924 Eyewitness (1/2)
Servant Fu was a middle-aged man. His name was weird, but he hadn't had a choice. Back when he had been sold to Golden Roc Castle, the steward had named the servants with characters from the Thousand Character Classic(1. Thousand Character Classic is a Chinese poem used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children from the sixth century onward) in the order that those characters appeared in in the book. When it was his turn, the character that was supposed to assigned to him was ”Fu”(2. Fu in Chinese means women). Servant Fu, who hadn't been able to speak the Central Plains Chinese yet at that time, had dociley accepted his new name, mistaking the laughs of those around him as a nice gesture.
After he learned Central Plains Chinese and realized what kind of place Golden Roc Castle was, he had even less courage to request a new name.
Like most of the other servants, Servant Fu advanced very slowly in his professional career. And it was not until he was in his forties that he finally managed to get a slightly decent position: purchasing outdated cosmetics.
He could barely collect any profit in this job, and the only perk was a monthly opportunity to go downhill into southern Jade City where he could spend his petty salary finding some comfort in inferior wine.
As a result, when five shiny silver ingots were offered to him, he immediately decided to betray the castle. Apart from the temptation of money, the things that he had to provide were not confidential at all in his opinion. ”How… How much is this?”
”Each ingot weighs ten taels. There are fifty taels in total,” Xu Xiaoyi said with a smile. Now, he was a rich merchant who had a strong curiosity for information and who was willing to buy some inside information at the cost of some small amount of money.
Servant Fu swallowed hard, trying hard to imagine how much of his favorite wine he could buy with this large sum of money. After quite a while, he collected himself, lowered his head, and moved his eyes away from those silver ingots before saying in a somewhat timid tone, ”I saw the Waning Moon Hall break into the inner chamber with my own eyes, and they killed everybody in sight. My legs still quiver every time I think of that scene. That Master Commander – I can barely mention her name. I need a moment to collect myself.”
After taking another quick glance at the silver ingots on the table, Servant Fu regained some of his courage. ”She walked towards me, and I thought that I was about to be killed. But she didn't even give a glance at me. Someone suddenly sprang out of the ground, but she was not afraid at all. With a single palm strike… No, with a single finger, that guy was killed. And then the King Lord walked over… ”
”You saw the King Lord?”
”I didn't. How dare I look at him? Besides, the King Lord was behind me, and I knelt down on the snowy ground the moment the King Lord spoke.”
”What did the King Lord say?”
”Give me a moment… Let me imitate his tone for you.” In order to provide something worthy of those five silver ingots, Servant Fu spared no effort in his retelling. ”'This is the first time that I've ever seen someone who's not a member of the Shangguan Family manage to reach the level of dispersing internal energy in the cultivation of the Daoless Divine Power.' Then she said, 'I'm not as good as the King Lord. I missed… a couple of chapters.' He responded, 'You want to use… the Dead Body Swordsmanship to narrow the gap?' Then she said, 'I want to fight with you to prove it.'”
Servant Fu was trying very hard, but he still added some of his own interpretations into the dialogue, which made it sound less and less like the original conversation between the Unique King and Lotus.
Xu Xiaoyi knew the limits of money. It could bring him information, but it could also bring him lies. A man like Servant Fu wasn't inclined to lie, but in order to please his employer, he would say anything. To make it worse, he didn't know the difference between the truth and lies at all.
Xu Xiaoyi didn't want to encourage this kind of inclination, so he interrupted Servant Fu's imitations and bluntly asked, ”Did the Master Commander fight with the Unique King?”
”I don't know.”
”Weren't you there?”
”But my head was buried in snow, and I didn't see anything. The Master Commander and the King Lord didn't talk much afterwards. Uh, I heard some sounds. It sounded as if they were fighting. They must have been fighting. Yes, they fought each other. The fight was really intense. I even thought that the stone castle was going to collapse at some points. That was a really rare scene… ”
”Who won?”
”The King Lord, of course. The Master Commander is just a woman. I don't mean to degrade her, but how could she compare with the King Lord? She lost, so she pleaded for mercy and then requested a truce.”
”You heard them talking about a truce?”
”Somebody else told me this. When I raised my head, the Master Commander and the King Lord had already left. But I'm not making this up. Everyone in the castle says that the Master Commander admired the King Lord's matchless kung fu skills, and that the King Lord also admitted that it was not easy for a woman to become this proficient in kung fu, so he decided to spare her. Did you know that the Waning Moon Hall actually used to be affiliated with Golden Roc Castle?”
Servant Fu intended to talk more about this rumor, but the rich employer became uninterested at this point. ”That's enough. Take the silver and go have some fun. I'm a little tired and I want to rest.”
Servant Fu answered ”Yes” repeatedly and stared at those silver ingots for quite a while, as if he couldn't believe that they now belonged to him. He suddenly stretched out his arms, wrapped them around the silver ingots, and then held them like he would a newborn baby as he ran out.
Xu Xiaoyi shook his head, mumbling, ”I hope that he has enough self-control to not spend the money too fast. If the killers found out… Never mind. It doesn't concern me anymore. Somebody get me the next guest!”
Zeng Jian was in his sixties but still very robust. Upon entering the room, he vigilantly looked around and seemed to be very concerned about the inner room, the doorway of which was covered by a curtain formed of beads.
He was a killer who had retired from Golden Roc Castle many years ago, but he had never let go of his former habits.
Pointing at the five big silver ingots on the table, Xu Xiaoyi said with a smile, ”These are yours. Those in there are mine.”
Zeng Jian was an experienced man who had seen much of the world when he was young, so he barely paid any attention to the five hundred taels of silver. ”I know that you work for the Dragon King. Please tell him that I'm not here for the money.”
Xu Xiaoyi widened his eyes, as if he were humiliated, with one hand still on the silver ingots. ”If you're not here for money, then please leave here the same way you came. There's only money here, no Dragon King. I don't have time to send messages for you.”
Zeng Jian stared at the stout rich merchant coldly. He knew that this merchant was in disguise. Suddenly, he said, ”A few old fellow killers and I were the first batch of people to rush into the inner chamber to help out. Those young killers were running around like headless chickens trying to stop those insignificant minions. A Sabrelord ordered us to stand by where we were.”
”So you didn't see the kung fu competition between the Master Commander and the Unique King?”
”I did, but it doesn't count as a kung fu competition. Lotus threw a palm strike. The King Lord exchanged a move with her. And then they both stopped moving. That's it.”
”And what happened next?”