“Xiao Fang, who is this Shui Duopo you mentioned just now?” Yu Tuan’er stared at Fang Pingzhai. “Can he really heal his face?”

Fang Pingzhai laughed heartily. “Shui Duopo? Have you ever heard ‘Romantic and leisurely in elegant style, jade belt adorned with golden flowers. Passing through clusters of leaves and blooms, this one family beneath all heaven’?” Yu Tuan’er shook her head. The only prominent figure she knew was Liu Yan alone – even Tang Lici, she wasn’t clear who exactly he was.

Fang Pingzhai waved his red fan. “That’s a gentleman I privately admire very much.” Yu Tuan’er looked at him in surprise, finding it strange that he hadn’t continued rambling on endlessly. What kind of person could make someone like Fang Pingzhai both admire and fall silent? “Can he heal his face and legs?”

Fang Pingzhai tapped her head with his red fan. “He could attach a sow’s head to a human body, could grow radishes into cabbages and cabbages into sweet potatoes, raise roosters into fat geese and fat geese into swans – so if we could find him, perhaps it really would be possible.”

All the blood in Yu Tuan’er’s body heated up as her spirits lifted. “Do you know where he lives?”

Fang Pingzhai tapped her head again with his red fan. “Very unfortunately, I don’t know, and most people in this world don’t know either. Shui Duopo has a good friend called Xue Xianzi, and Xue Xianzi has a good friend called Tang Lici. Very unfortunately—” He glanced at Liu Yan from the corner of his eye. “My dear good master would rather jump into the sea to be bitten by fish, drowned by shrimp, or hanged by seaweed than be saved by a friend of Tang Lici’s friend, right? Moreover – requesting Shui Duopo to save someone requires over a hundred taels of gold. I think even selling you three or four times wouldn’t cover that much money. Anyway, since master himself doesn’t care, why should you worry for him? Haha.”

“Just because he doesn’t care means it doesn’t need to be healed?” Yu Tuan’er rolled her eyes at Fang Pingzhai. “He’s very pitiful like this now.”

Fang Pingzhai was left speechless and could only laugh again. Even though he had a silver tongue that could describe Asuras as Guanyin and sows as fairy maidens, he always came up short in front of Yu Tuan’er.

A’Shui was cooking noodles in the kitchen, listening to the trivial chatter of the few people in the main hall. For a while her heart felt empty and hollow. They all truly cared about Liu Yan. How difficult it was to meet people who were genuinely good to oneself – she understood this all too clearly. Perhaps because he bore crimes he shouldn’t really have committed, he was always relatively fortunate? Lifting out the noodles and dividing them into three porcelain bowls, she concentrated on making the plain noodles while quietly listening for sounds from the guest room.

The guest room remained completely silent, as if there was no one inside at all.