How To Polish A Pearl

Extra Three - Sharing (4)

Author's notes:

@Tan_Lyan and @Alalex6252 - this one's for you and my Russian readers. Wen Ke Xing clearly heard your chatter and requests-because he woke me up at 4am again and refused to let me go back to sleep. He wanted to tell you this story.

Just for the record, the weather today is unstable, but clearing towards the evening..

⊂(▀▿▀)つ❤

Wen Ke Xing watches Zhou Xu fight the two assassins in the restaurant with a complicated expression on his face. Part of him is amused and intrigued at the man who's martials arts are literally evolving before his eyes. But part of him is also puzzled, his heart thumping a bit faster than normal inside his chest.

He doesn't blame it on the Water of Lethe. It was just who he used to be, who he had chosen to be, and partly still was. He would fuck whomever he wanted or desired, and then move on. It wasn't that he forgot about the trail of men that he left behind. The water had frozen his core and diluted his mind to the point where it was second nature to take what he needed and wanted, whatever it was in that particular moment, and then he would move on towards the next desire or the next step in his plan. It was just his nature to never look back.

Meticulously.

Ruthlessly.

And even if his hand had reached out towards that empty spot in his bed when he woke up that morning, after having spent the night in Lei Qian's embrace, it was before he had opened his eyes and registered that it was a new day. The Water of Lethe was very effective in protecting his mind from his subconscious and anything resembling feelings. That was, in the end, its sole purpose.

He did, however, have a spring in his step that day and a smile more true to his actual person, rather than the one that he wore as the Guigu Guzhu. He just didn't question why that was. It was simply put-a really good day. He was, after all, heading back towards Ghost Valley as the new Guzhu. And he had enjoyed a very satisfactory week of celebrations.

So, that first time when something that resembled a memory he didn't fully comprehend flickered through his mind during the first wedding night, he felt a little bit perplexed. Partly over this new experience of his mind trying to uncover something that was subtly hidden behind the veil of Lethe, but also because he was used to knowing his own mind and being focused. He rarely wavered in any of his actions anymore and he thought that he had left that unstable and vulnerable past behind him, washed away with the Water of Lethe.

It had been months since he had felt that part of him. Ironically, it had been when he had looked at this man in front of him for the first time. Or at least what he had thought was for the first time.

Back then, that urge for poetry, for writing down his confusion down into something as sentimental as poetry, had come back. Due to the circumstances, he had instead recited his old poetry whilst drinking and watching him sleep.

The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory. (1)

Now, looking at the man moving like the wind through the room, those lines started swimming inside him again. There was something familiar about the way his bride had fought him when Zhou Xu's spiritual core had activated again that first wedding night. And it was the same when they had fought on that second wedding night, and yet he still hadn't been able to pinpoint where he had felt this before. It made him uneasy in a way that not even his favorite wine could ease. He was certain that he had never met the man in front of him. He would have remembered that face. It was a face that his younger self most certainly would have written poems about. So he watched, listened and waited.