Zhou Zishu flung the man’s hand off and pushed him away. “What kind of joke is that, Brother Wen? As if ‘Wen Kexing’ is your real name,” he said with bold confidence.

Wen Kexing raised his brow at that, replying with another, even lower and softer question. “Then, according to your view, what should I be called?”

Zhou Zishu went quiet for a moment before he whispered back. “Brother Wen, is your surname really Wen? I feel like you ought to be a Rong.”

The translator says: Pinyin is great until you get names like ‘Shen Shen’…

*’Rong Xuan’ backwards, xuanrong 炫容, means “to show off one’s looks”.

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Chapter 31: Escape

Zhou Zishu suddenly felt a gaze on him, as if someone was staring at him specifically. Turning his head around, he met Ye Baiyi’s eyes. Ye Baiyi was also standing in the crowd, not too far from him, but not too close either; he didn’t gesture, not even greeting him with a single nod, still staring at him without blinking at all. His expression was calm, like it had been when he had told Zhou Zishu “You’re going to die soon.”

You’re going to die soon, you’ve been a tortoise that only knows how to shrink its head in the face of danger -- Zhou Zishu murmured it to himself quietly in his heart, thinking, what’s the big deal about this? At this stage, what did he have to worry about paving the road ahead for future plans, or about plotting? If a person had never acted rashly at least once in his life, wasn’t he then too repressed, too pitiable?

He suddenly discovered that his own dream was, all along, to be a bastard[1] who stuck his neck out and didn’t hide under his shell.

The endlessly-clamouring crowd suddenly heard a light laugh; that laugh of his should not have stood out among the raucous crowd, but by some unknown method, it suppressed all the other voices just like that. Then a thin, unassuming man with a sickly yellow face walked out, and said in a soft voice, “Everyone, what kind of logic is it, to trouble a child so much in public?”

Zhang Chengling’s eyes brightened. His mouth moved soundlessly, forming the words, “Shifu.”

Cao Weining had spoke highly of Zhou Zishu to Gao Chong, so Gao Chong hesitated for a bit, before calling out his identity, “Brother Zhou.”

Gao Chong only found it strange that the man at this moment possessed the aura unique to an expert, and thus should have been unforgettable to himself. Yet, somehow, when Cao Weining had brought them to the Gao Family Manor that day, he surprisingly had not taken note of his person. Even at this moment, he could only recall with great difficulty that his surname was Zhou, and not his name. A chill twinged in Gao Chong’s heart.