Mo Ran gazed at Rong Jiu’s face for a long moment.
“What’re you staring at me for?” Rong Jiu asked in mock-displeasure, thinking he was getting horny again. “The food’s going to get cold.”
Mo Ran was silent for another moment. As he recalled the “good deed” Rong Jiu had done him behind his back in his previous lifetime, the corners of his lips curved into a sweet smile.
The great Taxian-jun had done plenty of gross things. There was nothing too gross for him so long as he felt like doing it. This right here would be just putting on a show—mere child’s play.
Mo Ran casually leaned back against the chair and smiled. “Sit.”
“I…I’m already sitting?”
“You know very well where I’m telling you to sit.”
Rong Jiu blushed and sputtered. “Why the rush, Gongzi? Why not finish eating fir—ah!”
Before Rong Jiu could even finish his sentence, Mo Ran pulled him forward and pressed him back down. Rong Jiu’s hands shook and knocked the bowl of congee to the floor. “Mo-gongzi,” he managed between gasps, “the bowl…”
“Leave it.”
“B-but you should still eat first…nngh…ah…”
“Am I not eating right now?” Mo Ran held his waist, the lovely visage of Rong Jiu with his head flung back reflected in his pitch-black pupils.
In Mo Ran’s previous lifetime, he’d liked to kiss those captivating red lips during these moments of intimacy. After all, Rong Jiu was pretty and knew just the right words to say. It would have been a lie to say that Mo Ran had never felt anything for him.
But now that Mo Ran knew what treacherous things those lips had done, he found them unbearably foul and had absolutely no interest in kissing them.
The thirty-two-year-old Mo Ran was different from the fifteen-year-old Mo Ran in many respects. For example, the fifteen-year-old him had still known gentleness in love and intimacy. However, the thirty-two-year-old him knew only violence.
After Mo Ran was done, he looked at Rong Jiu, passed out from getting fucked to within an inch of his life, with an undercurrent of something dark in his gaze. As he looked, his eyes curved faintly, carrying a hint of that sweet smile. He was incredibly good-looking when he smiled, his eyes a bold, rich black with, from certain angles, a sheen of arrogant purple. Still smiling, he dragged Rong Jiu onto the bed by his hair and casually picked up a shard of the broken bowl from the ground, which he held by Rong Jiu’s face.
He’d always avenged every grievance done to him; this time would be no different.
As Mo Ran thought about how well he had taken care of Rong Jiu in his last lifetime, how he’d even thought about buying Rong Jiu’s freedom, and how Rong Jiu had repaid him by scheming against him with others, his eyes couldn’t help but curve more deeply into a smile, and he pressed the shard against Rong Jiu’s cheek.
This person’s body was his livelihood. Without this face, he would have nothing. He would be forced to wander the streets like a dog, to crawl on the ground, be kicked, and suffer all kinds of spurning and abuse… Mo Ran was so delighted by this mere thought that even the disgust he felt from fucking Rong Jiu vanished like smoke.
His smile became even more lovely. His hand pressed down ever so lightly, and a thread of blood, captivatingly scarlet, seeped forth. The unconscious Rong Jiu seemed to feel it and made a low, pained sound. With his tears clinging to his eyelashes, it made for quite a pitiful sight.
Mo Ran’s hand jerked to a stop. A dear friend had come to mind.
Suddenly, he realized what he had just been about to do. It was a few dazed moments before finally, slowly, he lowered his hand.
He had done so much evil that it had become habitual. He’d even forgotten that he was now reborn.
At this moment, all those things had yet to happen. Irrevocable mistakes had not yet been committed, and that person…still lived. There was no need to walk the same cruel path. He could do it over.
Mo Ran sat down, one foot propped on the bed, and absentmindedly toyed with the piece of broken porcelain in his hand. Noticing a greasy pancake that still sat on the table, he grabbed it, peeled off the wax paper, and tore into it with his teeth, eating until crumbs flew everywhere and his lips grew shiny with grease.
Youxuan pancakes were a specialty of this brothel. They weren’t that good—kind of flavorless actually, especially compared to the delicacies Mo Ran would taste in the future—but after this place went under, Mo Ran would never again get to eat one. However, in this moment, even after everything that had happened in the past, here he was, once more tasting this familiar flavor.
The unreal feeling of having been reborn lessened with every swallow. By the time he finished the pancake, his mind was finally clear of the stupor it had been in ever since he woke.
He really had been reborn. Everything hateful in his life, everything he couldn’t take back, all of it, had not yet come to pass. He had not yet killed his uncle and aunt, not yet razed seventy-two cities to the ground, not yet betrayed his teacher and ancestors, not yet gotten married, not yet…
No one had died yet.
Mo Ran savored the taste in his mouth, licking along his teeth and feeling the thread of joy in his chest balloon rapidly into a feverish excitement. He’d rebuked heaven and earth in his last life, experimenting with all three of the forbidden techniques of the mortal realm. He had mastered two of these three; only the last, Rebirth, had eluded him, despite his natural aptitude.
Unexpectedly, that which he had failed to obtain in life had, in death, fallen effortlessly into his lap.
All the distaste, the revulsion, the desolation, the loneliness, all of his complicated feelings from his previous life remained locked in his chest. The sight of the army marching on Sisheng Peak, the ten thousand fathoms of torch fire, was fresh in his mind.
At that time, he really hadn’t wanted to live anymore. Everyone had said that his very existence cursed all who came close to him and that he was fated to die alone. Everyone had turned their backs on him. Toward the end, even Mo Ran himself had felt like the walking dead, apathetic and isolated.
He didn’t know what and where things had gone wrong, for an irredeemably wicked person like himself to get the chance to redo everything after ending his own life.
Why destroy Rong Jiu’s face over such a measly grudge from so long ago? Rong Jiu loved money. Mo Ran would just not pay him this time, and on top of that, he’d take some silver to teach him a lesson. As for Rong Jiu’s life—he didn’t want that burden just yet.
“I’m letting you off easy, Rong Jiu.” Mo Ran said this with a smile and tossed the porcelain shard out the window.
He then proceeded to clear out Rong Jiu’s jewels and valuables, tucking all of them into his pouch, before unhurriedly getting dressed and tidying himself up. Finally, he leisurely strolled out of the establishment.
Uncle, Aunt, Cousin Xue Meng, Shizun, and… Mo Ran’s eyes softened at the thought of one last person. Shige, I’m coming.