Lan XiChen spoke, “Uncle has taken and examined what you brought back from Mo Village.”
Hearing the words “Mo Village”, Wei WuXian automatically started to pay attention. Unexpectedly, he felt his lips part. Lan XiChen had released his silence and spoke to Lan WangJi, “It is not often that you bring somebody home, being in such good spirits. You need to treat your guest with courtesy, unlike this.”
Good spirits? Wei WuXian carefully looked at Lan WangJi’s face.
How could he tell that he was in good spirits?!
After watching Lan XiChen leave, Lan WangJi spoke, “Drag him inside.”
Then, Wei WuXian was, indeed, dragged into a place which he swore not to step inside again.
In the past, only distinguished cultivators had came to visit the Lan Sect, and never had anyone seen a guest like him before. The juniors all crowded around him, interested by this new turn of events. If not for the sect rules being so strict, there would definitely be bouts of laughter along the journey. Lan JingYi asked, “HanGuang-Jun, where should we drag him to?”
Lan WangJi replied, “The jingshi.”
“… The jingshi?!”
Wei WuXian didn’t know what was going on. The rest stared among themselves, afraid to make any sound.
It was HanGuang-Jun’s bedroom and study, which he had never invited anyone inside…
The furniture in the jingshi was extremely simplistic, without any unnecessary belongings. On the accordion partition, there was a painting of drifting clouds, floating and morphing with its fine brushwork. A guqin table lay horizontally in front of it. On top of the three-legged incense stand in the corner, a hollowed out incense burner made of white jade emitted soft, lingering smoke, filling the whole room with the chilling scent of sandalwood.
Lan WangJi went to see his uncle to discuss serious matters, while Wei WuXian was pushed into the room. Right after Lan WangJi left, Wei WuXian also went outside. He strolled around the Cloud Recesses, and found that, as he had expected, without the jade token for passage, even if he climbed up the white walls of a few zhangs’ height, he would be immediately flung off by the barrier, attracting the attentions of the nearby patrolmen at once.
Wei WuXian could only go back to the jingshi.
He never really worried about anything, no matter what he came across. He walked around the jingshi with his arms behind his back, firmly believing that, sooner or later, there would be a solution. The refreshing scent of the sandalwood was cold and clear. Although it wasn’t sentimental, it had its own way of tugging one’s heartstrings. With nothing to do, he started to think random thoughts, Lan Zhan happened to smell like this scent. His clothes were probably tinged with the fragrance when he was practicing his guqin or meditating here.
After these thoughts, he couldn’t help but to shift closer to the incense stand at the corner. With this shift, he became aware that, beneath his foot, one piece of wood was significantly different from the other places. Wei WuXian bent down and started to knock here and there, due to curiosity. In his past life, he did a lot of digging pits, excavating graves, and finding holes in the ground. After a few moments, he turned a piece of board up.
Finding a secretive space in Lan WangJi’s room was already more than enough to surprise Wei WuXian. However, after he saw what was hidden inside, he was even more surprised.
After flipping the wooden board open, a mellow aroma had filled the air, unnoticeable when it was mixed with the sandalwood scent. Seven or eight black jars were packed into a small, square cellar.
Sure enough, Lan WangJi had changed—he even started to hide liquor!
The Cloud Recesses prohibited liquor. Because of this, the first time they met, they had a small fight. Lan WangJi ended up spilling a jar of the “Emperor’s Smile” which he brought back from the city of Gusu.
After he returned from Gusu to Yunmeng, Wei WuXian never had the chance to drink the “Emperor’s Smile” made exclusively by Gusu’s experts ever again. He had thought about this for his entire life, always telling himself to come back to taste it if he ever received the opportunity. But, the opportunity never came. Hidden in here was no other than the liquor—he didn’t even need to open and taste it, and knew that it was an “Emperor’s Smile” just by the smell of it. He would never have thought that he would find a liquor-hiding vault in the room of a person as scrupulous and abstinent as Lan WangJi’s. Karma really outdid itself with this reincarnation.
As Wei WuXian exclaimed upon the matter, he finished one jar already. He had a high tolerance for alcohol and loved to drink. After he came to the conclusion that Lan WangJi still owed him a jar of Emperor’s Smile and it was time to collect his interests, he drank another jar. When he was just starting to get tipsy, a thought suddenly passed his mind. How hard was it to get the jade token? In the Cloud Recesses, there was a cold spring with a lot of miraculous effects, for the male cultivators to use. It was said to be able to calm down one’s heart, clear one’s mind, quench one’s fire, and so on. When he went into the cold spring, he was bound to take off his clothing. Then, with his clothing already off, there would be no where to put it aside from holding it in his mouth, which was definitely out of question.
Wei WuXian clapped his hands and finished the last gulp in the jar. After searching, he found that there were no places to throw it away, so he filled the empty jars with clear water and sealed the lids again, stuffing them back inside and closing the wooden board. With this done, he ventured out to find the jade token.
Although the Cloud Recesses had been burnt down before the “Sunshot Campaign” happened, the rebuilt structure of the area was the same. Wei WuXian walked through the winding paths from memory, and soon found the cold spring, situated at a quiet and obscure place.
The disciple on duty for watching over the cold spring was quite a distance away. The female cultivators were in another quarter of the Cloud Recesses and didn’t come here to use it. Nobody in the Lan Sect did an impudent thing such as coming to the cold spring to watch others bathe, anyway. Therefore, the security wasn’t strict at all and it was extremely easy to overcome, making it easy for Wei WuXian to go and shame himself. And, coincidentally, there was a set of white clothes on top of the white rocks behind the crisscrossed eupatorium grasses, meaning that someone had already came.
The set of white clothes was folded extremely neatly, almost making one’s hair rise. It looked like a snow-white piece of tofu—even the forehead ribbon was folded without any creases. As Wei WuXian put his hand in and searched for the jade token of passage, he was almost reluctant to mess it up. Afterward, stepping over the bushes of eupatorium grasses, his gaze passed over the spring, and suddenly halted.
The water in the cold spring was freezing. Unlike a hot spring, there wasn’t any vapour to shroud one’s eyes, so it was possible to take a clear look at the upper half of the person in the spring who stood with his back to him.
The person in the spring was quite tall. His skin was fair and his hair was black, wet and gathered to one side. The lines which outlined his waist and back were smooth, graceful yet holding strength. In simpler terms, he was a beauty.
However, Wei WuXian was definitely not stunned and unable to avert his gaze because he was looking at a bathing beauty. No matter how beautiful he was, he wouldn’t actually be attracted to men. Really, it was the things on the person’s back that made him unable to avert his gaze.