WangXian Forever 4

Chapter 56 Blackmarket

Lan Zhan and SiZhui left the inn early the next morning. Clouds swept across the sky, filling their world with a greyness hard to ignore. It seemed that the last full day of sunshine had been the one before Wei Ying had left him. Lan Zhan had tried to sleep, but it was hard to do so when the space next to him was so empty.

SiZhui was there but in his own bed.

After their marriage, this was their first separation. Out of choice.

Lan Zhan hated it.

He wondered what Wei Ying was doing now, whether he had found any leads as to where their daughter was. If he had found her, nothing would have kept him away from coming back. Was he in trouble? Lan Zhan snuffed out that thought straight away. It was one that would paralyse him into panicking and not doing what he should. Wei Ying was out there somewhere, and Lan Zhan would find him.

His only solution lay in the hands of the black marketeer, by the name of Mimi Jiaoyi, and Lan Zhan was going to make sure they met with him today.

SiZhui felt excited when they left the inn. He had gotten precise directions from the innkeeper, who had told him that he should under no circumstances mention his name. And there was a distinct possibility that the market would be in a different location altogether, because that was how Mimi Jiaoyi kept out of trouble with law enforcement. And he definitely would be asking them how they came to know of him.

Haibian Chengshi was definitely a town split in two. There was the bad side, which they were thoroughly acquainted with, and then there was the worse side, where they were going now.

SiZhui tried not to show how he was feeling, but the ever increasing gap between the two sides was making itself known so absolutely. Poverty painted the streets and the houses, which if he was honest, were not much more than four walls and a roof, if that.

Raggedy children played in the streets, running after these cultivators in pristine white robes, a sight that had never graced their young eyes before. Litter stank on the roads, wet and limp discarded vegetation, and not the healthiest shade of green at that, raw sewage, not to mention what SiZhui couldn't name.

Here, was open hostility against the very present reminder of themselves, showcasing the difference between what was there and what did not belong there, namely them. In all his time in Gusu, SiZhui had never come across such desolation in everyday life. Sure, there were families that needed help, and Cloud Recesses prided itself on its benevolence towards the less fortunate, but here, no one cared about these people. It was truly sad.

Lan Zhan scanned the streets with practised single focus. Experience told him he could not help these people, that to attempt to do so was inviting trouble, and he knew they just needed to find that man, buy what they needed and get out of there.

So easy to say.

His heart, once so indifferent to other people's hardships, before Wei Ying, would have coldly turned away, recognising that his hands were tied. But his husband had made him aware that Lan Zhan could make a difference. He cared because Wei Ying would care.

His life could be defined like that; before Wei Ying, cold as the polar ice caps, barren as the desert. His life then had been filled with making sure his uncle was proud of him, of excelling at every skill, not because he wanted to be the best, but because he had to be, no choice in the matter.

After Wei Ying, his life was filled with all the colours of the rainbow, no longer just black and white and bleak. He had something to live for, someone to live for. Wei Ying was his everything.

His feet stopped walking of their own accord. He looked up in surprise. They were standing outside a house of ill repute.

SiZhui glanced questioningly at him, a faint blush hinting at his cheeks.