Chapter 40

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Present\nThe next morning, at the Peninsula Hotel:\n

“That was way too risky!” Zhou Luoyang said. “Madness, absolute madness! They had a gun! And you were gonna fight them empty-handed?!”\n

Du Jing sipped his coffee by the table. “I did think about killing them myself if it came down to it.” \n

“Why would you kill them?” \n

Du Jing glanced at Zhou Luoyang and asked indifferently, “Do you know who they are?” \n

“No…”\n

“So?”\n

“Who are they? I don’t care who they are; why did you have to meet them alone?”\n

“They must’ve bought quite a sum of life insurance. The beneficiary might have been overjoyed. Of course, I have life insurance too.” \n

Zhou Luoyang felt his irritation mount. He watched Du Jing and said, “Just tell it to me as it is.” \n

“They work for my old boss,” Du Jing said. “A new hire under the Agents’ Association.” \n

“Why did you get into a fight with them?” \n

Du Jing was quiet for some time. “Because of things from the past.” \n

Worried, Zhou Luoyang asked, “Are they still not going to leave you alone even after you’ve left that Agents’ Association? Because of classified information?”\n

Du Jing was succinct in his answer: “No.” \n

Zhou Luoyang furrowed his brows, confused. Du Jing gave it some thought and said, “It involves an old case and a death. This new association member doesn’t want to leave it as is. Sup suspects I’m involved in that death.” \n

“Who?” Zhou Luoyang said. \n

“I can’t tell you.” Du Jing’s tone was stern. “Believe me; this isn’t something you should know.” \n

Zhou Luoyang could only give up on any further questioning. He assumed it was something related to Du Jing’s past missions. Based on the information he’d hinted at, it might be that someone had died in an accident because of him when he was carrying out one of his missions. And this mission was somehow related to Sup, who investigated it tirelessly. They’d met each other by coincidence at the auction, where Sup recognized Du Jing, who’d left his previous job long ago…Both of them had acted, leaving no room for negotiation, thus leading to last night’s unfortunate development. \n

“You swear you’re not lying to me?” Zhou Luoyang looked at Du Jing with suspicion. This is so strange. How could someone want to murder him?! \n

“I’ve never lied to you,” Du Jing replied.\n

But still he raised three of his fingers and continued, “I swear to never lie to my wife, Zhou Luoyang.” \n

“Leave out ‘my wife’,” Zhou Luoyang said. “Then I’ll believe what you just said.” \n

Du Jing smiled. \n

How rare it was for him to smile. \n

Whenever Zhou Luoyang saw Du Jing’s rare smiles, any hesitation or anger would fly away with the wind. \n

“Let’s leave,” Zhou Luoyang said, after mulling it over for a minute. “Let’s not go to the auction. We should do all we can to avoid Sup.” \n

“No.” Du Jing glanced at his watch. “We should get changed and go get breakfast. You’ll meet Chen Biaojin at the restaurant–otherwise, how will you get his invitation for the investigation? And in the afternoon, you still have tea with Satanovsky.” \n

There really is no escaping today, Zhou Luoyang thought to himself. But since he had experienced it once already, he felt prepared for what was to come. He showed up to afternoon tea appropriately late by fifteen minutes. After he retrieved Satanovsky’s broken watch, he didn’t put the two Eyes of Forseti in the scanner. In the end, he took a seat and drank tea with Du Jing in silence.\n

“I didn’t think these twenty-four hours would repeat.” \n

“In the last twenty-four hours, I adjusted the date ring in the afternoon,” said Du Jing, “so that even if the watch got hit by a bullet during the night, the time travel would still take effect.” \n

“In other words, perhaps the mechanism inside the watch didn’t fall out entirely?” Zhou Luoyang turned the watch over in his hand and raised it towards the sunlight as he studied it. He murmured, “Then there’s at least one other possibility: this watch does not need to be complete to work. As long as one of its key parts is not destroyed, it can still travel to the past.” \n

“Did you see it clearly last night?” Du Jing asked. “What was in the broken watch?” \n

Zhou Luoyang shook his head. “How could I have spotted that in time?” \n

“I saw a speck of light. Maybe I was seeing things. But it was a blue light.” \n

“Maybe one day, we can first set up the time travel, and then take the watch apart, step by step, and try and see what exactly its driving force is.” \n

“That’s not a bad idea,” Du Jing replied easily. \n

“Now that we’ve got the invitation letter,” Zhou Luoyang continued, dropping the other Eye of Forseti into his pocket, “I think it’s time to leave.” \n

He truly didn’t want Du Jing to meet with Sup again. Their bloody escape was too horrifying. Moreover, he couldn’t confirm whether Sup had really died before midnight. Based on the previous patterns, if Sup had died once, there must be another death within these twenty-four hours…\n

…Through some unspoken agreement, they both avoided raising that subject. Du Jing continued to tap his fingers on the desk and went into a state of deep contemplation. In the end, he looked towards Zhou Luoyang. \n

“Let’s check our passports,” Du Jing said, “then get going.” \n

Just then, their room’s doorbell rang. Zhou Luoyang looked out through the peephole: Sup was standing in front of their door, fixing their hair, as if they were just some nobody. In their hand was a small handbag. \n

Zhou Luoyang looked back at Du Jing, who didn’t say a word—as if he’d seen this coming all along. \n

“Let them in,” Du Jing said, walking behind the bathroom door. \n

Zhou Luoyang hesitated. Du Jing gestured that it was fine. Zhou Luoyang then took a deep breath and collected himself before opening the door. \n

“Is Vincent here?” Sup smiled at Zhou Luoyang with a gentle expression. \n

“He went out,” Zhou Luoyang answered. “You can wait for him here.” \n

At the invitation, Sup casually strolled into the room. As soon as Zhou Luoyang closed the door, the back of Sup’s head took a hit from Du Jing, and they collapsed to the floor in a dead faint. \n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nHalf an hour later: \n

Sup’s hands were tied behind their back, and their mouth was stuffed shut. Wearing a pair of gloves, Du Jing rifled through the handbag and dumped out a handgun, a tube of lipstick, and several pieces of ID. There was even a minicamera, which was handy for recording even the slightest movement outside the handbag wherever it was set down. \n

“Mm…mmph…” Sup squirmed and tried to motion with their eyes for Du Jing and Zhou Luoyang to let them speak. \n

Du Jing held out the handgun and pressed it against Sup’s forehead. \n

Zhou Luoyang’s heart immediately jumped to his throat. \n

But in the end, Du Jing didn’t open fire; he only confiscated Sup’s equipment and threw them into the bathtub. After that, he said, “Let’s go.” \n

Sup was extremely anxious and kept blinking furiously in Zhou Luoyang’s direction. At first, they had been nodding their head up and down, but now they began shaking it from side to side. \n

Zhou Louyang became worried. “Are you not gonna listen to what they have to say?” \n

“It won’t be anything worth listening to,” Du Jing said coldly. “I’d only want to shoot them even more if we let them speak.” \n

Du Jing dragged a suitcase behind him as he left the hotel foyer with Zhou Luoyang. There was a car parked outside. Its window rolled down to reveal Zhuang Li’s face. \n

“To the airport,” Du Jing instructed. \n

“I…Jing ge, I just got off the plane and the luggage is still…”\n

Du Jing stood there and stared at him. With that, Zhuang Li immediately nodded obediently. He made a U-turn and took them away from the Peninsula Hotel. \n

Strangely, on the way to the airport, many more temporary checkpoints for inspection had cropped up. Zhou Luoyang received a call from Lin Di.\n

“Where did you go?” Lin Di sounded nervous. “Why didn’t you come to the auction?”\n

“They found out about us,” Du Jing said. “End the call.” \n

Zhou Luoyang could only apologize to Lin Di before hanging up. Du Jing picked up Huang Ting’s call. \n

“Why did you stash a transgender¹ person in your room?” Huang Ting asked. “What the heck are you up to?! The police are already after you. Where did you go?”\n

“Keep them occupied and I’ll explain later. We have to leave the country. We’ll meet you in Ho Chi Minh City,” said Du Jing.\n

“Impossible! I don’t have a permit to conduct cross-border inspections. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be—”\n

Du Jing hung up the phone. Zhuang Li unloaded their luggage. The three of them had just stepped into the airport when they were stopped by the police. \n

Du Jing put his right hand over his left as he took a step back, showing his courtesy and cooperation. \n

Soon after, all of Zhuang Li, Du Jing, and Zhou Luoyang’s personal effects were taken away, including the two Eyes of Forseti. \n

Zhou Luoyang was taken to an interrogation room. An officer took Sup’s gun out of a plastic evidence bag and asked him, “Where did this thing come from?” \n

Zhou Luoyang looked at the clock hanging on the wall. Twelve o’clock. \n

His surroundings darkened, then became light once more. He woke up on his bed at the Peninsula Hotel.\n

Du Jing held his phone as he fell into a stupor. The watch was still on his wrist.\n

“We can’t let Zhuang Li come over; that guy’s too jumpy,” Du Jing said. “Share a dance with me?”\n

“Why did we come back twenty-four hours?” Zhou Luoyang asked.\n

“Better than waiting in the interrogation room at the airport. Let me plan out a schedule.” \n

Du Jing jotted down a timeline on a piece of paper while muttering to himself. Zhou Luoyang walked over and looked at the flowchart. He suddenly felt as if the two of them were playing a real-life RPG on adventure mode with multiple storylines.\n

“We have to get the invitation and then leave.” Zhou Luoyang slumped forward on the table. “That’s the main objective.” \n

The first two buttons on Du Jing’s pajama top were undone, the fabric slipping just enough to reveal his collarbone and part of his pectoral muscles. He looked back at Zhou Luoyang and nodded. \n

“So, the plan for our departure time is,” Du Jing said, “if we don’t want a direct confrontation with Sup, then we have to leave after getting the invitation, before he blocks our way.” \n

“Is there no other way?” Zhou Luoyang asked. “For example…”\n

“A meat grinder?” Du Jing filled in. “But we can’t grind the head. What should we do with that?” \n

“No!” Zhou Luoyang exploded. “Why can’t you just let them talk?” \n

Couldn’t there be a peaceful resolution between the two parties? Why had they gotten into a fight the first time and even ended up opening fire? This was something that Du Jing still hadn’t explained. \n

But Du Jing said, “I don’t wanna listen to them talk nonsense. If we take into account the time gap, we can get to the airport first and then find somewhere to fax the invitation.” \n

Zhou Luoyang was out of ideas. “Fine, it’s up to you. Let’s give this a try.” \n

The following day, after seeing Chen Biaojin, drinking tea with Satanovsky, and obtaining the invitation, Du Jing and Zhou Luoyang called a taxi to head straight to the airport. This time, everything went smoothly. It was only right before the auction was set to begin that Lin Di and Huang Ting each called them. \n

The reply that Zhou Luoyang gave Lin Di was that there was an emergency, and he had to leave on short notice. As for Du Jing, he told Huang Ting to take his leave as soon as possible and that they would meet up in Ho Chi Minh City.\n

“I’ll go fax this,” said Du Jing. “It’ll take at least two hours for the electronic signature to update.” \n

Zhou Luoyang nodded as he bought tickets for the last flight out to Ho Chi Minh City for him and Du Jing. \n

“Be careful,” Zhou Luoyang cautioned. \n

In the airport bathroom, as Zhou Luoyang was washing his hands and face, Sup appeared in the mirror. \n

They stood behind Zhou Luoyang and said somberly, “Zhou Luoyang, I have something to talk to you about.” \n

Zhou Luoyang wiped his hands dry as he contemplated negotiation tactics. Du Jing still hadn’t returned yet.\n

“How long have you known Vincent?” Sup asked. \n

“I don’t know you, and I have nothing to say to you. This is the men’s washroom, miss.” \n

Zhou Luoyang turned around to leave. He’d bet on the assumption that Sup wouldn’t kill anyone at the airport. \n

“Wait!” Sup wasn’t their normal self. Trailing behind Zhou Luoyang, their voice was low yet desperate. “Du Jing returned to China, to you, for an ulterior motive! If you don’t want to risk your family’s safety, you have to consider working with us! Don’t go any further ahead! Vincent killed your father in order to conceal evidence! Zhou Song was killed in a cover-up!”\n

In that instant, Zhou Luoyang’s blood turned to ice. He whipped around and stared at Sup. \n

“What did you say?” Zhou Luoyang’s voice shook. \n

“I have proof,” Sup said, “but it’s not in my hands right now. Come with me. I can ask headquarters to send all the surveillance tapes from Haneda airport to me—that car accident was no accident! I’ll get them to send it to me right now. We can find a cafe to sit in. The choice is yours!”\n

At the same time, Du Jing had finished sending the fax and was walking towards them from a corner not too far away. \n

In that brief second, Zhou Luoyang picked up perceptively on two key terms: Haneda airport and premeditated car accident. \n

Why would a foreign Agents’ Association look into the death of his and Leyao’s father?\n

But in the blink of an eye, Du Jing had already appeared before them. \n

Immediately, Sup pulled out their lipstick gun in the middle of the airport. But Du Jing was faster—he dodged as a gunshot rang out and a hanging monitor shattered into pieces. Hong Kong International Airport soon broke into utter chaos. As the police arrived on the scene, Du Jing yanked Zhou Luoyang to his feet. They were on their way to leave the premises when they were caught and placed in holding again. \n

“Hey.” Zhou Luoyang sat in the interrogation room, mind racing, and greeted the officer sent to question him. “We meet again.” \n

It was the same person who was ordered to question him in the last twenty-four hours. The officer looked at Zhou Luoyang with suspicion, expression peculiar. Zhou Luoyang only stared fixedly at the hanging clock on the wall; the officer followed his gaze and looked towards the clock. \n

Midnight. Time flowed backwards, and they were back in the guest room at the Peninsula Hotel once more. \n

Zhou Luoyang was at his wits’ end “Just what will it take for this day to finally be over?” \n

“We’ll get there soon enough,” Du Jing said. “Sleep first. We’ll definitely figure it out by tomorrow.” \n

“I’m going insane,” Zhou Luoyang exclaimed. “This is the fourth time we’re going through the same day. I still have to meet Chen Biaojin in the morning! To have the same conversation verbatim!”\n

In the afternoon, they were back at the airport. Du Jing read the invitation with his head lowered. Zhou Luoyang slipped into the bathroom. \n

Sup appeared behind Zhou Luoyang and was instantly knocked out cold by Du Jing with a bat. \n

Du Jing glanced at the watch. 11:05. \n

“Come over here.” Du Jing dragged Sup into one of the stalls. Zhou Luoyang followed and locked the door from the inside. \n

Du Jing patiently fished out from Sup’s bag a small bottle of anaesthetic that was masqueraded as nail polish. He squeezed a drop onto Sup’s jacket and used it to cover their head. \n

Then, Du Jing let Zhou Luoyang jump into the next stall, following close behind him. \n

“What’s that sound?” Someone asked in Cantonese. Whoever was outside walked over to knock on the stall door as soon as Zhou Luoyang landed and accidently slammed against the stall divider. \n

Several airport security guards came into the washroom and talked amongst themselves in Cantonese. Du Jing gently nudged Zhou Luoyang. Zhou Luoyang gestured that there were people outside, and Du Jing motioned that it was fine. He ruffled Zhou Luoyang’s hair. \n

Zhou Luoyang: “???”\n

Zhou Luoyang opened the door and walked out, his expression somewhat nervous. The guards outside had thought that somebody had tripped and fallen inside the stall. When they discovered two men in one stall, their expressions became suggestive. \n

Du Jing, unbothered, adjusted his belt and met their gazes confidently. \n

The two of them walked towards the mirror, one after the other. Du Jing patted Zhou Luoyang’s behind. \n

“Do you like it?” Du Jing asked in English.\n

Zhou Luoyang: “……”\n

It was quite unusual for Zhou Luoyang to tighten Du Jing’s tie of his own accord. But with a brutal push and shove, the knot of the tie closed taught and slid up to reach his Adam’s apple. \n

Du Jing didn’t go into the VIP lounge and instead simply found a place to sit down at the terminal’s waiting area, watching the washroom from a distance. He pulled out Sup’s lipstick; with a slight twist, the barrel of the miniature silenced pistol was revealed. \n

“This is for you,” Du Jing said. “There are six bullets inside.”\n

There was another gun that Sup hadn’t carried on themself; it was probably inconvenient to bring into the airport. \n

“The security now is really too subpar,” Zhou Luoyang commented. “They’re letting in all kinds of things now.” \n

“Investigators have their ways of investigating,” Du Jing said nonchalantly as he put on his sunglasses. “He must have a contact on the other end, and this contact had already placed the gun inside the hotel.” \n

“Then why did this contact never show their face?” Zhou Luoyang furrowed his brows.\n

“Never?” Du Jing said. “I don’t think so.”\n

Zhou Luoyang’s thoughts were muddled, which seemed to have escaped Du Jing’s notice as he continued seriously, “We can disregard the first time round. But the second time around, they realized quite quickly that we had locked Sup up; this meant that there was a contact paying attention to Sup’s whereabouts. It took them less than an hour to release Sup and notify the police.” \n

Zhou Luoyang needed to find something to say to distract himself, so he asked, “Who could the contact be?”\n

Du Jing lowered his sunglasses and threw Zhou Luoyang a glance.\n

“Who do you think?” Du Jing asked. \n

“How would I know?” Zhou Luoyang was at a loss. \n

He couldn’t focus too much on the details. In fact, Sup’s words did confuse and distress him to a degree. Zhou Luoyang was sure that he had a normal family. His father had never appeared to be hiding any secrets at all…No, were there really no secrets?\n

Zhou Luoyang looked at the Eye of Forseti on Du Jing’s wrist.\n

He tried his best to get rid of this string of intrusive thoughts. \n

Du Jing waited a while, but no answers came. He realized that Zhou Luoyang was behaving a bit differently. \n

“What’s up?” Du Jing asked abruptly.\n

Caught out, Zhou Luoyang replied, “I’m thinking.”\n

Du Jing revealed the answer to the puzzle and pointed out the key suspect. “That Ukranian girl.” \n

Zhou Luoyang’s thoughts were still in a jumble; now, he forced himself to turn his attention back to the information Sup had leaked. \n

“Right,” Zhou Luoyang replied instinctively. \n

Du Jing merely assumed that Zhou Luoyang was pondering the links within this matter, so he said naturally, “We can’t be sure whether Satanovsky knew that there was a spy by his side; but it seems Sup and that Ukranian beauty aren’t working together, either.” \n

“Hmm.” Zhou Luoyang was tired; he rubbed his forehead as he said, “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have let us go on the night when we escaped…Du Jing?” \n

Du Jing looked at him inquisitively.\n

They stared at each other in silence. Du Jing raised one eyebrow; the scar on his face was particularly prominent, just like on the day when they first met. \n

Zhou Luoyang still felt as though he’d completely overlooked something about this entire ordeal, but he couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. In the split second when their gazes met, the memory of their first meeting in the dorm room amidst the turbulent storm stirred in his mind, and he finally pinpointed what it was that bothered him. \n

Why did Du Jing quietly disappear during his third year of university, join the Agents’ Association under the FBI, and stay in Washington D.C. for two whole years?\n

None of these actions were something that he would have done. \n

The truth behind the car accident and the so-called secrets–all of these Zhou Luoyang could set aside temporarily and wait until later to drag out an answer. But the biggest mystery of all was for Du Jing, alone, to behave in a way that was so out of character. \n

They were just ordinary people. During the time that they’d spent together, Du Jing had never mentioned that he wanted to become a private investigator. They’d never even heard of this Association. When they’d met again and Zhou Luoyang asked for the reason that he’d left years ago, Du Jing’s reply was “Do you have to know?”\n

Zhou Luoyang looked at Du Jing intently. \n

Du Jing turned to his side and put one arm on Zhou Luoyang’s chair, as if embracing him. His fingertips casually tapped on the chair as he asked, “What did you come up with?” \n

The moment their eyes met, Zhou Luoyang’s doubts vanished. He decided to believe unconditionally in Du Jing, just like before. \n

“Nothing,” Zhou Luoyang said firmly, convincing himself of it. \n

Du Jing, on the other hand, grew suspicious. Zhou Luoyang rarely looked so perplexed; whenever it was just the two of them, they each knew what the other was thinking like the back of their hands. \n

“They’ve noticed,” Du Jing murmured, voice low.\n

The airport officers had discovered Sup locked inside the washroom stall. They cleared the scene of bystanders, put up police tape, and started to rewind the surveillance footage. \n

Zhou Luoyang and Du Jing lowered their heads. Sup still hadn’t fully regained consciousness when they were hoisted up by the arms and escorted out of the washroom. They were taken to a rest room by the same officer that had questioned Zhou Luoyang the last two times. The officer even brought an oxygen mask for Sup to use. \n

Security was beginning to patrol and question the crowds, and they were heading in their direction. Du Jing had no choice but to place his right hand over the dial of the Eye of Forseti. But just then, there was a scream in the distance, which made the two officers turn their heads in an instant.\n

There was a disturbance on the other side of the airport, towards which all the police officers ran. \n

At the same time, the call for boarding came over the speakers. Zhou Luoyang didn’t even listen to the full announcement before he dragged Du Jing forward. “Let’s go!”\n

All of the passengers were looking in the direction that the officers had headed. Zhou Luoyang and Du Jing barged to the front of the VIP boarding queue, apologizing profusely. Zhou Luoyang showed his passport, his heart racing. The barcode on their boarding passes was scanned, and they boarded the plane without trouble. \n

Zhou Luoyang was still panting when he took his seat. Meanwhile, Du Jing’s eyes were fixed on the cabin door, with one hand pressed over the Eye of Forseti, prepared for another round of time travel. \n

“We should be fine now, right?” Zhou Luoyang confirmed quietly. \n

All the passengers had boarded the plane. Just as the cabin door was closing, a hand latched onto the doorframe. A familiar silhouette appeared. \n

That person wore a backpack. When he spotted Du Jing and Zhou Luoyang, his gaze subconsciously fell on Du Jing’s watch. It was Huang Ting. \n

Du Jing’s expression was as carefree as could be. He loosened his grip. Huang Ting nodded, indicating that they were in the clear. \n

It was only when the plane took off that Zhou Luoyang was finally able to catch his breath. When he looked out the window, he noticed that there was a police car parked on the ground. They could have stopped the plane if they had arrived a split second earlier. \n

The plane engine whirred. Du Jing asked the attendant for a blanket and handed it to Zhou Luoyang. \n

“Your company’s benefits aren’t half bad.” Huang Ting sauntered over from the economy section and went to the lavatory at the front of the business class cabin.\n

“Do you want an upgrade?” Du Jing looked at Huang Ting, who waved his hand no. \n

Du Jing got up to look for an attendant so they could upgrade Huang Ting’s ticket. \n

Zhou Luoyang gave it some thought before realizing that this was Du Jing’s way of showing appreciation. The disturbance that had distracted the police at the airport was probably Huang Ting’s doing. \n

“Thanks.” Huang Ting nodded towards the two.\n

Du Jing and Zhou Luoyang replied likewise, “Thank you.” \n

The international flight to Ho Chi Minh City only took three hours. Once the midnight snack had been served, the three of them finally began to relax. Huang Ting turned on the in-flight entertainment system and started up a movie. \n

“You said that you’d never lie to me,” Zhou Luoyang suddenly said to Du Jing. \n

Du Jing adjusted his noise-cancelling headphones. He was surprised to hear these words and turned his head to stare at Zhou Luoyang. \n

“Sometimes, you double and triple check the things that you’ve already set your heart on. This stubbornness is kind of girly,” Du Jing replied. “Do you also feel insecure?” \n

Zhou Luoyang was irritated. “Don’t talk about nonsense.” \n

“But I really like this side of you,” Du Jing said, as if to himself, “because it makes me feel that you’re relying on me. I’ll snooze for a bit.” \n

Du Jing put on his eye mask. Zhou Luoyang rolled down the divider between the business class seating—making sure that he was positioned so that Du Jing could see him as soon as he woke up—and didn’t bother him anymore. He knew that Du Jing needed the rest; he had to take care of complicated matters once the day broke. \n

“Swear that you didn’t lie to me.” \n

“I swear that I will never lie to my wife, Zhou Luoyang.” \n

That day, many years ago, Du Jing had voiced the same vow to Zhou Luoyang with equal solemnity: with three fingers raised from his right hand, and holding a book in his left.\n

Zhou Luoyang’s reply at the time must have been a laughing, helpless: “Stop fooling around!”\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nThat was Zhou Luoyang’s first–and only–time asking Du Jing about his sexuality. Du Jing’s answer was: “I’m not a homosexual.”\n

And then Zhou Luoyang said, “Swear that you didn’t lie to me.”\n

“I swear that I will never lie to my wife, Zhou Luoyang,” Du Jing vowed. And there was nothing that Zhou Luoyang could do with him. \n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nFootnotes:\n

<ol>The term (人妖) he uses in the raws actually has derogatory connotations. While the origin of the term wasn’t derogatory, the growing Chinese-speaking queer community has pointed out that the literal meaning of the term denigrates trans people (typically AMAB individuals). Make of this what you will. [Back]</ol>\n<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nTranslated by eggy (@peachiprint). Edited by beansprout, opal.\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nthank you so much eggy for guest translating this chapter!! it was so fun working with you! (in case anyone missed it, eggy translated all of chapter 40 earlier for april fools’. this is the final, edited version, no jokes this time!)\n

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