All Things Are Contracts

With General Yue Feipeng’s awakening, the general’s mansion was filled with joy. The strange old man who had cured General Yue naturally became an honored guest. A grand feast was laid out in the mansion, with everyone drinking to their heart’s content.

“Old sir, I truly thank you,” said Yue Feipeng. “If not for your help, I fear I wouldn’t have survived. If you have any requests, as long as I can fulfill them, I will do so to repay your life-saving kindness.”

The old man, drunk and full, swallowed a piece of meat before advising General Yue, “This old man… has nothing… that needs the general’s help. I only hope that in the future, the general will respect the Fox God and never again destroy Fox God temples.”

Yue Feipeng hadn’t expected this response. He asked curiously, “Old sir, does the Fox God truly exist in this world?”

The old man smiled mysteriously through his drunkenness, “If you believe… it exists. If you don’t… it doesn’t. But if you don’t believe… yet force others not to believe… you’ll surely face retribution.” With that, the old man collapsed onto the table, asleep from too much drink.

A glint flashed in Yue Feipeng’s eyes; he still didn’t believe in any Fox God. “Someone, help the old sir to rest.”

“Yes, sir!” Two soldiers carried the old man away.

After the banquet dispersed, Yue Feipeng kept Deputy General Li in a secret chamber.

“His claim that I was cursed by the Fox God isn’t credible. I must have been poisoned, probably at that time…” Yue Feipeng recalled: “When we were scouting the border terrain earlier, didn’t we save a group of civilians? A little girl among them gave me a piece of cake, which I ate without suspicion. The next day, the poison took effect. It seems those civilians were actually from the Blue Hill Kingdom. I fell into their trap.”

“I know about that incident, General. I was there too. I sent people to pursue them immediately, but that group vanished like smoke. My men tracked them to a fox den, where they seemed to disappear into thin air.”

“A fox den? Foxes again?” Yue Feipeng’s face darkened, feeling enveloped by a grand conspiracy. “We must keep that old man under close watch. We can’t let him escape. He came with the antidote to save me – what’s his real plot?”

“Yes, don’t worry. I’ve arranged hidden guards to watch him,” said Deputy General Li.

Yue Feipeng rubbed his temples, having to deal with these strange matters right after waking up. After Li left, he took out the wooden box Zhanyue had brought him. He unfolded the silk cloth inside, which was indeed a map, though he didn’t know what it marked. However, he didn’t focus much on the cloth, instead examining the box carefully before finally smashing it. The box had a hidden compartment containing a secret letter. This was something Zhanyue hadn’t anticipated; anyone opening the box would focus on the silk cloth, not the box itself. Yet the real secret lay within the box, something General Yue had previously arranged with a friend.

“Brother Feipeng, by the time you receive this letter, I fear I’ll no longer be in this world. I don’t even know when you’ll receive it. But I don’t want this secret to be buried, and after much thought, I feel I should tell you…” The letter writer was Yu Xinwen, father of Yu Dayou, the Cloud Ink Village chief. Yu Xinwen had once enlisted in the army with Yue Feipeng, both performing excellently. But their paths diverged – one remained in the military, while the other entered the palace, becoming a leader of the Imperial Guard and deeply trusted by the previous emperor.

After reading the letter, Yue Feipeng’s eyes widened, his whole body trembling. The letter completely overturned his understanding of things.

Thirty years ago, in the imperial harem, two consorts vied for favor. The emperor promised that whoever bore a son first would become empress. The Virtuous Consort became pregnant first and gave birth to the current emperor. However, this letter told Yue Feipeng that the Virtuous Consort had actually given birth to a baby girl, who was switched for a baby boy. More terrifyingly, the Virtuous Consort wasn’t human, but a fox spirit. She had used magic to bewitch Yu Xinwen, the Imperial Guard leader, to carry out her plan. Yu Xinwen learned of this because he had previously obtained a talisman from a Taoist temple, which he carried with him. Unexpectedly, the talisman worked, allowing him to wake up midway through the plot, avoiding becoming the fox spirit’s puppet. By then, he had already been ordered to strangle the baby girl and bury her outside the palace. All along, he pretended to know nothing to protect himself and his family, allowing the boy of unknown origin to become the emperor of the Great Fortune Kingdom.

Years ago, feeling his days were numbered, Yu Xinwen didn’t want to take this secret to his grave. If the emperor had been wise and virtuous, it might have been fine, but he turned out to be an incompetent ruler, causing great suffering to the people, while the wise Jade Prince could only rule a small domain. Yu Xinwen knew the throne should have been the Jade Prince’s. If the Jade Prince had ascended the throne, the people of Great Fortune might have lived better lives, which made Yu Xinwen especially guilty. Before his death, he sealed all the secrets in this box, instructing Yu Dayou to pass it to General Yue when he was stationed at the border.

However, Yu Dayou discovered that he and his mother seemed to be targeted, in constant danger. Unable to wait to deliver the message to General Yue, he fled deep into the mountains for years before finding a way to contact General Yue’s people. Still not daring to hand over the item directly, he could only ask General Yue to send trusted people to retrieve it, having his own ways to identify them. This led to Zhanyue’s story in Cloud Ink Mountain, and Eunuch Cao likely rushed there after catching wind of something.

“So that’s how it is.” General Yue connected all the pieces, but the events recorded in the letter were still too bizarre. “Fox spirits? The current emperor isn’t the previous emperor’s son, but someone the fox spirit found outside? What’s their relationship with the Fox God religion?” Yue Feipeng felt overwhelmed. This matter concerned the fate of the nation; he dared not tell anyone. He burned the secret letter and then called for Deputy General Li.

“General, what’s the matter?” Seeing Yue Feipeng’s solemn expression, Li also became serious.

“Find someone trustworthy to go to this location on the map and bring back whatever is dug up,” Yue Feipeng said to Li, handing over the silk map. If the secret letter was correct, that place should contain… a baby’s remains. Was the Virtuous Consort really so cruel? Killing her own daughter for the position of empress? But remembering historical events, Yue Feipeng wasn’t too surprised.

“Fox God, fox temples, fox spirits… the world is about to descend into chaos,” Yue Feipeng sighed deeply.

Deputy General Li soon returned, his face pale.

“General… the old man is gone,” Li reported.

“Gone? How?” Yue Feipeng was furious. “Didn’t I tell you to watch him closely? He’s an important informant!”

“I don’t know what happened. He was clearly in that room; the guards at the door could hear him snoring. But when we checked again later, he had vanished. We don’t even know how he escaped. The room only has one door and one window, both closely watched,” Li said defensively.

“Let’s go take a look,” General Yue said, leading Li to the room.

The door and window were intact and had been guarded continuously, so escape through them seemed impossible. That left either digging a tunnel or escaping through the roof.

Yue Feipeng looked around. The floor was undamaged, so tunneling seemed unlikely. On the ceiling, there was indeed a hole in the rafters, but it was small, not seeming large enough for a person to squeeze through.

“Could it be there? But that hole is too small for a person. Maybe a cat or a fox could get through,” Li wondered aloud.

Yue Feipeng’s face darkened. He gritted his teeth and said, “Don’t mention foxes in front of me again.”

“Oh…” Li was confused by this reaction.

Meanwhile, the old man was fleeing at top speed, having completed his mission and just needing to escape. However, a figure followed closely behind – Zhanyue. Ordinary people might think the old man was just after the golden statue, but Zhanyue knew it wasn’t so simple. This old man was certainly no ordinary person. Zhanyue had also kept watch for a long time and had seen something incredible: the old man using a bone-shrinking technique to make himself smaller and squeeze out through a gap in the roof tiles. The old man’s lightness skill was impressive, but he still couldn’t evade Zhanyue.

“How long are you going to chase me?” the old man shouted. He was nearly exhausted, never imagining there could be someone in the world whose lightness skill surpassed his, the ‘White Rat’.

Soon, Zhanyue’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Still running?”

“Impossible! Who are you? How could you catch up to me?” White Rat was astounded. He was supposed to be the world’s best in lightness skill, a generation’s king of thieves. But he didn’t know that with Zhanyue’s arrival in this world, that title had to be relinquished. It was truly a case of the king of thieves meeting the saint of thieves.

“Let’s cut to the chase. Where did you get that antidote? How could it cure General Yue?” Zhanyue asked directly.

“What antidote? I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” White Rat’s eyes darted evasively.

“If you don’t understand words, maybe you’ll understand this.” A dagger pressed against White Rat’s throat.

“Great… great hero, no need for weapons. Let’s talk this out. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you everything. The antidote was given to me by a fox immortal,” White Rat said.

“You’re still trying to fool me? What fox immortal? Nonsense,” Zhanyue said, exasperated.

“Hero, it’s… it’s true. It was a fox immortal. That day I was sleeping in a Fox God temple when a blurry figure appeared beside me. I couldn’t see clearly. It said it would give me a great fortune and then gave me a gourd, telling me to find that General Zhang. It guaranteed I’d be rich and famous after curing General Yue. I’m telling the truth,” White Rat hurriedly explained, not seeming to be lying.

“Then why are you running?” Zhanyue asked, puzzled. “You saved General Yue’s life. What are you afraid of?”

“I… I don’t know. I just had a gut feeling that staying there was dangerous. My instincts are usually right…” As he finished speaking, White Rat’s expression changed. He had been preparing for a while and finally let out a thunderous fart. Zhanyue felt nauseous from the stench. In a moment of dizziness, he realized White Rat had vanished.

“He got away… like a weasel,” Zhanyue quickly moved to a clean area to recover. “Next time I see him, I won’t let him off so easily,” he said through gritted teeth.

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