"But… right now, I don't have that much money on hand. Not in silver. If you trust me, give me the goods first, and I'll go and borrow the rest from an acquaintance. What do you think?" He brightened again. "And I'll give you each a VIP Four token for my bar, too! The both of you!"
Li Yuguo looked at the fat, flushed, eager face in front of him.
Give him the goods first. Eighty thousand taels on a handshake. To a merchant he had met three days ago.
There was one way to find out whether that was wise.
Tell me your secret.
The little gold window slid out beside Shi Dacheng's head.
> [ Name: Chi Dacheng ]
>
> Secret: Is planning to trap Nalan Meng, the city lord, into working as a waitress in his bar once she cannot pay back his money.
Chi. The same slurred spelling as before—as if the system had heard the name the way the man's own southern tongue said it, and written that down instead. Chi Dacheng. Shi Dacheng. There was no second merchant. There had never been a second merchant.
And the secret went on unfolding in his mind, the way the skill's knowledge seemed to—not just words on the panel, but the shape of the thing behind them.
It had started one day, years ago perhaps, on City Gate Avenue. Shi Dacheng had been standing outside one of his bars when the city lord rode past on her blood-bay, sitting tall in the saddle in that crimson silk, her bare thighs gripping the horse's flanks and her round ass rocking in the saddle—and from that moment on, the fat man had lusted after her body. He had dreamed of it. But she was the city lord, and a prince's daughter, and the Luo Sha Nv, and he was only a merchant. There had been nothing he could do.
Until she came to him for a loan.
And then the drought had come, and she had cancelled the year's taxes, and her treasury had run dry. She was never going to be able to pay him back. She was bound to fall into his trap. All he had to do was wait.
A waitress in his bar.
Li Yuguo looked down at the open cardboard box at the fat man's feet. At the black satin uniform with its tiny skirt, still lying on top of the pile where Shi Dacheng had dropped it.
You pig bastard, he thought. Lusting after my wife while you're kneeling here doing business with me.
The rage came up in him, hot and possessive, the husband's rage. His torn knuckles throbbed inside their bandages.
And right behind it, cold and quiet, came the other thought.
But if that happens… wouldn't I earn cuckold points without doing anything at all?
He did not want to think it. He thought it. And once he had thought it, his mind, treacherous as always, began to show him. Nalan Meng in a dim, smoky, lamp-lit bar on City Gate Avenue, carrying a tray of wine jars between the tables. Wearing that black satin uniform. The skirt so short it rode up over the bottom curve of her ass with every step, the round pale cheeks peeking out beneath the frilled hem. The tight satin top straining over her full breasts, the neckline cut so low that they threatened to spill out every time she bent to set down a cup. Her face burning red with shame, her lips pressed together, her fierce eyes lowered. And all around her, the eyes of the drinking men, crawling over her body, and the fat pink hand of Shi Dacheng reaching out to rest on the small of her back—
His cock went hard.
It happened so fast it made him dizzy—a hot, heavy, shameful surge of blood straight down into his groin, his shaft swelling and stiffening and pushing against the inside of his trousers until the silk was tented in front of him. The Lieyang Shenjian's yang fire roared up to meet it, and for a moment his whole body felt flushed and feverish and hungry.
A slow smile spread across his face. He could feel it happen, and he could not stop it. It was a villain's smile—the smile the original Li Yuguo's face had been built for, crisp and cold and curling at one corner.
Well, well, Brother Dacheng, he thought. It seems we both have plans.
He shifted his robe to cover the front of his trousers, and took a long, slow breath, and when he spoke, his voice was perfectly calm.
"All right," he said. "Then I'll trouble you, brother. Take the goods first."
Shi Dacheng left in a cloud of joy, his guards staggering behind him under the four cardboard boxes, promising to be back before the hour was out.
The moment he was gone, the world went dark.
It happened all at once. Li Yuguo had been standing beside his empty booth, watching the merchant waddle away, and suddenly there was a black curtain coming down over his eyes, and a roaring in his ears, and his knees were folding under him. He grabbed at the edge of the plank table. Missed. Grabbed again and caught it, and hung there, swaying, cold sweat bursting out all over his body.
What—
He knew what. He had felt the edges of it for two days, that hollow weariness after every purchase, and ignored it. And now he had bought four large boxes at once.
And now he remembered.
He remembered the setting. He had written it into Ye Qiong's system himself, years ago, as a limit on the protagonist's power, and then promptly forgotten about it because it was inconvenient. The online shopping system draws its energy from the user's own physical strength. Buy too much, and the body pays the price. There had to be a cost. Every golden finger needed a cost, or the story fell apart.
So everything has a price, he thought dizzily. Even this.
"Brother!" Guan Yunfan was at his side at once, a big hand steadying his shoulder. "Brother, are you all right?"
Li Yuguo waved him off weakly. "No, no—it's fine. Maybe I didn't rest well yesterday. Go—go and get me some water. I'll just drink some water…"
"All right. Wait a moment." The King of Thieves hesitated, frowning, then strode off toward the well at the far end of the square.
As soon as he was gone, Li Yuguo, gripping the table, tried to call up the panel again—just to look. Just to check his balance.
His throat went sweet.
Something hot and thick surged up from his chest, and he doubled over, and coughed, and a mouthful of blood spattered out onto the dusty planks of the table. Bright red. Shocking against the pale wood.
He stared at it.
I'm actually injured.
He wiped his mouth with his palm and looked at the blood smeared across it, and a bitter, crooked smile crept over his face.
"Sure enough," he whispered. "Everything has to be paid for… Otherwise, with an online shop like this, I'd become the richest man in the world overnight." He closed his hand slowly over the blood. "Looks like I can't use it for the next few days. And if I'm not careful… I'll make all the money in the world, and not live to spend a single coin."
He would have to restrain himself. Rich, and dead, was no use to anyone.
By the time Guan Yunfan came back with a gourd of cold well water, Li Yuguo had wiped the table clean and was sitting on his mat looking almost normal.
He had barely finished drinking when Shi Dacheng returned, puffing and red-faced, carrying a small lacquered box under his arm and smiling apologetically.
"Brother Yuguo! Sorry, sorry, it's been a long wait…" He opened the box and held it out. Inside, on a cushion of black velvet, lay a plain bracelet of dull silver-gray metal, etched with faint lines. "This is your eighty thousand taels of silver."
Li Yuguo looked at the bracelet. Then at the merchant.
"Actually," Shi Dacheng explained, "we merchants use these when we travel the world. To carry money. It's a spatial container. This one can hold a hundred thousand taels of silver. Everything's inside already." He pressed it into Li Yuguo's hands. "Take it, brother. The bracelet comes with it, a gift. All you have to do is sink your thoughts into it, and you'll find the money."
"It's that convenient?"
Li Yuguo slid the bracelet onto his wrist. It was cool and surprisingly heavy. He closed his eyes and pushed his awareness into it, the way he had pushed Qi through his meridians—and sure enough, there it was: a small gray space, like a room glimpsed through a keyhole, and in it, stacked in neat glittering rows, more silver than he had ever seen in his life. It gave off a faint silver glow in his mind's eye.
He opened his eyes again, a little dazed.
"Ah, this is only a low-level container," Shi Dacheng said, waving a hand. "If you go to the True Yuan Sect and buy a bracelet from them, you can get one with an enormous space. I've heard the largest can hold an entire house. Three hundred square meters. But it doesn't come cheap…"
"How much?"
"Three million taels of silver."
Li Yuguo sucked in a breath. "That expensive?"
"Well—actually, in terms of materials, the bracelets are only average. It's just that the True Yuan Sect has a monopoly on them." Shi Dacheng lowered his voice confidentially. "Don't let the True Yuan Sect fool you, brother. They look like a school—a group of disciples sitting on a mountain cultivating. But in fact, they do a great deal of business. Magic tools, elixirs, panaceas, all the things ordinary people can't make. And since ordinary people can't make them…" He shrugged his fat shoulders. "They have to buy them. From the sect. At the sect's price."
Li Yuguo filed that away. The True Yuan Sect. Ye Qiong's sect. He had not written them as merchants. Another change, perhaps, or simply a detail he had never thought about.
"And these," said Shi Dacheng, with a broad, sly wink, "are for the two of you."
He drew two small tokens out of his robe and pressed one into Li Yuguo's hand and one into Guan Yunfan's. They were flat discs of red jade, each carved with the character Four and a tangle of intertwined flowers. They were warm from his body.
"VIP Four," he said. "For my bar. Heaven Lust." He chuckled wetly. "If you ever want to enjoy a night with some beautiful ladies, brothers, these tokens will open every door."
Every man in Nalan City knew what a token like that meant. Li Yuguo could see that in the way the stallholders nearby glanced at the red jade and then quickly, enviously, away.
Both of them did their best to look as if it did not matter.
Guan Yunfan turned his token over once in his scarred fingers, his face carefully blank, and then tucked it away deep inside his cloak where he would not have to look at it. Li Yuguo knew why. The King of Thieves loved his wife far too much to ever use it—no matter what his wandering eye said.
Li Yuguo slipped his own token into his sleeve beside the bracelet.
He was not so sure he would never use his. Not because he wanted beautiful ladies. Because he had sixty-some days left to live, and a bar to fill, and a mission from the King of Hell. And a place called Heaven Lust, owned by a man who was plotting to put his wife in a satin uniform, sounded very much like the kind of place where a mission like that might be fulfilled.
The deal was done. Shi Dacheng bowed himself away, promising to send word about the caravan and the magic tools, and Li Yuguo and Guan Yunfan packed up the empty booth and set off back to the mansion.
They heard her before they saw her, again.
Whum. Whum. Whum.
The sound came over the courtyard wall as they passed through the outer gate—the great sword beating the air, the sharp hiss of breath—and the servants in the forecourt were giving the inner gate a wide berth, exactly as before. Li Yuguo smiled a little at the familiarity of it, and led the way through.
Nalan Meng was practicing in the inner courtyard.
But not with the sword, this time. The great blade was propped against the stone table in its sharkskin scabbard. She was practicing barehanded—a footwork form, fast and fluid, all spins and leaps and sweeping kicks—and she was moving at a speed Li Yuguo's eyes could barely follow. Her bare feet flickered across the flagstones. Her body whirled. The long black tail of her hair whipped around her like a lash, and the two crimson silk panels of her skirt flew out from her hips as she turned, rising and snapping and streaming in the wind of her own motion.
And as she spun, at the top of a high, turning kick—her right leg sweeping up over her head, her body twisting in the air—the back panel of crimson silk slid aside.
It slid all the way.
For one long, slow, impossible instant, the whole of Nalan Meng's ass was bared to the afternoon sun.
It was white. That was the first thing. Not pale—white, white as fresh snow, as milk, as the inside of a split lychee, glowing in the bright light so that it almost seemed to shine. It was round. Perfectly round, two full, high, firm globes of flesh, tight with muscle from years of riding and training, and yet soft on the surface, so soft that he could see them move—ripple—with the force of her kick. The deep shadowed cleft ran down between them. And clinging to it, stretched tight across the curve of each cheek and drawn up deep into that cleft, was a tiny pair of white silk panties—so small and so thin that they covered almost nothing, a narrow strip of shining white that sank into the crack of her ass and vanished, and then, between her parted thighs, at the very bottom of her lifted leg, cupped the soft swollen mound of her pussy, the silk pulled so taut over it that he could see its shape. The plump outer lips. The faint shadow of the seam between them. A small, darker patch where the white silk had gone damp with sweat and clung.
It lasted perhaps half a heartbeat.
Then her leg came down, and her body turned, and the crimson silk fell back into place, and she was simply a woman in red finishing a kick.
Li Yuguo stood frozen in the gateway.
Something hot and wet ran out of his left nostril and over his lip. He put up a hand to it, and his fingers came away red.
Nosebleed. He stared at his fingers. I'm having a nosebleed. Like a character in a cheap manga. He would have laughed if he could have moved. Every drop of blood in his body seemed to have rushed in two directions at once—up into his face and down into his cock—and his cock had gone instantly, achingly hard inside his trousers, throbbing against his belly, and the Lieyang fire was roaring through his meridians, and he could still see it, burned into the backs of his eyes: that white, round, perfect ass, and that tiny strip of silk sinking between the cheeks, and the soft swollen shape of her pussy cupped in white—
Beside him, Guan Yunfan had seen it too.
The King of Thieves had stopped dead one step through the gate. His single eye had gone wide—and then, almost at once, he had wrenched it away, staring fixedly at the sky, at the roof tiles, at a sparrow on the wall, at anything at all except the woman in the courtyard. His jaw was clenched so tight that a muscle stood out in his scarred cheek. His lips were moving silently. Li Yuguo, glancing sideways at him through his own daze, could read the shape of the words: sister-in-law, sister-in-law, she is your sister-in-law, respect, respect—
He was trying with every ounce of his iron will to forget what he had just seen.
It was not working.
Li Yuguo could see that it was not working. Because the front of Guan Yunfan's ragged cloak, just below his belt, had pushed outward in a hard, unmistakable bulge—his cock standing up stiff beneath the threadbare cloth, straining against it, as hard as Li Yuguo's own. The big man shifted his weight, trying to hide it, and his face, under its weathered tan, had gone a deep dull red all the way to the crossed scars on his forehead.
Li Yuguo could hardly blame him.
That was no ordinary ass. It belonged to the most beautiful woman in Nalan City. No man alive could have kept control of himself after seeing it.
Lord Yama, Li Yuguo thought weakly, you absolute bastard. You designed this outfit for exactly this.
Nalan Meng finished the form.
She landed lightly, turned, and saw them standing in the gate, and straightened. A sheen of sweat glowed on her throat and her bare shoulders. She was breathing a little hard. If she had any idea of what the two of them had just seen, she gave no sign of it at all.
"You're back," she said to her husband. Her eyes went to the bandage on his hand, lingered there for a moment with a faint frown, and then moved to the big scarred man beside him. She nodded to him—a short, cool, but not unfriendly nod.
She knew who Guan Yunfan was by now. Or at least she knew that a one-eyed stranger with a sword had started following her husband around the city two or three days ago, like a shadow, and had come and gone from the mansion at his side ever since. The servants had told her. She had watched him herself, from a window. And she had decided she did not mind. Whatever else he was, the man was obviously capable. Anyone could see that from the way he moved. If her useless husband was going to start walking around Nalan City making money and getting himself into trouble, it was no bad thing for him to have a man like that at his back.
"Sister-in-law," Guan Yunfan said hoarsely, and bowed to her, very low, with his gaze fixed firmly on the flagstones. He held the bow for a long time. Possibly, Li Yuguo thought, until certain parts of him had calmed down.
"Wife," said Li Yuguo, and bowed too, and pressed his sleeve discreetly to his nose.
Then, together, before either of them could disgrace himself any further, the two of them turned and walked very quickly out of the courtyard.