Had someone prophesied to Mo Xi three days ago, “Hehehe, Xi Hejun, let me tell you on the sly, three days later, you will solicit courtesans”, then Xi Hejun would definitely smash that person's face in until he had no teeth left.
But now, he was already riding on the back of a tiger[1], and had no other choice.
In the end, he rapped a knuckle on the slip with the two words 'Chit-Chat'. While he was taking his pick, his face was ashen and his eyes were full of repressed darkness.
Mo Xi had made his choice.
Gu Mang held out a hand towards him.
“What?”
“Pay up.”
“......You!” Mo Xi was so infuriated that his eyes turned red; he was so choked up with anger that he could not even manage to complete a sentence, “I---!”
Gu Mang did not say anything and just silently held his hand out and waited for the money. He hardly spoke these days, if there was no need for him to speak, then he would just maintain his silence.
Yet, the General Gu in Xi Hejun's memory was really chatty. When he was standing under the scorching sun and facing the soldiers in the drilling grounds, he would always stride proudly and walk back and forth in an awe-inspiring way, shouting at the top of his voice, his skin glistening with sweat, like crystal beads rolling off the fur of a cheetah. He was always grinning or smiling brightly, his black eyes all moist and shiny. And, he had a little canine tooth.
Mo Xi gave him the most valuable currency in Chonghua - the gold money cowrie[2].
Without thanking him, Gu Mang stood up and walked over to the edge of a cupboard and took down a small jar. He carefully put the money cowrie into it and then placed the jar on a high shelf.
Mo Xi watched him coolly, a multitude of emotions stirring up in his heart - fury, hatred, resentment. Everything. He watched Gu Mang's back, and suddenly threw a question to him in an icy voice: “How much money have you saved in that jar of yours?”
How many people have you allowed to abuse you, humiliate you, and trample all over you?
.......You......
How many people have you slept with?
Gu Mang remained silent. He put the jar away and walked back to sit in front of Mo Xi.
Under the dim lamplight, Gu Mang's face was not really all that clear.
Mo Xi did not know if there were any subtle emotions displayed on his face that he did not detect.
Gu Mang was too quiet, so much that it was somewhat unusual.
Has two years of humiliation already worn out the last of his backbone to nothingness?
But Mo Xi has yet to collect on his debt from him, has yet to hear him admit his mistakes......
How could he thus strip himself of his flesh and blood, leaving Mo Xi with only an empty shell?
“The gold money cowrie you gave me, is too much.”
“......Keep the change.”
Gu Mang honestly replied: “I can't afford to make change.”
Saying that, he reopened the bundle of slips and went so far as to hand them over to Mo Xi again: “So, choose again. You can choose everything that is listed on it.”
Mo Xi: “........................”
He stared at Gu Mang's face. There was no anguish of being humiliated on that face; he was simply quietly, placidly and rationally inviting Mo Xi to make his choices again.
Mo Xi turned his head and clenched his teeth so hard that they were almost crushed. This was odd, shouldn't he have anticipated this? First he frequented courtesans, then he committed treason. Again and again, he had trampled beyond the threshold of his tolerance. “Don't take sex too seriously” these kinds of words had already been spoken from the horse's mouth, and now, he was selling his body to drag out an ignoble existence.
Only, he went from sleeping with others to being slept by others, so, what was so unexpected about it?
“I don't want to choose.” Mo Xi grew more and more agitated, and that anger in his heart was getting harder and harder to suppress.
He could bear it no longer and stood up swiftly with a frosty expression on his face.
“Forget it, I’m leaving.”
Gu Mang seemed to have never encountered such a situation before. His eyes finally flickered with confusion. He wanted to say something, and yet he did not know what he should say.
Mo Xi had already turned around. Gu Mang grabbed on to his sleeves.
Mo Xi was already teetering on the brink of an outburst, like an angry flame sputtering with dangerous sparks, ready to surge anytime, “What exactly do you want?”
Again, Gu Mang did not reply. He went back to the shelf and took down the small pottery jar that was his piggy bank. He held out that gold money cowrie in both his palms and silently handed it back into Mo Xi's hand.
“Then I'll return this to you.”
“......”
“Farewell.”
“........................”
A deathly silence.
All of a sudden, Mo Xi yanked the bamboo slips over with a swoosh, jabbing them in front of Gu Mang's eyes and said through clenched teeth: “How do you feel about doing these kinds of shameful deeds just for the sake of remaining alive these two years? Did you have a good time? Even if someone slaps you and gives you some money, you can still make do with it?”
At last, the molten stream broke free of its prison, and all the pent-up rage in him gushed forth.
Mo Xi gasped, his eyes flashing scarlet, and yet the rims of his eyes were moist: “You could even accompany those kind of men, are you still the original Gu Mang? Look at you now, who would have thought that I was actually once friends with a person like you, once quarreled with others because of you. And I actually once took you as my...... my.....”
“My......”
He could no longer go on. It was as if this was a bitter pill for him to swallow; he was so angry that even his lips were trembling. Influenced by the intensity of his emotions, the flames of the candles in the room that were lit with spiritual power flickered. The light wavered, casting a silhouette of two figures locked in a stare.
Mo Xi clutched at Gu Mang's collar. Gu Mang was unable to dodge and the front flaps of his garment fell open. The two of them were almost touching nose to nose, staring eye to eye.
Mo Xi's chest heaved heavily, and he remained this way for a moment staring at Gu Mang. Suddenly, his gaze fell and swept over Gu Mang's bare shoulders.
The bruises on it bore traces of having been whipped before......
There was a “buzz” in Mo Xi's brain, as if something had snapped. In addition to the growing rage in his eyes, there were also some unexpected emotions that even Mo Xi could not explain. Those emotions drove him to raise his hand suddenly and brutally grip Gu Mang's cheeks with his palm pushing up against his jaw as he slammed him against the cupboard and pinned him down.
The candle flame made a last-ditch attempt to stay lit, but in the end, it was no match for Mo Xi's explosive and ferocious outburst of spiritual flow of energy and was abruptly snuffed out.
In the darkness, Mo Xi glared at Gu Mang's close-up face. His rough, callused fingers harshly ran over Gu Mang's cheeks and lips. His voice was furious, low and hoarse.
He was so resentful that he did not even notice the strange look in Gu Mang’s eyes, the consternation that flashed through his eyes.
“For survival, for a little money, you will do anything I ask of you, is that right?”
It was as if being choked by Mo Xi was too hard for Gu Mang to bear. His cheeks gradually reddened, until he could no longer stay silent and started to struggle under Mo Xi's hand.
But Mo Xi's senses had taken leave of him, and his eyes could not see Gu Mang's agony. Their surroundings were dark, as dark as death itself. The neighboring rooms on both sides were filled with men panting and women moaning, losing no chance to remind Mo Xi at every opportunity the kind of place this was, the purpose of Gu Mang being here, and the stuff they could be doing in this room.
Mo Xi was slightly alarmed at these provocative thoughts flashing through his mind, and his blood ran cold.
The woman in the room next door seemed to be reaching her peak, her cries getting heavier and more urgent. The sound of flesh pounding on flesh in the night was so vivid and clear as if it was right beside his ear. Beneath him, Gu Mang’s breathing was ragged and labored and consequently, his struggles were feeble. All of these actions were regarded by him to be nothing more than a shameless, drawn-out seduction.
Mo Xi's eyes darkened. Perhaps it was because of fury, or perhaps because of some other reasons, his glare was alarmingly scalding, as if smoldering with molten iron.
“Let....go......”
Mo Xi did not release him and let out a sneer. There was no sense of pleasure or comfort in that sneer, only extreme disappointment and jealousy.
He was consumed with hatred, and possibly with something else. His voice was so hoarse, sounding as if it was sputtering with glowing embers, that even he could not believe it himself. He bent over and leaned in to Gu Mang's ear: "Alright. You won't let me go, right? Then what do you want me to choose? Do you want me to bed you, to have me fuck you?"
“......”
All of a sudden, he snapped furiously through clenched teeth, “Haven't you been fucked enough by me?!”
He was too impulsive.
Now that the words were out of his mouth, he felt aghast.
Mo Xi hardly spoke these kinds of words. He was the kind of person who would frown whenever he heard Yue Chenqing telling dirty jokes. But at this moment, he had gone so far off the deep end that he had blurted out several such words without thinking... words that were savage, threatening, vicious.
Barbaric.
Full of despair.
Mo Xi inwardly cursed himself. In the spur of the moment, he pounded a fist heavily on the cupboard. That little earthen jar that was Gu Mang's piggy bank swayed for a bit, before it toppled over and smashed to smithereens on the ground.
He subconsciously turned his head and swept his glance across without really paying that much attention. It was only after a moment before he finally realized something. He promptly released his grip on Gu Mang, straightened up, and turned his head to look at the ground.
A beam of moonlight shone through the window.
As it turned out, there was nothing inside that little earthen piggy bank.
Gu Mang had never received even one tiny piece of the smallest white money cowrie.
That jar was empty.
Translation Notes:
[1] 骑虎难下, lit. he who rides a tiger finds it difficult to dismount, ie. to have no way to back down or find it hard to stop what one is doing.
[2] 贝币 - basically cowrie shells that were used as currency in ancient China.
[3]炸毛老虎 literally explosive-fur tiger, i.e. fur standing on end which usually happens when the feline is frightened, angry, startled or threatened. Also refers to a character losing his temper or is very emotional and prone to outbursts of anger in the same situation. Looks like below but with a tiger for this case, though maybe our Gu Mang might be more of a fluffy kitteh, but then again, our Mo Xi is already ‘riding on the back of the tiger’. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Bonus Scenario:
Gu Mang (tiger losing his temper[3]): Don't choose if you don't want to! Why did you have to squeeze my neck!
Mo Xi (*sweeps a glance at this tiger's ass*): Then where do you want me to squeeze?
Gu Mang: ......Shift your dangerous gaze away.
Dante's Notes: A million thank you's to Lianyin for translating! Your TL notes had the beta readers on the floor ( I think they liked your cat pics a lot more than tree genomes).
