[Vol. 1, Fragment XIV: Pavilion of Forgotten Sorrows ? VIP Bill]

  "Special-Grade Repair Surgery: Three thousand taels of silver. Compensation for Mental Distress (woken up in the middle of the night): Five hundred taels. Cleaning Fee (cleaning up the mud brought in by that stinking Commander): Fifty taels. Total: Selling the Directorate of Astronomy wouldn't cover it. Flesh payment is recommended."

  — Su Xiaoxiao's Private Account Ledger

  [Internal Note / Directorate of Astronomy] "Gold Mending (Kintsugi)": The craft of repairing broken porcelain with gold lacquer. In the Pavilion of Forgotten Sorrows, this craft is used to repair broken... men.

  The lights of the Pavilion of Forgotten Sorrows burned with the warmest, most ambiguous color in Jiankang City. Shrouded by hundreds of red-gauze lanterns, the small building looked from afar like a cluster of karmic hellfire burning silently in the urban night.

  When Shen Wu—carrying the unconscious Xie Bi'an like a coolie hauling a sack of grain—smashed open the carved mahogany doors, a thick, inescapable wave of warm fragrance rushed out to meet him. It was a suffocating blend of agarwood, rouge, and aged Huadiao wine, nearly choking the military officer who spent his days dealing with corpses.

  The bone-melting heat of the underfloor heating instantly dismantled the freezing dampness of the outside world. In the four corners of the grand hall, Boshan censers quietly exhaled "Soul-Returning Incense," a smoke capable of inducing mild hallucinations. Lavender tendrils writhed and tangled in mid-air, enveloping the flushed patrons and half-undressed courtesans, turning them into a horde of amorous ghosts fermenting in a pool of warm water. Crystal-clear, paper-thin slices of iced raw fish rested on the tables, fracturing this space into an absurd extreme entirely divorced from the freezing, deadly reality of the city's northern slums.

  "Su Xiaoxiao! Help!"

  Shen Wu roared, his voice jarringly abrupt against the chaotic backdrop of silk and bamboo music.

  The clamor in the hall ceased instantly. Dozens of patrons drinking flower-wine and scantily clad girls turned their heads simultaneously, staring at the two intruders as if looking at madmen. Shen Wu’s tattered black combat uniform, caked in bone ash and mud, clashed violently with the brocade and jade surrounding them.

  "My, isn't this Commander Shen?"

  A lazy voice, three parts sleepy and seven parts displeased, drifted from behind a bead curtain on the second floor.

  A slender, jade-white hand parted the beads. Su Xiaoxiao wore a loose, crimson sleeping robe embroidered with peonies, her long hair cascading freely, clearly having just been woken up. Massive spider lilies were stitched into the hem with dark gold thread. As her chest rose and fell with faint irritation, the ultra-thin silk clung tightly to her skin, resembling a stream of blood slowly flowing over her body.

  She wore no makeup. A wooden hairpin—actually a hairpiece carved from an unknown beast's bone—casually gathered her messy hair. The red agate dangling from the top of the pin refracted a viscous sheen in the dim light, exactly like a freshly fallen drop of blood. Paired with the crimson lacquer on her fingernails, she exuded the eerie aura of a demon who ate men without spitting out the bones.

  Barefoot, she stepped onto the soft Persian rug, looking down at the two men from her vantage point. Her gaze finally landed on Xie Bi'an's crumbling right hand.

  "Tsk."

  Su Xiaoxiao frowned in disgust, though a trace of professional scrutiny entered her eyes. "Tormented himself into this state again? I told him long ago that his skin sack wasn't built to last."

  She waved a hand, her crimson nails looking as if they had just sucked blood.

  "Bring him up. Take the back stairs; don't dirty my rug."

  The top floor of the Pavilion of Forgotten Sorrows. The secret chamber.

  There was none of the vulgar rouge scent of the outside world here, only a faint medicinal fragrance mixed with the harsh tang of scorched metal. The eternal lamps in the chamber were turned to their brightest, banishing the decadent music from outside. On a bronze tray in front of Su Xiaoxiao sat a small bowl of boiling, molten red-gold liquid, its surface floating with a layer of dark green, aged medicine dregs.

  Xie Bi'an lay on a soft couch draped in snow-white fox fur. Sitting beside him, Su Xiaoxiao wielded a delicate pair of gold scissors. She cut along his arm, slicing open the hardened, cracked skin to reveal the dark red muscle beneath, which looked like charcoal that had been scorched by hellfire hundreds of times.

  The rhythmic snip-snip of the scissors slicing through the dead skin sounded unsettlingly like cutting open the dried husk of a molted cicada.

  Shen Wu stood to the side, watching Su Xiaoxiao's movements without daring to breathe.

  "Commander Shen, don't just stand there planted like a wooden stake," Su Xiaoxiao said without lifting her head, tossing over a hot towel. "Wipe your face. You reek of bone ash; it's giving me a headache."

  Shen Wu caught the towel, wiping his face awkwardly. "Miss Su, Gleaner Xie... can he be saved?"

  "He won't die."

  Su Xiaoxiao snorted coldly. She picked up a microscopic gold needle from the tray and sterilized it over the candle flame.

  "Simply put, his soul-fire is too vigorous, and his skin sack is too thin—it burned through."

  She pinched Xie Bi'an's frantically throbbing golden tendon. The needle fell and rose with the swift, precise movements of a master tailor.

  The gold needle pierced an acupoint with a faint sizzling hiss of burning flesh. In his coma, Xie Bi'an’s brows locked tight, his Adam's apple bobbing as if forcibly swallowing down a mouthful of surging blood.

  "Bear with it," Su Xiaoxiao's tone was fierce, but her hands lightened their touch. "This is the craft of 'Gold Mending'. Repairing meridians with gold and spiritual medicine is a bit expensive, but it holds strong."

  As the boiling medicinal gold was injected into his meridians drop by drop along the needle, the grating sizzle of flesh being forcibly welded echoed harshly in the secret chamber. The air instantly filled with a bizarre, sweet-metallic stench—a mix of roasting meat and cheap rouge.

  Half an hour later.

  The surgery ended.

  Xie Bi'an's right hand was wrapped in a thick layer of gauze, exuding a heavy medicinal fragrance. The distance between the two was mere inches. The warm breath emanating from her body—a blend of Soul-Returning Incense and her natural scent—drilled straight into his nose.

  "Hah..."

  Xie Bi'an finally opened his eyes. His face remained pale, but clarity had returned to his gaze.

  "Awake?" Su Xiaoxiao crossed her arms, eyeing him sideways. "This order: three thousand taels. No credit allowed."

  "Talking about money hurts our relationship," Xie Bi'an smiled weakly, trying to sit up. Though his right arm hurt as if deep-fried in boiling oil, he still panted heavily and used his hoarse voice to tease her. "Boss Su, although we are business partners, it's the middle of the night, just a lone man and a lone woman. You strip off my clothes the moment I arrive and feel me up so thoroughly... Back in my hometown, you'd have to take responsibility for me."

  Su Xiaoxiao, wearing ice-silk gloves, violently exerted force with her fingers, driving a scalding gold needle viciously into his acupoint. The strike forced a sharp hiss of drawn breath from Xie Bi'an's lips.

  "Watch your mouth, or I wouldn't mind sewing your tongue shut while I'm at it." Su Xiaoxiao glared at him coldly, her hands not pausing for a second.

  "You can't do that," Xie Bi'an broke into a cold sweat from the pain, but his mouth remained as stubborn as a dead duck. A sly glimmer flashed in his eyes. "You're stabbing this needle so deep, you clearly want to pierce straight into my heart. If you sew my mouth shut, what will I use to please Boss Su tonight? Surely I can't just rely on this rock-hard... Liuli hand?"

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  Su Xiaoxiao's wrist twitched, nearly spilling drops of liquid gold. She rolled her eyes at him in exasperation. "Xie Bi'an, whether you are soft or hard, exactly how many ounces you weigh—this lady knows perfectly well. If you have true capabilities, stop relying merely on your lip service."

  Just at this tension-filled debt-collection moment, a charming, lazy meow drifted from the intact left lapel of Xie Bi'an's robes. A silver furball, lacking even a single stray colored hair, poked its head over the edge of the fabric. It was the extremely picky aberrant cat, Anu.

  Anu's eerie heterochromatic eyes swept over the blood-scented secret chamber with utter disgust. With a graceful leap and a soft tap, she landed steadily on the dressing table. She meticulously avoided all the blood-stained gauze and scissors. Showing an incredibly human degree of fastidiousness, she raised her right paw and shook it twice in the air, acting exactly like a noble daughter who had accidentally stumbled into a slaughterhouse.

  Seeing this silver cat, the ruthless, cold-blooded mask of the underground queen on Su Xiaoxiao's face instantly crumbled. The shrewd calculation in her eyes was immediately replaced by an unconcealable, frantic doting.

  "Oh my, my little ancestor. How did you end up following this rough man into such a dirty place?"

  Su Xiaoxiao hurriedly threw the bloody gold scissors far away. Snatching a scalding hot towel, she repeatedly wiped her hands three times, terrified that the scent of blood on her person would offend this famously germophobic silver cat. She turned around, unlocked a hidden compartment at the very bottom of the dressing table, and carefully brought out a palm-sized mutton-fat jade dish.

  Resting in the jade dish were several crystal-clear eyeballs of Northern Sea Ice-Fish, steeped in snowmelt from the Heavenly Mountains. On the black market of Jiankang City, a single one of these could be traded for ten taels of gold. Yet now, Su Xiaoxiao pushed them in front of Anu without a hint of heartache.

  "Come, be a good girl Anu, taste this. Fresh goods straight from the ice cellar, untainted by even a speck of earthly dirt." Su Xiaoxiao's voice was so gentle it sounded like a completely different person, even carrying a distinct note of flattery.

  Anu lowered her head haughtily, her pink nose sniffing near the jade dish. After confirming this "offering" met her standards, she deigned to extend her small pink tongue. Emitting faint, rhythmic smack-smack chewing sounds, she elegantly rolled the priceless ice-fish eyeballs into her mouth.

  Taking advantage of Anu's mealtime, Su Xiaoxiao boldly extended a finger, attempting to stroke that satin-smooth silver fur.

  Anu didn't stop eating. Just at the exact moment Su Xiaoxiao's fingertip was about to make contact, her body shifted precisely half an inch to the left. Su Xiaoxiao grasped empty air, but wasn't angered in the least; instead, she giggled with delight. Having finished the last fish eyeball, Anu seemingly felt a slight obligation for the free meal. She reluctantly swept the fluffy tip of her tail over the back of Su Xiaoxiao's hand in an extremely perfunctory manner, acting as if she were bestowing a grand reward.

  "This little tsundere temper is absolutely mesmerizing," Su Xiaoxiao sighed in satisfaction. But when she turned her head back to Xie Bi'an, the gentleness on her face vanished without a trace, seamlessly switching back to the visage of a cold-hearted creditor. "The cat's meal is on the house. Your surgery fee, however, cannot be short a single copper. Where are the materials? Don't tell me you ran around all day just to bring back a coat full of bone ash."

  "How could I?"

  Xie Bi'an brought out the four items from his robes—or rather, from Shen Wu's possession.

  The crimson, warm Fire Essence. The dark red, foul-smelling Dragon Vein Dregs. The eerie blue, pure Mermaid Tear. The golden-red, violent Middle Finger Sarira.

  As the four items were laid out on the table, the candlelight flickered wildly, as if licked by something unseen. Instantly, an indescribable aura of slaughter invaded the warm, fragrant secret chamber.

  Su Xiaoxiao's eyes changed.

  Dropping her lazy demeanor, she pulled a pair of ultra-thin silk gloves from her sleeve, put them on, and carefully picked up the Middle Finger Sarira.

  "This is... from that mad monk Pudu?" Su Xiaoxiao cast an astonished glance at Xie Bi'an. "You actually dug up his grave?"

  "He gifted it to me," Xie Bi'an corrected. "This is good stuff. With this, no matter how wicked the Imperial Preceptor's jade heart is, it will have to obey obediently."

  "Indeed, it is good stuff. He was truly generous to give it to you. Tsk, tsk..."

  Su Xiaoxiao put down the finger bone and picked up the vial containing the Mermaid Tear, shaking it against the candlelight. The eerie blue glow reflected on her face, lending her an otherworldly beauty.

  "This tear... is of superb quality," Su Xiaoxiao praised. "Filled with the tension of hope and despair. Xie Bi'an, your strokes are quite grand this time."

  "I nearly traded my life for these scraps."

  Xie Bi'an leaned against the soft pillows, pointing at the four materials on the table. "These are all 'raw materials,' brimming with resentment and impurities. If we use them directly to burn the Emperor, the furnace will likely explode. Xiaoxiao, I have to trouble you to... 'wash' them."

  "Wash?" Shen Wu interjected. "These things can be washed?"

  "Of course." Su Xiaoxiao threw him a sideways glance. "What do you think the Pavilion of Forgotten Sorrows does? This place gathers the most chaotic aura in the world. Placing these items in the girls' makeup boxes and nourishing them with human vitality for three days will strip away the bloody stench, turning them into the cleanest 'cooked materials'."

  "However, the price is—for these three days, the girls in the building will have nightmares, and the guests will feel cold." Su Xiaoxiao smiled shrewdly. "You two had better pay half the processing fee upfront as a pacification bonus for the girls."

  She expertly packed the four materials into a gold-traced lacquer box, her movements as elegant as organizing jewelry.

  "Deal." Xie Bi'an nodded. "Write my name a bit larger, save the Ministry of Revenue the trouble of missing it."

  Since a mountain of debt doesn't burden a louse, he added, "Once the 'Grand Ceremony of Liuli' is over and the final payment from the Emperor is settled, I'll pay you back, principal and interest."

  "You'd better pray the Emperor lives until then," Su Xiaoxiao rolled her eyes at him. She turned to the dressing table and poured three cups of wine from a mutton-fat jade vase. The liquid was as thick as unmelting amber, reflecting an eerie dark red under the candlelight.

  "Have a drink." She handed the cups to the two men. "To celebrate that you're still alive."

  Noticing that neither man moved their hands, Su Xiaoxiao explained with a smiling face, "This isn't ordinary Green Ant wine. This is aged Huadiao steeped with placenta from the Western Regions."

  Shen Wu took the cup. His Adam's apple bobbed, and he barely managed to take a tiny sip, looking somewhat constrained. This was his first time drinking in such an establishment, let alone sitting across from a courtesan who had just finished performing suture surgery on a man.

  A pungent earthy flavor, mixed with a secretive bloody tang, shot straight to his brain, scalding his stomach and making it churn violently.

  In contrast, Xie Bi'an drained the cup in one gulp without changing his expression, even licking the residual wine from his lips as if wanting more.

  Just then.

  A clear, mournful twang of a stringed instrument suddenly drifted up from downstairs.

  The sound of the qin was unique. The body of the instrument was long and narrow, its neck thin as a crane's leg, yet the sound it produced was as sharp as thin ice snapping, drilling straight into the heart. It carried an extreme chill, piercing through the thick floorboards to bore directly into the marrow of their bones.

  The hand Xie Bi'an used to hold his wine cup froze abruptly.

  "This tune..." he frowned. "Something is wrong."

  "What's wrong?" Shen Wu asked.

  "It's too cold." Xie Bi'an set down the cup, his gaze turning sharp. "This isn't a tune played for the living. This melody... it sounds exactly like someone scraping fingernails against a block of ice."

  Su Xiaoxiao sighed, a trace of helplessness appearing on her face.

  "That's the new singing girl. Her name is Ah Sheng."

  She walked to the window, pushed it open a crack, and pointed toward a corner of the grand hall downstairs.

  Shen Wu and Xie Bi'an leaned over to look.

  In the most secluded corner of the hall sat a young girl wearing a plain white dress. Holding a battered Qin lute, she lowered her head as she played and sang.

  She was thin, thin as paper. So frail she looked like a plain paper doll that might be baked brittle by the underfloor heating at any moment. But amidst a building full of fragrant clothes and shadowed hair, the most striking thing about her was her eyes. A black cloth blindfold was tightly wrapped around her eye sockets. Not only was the cloth seeping with dark, foul blood, but amidst the stifling heat of the hall, it faintly steamed with the rusty, sweet stench of cheap rouge mixed with bloody water. This smell was entirely incompatible with the expensive agarwood and Huadiao aromas of the Pavilion, yet it pierced sharply into the nasal cavity—an aura of sickening death brought straight from the northern slums.

  "She's blind?" Shen Wu asked.

  "Not just blind," Su Xiaoxiao said softly, her tone grave. "The Pavilion of Forgotten Sorrows resides within the Ghost Market. Mortals absolutely cannot stumble in without soul-guiding incense. Yet a few days ago, like a floating corpse, she followed the Yin veins of the Qinhuai River and was washed directly from the 'Mortal Realm' to our doorstep. Her body was contaminated by extremely heavy baleful qi, causing the Mortal Realm to reject her and 'leak' her into the shadows. I took pity on her and took her in. She said she was blinded by 'gray fog'."

  "Gray fog?" Xie Bi'an sensitively caught the phrase.

  "Yes. She said she originally lived in the slums of the northern city." Su Xiaoxiao's voice dropped. "Half a month ago, a dense fog suddenly rose there. The fog was gray, smelling like rotten apples mixed with iron—sweet yet fishy, so fishy it felt sticky."

  "When the fog dispersed, she was blind. And..."

  Su Xiaoxiao paused, turning to look at Xie Bi'an. "She said that inside the fog, she heard the sound of a heartbeat."

  Thump, thump, thump.

  Su Xiaoxiao rapped against the window frame, imitating the rhythm. "She said the heartbeat came from underground. With every beat, one person above ground would disappear."

  Xie Bi'an's pupils contracted violently.

  Gray fog smelling of rotten apples.

  A heartbeat underground.

  Wasn't this exactly... the symptom of the jade heart leaking from inside the Emperor's chest cavity?

  "The northern city..." Xie Bi'an muttered to himself. "That's the outlet of the capital's 'sewers,' and the place with the heaviest Yin energy."

  "It seems our 'Leak-Sealing Project' needs to be accelerated."

  Xie Bi'an struggled to stand up, ignoring the injury on his hand. "The toxic gas from that jade heart has already begun to spread along the underground water veins. If we don't plug it, this blind singing girl will only be the first."

  "What are you going to do?" Shen Wu stopped him.

  "Go listen to a song."

  Xie Bi'an grinned. Though his face was pale, that mad glint had returned to his eyes. "I want to ask Miss Ah Sheng... what else did she see in the fog besides the heartbeat?"

  He pushed open the door, listening to the mournful lute music downstairs, and adjusted his collar.

  "Let's go, Commander Shen. Tonight's expenses are on Young Master Xie—on credit, of course."

  Watching his back, Shen Wu sighed helplessly, patted his completely empty money pouch, and followed.

  The lute music downstairs grew more urgent, as if someone were demanding a life from beneath the earth.

  Meanwhile, the great gray fog shrouding the sky over Jiankang City rolled slowly, exactly like a beating heart.