Chapter 285

Over dinner in a restaurant full of easy, unrelated chatter, Fang Yuan and Li Ran sit across from each other, outwardly relaxed while each quietly sizes up the other; Li Ran carries real killing intent beneath the calm. Speaking half aloud and half through the heart sound Gu, Fang Yuan asks for the pancake bag and remarks on how good it tastes, a reminder that he tailed Li Ran for days before finding him. Li Ran suspects poison but hides it, smiling and calling their relationship a great one. ^{ch. 285}

Fang Yuan then names the all-out effort Gu sealed in the stellar stone, and Li Ran’s composure breaks for a moment despite years of practiced acting. He had trusted Wei Shen Jing’s fossil to be flawless, and now suspects his own clan has been infiltrated, since the large southern border clans spy on one another constantly. Fang Yuan lets the silence stretch. Li Ran’s own fear does the persuading for him. ^{ch. 285}

Fang Yuan states his price: he wants the all-out effort Gu, but knows taking it by force would make an enemy of the clan behind Li Ran, so he needs cooperation instead. Li Ran mocks the idea of an alliance between spies, and Fang Yuan answers, in his mind and then with a remark about tofu spoken aloud, that he too has people to protect and does not want to be enemies. Looking toward the window where Li Ran’s wife and son stand, Fang Yuan speaks of two men squeezed between larger forces, hiding their feelings and risking death at any time for a clan they will not betray. The innocent people around them, he says, bear risks they never chose. ^{ch. 285}

Li Ran reads sadness, pain, helplessness, and fondness in Fang Yuan’s face and cannot believe someone so young could fake it; he begins, without meaning to, to trust him. Fang Yuan presses the point: exposure would cost Li Ran his life and disgrace his clan’s expectations, leaving his wife widowed and his five year old son fatherless. Even success only buys him a lifetime more of the same risk. Loyal to the clan above all else, and with no real alternative left, Li Ran slowly gives ground. Fang Yuan proposes an alliance that holds only in private, and warns him plainly: if their clans ever go to war, Li Ran will be the first man Fang Yuan eliminates. Oddly, the threat only makes Li Ran trust him more. ^{ch. 285}

After a long silence, Li Ran asks how he can believe him, and Fang Yuan answers by producing a poison vow Gu. ^{ch. 285}

Three days later, Fang Yuan opens the all-out effort Gu in the Lan Chao gambling den, throwing the whole district into an uproar. The story spreading through Shang clan city names the winner as Gu Yue Fang Zheng, holder of the purple thorn token, and claims Li Ran collided with him, prompting him to demand three fossils in compensation, among which the Gu happened to be hiding. ^{ch. 285}