Mo Zi knew close-quarters combat techniques. Like an assassin, her moves were three words—fast, ruthless, precise. But up until now, she had never demonstrated this once in front of others. That was her final survival skill, and unless it was a life-or-death moment, she absolutely would not use it.
Honestly speaking, those meager skills of hers could only catch jianghu people off guard once. As Huo Ba’s eagle claw strike came at her, she could feel the fierce wind hitting her face—clearly he had internal martial arts cultivation. Should she risk exposing her trump card to gamble on that slim chance of throwing him out? Or should she wait for Zan Jin and Chou Yu, who were trying to rush toward the table?
Huo Ba’s subordinates weren’t very skilled, but they were thick-skinned and extremely resistant to blows. They had all drawn their blades and possessed the desperate tenacity of death-defying warriors. Moreover, this room actually constrained the experts’ movements. Huo Ba’s side was watching for openings to target the weakest of the three, striking extremely fast and without obstruction. No matter how fast Zan Jin and Chou Yu were, kicking away all these incompetents would still take a little time.
Huo Ba might be a thoroughly rotten person in terms of character, but his martial arts were genuinely formidable and not to be underestimated.
In that split second, Mo Zi moved, and Zan Jin also moved.
Mo Zi’s movement wasn’t combat technique, but quick thinking—she grabbed the tablecloth in front of her and suddenly flipped it upward. At the same time, she had already jumped aside.
Zan Jin’s movement was to suddenly disappear from the corner of the room. Just as the thugs who had been surrounding him were completely bewildered, he appeared to Huo Ba’s right, about an arm’s length away.
Huo Ba hadn’t expected that Mo Zi, who looked so refined and weak, would actually move quite swiftly. When the tablecloth flew up and he punched at it, he immediately felt it miss. And Zan Jin took this opportunity to chop at his chest with a palm strike.
Within one move, Huo Ba felt his qi and blood churning. He couldn’t help but be greatly alarmed. Not daring to be contemptuous, he immediately engaged with full concentration.
Although Mo Zi had dodged aside, she didn’t stop there. She rushed out the door, took a deep breath, and drew in her abdomen while straightening her chest. She didn’t use her life-saving moves because she had another method.
What method?
The method of calling for help!
She raised her voice to maximum volume and shouted, “Someone come! Murder!”
While this method might seem rather wimpy to others, to Mo Zi it was a brilliant way to save her side trouble. Since Huo Ba could drug the tea through Wu You Pavilion’s service, it was clear the Leopard Gang’s influence was quite large. But Huo Ba had said something that made Mo Zi ultimately decide to make this matter public.
Huo Ba had said: On Wu You Mother’s turf, he wouldn’t cause any deaths.
This statement indicated that Huo Ba had dealings with the Wu You proprietress, and at the same time showed he had some apprehension of this Wu You Mother. Otherwise, if he truly got vicious, would he fear causing deaths? Jianghu affairs were beyond even the authorities’ jurisdiction. Once you entered the jianghu, you had to be prepared at any time to have your life taken.
Mo Zi wasn’t a jianghu person, but Chou Yu was. Although Zan Jin had just come down from the mountain, his excellent martial arts destined him to be connected with the jianghu. Now, if the Leopard Gang matter wasn’t handled well, Mo Zi would have no choice but to enter this jianghu too.
Wu You Mother wasn’t afraid of people causing trouble, but feared causing deaths—showing that in this trade, because one had to deal with men from all walks of life, one must be careful to sail safely for ten thousand years.
Today, Mo Zi would gamble on her own luck to see if she could borrow force against force!
She called out again, using the proper enunciation of shouting slogans: “Wu You Mother, you allow people to commit violence and aid evildoers—is this your Wu You Pavilion’s way of treating guests?”
Actually, when she first shouted, she had already alarmed the customers and girls in the great hall, who all looked up to see what was happening. When she shouted the second time, the private room doors on the second and third floors burst open, and many men in fine brocade robes emerged, with women following behind them curiously looking her way.
Mo Zi was prepared to go all out. Unable to push open the two windows behind her in the private room, she entered the room again. One side was fighting one-on-one, the other side was in chaotic group combat—no one paid attention to her. She grabbed a round stool, walked outside, and under everyone’s gaze, used the stool to smash the windows to smithereens.
This way, many people could see the fighting scene inside. Immediately, voices grew louder, pointing and commenting, and there were women’s shrill screams.
She didn’t expect people who came to pleasure houses to be particularly righteous, but sometimes what you needed was just momentum.
Mo Zi turned her head, instinctively looking upward. Wasn’t this the logic? The higher the place, the higher the status of those who frequented it. Just now in the great hall, Third Mother had received them. By this reasoning, the second floor would have Second Mother, and the third floor would have Wu You Mother herself.
The southernmost room on the third floor had its door opened latest, and the people who emerged were the most extraordinary. Several men and several women. The men were of various ages but all in high spirits; the women were all in their prime years, delicate and beautiful as flowers. Each man had almost two beauties beside him, except for the last man to walk out the door, who had a man beside him.
Don’t misunderstand—that wasn’t the cut-sleeve preference.
Mo Zi was so certain because she recognized those two men. One was Hua Yi, one was Yuan Cheng. Both wore black clothes, though Hua Yi’s black was cool crow-black, while Yuan Cheng’s black was starry night silk-black.
Yuan Cheng at first seemed rather indifferent, as if he had reluctantly followed others out. But when he saw that the one making the commotion was the familiar Mo Zi, his face showed a trace of interest. He sat sideways along the walkway railing, placing his elbow on the carved wood—he was settling in to watch the show.
Mo Zi didn’t know why she felt like laughing. She smiled at the one watching the show, meaning ‘go ahead and watch.’ She wasn’t surprised at all to see him at Wu You Pavilion. Someone who held all-night banquets at home before even taking up his post—how could he miss the famous Wu You Pavilion of the capital? It was about time he came.
Mo Zi smiled, and Yuan Cheng also smiled.
In this mutual smile, it seemed the fate of sharing a boat and sharing a life had become very distant. Incredibly, neither person seemed to care. To Yuan Cheng, Brother Mo was now Mo Zi; to Mo Zi, Mister Yuan was now Official Yuan. The two were going to reacquaint themselves with each other, both taking a step back while leaving room for the other to step forward. Without prior consultation, they both used the same attitude—one couldn’t say it wasn’t interesting.
One smile said: I’m watching the show!
One smile said: You watch slowly!
Who said a life-saving debt must be repaid? Who said a life-saving debt must be collected? Those who don’t know to repay don’t feel guilty. Those who don’t want repayment don’t feel uncomfortable. What began as a transaction—then the paying party became vulnerable, and the receiving party’s head grew hot, and only then was there the kindness of the bright pearl given to you. So why not be carefree about it? To struggle between repaying and not repaying was truly quite meaningless.
After Mo Zi finished smiling, her gaze searched along the third floor railing for a middle-aged woman’s figure.
“Who dares to be insolent in my Wu You Pavilion and drive away my customers—can you bear the consequences?” A delicate and soft voice carried a proud tone.
Wu You Mother!
Mo Zi immediately found the speaker and was startled.
A golden hairpin swayed, white jade fragrant flowers studded her cloudy coiffure, high forehead, powdered cheeks, delicate jaw, and a snow-white neck with a swan’s nobility. Her hands were clasped in front. She wore a high-waisted cloud-patterned skirt with large peony flower designs, covered by a blue mist mountain gauze. When she raised her wrist, two golden bracelets struck together, producing a pleasant bell sound. Looking carefully, they were hollow in the middle—presumably hiding bells inside.
The Great Zhou’s handicrafts, unlike its increasingly strict moral standards, were even more intricately carved and ingeniously crafted than the Great Tang before it.
This Wu You Mother was not at all a middle-aged woman. She appeared to be only about twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and though not absolutely beautiful, she was a woman whose bearing could eclipse all other beauties.
For a moment, Mo Zi thought Wu You Mother was Mo Chou. Because in her judgment, none of the women present could surpass Wu You Mother.
“Are you Wu You Mother?” Thinking it was one thing, but confirmation was still necessary.
“Are you the young fellow who said I allow violence and aid evildoers?” Wu You lightly raised her eyebrows. “Remember to take out one thousand taels in banknotes when you leave, to pay for my losses tonight.”
When Mo Zi heard this, she thought—you’re just like Qiu Sanniang. Just as she was about to speak, the battle situation in the private room had already changed. She heard an anguished cry as a black shadow flew out the window, crashed into the railing, and fell to the ground curled up like a shrimp. That person was precisely Huo Ba, who hadn’t lasted ten moves under Zan Jin’s hand before being knocked unconscious by the sword scabbard.
Zan Jin strode out in a few large steps and said to Mo Zi, “Brother Mo, he’s not dead.”
And almost simultaneously, Chou Yu had already knocked down all of Huo Ba’s subordinates, giggling and chuckling as he stood beside Mo Zi.
Mo Zi looked up and saw Wu You’s expression unmoved. She secretly praised her good composure, but her mouth was impolite: “Miss Wu You, I came by invitation, originally wanting to appreciate Wu You Pavilion’s beauties. Yet before a single drop passed my lips, the tea had been drugged. The one thousand taels of silver should be you compensating me.”
Speaking of Wu You Pavilion’s Mo Chou—she became the number one courtesan through beauty and musical skill, but this Wu You was the true person in charge. When she was happy, she’d drink wine with guests; when unhappy, she’d manage affairs and calculate accounts. Therefore she wasn’t famous as a courtesan, but won respect in the capacity of a mother. Her background was said to be very deep, with many rumors, but they all amounted to one thing: she definitely had someone of high position and power or someone with extremely high martial arts in the jianghu backing her. Otherwise, Wu You Pavilion had plenty of troubles in its early years—without someone supporting it, it couldn’t possibly have today’s prominence. Even the most arrogant underworld figures had to listen to Wu You’s words at Wu You Pavilion. If she told someone to leave at the third watch, they couldn’t stay until the fifth. Those who didn’t believe in evil and insisted on acting recklessly would inevitably meet with misfortune within three to five days—at best getting thoroughly beaten by someone unknown, at worst losing their head without knowing who did it.
“This address of ‘Miss Wu You’—I quite accept it.” Wu You wasn’t very old, but her status was there. Most people called her Mother. “However, though the address sounds nice, the words are unpleasant. The tea was drugged—are you saying I ordered it? Looking at you, so young yet with such wicked intentions, randomly framing people.”
Oh? Had she encountered all of the Great Zhou and Nande’s formidable figures? There wasn’t a single easy one to deal with.
However, Mo Zi was even more formidable: “Wu You Pavilion’s Third Mother personally led us into the private room. She said Leopard Gang’s Ninth Master Xu would be half a shichen late and had us sit and wait first. But just as we poured tea, we discovered it had been drugged. Since the host hasn’t arrived yet, wasn’t this matter in the tea done by Wu You Pavilion’s people?”
The young man in brocade closest to Yuan Cheng, who was holding a white porcelain wine pot and drinking from it, suddenly stopped, stuffed the pot into the hands of the woman beside him, and fixed his bright eyes intently on the space behind Mo Zi.
Third Mother from the first floor was also present. Hearing herself implicated, she hastily deflected: “It has nothing to do with us—it was Eighth Master Huo who put in the sleeping drug as soon as he arrived.”
Wu You’s expression finally changed.
A clever mistress with stupid subordinates—it was the most helpless situation.