Dear readers. This chapter is just like the one with Méi Shūmíng but taking it a step further. So sensitive people might not want to eat something while reading this.
I guess I should write a warning too. There is rape, mentioning of pedophilia, words and probably other stuff that might trigger people, so be warned.
Seven
Lán Gānbăo came back to his room and laid his slim body down on the bed. His cheeks, as pretty as a girl’s, were lightly tinged with pink.
“Ah … Lady Luán Niángzĭ’s honeypot … was truly tasty …” he muttered in a trance. Just a few moments ago, he had been in her bedroom, using his tongue skills to the full. To be able to drink the sweet love juices overflowing from the secret places of his beloved mistress to his heart’s content, made him have an intoxicated feeling in his heart. Luán Niángzĭ’s love juices tasted just like honey. Not just the love juices. Her sweat, saliva, tears and even excretions had the sweet taste of flower wine. Compared to Luán Niángzĭ’s secretions, the semen of the government official he used to taste every night before he came to the Mansion of the Eight Celestials was like muddy water.
“Ah … it’s poison. Lady Luán Niángzĭ is a beautiful poison flower … I’m a total addict of that poisonous nectar …”
On his bed Lán Gānbăo writhed in agony. The mere thought of the word ‘poison’ was enough to give him an unusual thrill. He had only been seven years old when he used poison and committed his first murder.
Born into a family of apothecaries, he snatched some poison from the storeroom and fed it to a stray dog in the neighbourhood. The dog’s eyes turned white, it spewed bubbles while wobbling around as if dancing, then died. The sight of its death gave the young Lán Gānbăo an abnormal sexual reaction. Since then, he had poisoned various animals like cats, horses, and cows, and was 15 years old when he killed a human being – a travelling vagrant.
Immediately after poisoning a living creature, Lán Gānbăo, who felt a strong sexual desire, became exceptional beautiful. He has always had a lovely, maiden-like appearance, but now he also had a unique sex appeal. Something that could even be called “lewdness”, emanated from his whole body. It was men, rather than women, who were seduced by this sex appeal. When they laid their eyes on Lán Gānbăo after he had poisoned someone, they would become eager to hold this beautiful boy’s jewel-like body and suck his lips. He himself would be also in a state of extreme arousal at that time, so he would not reject the men who came close to him but would accept them with open arms.
It was through this that Lán Gānbăo mastered his virtuoso tongue and ass technique. Homosexuality and poison. It was at the age of eighteen that he became ambitious to use this two-faced sword to achieve glory. He seduced and bewitched a man of the government and became his favourite child. To further monopolise the favour of the official, he poisoned other favourite children, the wife of the official and even his daughter. It was fair to say that Lán Gānbăo single-handedly destroyed a warm and friendly family. Of course, he didn’t feel a twinge of conscience.
Eventually, through government officials, he planned to infiltrate the ranks of those of higher position. It was at this point that he met Luán Niángzĭ. She had come to the capital on a sedan and when Lán Gānbăo saw her beautiful face, he was instantly smitten. He completely abandoned his ambitions, poisoned the officials who might give him future troubles, and came to the Mansion of the Eight Celestials in pursuit of her.
Whoops. Speaking of poison, I’ll have to do that later tonight.
Suddenly remembering something, he raised himself from his bed. He took a small basket from a corner of the room and put it on a small table. It was filled with a variety of wildflowers and insects. These were poisonous plants and insects that naturally grew and inhabited the surrounding area. He had collected them during the day when he went into the mountains. They would then be mashed in a mortar, the liquid was squeezed out, filtered through a cloth, and mixed with wine. That was how he did the preparation of poison. The nerves of whoever would drink it would become paralysed, the function of the heart would stop then death would occur. No traces would be left behind and only an unexplained and sudden death would be seen. Lán Gānbăo worked silently with an enraptured expression on his face. He was aware that he would become more beautiful after poisoning someone. For him, making poison and serving it to others was the equivalent of putting on make-up. This time the person to be poisoned had already been chosen.
Xuĕ Míng … That newcomer.
Lán Gānbăo thought about the face of the white skinned man and bit his lips. For a newcomer, Xuĕ Míng was already very much in Luán Niángzĭ’s favour. Earlier in her bedroom, Luán Niángzĭ had been talking about him with great amusement. And that was not all. There was a moment while being teased by Lán Gānbăo tongue, when Luán Niángzĭ pitifully gasped Xuĕ Míng’s name.
From what he heard, Xuĕ Míng hadn’t laid a hand on her yet. The lustful Luán Niángzĭ had begun to get impatient with this, and while she enjoyed Lán Gānbăo’s tongue skills, in her mind she was dreaming of being in Xuĕ Míng’s arms. In other words, tonight Lán Gānbăo had been forced to help Luán Niángzĭ pleasure herself. As a man he could not have been more humiliated. Not to mention he felt a fierce jealousy in his heart. The jealousy had faded for a while when he sucked Luán Niángzĭ’s love juices, but now he felt a mad hatred rising in his heart.
Hehehe! I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. Xuĕ Míng, I’ll kill you!
He exerted more strength into his hand which grinded the poisonous herbs. As if to express his feelings, there was a violent wind and rain blowing outside. Suddenly he thought he could hear a faint sound, like a woman crying and sobbing, mixed with the roaring of the strong wind. It could also have been a gloomy tune, like a song, so he paused his hand. However, he quickly decided that he was probably just imagining things and went back to what he was doing before. At that time, he heard several knocks on the door.
“Who is it?” Lán Gānbăo asked, without turning to look at the door. He didn’t know who it was, but he had a pretty good idea of why that person was here. Probably one of the harem members had come to borrow Lán Gānbăo’s butt or tongue. A mansion inhabited by dozens of men. As Luán Niángzĭ’s favour faded, many of them became unable to spend a night with her. They had no choice but to masturbate in solitude. Lán Gānbăo accepted the role of a comforter for those people. The Mansion of the Eight Celestials where jealousy led to murder. By taking care of the men’s sexual needs, he avoided unnecessary resentment and ingratiated himself with them. It was one of the ways of surviving in this mansion.
“Sorry, but I’ve got things to do tonight. Can you come again tomorrow evening?”
He cast his voice to the door. Again, it was knocked on.
Persistent…
Without hiding his frustration, he shouted, “I told you I’ll be your partner tomorrow. Go back today!”, but just as he said this, the door was knocked “bang, bang, bang” with double the force as before.
“Damn noisy! Who is it?”
When he shouted at the door, the pounding died down. But there was no sign that the person on the other side of the door had left. He seemed to stand there in silence. For a moment, there was an eerie silence. Lán Gānbăo begun to feel a little creeped out by the person outside the door who didn’t say a word but also didn’t leave.
“Hey. Who is it…?”
Lán Gānbăo got close to the door. Then, an unpleasant smell hit his nasal mucosa. A sour, bitterish smell. That kind of smell was pouring in through the cracks in the door.
…What?
Lán Gānbăo wrinkled his eyebrows and covered his nose with his hand.
“…Gānbăo… Oh… My beloved Gānbăo…”
The person on the other side of the door called out. It was a low, muffled male voice. Like a person with asthma, it was hard to hear.
“…Who?”
But the owner of the voice did not answer and continued.
“… Gānbăo …I can’t forget you… Gānbăo… Gānbăo… Gānbăo hey…”
There was a gooey, watery sound mixed in his voice. Lán Gānbăo took a few steps backwards. His body was shaking. ‘Gānbăo hey’. He was familiar with this way of calling him. Lán Gānbăo knew the person who would call him that way. But, no way, it couldn’t be. The person who called him like that should no longer be in this world.
“…Lord Yáng…?”
He said that name with fear. Yáng Dàoqìng – The official who gave his affection to Lán Gānbăo. It was the name of the man he was supposed to have poisoned.
“Gānbăo hey… Gānbăo hey… Cold, cold. Open up this place… …Oh, is it open?”
The door creaked slightly.
“May I come in…? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen your beautiful face… May I come in…? May I come in…? Why don’t you answer? May I enter? I come in…? …I will come in now.”
In front of the shocked Lán Gānbăo’s eyes the door was pushed open with a dull thud. Instantly a rotting smell washed over him. With footsteps that sounded like beating on a wet, sticky cloth, something strange entered the room. – It was a rotting corpse. The skin was covered with pus, dissolving, and dripping with fluids. Its face was disfigured, the nose had fallen off, the eyes were misty white. It was no more a human appearance. Half of its scalp had been peeled away, revealing white bone. A few strands of hair on his head only added to the awfulness of the scene. In the hole of the mouth, that was missing some teeth, was something wriggling. It was a great number of maggots. Nevertheless, the remnants of his life were still evident in his tall, broad shoulders and the fine clothes it wore. That robe was without doubt the favourite of Yáng Dàoqìng, the official whom Lán Gānbăo served. The rotten corpse turned its eyes, which actual direction of sight was unknown, to the cramped up and shaking Lán Gānbăo.
“…Oh …oh. It’s been a while… Gānbăo… Beautiful as ever…”
Every time he spoke, a few maggots fell from his mouth.
“Lord Ya-Yáng. W-why are you here…?”
The question came out of Lán Gānbăo’s mouth without a thought and was a bit foolish. It was a situation from a nightmare and his brain was not functioning properly.
“What? It’s obvious… I came to meet you… I missed you so much, I walked around looking for you… I’ve finally found you… You were in such a place…”
After saying this, the rotting corpse shuddered. Parts of the nasty carrion came off and scattered.
“…Cold. …Ugh. I was hit by the rain, so I’m cold …I want to warm up my body …Alcohol …Is there any alcohol?”
The rotting corpse looked around. What caught his eye was the jar of wine on the small table.
“…Oh. There is some. I’ll take it…”
With squishy sounds he walked up to the small table and grabbed the jar of wine.
“Ah, that’s…!” Lán Gānbăo called out. Inside that jar was the half-done poison wine he had been making. The rotting corpse gulped down the content of the jar.
“Tasty. Ah… so tasty! This taste, I know it… Like the last drink you served me… Ah… tasty! I feel like my already stopped heart is starting to beat once again.”
The words, uttered after swallowing a heart-stopping potion, sounded like a joke but Lán Gānbăo did not laugh. The rotting corpse twisted his head to him.
“B-but… It’s still cold… Is there not more? Is there no more alcohol…?” the corpse asked, but the room should have been sufficiently warmed by the heatable brick bed.
“I, I’m very sorry… That was the only alcohol I had…”
“Then, what shall we do…? What should be done to heat this freezing body up…?
The rotting corpse looked at Lán Gānbăo’s body as if running his tongue over him. He felt a certain fondness for him, rising in the rotting, decaying face. A chill run down his spine as he realized what that look meant.
“After all, the best way to warm up a cold body is… “
“Fire! I will make a fire r-right away!”
Lán Gānbăo hurriedly interrupted the rotting corpse. He leaped to the furnace at the back of the room. He desperately tried to hit the firestones together, but with his hands trembling in fear, he could not succeed.
“…Is it done yet…? Did you… already make a fire…? …Cold, cold …As I said, more than fire, the best way to warm up a cold body is…”
“I, I made it! I just made a fire!”
Lán Gānbăo finally lit the straw bundle and placed it between the firewood in the fireplace. The time it took for the fire to spread to the wood felt terribly long.
“Cold… cold… The fire is too weak. Make the fire stronger… Can this fire even warm us up? Let’s warm up in another way…”
“Th-the fire is sufficient enough! P-please wait, i-iit will be warm soon!”
One after another Lán Gānbăo shoved pieces of wood into the fireplace. The words “cold, cold” of the rotting corpse continued. As if hurried by this, he made the fire stronger and stronger. He needed to warm up the cold body of this moving corpse. Otherwise, it will try to warm itself in another way. In what kind of way? Lán Gānbăo already knew. He knew, but he tried to not let it rise to the top of his thoughts. Because imaging it would be a horrible and nauseating thing to do. The room was filled with air as hot as midsummer heat. And yet the rotting corpse still repeated the same “cold, cold”. At this point, Lán Gānbăo suddenly had an ominous revelation.
Can a dead man even be warmed by a fire? Could it be that, no matter how much fire I make, it will be useless…?
However, the thought of what would await him should he stop building the fire, made it impossible to do so. So Lán Gānbăo had no choice but to keep throwing wood into the fireplace in desperation. But finally, the desperate moment arrived. He run out of firewood.
“…Cold. …It’s cold. …What’s up? …No more firewood?”
The eerie, muffled voice came from behind.
“I’m going to g-get some firewood!” Lán Gānbăo shouted and tried to run out of the room. His plan was to get away without returning. But his path was blocked by the large body of the rotting corpse. It said to the petrified Lán Gānbăo, “…I …don’t need fire anymore…”
“B-but… what about the cold…?”
“…I’ll get warm with another method…”
“T-that method is…?”
The sweat forming on Lán Gānbăo’s face was cool against the heat of the room. The face of the corpse became greatly distorted. It was laughing.
“You know, right…?”
The corpse then pulled out something from between his legs. Although it was rotten and covered with maggots, it was like a rolling pin, a very long example of a man’s iconic object.
“P-p-please don’t…”
As Lán Gānbăo retreated, the monstrous phallus dripped a liquid that was neither rotten fluid nor sperm, slowly cornering him.
“The best way for me to warm up is to use your body after all… I’ve been seeking it for a long, long time… I walked all this way to find you, to hold you once again… Now, I’m going to enjoy it for the first time in a while… Warm me up… with your tongue and ass… Right, Gānbăo hey…”
Just when he finished talking, the body of the corpse leapt at Lán Gānbăo with a suspicious agility. A mouth full of maggots blocked his screaming mouth.
What unfolded afterwards, in the heat of the room, late at night, was a nightmarish scene of the most horrible, appalling, disgusting and monstrously ugly thing in the world. The disgust made Lán Gānbăo vomit again and again, and the fear made him incontinent several times. Vomit, urine, rotten flesh, maggots, and the beautiful body of a young man, were all combined in harmony, creating a vernal scene from the demonic realm with a perfect match between beauty and ugliness!
How much time had passed since then? Lán Gānbăo was in a state of mental shock after being tortured for so long, when he heard a voice near his ear.
“Oh… oh… after all, it is only your body that can keep me warm… I’ve taken more warmth than enough this night… I’ve memorized… I’ve memorized it now. That I can come here for warmth… Tomorrow I’ll come again… The day after tomorrow I’ll come too… Stay here and wait for me…”
Next thing Lán Gānbăo knew, the rotting corpse had disappeared. Only the stifling heat and the smell of decay lingered in his room.
The rotting corpse, which had said it would come again tomorrow and the day after that, appeared night after night in Lán Gānbăo’s room, just as it had declared. Then, after devouring Lán Gānbăo’s flesh until nearly dawn, it would disappear into thin air. It was useless to lock the door. With an arm strength that was impossible of the still-alive Yáng Dàoqìng, it would pry open the door and enter.
“Please! Stay the night in my room! I’ll lend you my tongue or butt as much as you want! N-no, please let me spend the night in your room!”
Lán Gānbăo went around, begging the other men like this but not one of them would listen to him. After being embraced by the rotting corpse for a whole night, his body reeked of decay that no amount of washing could remove. Of course, Luán Niángzĭ too had become so disgusted with the stench emanating from Lán Gānbăo, that she no longer invited him into her bedroom. With no one to turn to for help and no one to turn to for salvation, he was constantly visited by the corpse.
Every time it would announce, “Oh… oh… I’ve warmed up. Be here tomorrow too. …I’ve memorized this place. When I come here, I can warm up my body…,” and then would leave.
As long as I’m here… As long as I’m in the Mansion of the Eight Celestials, I can’t get away from him…!
Still Lán Gānbăo found it hard to leave the mansion, where Luán Niángzĭ was. Even though her favour had long since passed from the stinking Lán Gānbăo. His iron-clad obsession with Luán Niángzĭ however was gradually worn away by the nightly visits of the rotting corpse he had to endure.
As long as I’m here … As long as I’m here … As long as I’m here … As long as I’m here …
It was more than a month after the appearance of the rotting corpse when Lán Gānbăo fled from the Mansion of the Eight Celestials.
***
The heatable brick bed mentioned in this chapter is from rural china, used till today. The character is 炕(kàng/kou), but the kana is オンドル/Ondol which is traditional Korean underfloor heating.
Xíng Hài has truly disgusting ways of dealing with things.
Sorry for any wrongly used words or grammar mistakes.
Setsuna's Translation 