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“I can’t believe Dao Wuxia,” Lei Jinghong complains. “He’s so two-faced. Only a couple days ago he welcomed us at his house, and now he’s trying to kill me. What a fake person.”
Feng Huang shakes her head. Aside from the fact that she knows Lei Jinghong wasn’t out to befriend Dao Wuxia in the first place—more to check in on Dao Liexiang, which annoys Feng Huang just a little—she finds it very pointless to criticize a man whom they both already knew was hardly a noble hero of the jianghu. “He was involved in the Snap Thunder incident, wasn’t he? And in Zhan Feng gaining power in Flaming Hills.” Lei Jinghong told her in detail about the former—they’ve been traveling so long, she’s heard all his stories—and for the latter, she’s had her ears as open for gossip as anyone. “What do you expect?”
“Not much, I guess. Still, he’s Dao Liexiang’s brother. One would hope…” Lei Jinghong sighs.
Feng Huang feels the same familiar prickle of annoyance she gets every time Dao Liexiang’s name comes up. It seems like now that she knows who Lei Jinghong’s mysterious lost love is, he’s no longer going to spare her the sight of his unsubtle pining. When she didn’t know, she was curious, but now she’d rather go back to vaguely wondering if it might be Die Yi or Lie Ruge.
Perhaps it’s that annoyance which spurs her to say, “He propositioned me in World Swordless City, you know.”
“Eh?” This does get Lei Jinghong’s attention, though not quite as much outrage as Feng Huang could have hoped. “I thought you were the one flirting with him.”
“Later, when you weren’t around, I ran into him at a cosmetics shop. He told me that I should become his concubine after he killed you.”
“After he killed me?”
“He wouldn’t have minded me leaving you, either. But he understood I have a reputation to uphold.”
Lei Jinghong is properly taken aback, but only for a moment before he lets out a disgusted laugh. “Well, they do call him a womanizer. But really, he’s quite bold. I know you flirted a little, but why would he think he’d have a chance with you? He even said it outright.”
Feng Huang huffs. She only half-agrees.
Lei Jinghong’s memory must not be very good, or he would remember that about a year ago, when Dao Wuxia came to visit Taste Flower Brothel, she’d tried her best to charm him, right along with every other woman in the place. She would have been happy to impress him, too; happy even if he’d decided to take her away with him. He was influential, rich, leader of a sect only rising in power. As for his womanizing tendencies, Feng Huang might still have been able to keep his interest if she tried hard enough, and at least no one said Dao Wuxia was wholly in love with anyone else yet.
Now it hasn’t been that long, and Dao Wuxia asked her to be his, and she turned him down for Lei Jinghong, who doesn’t even seem to get it. Lei Jinghong, who seemed like a good bet at one time but every day seems like a worse one. Lei Jinghong, who is very much in love with another woman, who is honorable and does give Feng Huang proper respect but has little else to offer. Not that he doesn’t always make sure Feng Huang is as well off as he is, but lately that’s not really saying much.
She should maybe be insulted that Lei Jinghong takes it for granted she wasn’t even tempted to take Dao Wuxia’s offer, but instead she feels strangely happy about it. Lei Jinghong has tried to drive her away periodically ever since they first started traveling together, but he won’t say she should have gone to Dao Wuxia, nor doubt that she, having committed to Lei Jinghong, is faithful. It’s a small thing, but it does make her happy.
Anyways. “That’s not really the important thing. What I mean is he was already planning to kill you when we were visiting—he just didn’t want to plot against you openly yet. We really shouldn’t have stopped in World Swordless City, you know. You could have been murdered easily.”
And of course Lei Jinghong only pouts and mutters some excuse that has nothing to do with Dao Liexiang or the truth of the matter, and Feng Huang ultimately lets him get away with it. She’s not happy that Lei Jinghong continues to take stupid risks like this, but there really is nowhere that is fully safe for him now, not in the world perhaps, with Flaming Hills and World Swordless and the whole of jianghu considering him a public enemy, and even Thunderbolt Clique in hostile hands. There is nowhere to hide, no one to really trust.
Perhaps that is why, even though Lei Jinghong is little better than a tramp right now, a tramp and a fugitive and nothing like the promising young master she hoped for when she joined him, she still feels proud to stand at his side, privileged that despite everything he trusts her. And maybe that is the real reason she joined him in the first place. Because on the run from his own sect members, he hid in her room before he even knew her. He decided she was trustworthy. That’s not a judgment people usually make about Feng Huang. People think she’s pretty or talented or charismatic, and occasionally dare to say she has a secretly soft heart, but trustworthy? And Lei Jinghong decided that right off the bat, and even now he still sleeps in the same room as her without fear. (He takes a sword to bed but that’s all right—if they get attacked in the middle of the night, Feng Huang certainly won’t be the one defending.)
A man like Dao Wuxia might give her the world, if he wanted to, if he had enough heart to love her. But a man who would assume Feng Huang would want her own lover dead for her advancement—Feng Huang can’t even imagine what being his concubine would be like. What is he compared to Lei Jinghong?
If anyone does manage to kill Lei Jinghong, she decides, she’ll take Dao Wuxia up on his offer, go to his bed. Then she’ll kill him. She’d like to see the look on his face.
“What are you smiling about?” Lei Jinghong asks suspiciously.
“I’m just thinking the weather is good for traveling,” Feng Huang says. “We should camp outside tonight. Less money than an inn.”
Lei Jinghong nods but sighs. “I know it’s not what you’re used to.”
“Oh, stop worrying so much about that. I’ll live in fine state once Thunderbolt Clique is yours again. Until then, it’s fine.”
In the end, she does still expect Lei Jinghong to win, one way or another. Even if things look grim, she has a good feeling about him, and it’s not entirely sentimental fondness. He’s the sort of man who really should end up on top. They’re bound to get there eventually. If it takes a while, she finds she really doesn’t mind.