Qian Youde's office was on the western side of the outer disciple district, wedged between two rows of dormitories. A crooked wooden sign hung over the door, bearing the four characters “Outer Affairs Steward,” in handwriting so sloppy it looked as if someone had written it with their feet.
Gu Wujiu stood at the entrance for three seconds and drew a deep breath.
He wasn't nervous. He was adjusting his expression.
In his previous life, he had gone with Third Brother to meet all kinds of people—debtors, loan sharks, informants squatting outside police stations. Every kind of person required a different face. When meeting a debtor, he had to look fierce. When meeting a lender, he had to be obsequious. When meeting an informant, he had to be casual, like he had just happened to be passing by and stopped for a quick chat.
For Qian Youde, the face he needed was—innocent.
A new disciple who knew nothing and had come to ask when the fasting pills would be distributed. It was that simple.
He knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” A feeble voice came from inside, as if its owner had just been woken from an afternoon nap.
“Steward Qian, I’m an outer disciple. I came to ask when this month’s fasting pill allotment will be distributed.”
The door creaked open.
Qian Youde was shorter and older than Gu Wujiu had imagined. He looked to be in his forties, with thinning hair and wrinkles like the bed of a dried-up river. His eyes were murky, like tea left overnight. His gray robe was slightly better than an ordinary disciple’s, but not by much, and the cuffs had worn into frayed edges.
A middle-aged man drained dry by both time and the sect.
“Fasting pills are distributed at the beginning of the month. It’s only the twenty-ninth today. What are you rushing for?” Qian Youde yawned, barely lifting his eyelids. “Go back and wai—”
His gaze finally landed on Gu Wujiu’s face.
Then his yawn caught in his mouth.
It was as if someone had pressed pause. His mouth hung open, his eyes were wide, and his entire body stiffened in the doorway like a wooden puppet that had suddenly lost power.
Gu Wujiu saw it clearly—the instant his pupils contracted sharply, then rapidly widened, as if he had first been frightened and then struck by something deeper.
Fear.
Not the kind of fear one felt upon seeing a ghost. This was the fear of realizing, “I know this face shouldn’t be here.”
“Steward Qian?” Gu Wujiu tilted his head, his expression as innocent as a blank sheet of paper. “What’s wrong?”
“N-Nothing.” Qian Youde’s voice had changed. It had gone from feeble to dry and raspy, like sandpaper scraping over his throat. “You… what’s your name?”
“Gu Wujiu.”
He deliberately said the three syllables slowly, one by one, like he was tossing stones into water and watching the ripples.
The ripples came.
Qian Youde’s right hand seized the doorframe, his knuckles turning white. His Adam’s apple bobbed once. His lips moved as if he wanted to say something, but in the end he only squeezed out, “Oh… Gu Wujiu. A new disciple?”
He was pretending.
Pretending he didn’t recognize the name.
But his hand betrayed him. Someone who truly didn’t know Gu Wujiu wouldn’t have gripped the doorframe tighter upon hearing that name.
“Yes, I entered the sect a little over two months ago.” Gu Wujiu smiled, his expression carrying exactly the right amount of ingratiation and timidity, like any low-ranking disciple facing a steward. “Steward Qian, what day at the beginning of the month are the fasting pills distributed? I’d like to know ahead of time so I can make arrangements.”
“The t-third—the third.” Qian Youde took half a step back, as if he wanted to shut the door but didn’t dare make it too obvious. “Just come collect them then.”
“Got it. Thanks, Steward Qian.” Gu Wujiu nodded and turned to leave.
After two steps, he stopped.
“Oh, right.” He turned back, his tone as casual as if he were chatting about the weather. “I heard there used to be another disciple named Gu Wujiu? Something happened to him, apparently?”
Qian Youde’s face turned gray in that instant.
Not pale—gray. The color of a dead man.
“That… that was, that was in the past.” His voice was practically squeezed through his teeth. “He suffered cultivation deviation. Very unfortunate. You—you just happen to share his name. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh, is that so?” Gu Wujiu nodded, his expression so guilelessly innocent it made people want to hit him. “What a coincidence.”
He turned and left.
This time, he didn’t look back.
But he didn’t need to. He heard it—the door closing behind him, hurried and forceful, like someone was running for their life.
Then came the sound of the door bolt dropping.
Then a suppressed, nearly inaudible bout of panting.
“Host,” the system’s voice sounded in his mind, its tone complicated. “Qian Youde’s heart rate spiked to three times normal the instant you said your name. When you mentioned ‘the previous Gu Wujiu,’ it reached four times normal.”
“I know.”
“He’s afraid.”
“Not just afraid.” Gu Wujiu turned into an alley and stopped with his back against the wall, his fingers habitually tapping his thigh. “He also feels guilty.”
“How can you tell?”
“People who are afraid will avoid your eyes. He didn’t. He kept staring at my face, like he was confirming something.” Gu Wujiu paused. “In my previous life, I knew someone who had handled a corpse for his boss. Every time afterward that he saw the victim’s family, he stared at their faces. Not because he was afraid of being recognized, but because he couldn’t get past what he’d done.”
The system fell silent for two seconds.
“So Qian Youde knows the body’s original owner didn’t die by accident.”
“He doesn’t just know. He helped clean up afterward.” Gu Wujiu narrowed his eyes slightly. “But he wasn’t the mastermind. The mastermind wouldn’t feel guilty. The mastermind would be wary—checking whether the dead person was really dead.”
“Then the person who stood outside the disciple dormitory for five seconds—”
“That was the mastermind, or someone working for the mastermind.”
The alley was quiet for a while. A few arguments drifted over from the distance. Outer disciples were fighting over something, an utterly ordinary occurrence.
“Host,” the system suddenly spoke again, its tone changing. It became formal, as if it were reading an announcement. “A Heart-Eater Sect disciple under extreme psychological pressure has been detected nearby.”
Gu Wujiu froze.
Ding—
The quest panel popped up:
Quest: Help outer affairs steward Qian Youde relieve his psychological distress. Reward: Merit Points +15, intel fragment ×1. Note: Qian Youde’s current mental state is approaching the brink of collapse. Under the prolonged strain of fear and guilt, his mind could break down at any moment. The system recommends that the Host… never mind, you definitely won’t listen anyway :)
Gu Wujiu stared at the smiling face, the corner of his mouth twitching.
“Are you serious?”
“The Merit System never jokes.” The system paused. “Fine, it jokes occasionally. But it’s serious this time.”
“You want me to comfort a guy who helped someone dispose of a corpse.”
“I want you to help someone in psychological distress. What he has done is outside the scope of merit evaluation.”
“That standard is completely ridiculous.”
“Host,” the system’s tone suddenly turned serious, “Qian Youde is a timid man who was forced to do something he couldn’t bear. He isn’t evil, merely weak. Weakness and evil are two different things.”
Gu Wujiu said nothing.
He leaned against the wall, his fingers resting on his thigh as he stared at the hazy mist before him.
The system was right. Qian Youde wasn’t evil. An evil person wouldn’t turn gray upon hearing the dead man’s name. He wouldn’t be unable to breathe after closing the door. He was merely a small fry dragged into the mess, just like the errand boys who ran around for the bosses in the urban village in his previous life—too afraid to say no, too afraid to ask why, and afterward tormented by their consciences until they couldn’t sleep.
Besides—
He suddenly thought of something.
A Qian Youde on the verge of collapse was the most valuable source of information he could ask for.
Frightened people wouldn’t tell the truth, but guilty people would. Especially when the person they felt guilty toward was standing alive right in front of them.
“System.”
“I’m here.”
“What’s an intel fragment?”
“It unlocks after the quest is completed. It might be a clue related to the body’s original owner’s death, or it might be some information about the Heart-Eater Sect’s internal affairs. The specific content depends on how the quest is completed.”
“The rewards differ depending on how it’s completed?”
“Of course. The system can tell the difference between phoning it in and acting sincerely.”
Gu Wujiu was silent for five seconds.
Then he turned and walked back toward Qian Youde’s office.
Not because of the Merit Points. And not entirely because of the information, either.
It was because he suddenly remembered the man who had handled corpses for his boss in his previous life. That man had gone crazy later, running barefoot through the streets in the middle of the night and constantly shouting, “I’m sorry.” Third Brother had said that was called a “debt of the heart.” Once incurred, it could never be repaid.
Qian Youde looked a lot like that man now.
When he reached the office, he didn’t knock this time.
“Steward Qian,” he said in a lowered voice, speaking through the crack beneath the door, “it’s me. The Gu Wujiu from earlier.”
There was no sound from inside.
“I know what you’re afraid of.”
Still no sound. But he could hear someone breathing behind the door, hurried and suppressed, as if desperately trying to hold something back.
“I’m not here to cause trouble.” His voice was soft and steady, like the tone he had used in his previous life to soothe the families of debtors who had been frightened half to death. “I just want to tell you one thing—that Gu Wujiu’s death wasn’t your fault.”
The breathing behind the door stopped for an instant.
“You were just following orders from above. Anyone would have done the same. I would have too.” He paused. “But the fact that you can’t get past it means you’re different from them.”
Silence.
A long silence.
Then the bolt moved.
The door opened a crack, much narrower than before, revealing only half of Qian Youde’s face. The expression on that half was complicated—fear, suspicion, and a faint, nearly invisible glimmer of hope.
“You…” His voice was hoarse as broken glass. “Who are you really?”
“I’m Gu Wujiu.”
“Impossible. Gu Wujiu is dead. I personally…” He abruptly shut his mouth, as if realizing he had said too much.
“You personally what?”
Qian Youde’s eyes reddened. It wasn’t an act. They were truly red, the kind of red that came when someone who had endured for too long could finally endure no more.
“I personally carried his corpse to the rear mountain.” His voice was so low it was nearly a breath. “The people above said it was cultivation deviation and ordered me to deal with it that very day without making a fuss. I knew something was wrong… How could someone at the first level of Qi Condensation suffer cultivation deviation? But I didn’t dare ask.”
“Who were the people above?”
Qian Youde’s body trembled.
“I don’t know his name.” He shook his head rapidly. “I really don’t. He was… someone from the inner sect. He wore a black robe. I never saw his face; he wore a mask when he came. He only said one thing: ‘Clean it up. Don’t ask questions. If you do, you’ll be cleaned up too.’”
Inner sect. Black robe. Mask.
Gu Wujiu lightly tapped his fingers against the doorframe.
“How many times did that person come?”
“Just once. He never appeared again afterward.” Qian Youde’s eyes flickered. “But… recently…”
“What about recently?”
“Recently, I keep feeling like someone is watching me.” His voice grew quieter and quieter, as if he was afraid something might hear him. “Not a disciple. Something… higher up. I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling. Like someone is standing in the shadows, staring at me the whole time.”
Gu Wujiu said nothing.
Because he knew that feeling. He had it too.
“Steward Qian,” he said, looking into Qian Youde’s eyes, each word deliberate, “you helped me once—even though you didn’t know it. Now I’m telling you this: I won’t cause you trouble. But you have to promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“If that person appears again, or anything seems off, come find me.” He paused. “Not because I can protect you. Because telling me is better than carrying it alone.”
Qian Youde looked at him. The suspicion in his eyes slowly receded, leaving behind a vulnerability born of utter exhaustion.
“You… you really are Gu Wujiu?”
“I am, and I’m not.” Gu Wujiu smiled, a hint of warmth in the smile that even he hadn’t noticed. “Either way, I’m alive now, and I’m using this name. That’s enough.”
Qian Youde opened and closed his mouth, but ultimately said nothing. He only nodded.
The door closed. This time, it closed very gently.
Ding—
Quest complete: Help outer affairs steward Qian Youde relieve his psychological distress. Merit Points +15. Reward unlocked: Intel fragment (1). Content: The body’s original owner, Gu Wujiu, did not die in the disciple dormitory. He died inside the miscellaneous affairs room. The corpse was moved to the dormitory and disguised as a death from cultivation deviation.
Gu Wujiu stood in the alley, staring at those words for a long time.
The miscellaneous affairs room.
The body’s original owner had died in the miscellaneous affairs room.
He had seen something there, then been killed inside the miscellaneous affairs room. His corpse had been moved back to the dormitory and disguised as a death from cultivation deviation.
Every clue pointed to that stone house with the copper lock hanging on its door.
“System.”
“I’m here.”
“How many Merit Points do I have now?”
“Fifty.”
“Halfway to a hundred.”
“Host, are you thinking about unblocking your meridians?”
“I’m thinking,” he said, turning toward the abandoned miscellaneous room and walking at an unhurried pace, “that before I uncover the secret of the miscellaneous affairs room, I need to make myself a little stronger. Even if it’s only a little.”
“Becoming a little stronger at the first level of Qi Condensation still makes you an ant in the face of Foundation Establishment.”
“Ants run fast.” He turned into a narrow alley and disappeared into the mist. “And ants have holes.”
The system fell silent for three seconds.
“Merit System operation log, day ten. The Host has begun actively building an information network, expanding his information sources from one to two.” It paused, a trace of satisfaction in its tone that it didn’t even seem to realize was there. “Projected life expectancy assessment… raised again.”
Gu Wujiu didn’t hear that.
He was counting the cards in his hand.
Three fasting pills. Fifty Merit Points. Two cultivation-method fragments. One tail. One timid informant. One confirmed clue.
And one door he would open sooner or later.
His hand was better than yesterday’s.
But the dealer still hadn’t shown his face.
In the urban village, Third Brother had once said, “It doesn’t matter whether your cards are good. What matters is whether you know what the dealer is holding.”
He didn’t know now.
But he knew where the dealer had played a card—the miscellaneous affairs room.
His next move was to turn over that card.
But not today.
Today, he had only one thing to do—cultivate. Push his cultivation-method synchronization progress above eleven percent. Even if he could only raise it by a single percentage point.
Because he had a feeling.
When he opened that door, he would need to run faster than he could now.