As Wen Kexing turned to stare at her, she was smart enough to slapp herself lightly, her tone serious, “Stupid, stupid mouth, what kind of trash are you spouting? You can’t just say such things!”

“Ah-Xiang.” Wen Kexing cut in, not humoring her.

Gu Xiang blinked. It only rained harder, the water creating a thick fog-like layer that prevented her from seeing Wen Kexing’s expressions clearly. After the solemn silence, he looked down and said softly. “He said… He’d die soon.”

Gu Xiang made a questioning noise, unable to react to that, “Who’s going to die?”

“Zhou Xu.”

There was a pause from Wen Kexing that might be either for him to compose himself or for Gu Xiang to take it in. As he continued walking forward, he molded his voice into the usual nonchalance it possessed, “He suffers from internal injuries, but from the way I see him go about, I assume that they are non-threatening. But today I learned that they were incurable, and he would only last two or three more years. The moment I heard that, I knew who he was… Hah! Had I known that from the beginning, I would have never followed him!”

Gu Xiang’s eyes were wide open as she seemed to have difficulty processing the truth. After a good while, she asked cautiously. “Zhou Xu?”

“Yeah.” Wen Kexing’s voice was low. “At first I thought he couldn’t be from Tian Chuang. There’s no escaping that place, and the ones who try will have to suffer the Nails of Seven Apertures for Three Autumns, resulting in the loss of their martial art skills and all senses; they will be turned into invalids who can keep secrets better than the dead. At first, I thought that there was no way he was carrying the Nails on him, seeing how capable he was… But just now someone let me know that he had a particular method to slow down the damage, but nonetheless he wouldn’t survive for more than three years.”

This was the first time Gu Xiang ever heard about this; she barely breathed while listening to him. At that, she asked, “Master… how do you know all this?”

“Me?” Wen Kexing let out a strange laugh, “Do you think I can survive until now if I don’t know more than I should?”

After a short silence, Gu Xiang continued. “Then… that Zhou Xu, he…”

“I met someone who escaped from Tian Chuang once.” A pause. “There has never been someone who can evade the fate of turning catatonic, but he can. From it I can guess that his rank was Great Butler at the very least; he… he might have been the former leader even.”

Gu Xiang was surprised. “If he was the leader, then why would he run…” Then she stopped, seemingly having realized something.