In his shifu Qin Huaizhang's youth, he had once taken refuge in a farmhouse after being severely wounded by the enemies hunting him down. Penniless, it was all thanks to a little girl with a scarred face who had secretly brought him food that he could survive the worst of it. With nothing on him to repay her with, and feeling much pity for her upon seeing her disfigurement, Qin Huaizhang had taught her a few techniques of disguise. Yet, he had never thought that it would harm her in the future instead.

Liu Qianqiao didn’t say anything, but upon hearing these words, a brief look of surprise flitted quickly across her face. Zhou Zishu understood, lowered his head to think, and drew a bottle of the wound ointment out of his robes. He set it in front of Liu Qianqiao and said, “Decide what’s best for yourself, from now on.”

Then he rose and left.

Elated, Wen Kexing followed after Zhou Zishu, saying, “She was plotting to do you in, yet, you were still so good to her, that’s really…”

But he suddenly stopped speaking, because he saw Zhou Zishu fish another bottle of ointment out from his robes as he walked, rubbing its contents onto his own face. It wasn’t obvious at first, but after a few more rubs, a different skin colour was gradually revealed.

Wen Kexing’s eyes weren’t even blinking, widening further as he stared--

Chapter 38: Deadlock [21]

Gradually, the waxy yellowish-green colour of his skin was washed off. His lower jaw looked as though a layer of meat had been shorn away as he peeled off something that Wen Kexing had never seen before, and the bony, sharp-cut profile as if it had been chiselled by a knife was revealed.

Wen Kexing held his breath unconsciously, watching his deft fingers remove the disguise on his face--

Unlike the young master in Luoyang City who had a smiling face as pretty as a flower, or the popular, powdered beauty of the brothel upstairs in Dongting, this was a man’s face, where there was no colour but black and white--pale and gaunt cheeks, lips as thin as a line and bloodless, the hollows beneath his brow very deep, his thick eyelashes half-covering his weighty, startling eyes, eyes like thick, rich ink.

Yes, in that instant, Wen Kexing could only think of such a description--thick, rich ink. In those eyes there seemed to be a coalesced black that would not diffuse; only when the angle changed, did a barely-there, reserved lustre flow over them.

He suddenly discovered that even if the other person had kept his disguise on for a lifetime, in his own mind, he was always envisioning that Zhou Zishu should look like this. Seeing now that he was indeed identical to what he had imagined, it was like...he had known him for a very, very long time.

Wen Kexing swallowed involuntarily, opening his mouth to say, “A-Xu…”