Mo Xi did not expect to hear his father's name to be mixed into a discussion of the past.
The shopkeeper said, "Miss Chu inquired several times, and learned that there was a girl in Mo Qingchi's family, and she was very jealous. So she finally set her goal on Murong Xuan, who was still single."
Murong Chuyi asked in a low voice, "But that… Since the second daughter of the Chu family had such a strong temperament, how could she be willing to obey her elder sister's arrangement? What's more, if we let her know that her sister's plan and forbearance were all for herself, how could she be willing to live secretly?"
"Yes," the shopkeeper said, "so what Miss Chu was going to do was not to let her sister know."
"She hoped her sister would live a good life without suffering. So one day… When the royal family of Mancheng went hunting in the suburbs, she took her sister with her and threw her stolen forgetful medicine powder into the water she drank."
"!"
"After her sister drank and forgot her worries, she forgot all the past and couldn't wake up. At this time, Miss Chu quietly carried her to the road that Murong Xuan was going to pass by. Murong Xuan saw that an orphan girl was dying. She was in a state of distress and pity. As expected, his heart was filled with compassion and she was saved."
"After finishing this, Miss Chu understood that all her previous temptations and courtesies would be seen through, so she planned to make a desperate attempt to escape by night. But before she could escape, the nobleman who had taken her captive found she had fled. He immediately became furious and sent for someone to chase her back. In the panic of her escape, Miss Chu fell down a steep slope and fell into the five poison abyss."
Murong Chuyi murmured, "The valley with a strong miasma east of the suburbs of Chonghua city?"
"Yes… When Miss Chu struggled to get out of the house, she was already a little confused because she had inhaled too much miasma and her mind was not clear. But you should know clearly, immortal, that the effects of that sickness will not end immediately, but will become more and more serious with the passage of time."
"Miss Chu still had some sober will, and her last tiny hope was to go back to Lin'an city to find her father and younger brother. But when she went to the places where there were people to inquire several times, the news made her feel desperate. She went crazy one day, and when she found out that she was pregnant with the noble's flesh and blood, the spiritual stimulation reached the peak - she almost completely collapsed."
There was a terrible silence in the private room, not to mention Murong Chuyi himself. It was Murong Chuyi who understood that Murong Chuyi was the child of Miss Chu and the nobleman who humiliated her.
Gu Mang looked at Mo Xi and said in a low voice, "Why do you look ugly?"
Mo Xi shook his head.
He really didn't want to listen any more and wanted to take Gu Mang away. However, going out at this time would only attract the attention of the other party, and he did not know how to face the Murong Chuyi at the moment.
In this embarrassing silence, Murong Chuyi suddenly asked emotionally, "Why didn't she drop the child?"
"How can it be said clearly?" The shopkeeper sighed. "She must not have understood what she thought. But a person's mood is the most unpredictable thing. Isn't it said that one thought is of the devil and another thought is of the buddha? I think she should have been struggling between giving up and staying for a long time, hesitating and hesitating, and then it was no longer suitable to fall in love with her children. That's why she later thought about leaving the baby at the gate of a temple."
Murong Chuyi suddenly closed his eyes.
The shopkeeper said, "Miss Chu told me repeatedly before she died. At that time, she hid in the woods and watched a well-dressed woman carry her child away. She felt only heartache when she was relieved. The pain was so bad that she suddenly regretted it and wanted to recover the child. But the woman had gone away on a chariot. She couldn't catch up with her and didn't care about shouting."
"It was the last straw that destroyed her, and that night she was completely mad."
When the shopkeeper talked about this, he also stayed for a while, and then slowly added, "As for the little son of the Chu family… The boy has been working for me on the boat. Later, when I was older and wanted to have a more stable life, I opened a restaurant in Lin'an, but he had feelings for the boat, so up to now, he is still running the wharf and doing the old business. I never talked to him about his childhood."
"..." Murong Chuyi's voice was slow and hoarse. "How is he doing now?"
"He has a wife and a son. In peacetime, he said that he wanted to take advantage of my youth and make more money. In a few more years, he'll take his wife and children back to settle down and start up a family business to let the children study."
Murong Chuyi said in silence for a while, "That's good."
After a while he asked again, "Shopkeeper, do you know who the nobles who took the two Chu sisters away are?"
The shopkeeper's color changed a little and his thick lips murmured - although he never mentioned the identity and name of the aristocrat in the process of narration, he obviously knew it, just said that the hearsay was the same thing, and it was another thing to name the man who was full of evil.
Everyone's justice in the world is different. Some people could only do it there.
No matter how much courage they had, they had their own goodness after all. It's not right to demand too much.
Murong Chuyi knew this truth very well. What's more, he didn't need to get a confirmation, and most of them had an answer.
Who else could it be?
Even Mo Xi, who was always the least meddlesome, could easily guess the identity of that evil animal.
Murong Chuyi saw the innkeeper's reaction in his eyes, but he said, "I understand. Thank you very much."
"No, alas, thank you… What can you thank me for?"
There was another silence.
Suddenly——
"Shopkeeper, please answer another question."
"Immortal, I would like to venture to ask."
They spoke almost at the same time.
Murong Chu Yi said, "You ask first."
The shopkeeper hesitated and said, "You… Not really… the child of Miss Chu…"
"..."
"Come on, come on. Well, I won't ask, I won't ask. What would you like to ask me?"
Murong Chuyi paused for a while and said, "I want to ask whether there are many families in Lin'an who will stab some tattoo seals on their shoulders shortly after the birth of the children."
Hearing this, Mo Xi put out his hand a little and couldn't help but be shocked.
"Oh... The Yue people are good at tattooing. There is such a customer, but not all the Yue people do it."
The shopkeeper said, "In fact, it depends on the ancestors. I don't know the specifics. I heard that a long time ago, some people's ancestors worshipped the flower god and recognized different flowers as a symbol of the family's evil spirits. As a practice, they would make a mark on thier arms. For example, those who consecrated garden peony would have a mark of garden peony. Those who consecrated tree peony would have a mark of tree peony."17 Mo Xi's face became worse and worse when he heard it. He almost turned white when he heard it.
The shopkeeper also said, "At that time, the spell used for the major practitioner of the imprint was very pure. This kind of imprint not only fell on those believers at that time, but also would be passed down. Their children would also carry such birthmarks on their own at birth."
"However, because the age of the great master was too long, the marks of each family were fading. Some of them were not effective, but they were not visible. It is estimated that in a few generations, there will be no such birthmark."
"..." Murong Chuyi was silent for a moment and asked, "The family named Chu at that time… Do they have the same legacy?"
The shopkeeper thought about it and replied, "Yes."
The air was stifling.
"What is it?"
"Lotus."
Just as the thunder shook the heart, the eyes and ears were dazzled, and Mo Xi's eyes turned black. He raised his eyes and looked across the dim candlelight of the restaurant at the face of Gu Mang who didn't know what happened.
Lotus... Lotus...
Many fragments of the past passed through Mo Xi's chest: the rumor of Wangshu and a Lin'an girl, the mismatch of Gu Mang and Murong Lian, and the slight similarities between Murong Chuyi and Gu Mang…
The last gentle and peaceful voice sounded from his memory. It was said by Jiang Fuli not long ago when he was treating Gu Mang's disease——
"Huh? The lotus petal seal on his shoulder… Where do I seem to have seen it?"
-
It was Murong Chuyi.
For some reason, Murong Chu Yi asked Jiang Fuli to have a look at his illness, and he saw the birthmark mark on his shoulder.
There were layers of coldness deep in his skeleton. The truth was like falling into a wold of ocean water. Immersed in it, it was impossible for Mo Xi to breathe.
He covered his eyebrows and eyes with the palm of his hand. He had goosebumps on his back. Murong Lian, Murong Chuyi, the first Wangshu, Miss Chu, Gu Mang… And that… And that Gu Mang once mentioned to him, at that time he didn't care about Aunt Lin.
All people's relationships were intertwined by this thread, floating in his heart, and gradually become clear, and become more and more terrible because of the clarity. It like his body was in ice water.
"Mo Xi?"
"..."
"Mo Xi!"
Who knows how long it was before Gu Mang's worried voice of inquiry pulled him out of his confused thoughts. Mo Xi lifted his head and saw Gu Mang's beautiful face under the candlelight.
He was distracted for a long time. Next door, Murong Chuyi had already said goodbye, and the shopkeeper had gone downstairs slowly. He had a fat stomach and he put back on his smiling face to entertain the guests again.
It was like a dream.
But Mo Xi knew it was not. It was not a dream.
He once saw the last goodbye of Gu Mang and Lu Zhanxing during his time travel. Gu Mang, this lonely person, hoped to be accompanied by relatives.
He also thought of Yue Chenqing saying that Murong Chuyi had been an abandoned baby at the gate of the temple. He never knew who his relatives were and whether they were still alive.
These two people, one warm, one cold, one hoping, one silently searching, seemed to have no intersection, but it turned out… it turned out…
Mo Xi shut his eyes tremblingly.
"Mo Xi, what's the matter with you?"
"Nothing..." Mo Xi said in a low hoarse voice after a long time. He didn't know whether he was worried or happy. He didn't need to say that he was happy, but he was worried because Gu Mang was like this now. He couldn't stand the stimulation of his life experience any more. The brothers were acquainted with each other, not to mention that in this way, the bad debts of the Murong family and the Yue family fell on Gu Mang's head.
For a while, he was in a complicated mood and didn't know what to say. He just raised his hand to touch Gu Mang's head and asked, "If you… Would you be happy if you had a close relative in the world?"
"What is that?" Gu Mang said in confusion.
"The one closest to you."
"You are the only one."
"What if there are others?"
"But no one else has kissed me." Gu Mang opened his eyes slightly. "If so, why didn't he come to me?"
"He..."
Mo Xi was silent for a while. Finally, he said, "He will."
-
Back at the inn, Mo Xi was sleepless.
He stood in front of the window, looking at the moon and the frost on the tiles outside for a long time, quietly contemplating the thousands of things in his heart.
In those days, the nobleman who took the sister of Chu family was Yue Juntian. With Murong Chuyi's personality, he didn't know what he would do, which would inevitably lead to the failure of both the Yue family and Murong Chuyi.
If you wanted to stop Murong Chuyi from taking the risk to revenge, the best way was obviously to tell him that he had a blood brother who needed him in the world.
He didn't know much about Murong Chuyi, but one thing he wanted was to know what it was like to have a "home." Between the pleasure of revenge and the long warmth, he believed that Murong Chuyi would choose the latter. In fact, this was better for everyone.
"Mo Xi."
Hearing the movement behind him, Mo Xi turned his head, only to find that it was Gu Mang talking in his dream after falling asleep.
Gu Mang curled up on the bed. The thin cover was pulled very high and only showed half of his face, frowning slightly because of his dreams.
Mo Xi went to him and sat down at the edge of the bed.
He raised his hand and smoothed some hair scattered over Gu Mang's forehead, but he saw that Gu Mang opened his eyes vaguely.
Mo Xi whispered in a gentle voice, "Did I wake you up?"
Gu Mang shook his head drowsily. After a while, he narrowed his blue eyes and mumbled, "I really have… Brother..."
Mo Xi reached out his hand a little bit, and then made a low "En."
"Then will he really come to me..."
"... Yes."
"Will he like me?"
"Certainly."
Gu Mang gently hummed, and his frown slowly loosened. There was something relaxed and expectant between his eyebrows and eyes.
In the long night, Mo Xi sat beside him, watching him sleeping, and pondered. After a long time, he twisted Gu Mang's thin skin, then got up, went out of the inn quietly, and went to the cemetery on the outskirts of the city.