Chapter Ninety-Three: The Parasites (Combined Chapter)

After a brief interruption, it did not take long before the kitchen dishes were brought out one by one and set on the table.

Perhaps Tongfu Inn truly was different from ordinary inns. While the meal was being served, Tong Xiangyu was unusually warm toward Zhu Yu, and took the opportunity to introduce everyone in the inn.

That included Li Dazui, Lu Xiucai, and Mo Xiaobei, none of whom had appeared yet.

Zhu Yu very much wanted to say that Tong Xiangyu’s enthusiasm was due to his own charm, but he had to admit that the real reason was the fifty-tael banknote Yu Huatian had casually pulled out earlier.

Because he had cooked for so many people, Li Dazui had simply prepared dinner for the inn’s own staff as well, so everyone sat down to eat at roughly the same time.

Only then did Zhu Yu finally see all the main characters from the story he knew so well.

Normally, every meal at Tongfu Inn was like a battlefield, with everyone scrambling for food, but this time it was different. Each person had chopsticks poised in midair and mouths already open, yet they all seemed frozen in place, staring straight at Zhu Yu’s table.

In truth, Zhu Yu had not done anything special. As always, he had his hands washed, his face wiped, and his mouth rinsed by servants, then had each dish tasted first by someone else before waiting out the tea’s worth of time it took for poison to take effect.

While waiting, Zhu Yu happened to catch the shocked looks on Tong Xiangyu and the others’ faces, and only then did he suddenly realize that he was no longer in the palace. He quickly tried to cover for himself.

“Ahem, the main thing is my family has too much money. There’s nothing to be done about it, and I’m the only heir. Traveling out here, one has to be careful, that’s all. Please don’t laugh at me.”

He gave a dry laugh as he explained himself to Tong Xiangyu and the others.

There was no helping it; he could only make it sound reasonable this way. Zhu Yu was not actually so foolish, but seeing the familiar faces of Tong Xiangyu and the others had left him absent-minded for a moment.

At that very moment, the maid beside him brought over the washbasin, and Zhu Yu had simply followed the palace habit by instinct.

His words were like breaking an acupoint seal. The dining hall instantly came alive with noise.

“Oh, no problem, no problem. We understand.”

“Yes, yes, perfectly normal, perfectly normal.”

Hearing Tong Xiangyu and the others’ clamorous agreement, Zhu Yu only smiled and nodded along.

“Um, this may be a little abrupt, but I’m still quite curious about something, so I’d like to ask. With such heavy rain, and for so many days at that, do you have some urgent matter that requires you to travel in this weather?

Of course, I’m just curious and asking casually. If it’s inconvenient to say, that’s fine too.”

A group of people with unknown origins staying at an inn on a rainy night left Bai Zhantang a little uneasy, so he wanted to sound them out and get a bit of information.

So he was already probing for details? Yu Huatian looked at Bai Zhantang covertly, wanting to imprint his face in his memory.

In this familiar setting, Zhu Yu was much less guarded. He smiled and explained.

“Of course not. Who would travel in rain this heavy? About ten li north of this town there’s a mountain, and at the foot of it stands a ruined temple. We had been sheltering from the rain there.

But this afternoon there was a loud explosion from the mountain, and it didn’t sound like thunder. We were worried there might be danger, so we traveled through the rain. Luckily there was an inn in town, or we wouldn’t have known what to do tonight.”

Naturally, Zhu Yu would not tell the truth. He made up a vague lie to answer Bai Zhantang’s question.

“The mountain to the north? I never saw a ruined temple there when I was in school. Did I miss it? Can you tell me where it is? I’ll take my friends there to play another day.”

When Mo Xiaobei heard Zhu Yu, she first looked puzzled, then brightened at once, because she had found another new place to have fun.

“Xiaobei, don’t talk nonsense. You can’t go there. It eats children,” Tong Xiangyu said, trying to scare her.

Lu Xiucai, on the other hand, spoke to Zhu Yu with great seriousness.

“Young sir, you’re rather fortunate. The mountain to the north is normally completely inaccessible. The emperor’s summer villa is up there.

There are usually guards stationed around it. Perhaps because of the heavy rain these past two days, no one noticed you entering the mountain. You should not go there again. If you are caught, you’ll be thrown in prison.”

Seeing how solemn Lu Xiucai was, Zhu Yu felt a trace of amusement, but he also knew that Lu Xiucai meant well. So he suppressed the smile and replied.

“So that’s how it is. Many thanks for the warning. Now I know. We won’t go again next time.”

“No need. Go if you must. As for that summer villa, the house has already collapsed. The emperor will probably build a new one somewhere else next year. In a little while, that mountain in the north should be open for anyone to go to.”

At the table, Guo Furong lowered her head and kept eating as she casually tossed in the remark.

That one sentence stunned everyone at Zhu Yu’s table. Yu Huatian immediately asked, “How would you know that?”

But Guo Furong had no intention of answering. She was completely focused on snatching the piece of meat Bai Zhantang had just picked up with his chopsticks.

What sort of person was Yu Huatian? When had anyone ever dared treat him so rudely? He let out a cold snort, drew the sabre from the waist of one of his subordinates, took a few quick steps forward, placed the blade against Guo Furong’s neck, and said in a阴冷 voice, “How do you know? Speak at once, or be careful for your life!”

But things did not unfold as Yu Huatian had imagined.

Guo Furong glanced at the blade against her neck, froze for a second, then slapped down the chopsticks in her hand, stood up, and said angrily, “Hah, you dare provoke your auntie? Shaking Mountain—”

Before she could even complete her famous opening move, she stopped, and the reason she stopped was Zhu Yu.

Zhu Yu took out a fifty-tael banknote and placed it before Guo Furong, saying gently, “Miss, I’m also quite curious about what you said. If you tell me everything you know, this fifty taels will be yours.”

“Mine? You’re not lying to me?”

Guo Furong completely ignored the blade at her neck and asked Zhu Yu in disbelief.

Zhu Yu said nothing, only smiled and nodded.

Having received Zhu Yu’s confirmation, Guo Furong was overjoyed. Her eyes instantly lit up, but before a smile could even appear on her face, it froze.

For at some point, Tong Xiangyu had circled around from across the table and, under Guo Furong’s very eyes, taken the banknote and tucked it into her own bosom.

At the same time, Tong Xiangyu wore an exaggerated smile and said, “My, Young Master, why are you being so polite? Xiao Guo, whatever you know, hurry up and say it. Don’t keep the young master waiting.”

As she spoke, Tong Xiangyu swayed her hips back to her seat.

“Tong, Xiang, Yu!”

The light in Guo Furong’s eyes turned into a torrent of fury as she ground out her innkeeper’s full name.

Just as the farce looked about to begin again, Zhu Yu sighed and took out another banknote. This time he stuffed it directly into Guo Furong’s hand and said, “Hurry up and speak, or both banknotes will have to be returned to me.”

Hearing Zhu Yu’s words, Yu Huatian also withdrew the blade at once.

“Fine, fine, I’ll say it,” Guo Furong replied while also checking whether the banknote was genuine.

After confirming that it was real, Guo Furong thought for a moment and said, “There’s really nothing much to say. Didn’t you hear the sound? If it wasn’t thunder, then either the house collapsed or the mountain collapsed.

You’re all still alive and well, so it must’ve been the house that collapsed.”

When Zhu Yu watched Tongfu Inn in his previous life, he had laughed until he nearly could not breathe. But after actually joining them in person, he did not laugh much at all. Instead, he was genuinely annoyed.

The smile on Zhu Yu’s face was starting to fail him. He said stiffly, “I’ll give you one more chance. If you keep saying useless things, both banknotes go back to me. What I asked was why you said the house had collapsed. What made you judge that?”

“Please calm down first, Young Master. Xiao Guo’s a bit slow in the head. Give her a moment. Come on now, that’s a lot of silver. You don’t want it anymore?”

Realizing the banknote she had just gotten might disappear, Tong Xiangyu hurriedly stood up to placate Zhu Yu, then turned and urged Guo Furong on.

Guo Furong, feeling wronged, said, “What reason could there be? It was just old and never repaired. With such strong wind and such heavy rain, and the building still being up on a mountain, wouldn’t it just collapse when the wind blew?”

“You’re talking nonsense. What do you mean old and never repaired? That place you’re talking about is the emperor’s summer villa. The court allocates silver every year for maintenance.”

Though Yu Huatian hurried to refute her, he was not stupid either. He seized on Guo Furong’s earlier words to counter her.

“Of course silver is allocated every year for maintenance, but who knows where it actually went? In any case, it wasn’t spent on that so-called summer villa.”

“Just an errand runner at an inn dares to casually speak about state affairs. Ridiculous.”

“Hey, what kind of talk is that? Have you lived here for years, or have I? In past years I used to take Xiaobei to and from school every day, and we always went along the northern road.

Whether in spring, summer, autumn, or winter, that mountain never looked like a place where a palace was being maintained. Do you take me for blind?”

Having been pushed back by Yu Huatian over and over, Guo Furong finally could not hold back.

Whether it was because he had been intimidated by Guo Furong or for some other reason, Yu Huatian’s face darkened as he stepped back several paces and stood with his head lowered behind Zhu Yu.

After that exchange between Yu Huatian and Guo Furong, Zhu Yu understood everything. His expression was also unpleasant, but he still forced a smile and said, “Sorry to disturb everyone. Let’s continue eating.”

With that, he returned to his seat.

He said to continue eating, but he did not take a single bite.

The entire conversation had been heard clearly by everyone in the hall. Tong Xiangyu and the others did not understand what it meant, but all the elites of the East Depot present knew that something serious had happened.

Since Zhu Yu made no move, Yu Huatian and the others naturally did not dare move either.

In the whole dining hall, aside from the sound of the wind and rain outside, there was only the noise of Tong Xiangyu and the others eating.

Gradually, Tong Xiangyu and the others also sensed that something was wrong. There were nearly forty people in the hall besides them, yet not a single sound could be heard. The scene was eerily strange.

“Um, is the food not to your taste? Why is nobody eating? I think it’s pretty good,” Tong Xiangyu asked with some courage, then picked up a bite herself and put on a deliberately affected show as she ate.

“Yes, it is pretty good. They may have been frightened by my steward just now. Go on and eat,” Zhu Yu said, brought back to himself by Tong Xiangyu’s words, and then gave a subtle order.

As soon as he finished speaking, the East Depot experts in the hall resumed moving their chopsticks, but everyone understood perfectly well what was going on. They only ate, said nothing, and moved with an identical, unnaturally synchronized rhythm.

Seeing that strange scene reappear, Tong Xiangyu also felt that this silver was getting a little hot to the touch.

But things had already come to this. Tong Xiangyu hardened her heart. Let the floodwaters rise if they must; refusing money would be monstrous.

“Why are you all staring? Eat. If you don’t eat now, I’ll take it all away.”

Seeing that Guo Furong and the others were also a bit frightened, Tong Xiangyu raised her voice, trying to divert everyone’s attention.

That worked well enough. Under Tong Xiangyu’s lead, Guo Furong and the others began eating again, but the table no longer had its usual laughter and chatter.

Once Zhu Yu saw that Tong Xiangyu and the others were no longer paying attention to him, he lowered his voice and said to Yu Huatian, “You heard everything clearly just now, right? I don’t need to tell you how to handle this, do I?”

“Yes.” Yu Huatian answered quietly, then left the table and walked over to one of his subordinates, whispering a few words.

Before long, three East Depot experts left in the rain, and the people of Tongfu Inn saw it all.

“With rain this heavy, what were those brothers off to do?” Bai Zhantang asked with obvious concern, whether sincere or not.

“Just now I suddenly remembered I’d lost some silver. It seems I left it in the ruined temple. I had them go back and look for it,” Zhu Yu replied with a smile.

“Oh, lost silver? Then it should be found. How much was it? Do you need my help? Don’t let my skinny arms and legs fool you, I’m quick on my feet. Just give me a little something if I find it for you.”

Bai Zhantang smoothly covered the matter up.

“No need. The few of them are enough. It’s getting late anyway, so we’ll head upstairs to rest.”

With that, Zhu Yu was the first to go upstairs, and the others followed.

Originally, Zhu Yu had wanted to keep talking with Bai Zhantang and the others after dinner, but after this sudden incident, he was no longer in the mood.

Watching Zhu Yu’s retreating figure, Guo Furong again felt that strange, familiar impression rise within her, and this time it grew even stronger.

“Xiao Guo, what are you spacing out for? There’s so much work, and you’re making me do it all?” Bai Zhantang said irritably while clearing the table, seeing her frozen there again.

“Oh, right, right. You too, Lao Bai. Would it kill you to do a little more?” Though she said that, Guo Furong still rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

At midnight, Guo Furong lay in bed and had a strange dream.

In the dream, she had returned to her younger days. Because she longed for the martial world, she clung to her father all day long and ran to the Six Gates whenever she had nothing to do.

One day, just as she arrived at the Six Gates, an eunuch from the palace came to announce that the Crown Prince was coming to inspect the Six Gates and that all departments were to prepare for the reception.

Born into a family of officials, Guo Furong naturally understood the rules and stood among the crowd to kneel and welcome the Crown Prince.

But being young and restless, she raised her head and stole a look.

The instant she saw the Crown Prince, the dream ended.