Chapter 7: The Alchemy of Opulence
This culinary colossus reigned unchallenged as Jiangzhou's singular five-star sanctum, where even hydrogen and oxygen underwent alchemical transmutation—98 yuan per chalice of Mount Eve's glacial essence, captured at celestial dawn and cradled in vacuum-sealed reliquaries.
To dine here demanded obeisance to fiscal sorcery. Five thousand yuan per palate merely purchased admission to this gilded amphitheatre, where murmured stock portfolios harmonized with silver cutlery's staccato poetry.
"An apt proscenium for reciprocity," Gu Chen proclaimed, his seatbelt's disengagement cracking like a flintlock's retort. "You enrobed me in sartorial majesty—allow me to shroud you in gastronomic glory."
They drifted through bronze portals into a sunlit nave of consumption, sparse noon patrons amplifying the marble's cathedral hush. An attendant manifested—a spectre in white gloves—bearing goblets of liquid diamond and a tablet menu glowing like Excalibur's altar.
"Monsieur's commandments?"
Gu Chen's gesture unfurled like a heraldic banner. "The muse dictates tonight's gastronomic liturgy. Let no epicurean psalm remain unsung."
"Unfettered profligacy?" Ling Meixue's lacquered nail hovered above digital temptation. Her prior encounters here existed as fiscal exsanguinations—each course a velvet-sheathed stiletto.
The screen's radiance revealed damning cartouches: Wagyu lamentations distilled in a temporal alembic—2,200 yuan.
"Compose your magnum opus," he urged, sprawled like a Byzantine despot.
Her smile acquired razor edges. *Let the jester's coffers haemorrhage for this burlesque.* "The White Alba triptych", she ordained. "Twin Wellingtons of Périgord's weeping livers, seared by Vulcan's breath. A '98 Lafite to inundate our sanity." The tablet's chime tolled fiscal apocalypse—660,000 yuan materializing like the Four Horsemen.
A sum to ransom city-states. While her peers auctioned kingdoms for quilted leather dominions, she'd commissioned an imperial banquet served on Limoges parchment.
"The maestro's selection?"
Gu Chen's fingers traced alchemical sigils. "Transmute plebeian chaff to ambrosia—*Dan Chao Fan* resurrected through Midas' crucible."
Cristal reigned across Damask as a porcine gastronome guffawed. "Egg-fried hovel fare in this culinary Sistine Chapel?"
The attendant's decorum fissured. "Our Michelin-anointed archimandrites don't deign to…"
"Heresy?" Gu Chen's interjection rang like Toledo steel. "Adorn it with Caspian astral caviar, shavings from the Truffle of Eternity, crowned with phoenix-feather katsuobushi. Does this theurgy satisfy your dogmas?"
The attendant's obeisance kissed marble. "Instantly, Excellency."
Ling Meixue's gaze dissected him. Beneath roguish nonchalance pulsed the certitude of crowned heads. "You apprehend", she breathed, "this numerical chasm we court?"
His laughter scattered like Visigothic coinage. "Chasm?" From his pocket cascaded a mendicant's trove—crumpled Cixis and clattering numismatics. A solitary fin pirouetted across polished obsidian, coming to rest beneath a carmine stiletto's stiletto heel.
The Alchemy of Humiliation
Ling Meixue's porcelain complexion flushed beneath the weight of patronising gazes, her fingers curling around the menu's gilded edges as if clutching a sinner's prayer book. The metallic clink of his pocket change—sixty-eight yuan in crumpled bills and orphaned coins—resonated like temple bells announcing fiscal sacrilege.
"Did you confuse Michelin stars with night-market lanterns?" she seethed, fingertips kneading her temples where migraine and mortification duelled.
Gu Chen glanced up from his golden-hued rice, grains shimmering with truffle oil and hubris. "Nourishment transcends price tags."
Their table resembled a post-apocalyptic banquet—discarded Périgord foie gras crusts (¥28,800 per decadent bite), hollowed Ossetra caviar shells (¥45,000 per mother-of-pearl spoonful), and the pièce de résistance: his ¥188,000 alchemical "peasant's feast", its Kobe fat pools catching light like liquid amber.
As Ling mentally tallied the carnage (¥898,000 and ascending), her boardroom pragmatism warred with visceral satiety. The '82 Margaux's velvet finish (¥420,000 per bottle at sunset) lingered on her tongue, its aftertaste laced with impending financial vertigo.
"Next fortnight..." she began, then choked on the unuttered *we'll dissolve this contractual farce at Grandfather's estate*. The lie curdled beside his sauce-smeared collar.
Gu Chen's chopsticks danced across Jingdezhen porcelain. "Family visit for tea ceremonies or stock audits?"
Her resolve fractured. This human paradox—equal parts gutter alchemist and corporate Midas—had become her boardroom Excalibur. The restroom mirror had reflected more than wine-flushed cheeks; it revealed fissures in her glacial facade.
At the obsidian payment altar, theatre commenced.
"Planning to wash dishes, street rat?" jeered at a Patek Philippe-clad patron, his ¥16,000 bird's nest soup abandoned.
Gu Chen's riposte—a matte onyx card etched with the State Council's qilin emblem—silenced the amphitheatre. The POS terminal bloomed with numeric jade blossoms, their zero-petalled display bending the maître d's spine to supplicant angles.
"Sir..." The hostess's Botoxed brow quivered above recalculated digits. "Might we... cultivate professional rapport?"
"Celestial alignment?" he grinned, tucking away the parchment receipt.
"Libra's scales," she purred.
"Fortunate." His wink carried the weight of imperial edicts. "This humble Earth Pig roots for balance."
The koan hung in the saffron-scented air as he guided his disarmed empress through rotating bronze doors, where neon reality—and her reordered universe—awaited beneath Jiangzhou's electric firmament.
The Banquet of Reckoning
Gu Chen's smirk curled like a duelling sabre. "This symposium of indulgence was sworn as my offering."
"Through what exchequer?" Ling Meixue seethed, her gesture encompassing his destitute pockets. "Their aqueous elixir commands ninety-eight celestial coins!"
"Attend, my caged songbird." His breath grazed her auricle in clandestine cadence.
Her ocular jade orbs dilated. "Bedlam! You'd choreograph a gustatory larceny?!"
"Since we waltz with euphoria," he murmured, digits already constricting her carpus, "let our pas de deux scorn restraint!"
They erupted from damask thrones in a maelstrom of scandalised linens. Sommelier petrified mid-oenological rite, Baccarat vessels aquiver as the maître d's stentorian cry ricocheted through onyx corridors:
"Apprehend these epicurean marauders!"
Ling's carotid rhythm synced with fleeing soles—whether from purloined Margaux or transgression's nectar, even her astute psyche faltered. Security appendages spread as portcullis chains at the egress, yet Gu Chen enfolded her in an imperial levée, surmounting the argent threshold with wuxia grace.
Three urban canyons hence, beneath neon zodiacs, she disentangled. "Execrable jester! What demonic muse—"
"Confess." His digital caress traced her pulsatile nexus. "Your essence hasn't ascended thus since antiquity's dawn."
The epiphany struck keener than censure. That chronometric flight—kid-gloved talons clutching his nape, zephyrs plundering her jade hairpins—had unshackled primaeval forces beneath her boardroom carapace.
Beyond the asphalt river, their berlinois chariot wept obsidian tears.
"Tarry." Gu Chen's mirth sublimated. "Inhale profundities."
Ling's brow furrowed in compliance. "Petrichor's kiss... and scorched amygdalae?"
"Precisely." His ocular daggers pierced the sixteenth stratum—a wraith in onyx ocular shields surveilling their ballet. The fuel conduit's precise laceration glistened viridescent, a photon's breadth from transfiguring escapade to funeral conflagration.
Shadows of Intrigue
Gu Chen's piercing gaze, sharp as a raptor's, forced the silhouette lurking by the sixteenth-floor window to recoil abruptly.
The sunglasses-clad operative pressed himself flat against the wall, rivulets of cold sweat tracing his temples. Even across the chasm of distance, the lethal intensity radiating from Gu Chen's stare had shackled him in primal dread.
"Mission… compromised," he rasped into the phone, the tremor in his voice betraying his terror.
"Fool!" A volcanic roar erupted from the receiver. "Return. *Now."
---
**Interlude: Towers and Tensions**
Beneath the glass monolith, Ling Meixue elbowed her companion, who stood transfixed by the skyward vista. "Your eyes stray where, exactly?"
"Merely comparing landscapes," Gu Chen drawled, mischief dancing in his eyes. "A fleeting spectacle above, yet none rival the horizon I've charted closer to home."
"Filthy-minded *degenerate*!" Her designer handbag became a projectile hurled with precision.
The compromised fuel line condemned their vehicle to stillness—a single spark from asphalt friction or a careless smoker's ember could birth catastrophe. Reluctantly, they consigned the machine to the dealership's sterile repair bays.
---
**Nocturne in Dereliction**
"You claim some *champion* shields the ice queen?" The corpulent crime lord's jowls quivered with disdain, lamplight glinting off gold-capped molars.
His subordinate—now sunglasses clutched like a talisman—swallowed hard. "The man *anticipated* sabotage before touching the vehicle. Detected my surveillance through sixteen stories of concrete. This is no mercenary. Perhaps one of those demobilized special forces operatives? Whispers say their ranks flood the streets…"
*Crack!* A meaty palm split the air. "Excuses drown in silence! Elite? Mortal flesh still rends!" The syndicate boss spread sausage-like fingers. "Let him taste mortal limits."
At his gesture, baton-wielding enforcers descended upon the informant, reducing explanations to fractured whimpers.
"Unmask this phantom guarding Ling Meixue," the kingpin rumbled to twin shadows at his flank.
A synchronized bow. "It shall be done."
---
**Crepuscular Encounter**
Gu Chen emerged from the market's humid embrace, canvas totes brimming with ochre-soaked squash and jade-bright greens. Where others saw culinary chore, he waltzed through mise-en-place as a symphony—each sear of the wok, each widened eye at his creations, a maestro's ovation.
The Porsche Cayenne tore through standing rainwater as he reached the kerb, filth blooming across his shirt like some grotesque epaulette.
"Your license plate's misspelt 'jackass'!" he bellowed at the retreating exhaust snarl.
Brake lights flared. Tyres hissed backward through sludge.
"Seeking encore performance?" Gu Chen lowered his provisions, cufflinks rolling up corded forearms.
The tinted window purred downward, unveiling a vision—raven-haired, lips painted wrath-red, eyes holding storms.
Tangled Vows
Their eyes met in electric collision. Gu Chen's pupils contracted to dagger-points of alarm.
"*You*—?!"
He veiled his face with a grocer's sleeve. "Mistaken identity! Strangers passing!" Snatching fallen produce, he dissolved into the crowd like ink in troubled waters.
"Stand your ground, you oath-breaking *weasel*!" The aristocratic beauty hammered her fist against the Porsche's blood-red interior. By the time stiletto heels met pavement, only drifting market aromas witnessed his escape.
"A peacock parades its plumes once," she seethed to her driver, jade pendant trembling at her clavicle. "Mobilize every underworld ear. That scoundrel's head shall grace my vanity by moonrise."
---
**Retreat to Sanctuary**
Gu Chen sagged against the villa's ivy-clad gates, perspiration mingling with mist. Streetlights stretched his shadow into a guilt-ridden marionette. "Three provinces," he chuckled darkly to a stray tabby. "Chased over steamed buns and a slivered moon's indiscretion."
Within, Lin Shiyu coiled on a Chesterfield sofa, manicured fingers tracing a mystery parcel's seams. The box pulsed with silent menace beneath crystal pendants' fractured light.
"Preparing my hero's feast?" Gu Chen's jest withered as he noted her blanched knuckles.
"Your 'chivalry'", she spat, rising like a provoked lynx, "reduced my suitors to tumbleweeds! Even the cafeteria widow avoids my shadow now!"
A silver flash. Twin mother-of-pearl buttons pirouetted across parquet as her silk blouse surrendered.
"Eyes to yourself, gutter alchemist!" She fled upstairs, scarlet-eared, while Gu Chen examined the throwing star glinting in his palm. "Must you weaponize *every* reunion?"
---
**Pandora's Parcel**
Ling Meixue's entrance sliced through the tension, her Balenciaga trench coat swirling. "Explain this." She nodded at the unmarked box, exhaling dread in their foyer.
"Your secret admirer's courtship ritual," Gu Chen quipped, the edge of the cleaver catching low light.
The parcel emitted a digital death rattle as she breached its seals. Within nested black foam lay a clockwork abomination—a gyroscopic orb caged in platinum filaments. Crimson numerals ignited: 00:59...00:58...
"Corporate gag gift?" She reached toward the humming contraption.
"*Don't!*" His bellow froze her wrist mid-air. The sphere's surface warped their reflections into scream-mouthed grotesques, its core thrumming a radioactive lullaby.
Recognition carved lines into Gu Chen's face—he'd last witnessed this artisan's malice in Dubai, seconds before a prince's yacht became seabed confetti.
Alchemy of Deception
His bark froze Ling Meixue's fingers mid-tremor. The steel orb quivered perilously in its glass cradle.
Gu Chen seized her wrist with falconer's urgency, steadying the lethal pendulum. "Relinquish it!"
He commandeered the device, retreating with the reverence of a priest bearing cursed relics. "Not a step further."
Ling Meixue rooted herself in the doorway, Louboutins scarring Carrara marble. "What devilry is this?"
"A symphony of mercury and malice," he hissed, all mirth extinguished. "Capable of transmuting stone to vapour." His mind replayed Jiang Lao's tutelage—the SB-250's kiss could indeed reduce bone to ash, its toxic breath weaving necrosis through bronchial tapestries.
---
**Intermezzo: Aquatic Alibi**
The courtyard fountain became his confessional. Gu Chen launched the apparatus in a desperate arc. Water swallowed the threat with sacramental silence. He crouched behind moss-stained griffons, bracing for apocalypse.
A lone bubble surfaced, mocking his vigilance.
"Your Armageddon lacks theatrical flair," Ling Meixue drawled from the colonnade, jade bracelet clinking against her still-raced pulse.
Gu Chen salvaged the floating taunt—a polymer-sealed scroll defying immersion.
Consider this prologue. Abandon the West District folly, or our next act dispenses with warning shots.
"Real estate theatrics", Ling Meixue shredded the ultimatum, crimson lacquer nails mirroring the disintegrating script. The riverfront parcel—a ¥200 million chess piece in Wang Fucheng's shadow play—now burned her palms like stolen fire.
---
**Coda: Cartography of Power**
"A sandbox squabble over dirt deeds?" Gu Chen's chuckle held blade edges. "Invite them to my mala banquet. Let Sichuan peppercorns judge their mettle."
"You navigate shadows with a tourist's map!" Her stiletto fractured limestone. "My lineage's coffers wouldn't fund their cigarillo habits. To cling to this earth…" Her voice fractured like overstrained porcelain. "Should I... surrender?"
He anchored her spiralling with a palm against her racing pulse. "You'll crown yourself land's queen." Moonlight sculpted his grin into a Damascus dagger's curve. "The Tiger's pact shields what's yours. Let jackals gnash their rotting teeth."
In the fountain's agitated depths, koi traced mandalas echoing both corporate mergers and ancient siege diagrams—prophetic cartography awaiting its interpreter.
Mirrors and Masks
Ling Meixue's laughter crystallised in the air—a brittle acknowledgement of his bravado. Here stood a man who shouldered cataclysms with the nonchalance of a street juggler, his irreverence softening her scepticism into reluctant reliance.
*(Were his jests not steeped in alleyway vulgarity...)*
---
**Overture: Silken Stratagems**
By dawn's tenth hour, the villa had become a textile battlefield. Gowns sprawled across onyx floors like vanquished banners—Chanel tweed supplanted by Gucci tulle, a Valentino blood-red sheath still sheathed in plastic sanctity.
"Does this honour the occasion?" Ling Meixue pivoted before her gilded mirror, her sapphire qipao transmuting sunlight into liquid cobalt. "The Tiger Marshal's verdict could unravel months of negotiations. Should I project austerity? Audacity?"
From his nest of discarded garment bags, Gu Chen peeled lychees with regal indolence. "Passable. Though the neckline tragically obscures my framed visage above your heart."
Her glare could preserve glaciers. "This isn't your brothel's beauty pageant! Those deeds…" Her jade hairpin quivered near his throat. "Three thousand acres dangle over vipers' jaws. Zhou Consortium's lawyers circle like carrion crows."
---
**Meridian: Carnivale of Aspiration**
The West District plaza seethed—oligarchs in Kiton cashmere traded veiled threats with ministerial underlings, socialites' Boucheron collars sparkling like dragon-scale armour.
"A pagan ritual for a warlord's ego," Gu Chen observed, parallel-parking their Rolls amidst armoured Cadillacs.
Ling Meixue adjusted her Mikimoto pearls, eyes tracing snipers' silhouettes on rooftops. "They whisper he redirected rivers to drown enemy battalions at twenty. Picture his bearing—glacial poise, eyes holding winter's sharpness..."
"And a birthmark shaped like the Hunan province," he interjected, buffing imaginary medals on his sleeve. "Chop-chop, goddess. My devotees grow restless."
---
**Spectacle: Bestiary of Influence**
Beneath the crimson ceremonial arch, power brokers jockeyed with feral grace. Debutantes' Schiaparelli gowns screamed *Elect me*—their dowries encrypted in Fendi peekaboos.
"Behold the plumage parade," Gu Chen murmured as a Saudi princess adjusted her Dolce & Gabbana veil. "All this pageantry for a shadow."
Ling Meixue's nails bit into his forearm. "Shadow or colossus, he commands our horizon. If the land bid tilts toward Li Group..." Her whisper frayed like overstretched silk.
Trumpets sundered the murmur.
The crowd's adulation detonated as a figure emerged from the bulletproof Maybach—ceremonial sabre at his hip, visage shrouded by a commander's feathered hat, epaulettes blazing with forbidden constellations.
Ling Meixue's pulse stuttered. Gu Chen's smirk carved deeper.
In the ornamental lake beyond, koi swirled new patterns—half corporate merger flowcharts, half ancient battlefield sigils, their fins writing prophecies in liquid cryptography.
Chapter 14: Bastion of Sovereignty
The assembly's pilgrimage sought not ceremony but revelation—heretics craving a glimpse of the mythologized warlord whose youth mocked their ossified hierarchies. Ministers and magnates traded furtive nods, their collusions simmering beneath ceremonial fanfare.
At the gates, tungsten-helmed sentinels stood as living barbicans. Rifle barrels' oiled darkness hushed jests, transmuting oligarchs into supplicants before this new martial pantheon.
Gu Chen surveyed the choreographed intimidation with a tactician's glare. *Must they trumpet my presence with such operatic flair?
---
**Prelude: Labyrinth of Access**
"Credentials." The guard's diction carried Siberian permafrost.
Ling Meixue's fingers fluttered through her Hermès abyss—titanium cardholders, jade USB drives, and no embossed parchment. "It *must* be here!"
"Perhaps your lingerie-obsessed flatmate repurposed it as garter decor?" Gu Chen drawled, examining his cuticles.
Her glare could vitrify volcanic glass. "That land contract dissolves at dusk! If I—"
A jackal's snicker pierced her panic.
"Ling, darling! Reduced to plebeian grovelling?" Yang Shen materialized like a laudanum vision, his silicone-enhanced consort's anatomy threatening Prada's structural integrity. "Does your paramour's prowess extend beyond boudoir theatrics?"
---
**Confrontation: Cerberus Unleashed**
Gu Chen's smile acquired stiletto edges. "The mange-afflicted mongrel howls loudest when denied table scraps."
Yang flourished vermilion-sealed scrolls. "Behold, serf—legitimacy incarnate, unlike your concubine's—"
"Revoked." Gu Chen's verdict fell like a guillotine blade.
"Filthy gutter spawn!" Yang's spittle flecked the marble. "These bear the ministerial privy seal! Who dares—"
The sentries' synchronized rifle bolts cycled with clockwork finality.
---
**Coda: Heraldry of Iron**
Ling Meixue's breath crystallized as Yang's scrolls spiralled downward, branded with crimson annulment sigils.
"Sorcery!" Yang's complexion rivalled his Bolivian marching powder's purity. "My father acquired these through—"
Gu Chen stepped into the sentinels' eclipse, his murmur carrying inquisitorial weight. "Inform your patriarch his bribes now fund court-martial coffers."
As security details dragged Yang's shrieking form into black vans, Gu Chen extended his arm. Beyond the cordon, howitzer salutes heralded the Tiger Marshal's advent—their detonations shaking cherry blossoms into crimson snowfall, each petal etching prophecies in the twilight.
The Invitation Scandal
After scanning the invitation, the soldier stepped forward and offered a respectful bow.
"Clear the path! What is this obstruction?" barked the officious man in charge, his voice sharp as a blade.
He narrowed his eyes and declared, "Expel these frauds at once—their credentials are counterfeit!"
"At your command, sir!"
Two guards seized Yang Sen's arms, their grip unyielding.
"Have you lost your senses?" Yang Cai'er seethed, her eyes blazing. "We are Yang nobility, *invited* guests! By what authority do you dare eject us? Name yourself!"
The officer met her fury with glacial indifference. "Lineage means nothing. Your names are absent from the registry. Depart immediately, or face forcible expulsion."
*Snap-click!
A phalanx of soldiers snapped to attention, rifles primed in flawless synchrony. The metallic chorus of loaded chambers echoed like a death knell, smothering all dissent.
"Audacious fools—forging passes for such an occasion…"
"Is that not Yang Sen of the illustrious Yang clan? Why resort to forgery?"
"Steer clear. Best avoid collateral disgrace."
Yang Sen blanched at the arsenal's lethal cadence. Clutching his companion's sleeve, he hissed, "Retreat—*now*!"
"Deceiver!" The woman recoiled as if scalded. "Your hollow boasts have made us a spectacle!" She vanished into the throng, heels striking marble like gunfire.
"Wenwen! Let me remedy this!" he pleaded, stumbling after her.
Gu Chen's voice sliced through the murmurs, laced with venomous mirth. "Spare the maiden your *three-second* theatrics, Young Yang. Did your paramour not take twelve lovers to compensate for your… inadequacy?"
The crowd erupted in stifled titters.
Yang Sen spun, venom dripping from his sneer. "What worth is your taunt? You stand invitation-less, trash."
"Is that so?"
Gu Chen threaded Ling Meixue's fingers through his. "Darling, the ceremony awaits."
"Have you gone mad?" She whispered, nails biting his forearm. "We've no passes!"
"Observe."
At the checkpoint, the officer extended a palm. "Your credentials, sir."
"Misplaced", Gu Chen drawled, producing a crimson booklet. "Will this suffice?"
Yang Sen's cackle pierced the air. "A *student pass*? Arrest this imbecile!"
The officer flipped the cover—and stiffened. His arm slashed upward in a salute so sharp it could cleave stone.
Like dominos, the guard unit mirrored the motion, weapons gleaming in deference.
"Your passage is granted, honoured sir."
The Crimson Credentials
The assembly stared, thunderstruck, as the couple advanced unimpeded.
Yang Sen's face contorted in disbelief. *A mere student permit granted passage?!* "This is lunacy!" he roared, spittle flying. "You deny *me*—bearer of legitimate credentials—yet grovel before this vagrant's scrap of parchment? Reveal your division! Your insignias shall adorn gutters by dawn!"
The officer's gaze frosted over. "Lodge your grievance. Let history judge whether your house or mine crumbles first."
"Insolent cur—!" Yang Sen's heel hammered the marble, impotent rage trembling through him. Though the Yangs commanded boardrooms, even they recognized the futility of duelling with sabre-rattling legions. Yet his humiliation festered: how does this gutter-born trickster mock us all with paper and audacity?
"Revel in your stolen moment," Yang Sen hissed, jabbing a quivering finger. "The Tiger General's guards will sniff out your stench soon enough!" No interloper could linger undetected where every cushion bore cryptographic seals and retinal scanners hummed beneath gilt chandeliers.
Gu Chen pivoted gracefully, a smile glinting like a stiletto. "Reserve your theatrics, *Young Master Yang*. I'll keep death's front-row seat warm for you."
Clasping Ling Meixue's hand, he guided her past the honour guard's forest of salutes. Their boot heels cracked like ice sheets fracturing in homage.
"How is this possible?" Ling Meixue breathed, her voice feather-soft.
"Certain keys", he murmured, "unlock more than academic libraries."
Her gaze lingered on the burgundy booklet peeking from his coat. "That object—it's no scholar's token, is it?"
He extended it toward her, leather creaking. "Shall enlightenment dawn?"
Her hand fluttered like a caged sparrow, then retreated. "Some mysteries", she said, throat tightening, "are better veiled until their hour."
"Ah, but veils multiply," he countered, eyes dancing with arcane mirth. "Consider this but the first gossamer layer."
Ling Meixue's breath hitched. When had this enigma—this labyrinth of contradictions—ignited such dangerous curiosity?
Within the vaulted chamber, dignitaries perched on velvet-draped seats like jewelled crows. The foremost tables yawned empty, their lacquered surfaces reflecting the absence of living legends.
"We've mistaken the section," Ling Meixue demurred, anchoring him by the sleeve.
Gu Chen inclined his chin toward the sacred void. "Our chalices await."
"Madness!" she gasped. "Those are—"
Her words dissolved as he stepped into the forbidden radius—and abruptly stilled.
"Gu Chen?"
His spine straightened into a blade. The air curdled with the metallic tang of coiled violence. Somewhere among the perfume and politics, a serpent had bared its fangs.
The Black Ring Revelation
The lethal aura he had detected moments prior was unnervingly refined—a blade of intent honed to pierce through chaos.
While ordinary malice disperses like smoke, this had been a scalpel's edge, precise and unerring, aimed solely at him and Ling Meixue.
"Merely admiring a passerby draped in midnight silk," Gu Chen quipped, lips curling with rakish levity. "Must civilization now criminalize beauty?"
Ling Meixue's porcelain features tightened. "Must civilization endure your reptilian brain's priorities?"
His laughter lingered, yet his gaze sharpened—a predator's grin masking coiled vigilance.
"Forward," he murmured, guiding her through the murmuring crowd.
They claimed their thrones at the velvet-cordoned dais, igniting a hundred sidelong stares. The privileged crescent remained desolate until lacquered dignitaries seeped into neighbouring chairs like inkblots on parchment.
Darkness fell—abrupt, absolute.
Footfalls echoed. A silhouette emerged bathed in limelight: Murong Wan'er, her leathers whispering of unsheathed blades and unspoken edicts.
"Gratitude for your presence," she intoned, each syllable a whetstone stroke. "As the Tiger Marshal's shadow, I arbitrate tonight's symphony. Discordant notes", her eyes flashed, "shall be silenced."
Ling Meixue inhaled sharply. "She devours the air men breathe."
"Darling wife", Gu Chen purred, "shall I demonstrate alternative methods of conquest?"
Her gloved hand flew to her throat in mock revulsion. "You reek of overripe audacity."
A voice cleaved the hush.
"Lady Murong! This gathering reeks of imposture!"
Heads pivoted toward Yang Sen—dishevelled, trembling in the vestibule's archway. Gu Chen's eyebrow arched; the pawn had sacrificed much to reach this board.
"Articulate your grievance," Murong Wan'er commanded, frost crystallizing in her tone.
Yang Sen's finger thrust like a dagger toward the dais. "Vermin occupy the Yang clan's rightful perch! These interlopers lack even counterfeit credentials!"
Murong Wan'er's gaze flickered—a lightning glimpse of understanding. She alone recognized the storm disguised as a man.
Silent as a shadow, her guard materialised—twelve blades encircling the accused.
"Credentials," demanded the lead sentinel, steel whispering from leather.
Gu Chen's hand emerged, cradling darkness made manifest. The ring's obsidian facets drank the light, its descent onto his finger a coronation.
"Does your hospitality", his voice dropped to glacial timbre, "always greet legends with drawn steel?"
Dual Shadows
"Amends are owed, sir." The captain of guards bent at a penitent angle, his obeisance exceeding ceremonial propriety.
Gu Chen's eyes thawed momentarily upon Ling Meixue before refreezing into arctic sovereignty. "Your pageantry unsettled my consort."
"Debts of contrition weigh upon us," the guard choked, brine seeping through his starched collar. "The Lady Ling's clemency we implore."
A dismissive tremor of fingers. "Expunge that cacophonous jackal from my presence."
Attendants descended upon Yang Sen's sputtering form, lifting him like a ceremonial sacrifice. "The Tiger Marshal shall hear of this travesty! Release your—!" His denunciations dissolved into vaulted ceilings.
Murong Wan'er reforged her countenance, molten yearning encased in tungsten resolve. "Let shadows reclaim this diversion. The West City inauguration commences."
***
Simultaneously, within Jiangzhou Medical Citadel...
Patriarch Bai emerged from clinical sterility, calligrapher's fingers quivering like autumn reeds. "Physician Jiang—what alchemy transformed blooming youth to withered stalk overnight?"
The healer adjusted spectacles fogged by weariness. "Sustained ingestion of gutter-forged ambrosia. Transient poisons purge through mortal vessels, yet..." His pen sketched damning hieroglyphs. "Entrails now mimic monsoon-ravaged spiderwebs. Gastric malignancy's second act. Only death's prologue remains."
"Odds favouring dawn's return?" The elder's cane beat funerary rhythms upon antiseptic tiles.
"Five blood rites might purchase three winters—should her vessel endure the alchemical fires." The diagnosis fell like ash. "Each crucible devours essence. Survivors retain but... mortal-shaped voids."
Ceramic thunder fractured the deathwatch silence.
"Deny your necromantic needles!" Bai Shanshan's aria of defiance pierced quarantine seals. Saline monoliths crashed as she writhed against linen shackles. "Grant me twilight's embrace, not this alabaster coffin!"
The heiress' silhouette diminished with each lunar cycle, clavicles gouging canyons beneath papyrus flesh. Intravenous ambrosia sustained mere metabolic mimicry—a grotesque parody of the wildfire spirit that once set Jiangzhou's nights ablaze.
Patriarch Bai pressed liver-spotted palms against the observation pane. Beyond, his dynasty's final scion lay fragmented—gilded tresses fanned across tear-tarnished silk, a marionette with severed strings. The House of Bai now dangled above oblivion's maw, suspended by chemotherapy's gilded noose.
Veil of Ashes
Chemotherapy's inaugural treachery unveiled itself through ebony filaments cascading upon her pillow—obsidian diadems supplanting life's aureate radiance.
This necromantic calculus—extinguishing legions of malignancies while immolating legions more of vitality's sentinels—transformed endurance into hieroglyphs of pyrrhic triumph. Mortals increasingly embraced oblivion's lullaby over such soul-gnawing alchemy.
Patriarch Bai breached the sanitarium's warzone where his progeny held court as a wasting despot. Nursing novices cringed beneath hailstorms of clinical shrapnel.
"Terminus!" His cane's impact fractured tilework like celestial judgement. "When shall your infantile theatrics expire in tandem with your withering corpus? Did I not prophesy against those asphalt-banqueting indulgences? Each grease-slicked morsel sculpted this alabaster sepulchre!"
Hawker fare—vomited forth by culinary helots ignorant of wok-crafted symphonies. Epicurean divinity reduced to conveyor-belt blasphemy.
"Ancestor... Thanatos' exhalations frost my vertebrae." Bai Shanshan's talons rent sterile linens. "Pluck me from this eventide's quicksand!"
The patriarch's fury liquefied into saline deluges. "Scion, I'd ransom dynastic archives for your dawn's resurrection. Yet what tithe purchases thaumaturgy?"
"Conjure the mountebank who reanimated that china-doll wraith!" Her perfusion-tethered limb semaphored desperation. "The sorcerer betrothed to our porcelain ghost!"
Remembrance crystallized—her smirking vigil as Bai Ruohan's death-waltz crescendoed. Now karma's pendulum swept its scything arc, edge glinting with cosmic irony.
Patriarch Bai kneaded temporal tempests. "You scourged divinity from our portals with scorn's cat-o'-nine-tails. What simpleton imagines grace returns to jeering mendicants?"
"Then petition Ruohan's clemency!" She scrambled for the technomantic sigil. "Her cardiognostic naiveté persists!"
The device shivered against her auricle. Stellar voids hummed through receivers before Bai Ruohan's cryogenic tone nucleated: "Petition?"
"Sibling... I genuflect in Tartarus's maw." Bai Shanshan's vocal cords vibrated with tragicomedy's cadence. "May your agape eclipse my hubris!"
***
Within West Citadel's strategic nucleus, susurrations fermented like vintage malice. "When shall the Tiger Marshal materialise?"
Gu Chen's rebuff had carried finality's edge—a Damascus blade kissing Yang's carotid through diplomatic proxies. "Test my restraint anew," his ocular daggers had warned during their chiaroscuro rendezvous, "and Jiangzhou's aqueducts shall channel haemoglobin."
Murong Wan'er now stood as a solitary monolith beneath interrogative spotlights, her vertebrae titanium-forged against scrutiny's gale. The grand illusionist remained enshrouded, yet his essence permeated every cantilevered angle—a poltergeist puppeteering pandemonium from liminal spaces.
A bespoke silhouette emerged from the amphitheatre's planktonic mass, its occupant's diction oozing curare-laced saccharine. "Miss Murong—does your liege orchestrate affairs like some chthonic rodent, forever nibbling at history's edges?"
Silent Tempests
The assembly's true craving dwelled not within ceremonial pageantry but in beholding the Tiger Marshal's countenance—a living deity incarnate. Yet the spectral sovereign persisted veiled, nurturing disquiet's spores beneath veneered civility.
"Scion Jiang—modulate your impudence." Murong Wan'er's diction carried permafrost's bite, her ocular spheres crackling with artillery-range lethality.
Jiang Feng, heir to Jiangzhong Consortium's disintegrating dominion, reduced his seat to kindling with a cobra-strike kick. "By what arcane calculus was the eastern enclave denied us? My bloodline has anointed bureaucrats' palms across seven prefectures! Now you bestow our birthright upon some insolvent trinket merchant?"
His sartorial fury bisected the chamber. The Jiang dynasty, submerged beneath oceanic debts, had staked redemption upon West Citadel's cardinal plots—only to witness their allocation to Ling Meixue's provincial enterprise.
Murong Wan'er's smile achieved absolute zero. "The Tiger Marshal eschews collaborators marinating in ethical insolvency. Your bordello-adjacent fiscal stratagems render you... incompatible."
Jiang Feng's palm detonated against onyx tabletops, vascular networks erupting like seismic fractures. "This symphony's final movement remains unwritten." His basilisk gaze ensnared Ling Meixue. "Cherish your confetti triumph, Mendicant Queen."
As his retinue tempested outward, Ling Meixue's keratin blades engraved lunate sigils into her flesh. "We've cultivated asps in our atrium."
Gu Chen arched felinely, a jaguar parodying indolence. "Pity the dullard conflating magnanimity with frailty. The Jiangs are alley curs supplicating offal—we simply revoked their phantom banquet."
***
Vesper's aureate wash gilded the egress where Jiang Feng lounged against obsidian automotive monoliths. "Already retreating, Nightingale?" His cigarette scrawled incendiary glyphs through gathering umbra. "Relinquish the territory, or witness your aviary transmute to funerary pyre."
Ling Meixue petrified at "aviary"—the phrase her matriarch had breathed before dissolving into bureaucratic limbo.
Gu Chen materialized forward, selenic light glazing his bicuspids. "Replicate that marital affront, and I shall weave your dynasty's foreclosure notices into necrological wreaths."
Jiang Feng's cachinnations ricocheted through concrete canyons. "Your domesticated stray articulates prettily, Songbird. Yet even decorative curs acquire leashes... or lethal injections."
As combustion engines roared into Nyx's oesophagus, Ling Meixue vibrated—not with trepidation, but dawning phoenix wrath. "That soil is ours by cosmic decree. Let serpents come. We'll erect bastions."
Gu Chen's digital extremity grazed her radial artery, where ancestral qi meridians thrummed. "There's my Valkyrie. Now—let us banquet. Rumour suggests the Tiger Marshal favours an establishment where mala broths boil with celestial fire…"
Her ocular slits narrowed. "You harbour arcana."
"Merely garnishing existence's consommé with... enigmas." His wink contained supernova remnants.
In Jiangzhou's chthonic recesses, an onyx ring glimmered against cartographic renderings of Jiangzhong Group's fiscal capillaries. The Tiger's shadow-dance had merely completed its opening salvo.
To be continuous…