu Mo returned, there wasn't a soul in the courtyard.
Chu Mo quietly hooked Ji Nanshu's hand with his own, then kissed him on the cheek when he wasn't paying attention.
Ji Nanshu touched the spot Chu Mo had kissed, his eyes curving into crescents. "Aren't you afraid someone will see?"
"Let them see."
Dating wasn't illegal. They could police everything else, but could they really police him finding a wife?
"Isn't our great film emperor afraid of his image collapsing?" Ji Nanshu teased.
Chu Mo fell silent for a moment, his expression a little strange. It seemed, perhaps, probably... he hadn't told his wife that acting wasn't his main occupation.
"...Mm, I'm not."
The two entered the room hand in hand, never noticing that someone behind them had held up a phone and recorded the entire thing.
What did an upheaval in the entertainment industry have to do with him?
His image collapsing? What collapse?
He was dating, not evading taxes or committing crimes!