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In the history of overly spoiled, sheltered young masters cut loose in the martial world, none have ever been so ill-equipped to survive the real world than the one who has stumbled between Li Lianhua and the gang of thugs on his tail.
"Resurrect the dead?" The worst recruit of Baichuan Court exclaims, wide eyed with unwarranted admiration and practically quivering out of sheer excitement. "You can do that? Isn't that amazing?"
Li Lianhua coughs behind his sleeve, astonished by this unprecedented amount of ingenuity in a card-bearing member of the most infamous sect of detectives he himself founded. He knew the standards of the Sigu Sect had marginally dropped since his disappearance, but that's just ridiculous. What were Fo Bi Bai Shi thinking to allow this gullible fool into their ranks? Thanks to their negligence, the precious heir of Tianji Mountains Manor is going to get himself killed for certain before the end of the month, and they'll have no one to blame but themselves.
At least he's a very good fighter. The brains are clearly lacking, if they exist at all, but he's been granted plenty of brawn to compensate.
"Young Hero, this is a misunderstanding… of course I can't raise the dead, I'm a mere wandering doctor, not a god…"
Fang Duobing visibly deflates. "Oh. That's too bad. I guess you guys will have to leave the doctor alone then."
The chief of the Hall of Wind and Flame squad points an accusative finger at Li Lianhua. "Obviously he's lying! Don't get in the way if you don't want to die, brat!"
"Aiyo, are you so confident you dare to threaten a detective of Baichuan Court now?" Li Lianhua says as he relocates himself behind the back of his incredibly stupid but dedicated protector. "You people are quite brazen, aren't you?"
Everyone's eyes zoom in the insignia on the young master's hip, and gasps of disbelief erupt all over the inn. The object of their attention remains mostly indifferent to the ruckus caused by the cognitive dissonance his existence inflicts upon the good folk of this quaint little town, the rascals of the Hall of Wind and Fire and Li Lianhua, who regularly eats cognitive dissonance for breakfast without any lingering stomach ache.
"That's right!" Li Lianhua clamors. "Your crimes won't get swept under the rug so easily! Young Hero, arrest those felons!"
Fang Duobing perks up and raises his sword. "Okay!"
If not for all those years riding over his own bullshit and thickening the skin of his face to the point of no return, Li Lianhua's jaw would have dropped on the floor. Okay? Okay? Young man, don't you have any professional ethic or personal pride?
"Wait a minute!" The chief retorts. "As a representative of Baichuan Court, you have a responsibility to investigate properly before passing judgment!"
"An investigation!" Fang Duobing repeats like the idea would never come to his mind on its own. "Yes, yes, I can investigate! I am a detective! That's so exciting! Show me that body of yours at once!"
What follows ought to automatically become a top contender for the sloppiest investigation in the records of Baichuan Court, if it even deserves to be called so. This debacle might suit his own goals just fine, but internally, as the former head of the Sigu Sect, Li Lianhua is chugging vinegar by the bucket, and so are his harassers. The Hall of Wind and Flame thugs have no other choice but to give up on their treasure out of sheer frustration with the young master's astonishing level of obtuseness and clear, albeit incomprehensible bias for Li Lianhua.
"I have excellent instincts, Li-xiong," Fang Duobing declares afterwards over tea too bland for his taste and cakes too dry for his tongue, "and they tell me in no uncertain terms that you are a good person."
"Ah," Li Lianhua says, "I'm flattered by your esteem, young hero Fang, but instincts aren't enough in the martial world."
No surprise nor questioning ensues on how exactly Li Lianhua figured out Fang Duobing's identity despite the lack of introduction. Fang Duobing merely takes this in stride like it's perfectly normal that Li Lianhua knows him without needing to be told, and smiles beatifically.
"Li-xiong is very kind to share his wisdom with this junior. I won't forget your advice."
He's taking back previous assessments about Fo Bi Bai Shi's responsibility in Fang Duobing's inevitable downfall: Fang Duobing's parents ought to have locked him down in their estate so he wouldn't get eaten alive at the slightest occasion by unsavory characters of dubious morality. At the very least, they should have assigned a couple of efficient and level-headed servants to mitigate the damage and keep him from getting scammed and swindled.
What a disaster. That Fang Duobing kid is so stupid even Li Lianhua hesitates to abuse his naivety and put him down a peg for his own good. They've long past the rookie mistake of trusting others too easily or not being thorough enough in his investigative skills, this abysmal level of incompetence is beyond anything Li Lianhua's advice or beratement could correct. What's the point of kicking down some intellectually challenged kid already at the bottom? Li Lianhua is a notorious scumbag, but he's not that cruel.
"Young Master Fang, you joined Baichuan Court fairly recently, didn't you?"
Fang Duobing nods, and doesn't offer any further extrapolation for his inexplicable life choices.
Li Lianhua is forced to ask, frustrated and bemused: "Why?"
"It's a family business," Fang Duobing says, between two yawns. "My uncle was a big shot of the Sigu Sect."
It is only then that Li Lianhua makes the connection. Fang Duobing, his Shixiong's nephew, the one he visited often at Tianji Mountains Manor. Eagerly, Li Lianhua searches for any hints of Shan Gudao's features on the unblemished face of his kin, and finds only traces of untouched innocence. This foolish, naive, brain-dead kid is Shixiong's only remaining family… and he's clearly too stupid to live…
Fang Duobing's large, joyful eyes struggle to keep open. "Li-xiong… I feel very sleepy all of a sudden…"
Li Lianhua stabilizes him upright, as Fang Duobing leans into him without a drop of suspicion on this spontaneous urge to fall asleep in the middle of the evening. "You had a very long day. You should get some rest."
Fang Duobing makes humming noises of agreement, and the sharp spike of guilt pierces through Li Lianhua's atrophied heart. Had Li Lianhua known he was poisoning his Shixiong's nephew… he would have done exactly the same, the circumstances don't allow for any less, but still.
It's probably for the best in the end. Better to confront early youthful ideals to the inevitably of betrayal. Fang Duobing might be the most gullible person Li Lianhua has ever met in his life, but surely even he can learn from his mistakes.
He'll be fine.
He'll be fine.
.
.
"Have you heard? That Young Master Fang completely fumbled his first investigation and embarrassed Baichuan Court… I bet they must be biting their own fingers to take him on, ahaha!"
"Rumors have it the Hall of Wind and Flame sucked him dry of every coin he had on him as compensation… what a fool!"
"Really? I heard he fought them all and almost died!"
"My cousin told me he joined a gang, actually."
"That boy is not going to last very long in the martial world, lemme tell you."
The mortifying image of having to kneel in front of his Shixiong's grave and apologize that his only remaining flesh and blood's inner organs ended up on the black market because Li Lianhua couldn't be bothered to keep his brain-dead nephew safe flashes in his mind. Li Lianhua curses everything and turns backward.
Six days left to his own devices had simultaneously managed to considerably change Fang Duobing and leave him wholly unaltered at the same time. His fine clothes had withered down to their barest components, his purse diminished into nothingness, but his attitude?
Exactly the same. He remained as cheerfully dumb as before.
"Li-xiong!"
The heavy bags of rice he'd been carrying on his shoulders, no doubt after getting roped into crippling debt by some opportunistic and unethical innkeeper, drop on the floor. The image of Fang Duobing brightening up superposes with the memory of the expression Huli-jing makes when she finds herself within chasing distance of a fat chicken. It then devolves into the scornful look she gives Li Lianhua if he has the nerve to get in her way.
"No, wait, I'm upset with you. You lied to me."
Li Lianhua secretly rejoices. Finally, some common sense! If Fang Duobing can recognize injustice and mistreatment and react accordingly, he might not be so defenseless as previously assessed and Li Lian can walk away guilt free.
His relief doesn't last. The frown twisting Fang Duobing's features eases up into a blooming beam, earnest, eager and so painfully sincere. "You can resurrect the dead! Li-xiong is amazing!"
This is fine. This is fine. If Fang Duobing needs to be treated like a child, then he'll get treated like a child. Li Lianhua doesn't even have to bother with subtlety and manipulation, the delicacy of his art will pass right over Fang Duobing's pretty empty head. He'll answer just as fine to plain misplaced abuses of authority, or so previous experiments have proven successfully.
Li Lianhua points his finger at Fang Duobing's chest and says: "You're coming with me."
To which Fang Duobing, technically a full grown man and talented martial artist by his own right, replies: "I am?"
"Yes."
Fang Duobing ponders briefly upon this new shift in reality. "Are you going to teach me how to resurrect the dead?"
The reasonable, responsible response to this nonsensical question would be to explain in clear and no uncertain terms that no one has the power to drag the deceased out of Yama palace, least of all a fraud doctor the likes of him. Li Lianhua, a notoriously morally-bankrupt person, elects instead to add this carrot into his arsenal of tools to bully Fang Duobing into compliance. "I'll consider it if you behave yourself."
Something unknowable glints through the dark pools of Fang Duobing's eyes.
One blink removed, and it has disappeared entirely from Li Lianhua's perception like it never existed in the first place.
.
Lotus Tower takes to Fang Duobing like he'd been part of the furniture all along.
The wooden floor doesn't croak under his feet. The cupboard Li Lianhua never manages to fix permanently opens easily at his finger's coaxing. Hulijng accepts, no, welcomes his patting like it's her rightful due. The patch of radishes he knew for certain had been dying suddenly revive inexplicably. His four horses take to the gentle but firm lead of a new hand without a single hitch.
It's bewildering. It's annoying.
It had taken years of Li Lianhua's sweat and blood for his efforts to amount to anything resembling a home. How unfair is it that such a foolish brat can just waltz in and make his own house's mechanisms purr so casually?
"She's a beauty," Fang Duobing says as he pats the framework with the professional appreciation that, in retrospect, Li Lianhua ought to have expected from the heir of Tianji Mountains Manor and their army of unhinged engineers of improbable devices of all kind. "So, where are we going?"
Li Lianhua glares at him over the tea Fang Duobing had served him exactly right to his preferences. If Li Lianhua could afford the detour, he'd have dragged this abandoned puppy back to its shameless owners either in Tianji Manor or Baichuan Court and caused a huge scandal on the immoral perils of pet negligence.
"To the Lingshan Sect."
"Shifu even knows I'm supposed to go there?" Fang Duobing nods to himself. "He truly is peerless."
The word, so carelessly thrown around, punches the breath of Li Lianhua's chest. Shifu is not a title compatible with tepid demonstrations of care undermined by the clear intent to get rid of his charge as soon as possible. Shifu is meant for responsibility, for commitment, and Li Lianhua wants nothing to do with any of it. Dead men had no business taking on vulnerable disciples who can't be trusted with themselves.
Li Lianhua raises up from the table and walks up to him in order to smack the back of his head. "Who's your shifu? I don't remember agreeing to take you as a disciple."
Retaliation comes in the form of a shameless pout. "Haven't I behaved myself to your satisfaction?"
"A well-behaved disciple would have attended to his assignment already instead of wasting time idlessly."
"I wasn't idle though," Fang Duobing argues. "Granny He asked for my help, and then I had to pay back Mr Shi for the food he gave me, and then the guards need me to-"
Li Lianhua raises his hand to put an end to this endless list of blatant manipulations. "Enough, enough. From now on, stop listening to those people. They don't have your best interests in mind, silly child. You only listen to me."
Fang Duobing smiles, pleased and warm and dangerous. "Alright, da-ge. I'll listen only to you."
Li Lianhua chokes over his tea.
.
Fang Duobing is, simultaneously and incomprehensibly, one of the most high-maintenance and low maintenance person Li Lianhua has ever met. His range of competency is truly impossible to manage. He can be trusted to take care of every single chore around the house before Li Lianhua even has to ask, but can't be sent into town to fetch groceries without getting swindled out of his money and coerced into marrying the blacksmith's daughter. His fighting abilities are one of a kind and allows him to dominate the vast majority of the opponents he might stumble upon in the martial world, but left to his own devices, he will get beguiled into joining any random enterprise of dubious morals and putting his combat skills to the service of nefarious purposes.
Therefore, Li Lianhua has no other choice to keep him within his line of sight permanently, least his charge finds himself inevitably entangled into outlandish trouble.
"How," he hisses as he drags Fang Duobing by the collar away from the establishment of ill repute he got somehow convinced to enforce security for, free of charge, "did you get accepted into Baichuan Court in the first place?"
Fang Duobing shrugs, not opposing a single hint of resistance to Li Lianhua's manhandling despite the fact he could have pinched Li Lianhua once and sent him flying. "I beat up all the other candidates."
"Martial abilities aren't enough to become a detective."
"That's what Fo Bi Bai Shi said too! Hence why I'm on probation until I prove myself."
How generous of his former colleagues to foster the hopeless recruit they can't get rid of openly without earning the might of Sect Leader He unto Li Lianhua's reluctant care.
Still, he can't deny having Fang Duobing around has its strong points too. He's an excellent assistant if kept under a tight leash, unparalleled in the arts of driving his house around and oddly skilled at enticing locals into consulting this weird wandering doctor that just settled shop between the inn and the tavern. Although he remains socially obtuse, his younger years have apparently been put in the service of absorbing an encyclopedic knowledge on a vast range of topics, from the four arts to every bizarre martial technics on the face of the martial world, passing through the obscure plants Li Lianhua uses to illegally practice medicine.
"How do you know so much," he says bemusedly while Fang Duobing exhausts himself into a wild tangent about the respective properties of this flower over another, "and so little at once?"
Fang Duobing brightens up on the spot. "You think I'm knowledgeable too, da-ge?"
Still, it must be stated that the presence of a semi-official member of Baichuan Court, although acquired through dubious means, suits Li Lianhua's purposes swimmingly. How convenient for him to shove Fang Duobing forwards and bully his way into investigations he has no legitimacy putting his nose into. Fang Duobing is only too happy to let him take liberties, pleased to follow him around and praise his intelligence while barking at anyone who looks at Li Lianhua the wrong way.
He's baffling to Li Lianhua.
"That's the young master for you," Happy says.
By some interesting coincidence, a servant of the Tianji Mountains Manor household, well acquainted with Fang Duobing's oddness, has found himself joining the competition for Lingshan Sect's inheritance.
"Oh?" Li Lianhua leans forwards. "Has your young master always been like this?"
Happy visibly hesitates. His companion, Li'er, takes upon herself to run interference. "We don't gossip about our masters, especially to suspicious characters."
"Suspicious?" Li Lianhua exclaims. "Your young master holds me to such high esteem, young miss. Isn't that right, young hero Fang?"
"Da-ge is very good to me," Fang Duobing agrees, in complete, devastating earnesty. "I must only listen to him."
Everyone in the vicinity but the main culprit suffers through the agony of vicarious mortification for a grown man to make such a blatant declaration in public regarding another, older man. Li Lianhua closes his eyes and soldiers through the certainty most people present are thinking that 'gege' gets up to lecherous and libidinous activities with this hapless naive young man in the privacy of the den of iniquity he calls Lotus Tower.
Li'er, no doubt, is plotting for Li Lianhua's disappearance under mysterious circumstances.
It's only fair. Li Lianhua would attempt to murder himself in her place too. The influence he has over her young master is worth the crime. Not even the evidence that the only way Li Lianhua can resurrect the dead is through deception can put a dent in his confidence in him. He's only too excited to put the finest engineering of Tianji Mountains Manor's to the service of Li Lianhua's ridiculous schemes and obliterate Piao Erhuang with the viciousness of a hunting dog unleashed upon its prey when he attacks Li Lianhua as a last resort. Li Lianhua didn't even need to call out for him, he just acted on his own accord as if protecting Li Lianhua was second nature to him.
"Don't cry over this scum," Fang Duobing says to Happy afterwards. "He's not worth your tears."
Happy struggles to hold back his sobs. "Young Master…"
In yet another completely inappropriate demonstration of lack of social awareness, Fang Duobing takes him into his arms. "We'll always take care of you."
Li Lianhua quietly slips away to interrogate Pian Erhuang on the whereabouts of his shixiong's remains. Fang Duobing's second nature strikes again to serve Li Lianhua's purposes, and Pian Erhuang dies by his sword with Li Xiangyi's secret rotting in his mouth.
"Li Lianhua."
The expression on Fang Duobing's face is unreadable. It wavers on the edge of a precipice Li Lianhua had not been consciously aware he'd been stumbling around.
Li Lianhua shakes his hand in dismissal. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Thanks for-"
Fang Duobing pounces on him. Li Lianhua realizes belatedly the hug he'd previously bestowed upon Happy had been perfectly acceptable among civil society in comparison to the crushing hold he traps Li Lianhua into.
"Don't do that again," he whispers, quietly, in Li Lianhua's ears, before releasing him and walking out.
.
.
Li Lianhua sneaks a note addressed to Sect Leader He into Happy's sleeve before they part ways. It says, in substance, that Li Lianhua, humble wandering doctor of little means and barely notable reputation, has found himself accidentally in possession of one of Sect Leader He's most precious belongings. He will, of course, eagerly awaits for her to come get it back and return it safely where it should have remained all along.
A week later, an eagle bearing the crest of Fang Duobing's family's sect drops a reply on his table. Sect Leader He thanks Physician Li for his concern, and is happy her little treasure has found such a benevolent hand to guide him on the path to greatness. She then goes on to claim she'll rely upon the good Physician Li to keep her belongings safe, and will pay for any additional expenses. A heavy bag of money is attached to the letter.
Li Lianhua briefly considers drugging Fang Duobing to unconsciousness and abandoning him on the side of the road, just to teach his negligent parents a lesson, but then remembers there is no way Fang Duobing won't get roped into trouble again and very likely die. For some reason, He Xiaohui, who up to this point had seemed like a perfectly adequate sect leader and parent, has become all too willing to skirt off her responsibilities towards her own single offspring.
And what a responsibility it is. Her grown man son can't even be trusted to sleep on his own bed by himself anymore.
"I had a nightmare," a drunk Fang Duobing says, petulantly, as he forces his way into Li Lianhua's bed and refuses to move. "It's your fault."
Li Lianhua flails backwards. "Fang Duobing! Go back to your room! You can't sleep with me!"
Fang Duobing's eyes fill with unshed tears. Li Lianhua's guilt kicks him in the back of his knees.
Fang Duobing sleeps in Li Lianhua's bed, his long limbs entangled with Li Lianhua's, his breath warm and heavy on Li Lianhua's nape. Li Lianhua wakes up more energized than he has in the past ten years, instead of already exhausted by the vast collection of menial pains his body is used to soldiering through.
No remorse or embarrassment is expressed by Fang Duobing in the following morning, as any righteous young man ought to for this momentary lapse of propriety. To add insult to injury, and thus proving Li Lianhua's theory that allowing any laxism in the rearing of feral pets in need of a firm hand will only lead to disaster, he hereby decides Li Lianhua's bed will be his from now on and for the foreseeable future.
Li Lianhua sends five more letters to Tianji Mountain Manor by the time they reach Yu City, each more desperate than its predecessor.