10.
O'Brien rushed back excitedly with the written IOU, but as soon as he entered the door, he clearly noticed that the atmosphere in the room was not right.
From the very beginning, the two brothers in the room didn't care much about "brothers and friends", now it looks more like they just had a fight - at least O'Brien remembered that Fang Tinglan wasn't so disheartened when he left.
Hai Lian sat on the chair, folded his arms and said coldly, "You tear up the IOU, and I'll give you the money."
"My younger brother is losing his temper again. Why should the family share yours and mine?" Fang Tinglan, who was standing on the other side of the room, said helplessly. He even let out a soft sigh.
Hai Lian was so disgusted that he gasped, and couldn't hold back his hand to put on the handle of the knife, but because there was a weak neighbor here, he had no choice but to close his arms angrily and continue to sulking.
O'Brien was confused and didn't know who to listen to. He froze for a while, and finally gave up exploring the subtle relationship between the two black-haired brothers, and still decided to hand over the IOU to Fang Tinglan: "... Thank you."
He also gave Fang Tinglan a lame Dongzhou salute.
Fang Tinglan raised his eyebrows and won a big victory: "Is it enough to just sign?"
Hailian stood up and was about to leave, but O'Brien quickly stopped him: "Wait for Hailian, I have something for you too."
He quickly took out a wax-sealed letter from his pocket: "For fear of losing it, I hid it in the manuscript, but that woman also detained it."
The wax seal is in the shape of an eagle's head, and Hailian knew it: "Who sent it?"
O'Brien shook his head: "It's a boy, he doesn't know his identity, he probably runs errands."
Hailian pouted, and opened the envelope. There was only a thin sheet of paper inside, and after a quick glance at the content, he asked O'Brien one last question: "When did the letter arrive?"
"Four days ago." O'Brien replied.
Hailian muttered, "It's not too late", he put the letter in his arms, and walked out the door. When he was about to go down the stairs, he seemed to remember something, turned around and called O'Brien: "I have something to go out. Come on, since you hit it off with my brother so much, he just arrived here, please help me receive him in a while."
The young man deliberately bit the word "Brother" hard, he licked the corner of his mouth at Fang Tinglan, and the unruly hair on the top of his head jumped in the sight of the two of them, and he disappeared.
O'Brien didn't realize that he had been betrayed by Hailian, he responded happily, turned his head and smiled at Fang Tinglan: "Mr. Fang, how about we go to that tavern on the street to eat and chat?"
If one ignores the string of hungry grunts coming out of his stomach at the right time, O'Brien has a good image of a "hospitality and long-dream man".
Just like Fang Tinglan didn't give Hailian the room to intervene when he forced a favor, Hailian threw Fang Tinglan to O'Brien like a burden. Fang Tinglan still looked at the direction Hailian left, the corners of his eyes twitched slightly, and then he returned to his usual smile: "Then I will trouble you."
※※※
"Our area was originally called Anwana District. In the southern language, it means reflection and mirror, but in fact, no one would call it that." O'Brien raised his foot and gestured to the upper, "We all It’s called the mud zone.”
Fang Tinglan looked around: "Very appropriate."
Like dirty black mud, Anwana District hides all the filth of Jiumeng City. Thieves, robbers, pimps, murderers, slaves and slave owners, all kinds of shady people and things like blood-sucking poisonous flowers are deeply rooted here, taking root and sprouting. There are no white walls and red tiles in the travel notes of Dongzhou Study, and no blue-eyed beauties with bright clothes and bright smiles. Even the bouquets hanging on the walls are a circle smaller than other places. A petal also fell, quietly mixed into the dust.
"The Jiumeng City that you Dongzhou people imagined is over there." O'Brien pointed to the far ahead, "Over there is the White Bird District, separated from the Mud District by a river, the Reflection River. All nobles and The rich people live there, follow the Shiratori District and go up the mountain, and you will find the Tisu Palace."
Fang Tinglan looked in the direction O'Brien pointed, and suddenly his eyes moved slightly: "What is that?"
At the height of the line of sight of the two, there is a huge white high platform standing majestically by the mountains and cliffs. Looking from the position of Fang Tinglan Station, one can still vaguely see the lingering and intertwined patterns carved on the periphery of this giant, and the garrison guards on the platform that are as big as rice grains. The shape of the high platform is like a flying kite spreading its wings. The wings protrude from the rocks and lush vegetation, and they are ingeniously integrated with the mountain. Compared with this amazing and miraculous giant platform, the shining Tisu Palace on the mountainside is down. It looks a little tacky.
"Where?" O'Brien squinted his eyes and adjusted the lens, then suddenly realized, "Don't you know? It is the symbol of our Tisu country, the Eternal Terrace."
Eternity... Fang Tinglan chewed on the word, matching his father's words in his memory with the real scene in front of him, "I've heard that we call it Qiwu Terrace."
O'Brien was surprised: "The name you chose is more appropriate, after all, it was built for a woman to stay on it."
"A woman?"
"The protagonist of our fourth epic in the southern region, Queen Tisu, Adullier, if you want to hear her story, I can tell you about it for three days and three nights!"
It was a wise decision for Hailian to throw Fang Tinglan to O'Brien. The writer would never stare at Fang Tinglan with prickly eyes, nor would he sneer at any of Fang Tinglan's questions. He talked endlessly, wishing to introduce all the allusions inlaid in the cracks on every floor tile in Jiumeng City to this man. Newcomer from Dongzhou.
It's a pity that the dead man and the rumored party's plan to stop the fire is useless, he declined with a smile and changed the subject.
The two of them walked to the tavern on the corner of the street unknowingly while they were talking, and the faint humming leaked through a light-transmitting wooden door, and Fang Tinglan pushed the door open.
There are no blue-eyed beauties in white dresses and gold ornaments in the tavern, and the tavern in the mud area does not serve the fine wine that Fang Tinglan's father said. A plate of bacon that was obviously not very fresh, and then continued to hum a ditty with unclear lyrics in the sun while wiping the table.
The moment the beer was poured in, Fang Tinglan immediately had the urge to go out for some air. It's not that he has never drank bad wine. In the most difficult year, when he was half dead in the cold in the dungeon in Chi Jincheng's winter night, the prisoner next door shared half a glass of beheaded liquor with him. He thought it was like horse urine. This is already the limit of his cognition of bad wine. He never expected that across the ocean, he could actually see a country where this kind of over-fermented rotten water can be called "wine".
Fang Tinglan thought that his father would not have drank this kind of thing with his mother back then, otherwise his bad-tempered mother might have poured this glass of yellow water down the boss's nostrils.
O'Brien on the opposite side of the table was obviously not as picky as he was. He gulped down half a glass, and finally felt like he had saved his life. Seeing Fang Tinglan looking at him in surprise, he felt a little embarrassed: "I haven't eaten all day, it's really... you won't be offended?"
Fang Tinglan shook his head with a smile, and calmly pushed the cup away an inch: "Let's continue talking about Jiumeng City itself, such as Shiratori District."