Chapter 31: Chapter 30: Chu Hongshang
The Wan Tong Restaurant held a similar status in the Beihai Collection as the Forget Sorrow Building did in Lianshan City. Both were places frequented by the lower echelons of Jianghu people.
The restaurant’s food and wine were affordable, so everyone gathered here to chat, boast, and share gossip and information, making it a very lively place.
Compared to the Forget Sorrow Building, the Wan Tong Restaurant served another purpose: it was a hub for many Assassins, where one could both post and accept missions.
The term "Assassin" originally referred to Jianghu people who collected bounties posted by the Court for handling its affairs.
Back when the Great Xia had first established its rule over the world, the Jianghu was still in a state of chaos, with countless rebels and bandits roaming the lands.
As the Great Xia was short on manpower, it would issue bounties to recruit Assassins to work for the Court.
In those days, Assassins held a very high status. Even the Court had to treat some of the more powerful ones with great respect.
Later, as the realm stabilized and the Great Xia’s power grew, it no longer needed Assassins to handle its affairs, so the system was gradually abolished.
However, Assassins still existed throughout the Jianghu. They were now mostly low-level Jianghu people, unaffiliated with any sect or clan, who drifted aimlessly and would do anything for the right price.
The more normal jobs included escorting shipments, guarding residences, or sailing with merchant fleets.
More dangerous work involved participating in conflicts between gangs and sects, acting as hired muscle.
They could also be hired as thugs, or even take on assassination jobs, acting as killers-for-hire and the like.
In short, the Assassins of today were a motley crew. Generally speaking, ninety-nine percent of them were unskilled Jianghu people who became Assassins just to scrape by.
Chen Yuan stepped into the Wan Tong Restaurant. The place was much larger than the Forget Sorrow Building, several times its size in fact.
However, the atmosphere inside was not much different.
In the center of the Wan Tong Restaurant was a huge wooden board, split into upper and lower sections, both covered with wooden plaques.
The plaques on the upper section listed all sorts of missions.
Anyone wishing to hire an Assassin would write their request on a plaque and hang it up.
If an Assassin in the restaurant was interested, they would take down the plaque and use the address left on it to make contact and negotiate a price.
The plaques on the lower section, on the other hand, contained brief descriptions of the Assassins’ skills and specializations. Anyone who wanted to hire one could take down their plaque to contact them.
All in all, the system was something like a Jianghu version of a job market.
’To come up with something like this,’ Chen Yuan mused, ’the owner of this Wan Tong Restaurant is quite clever.’
Posting and accepting missions in the restaurant was free; anyone could hang a plaque.
However, any Assassin who wanted to accept a mission had to spend a great deal of time in the restaurant keeping an eye on the board, or else the good missions would be snatched up by others.
And if you were always hanging around the restaurant, how could you have the gall not to order something?
Besides, they were all martial artists who burned a lot of energy. They would get hungry after just a few hours, and would most likely end up eating all three of their daily meals in the restaurant.
Thus, while other restaurants were only busy during mealtimes, the Wan Tong Restaurant had a constant stream of customers at all hours, even late into the night.
Chen Yuan stood before the wooden board and studied it for a long while, but he didn’t see the mission he was looking for.
’Hasn’t the person arrived yet? Or has that part of the plot already passed? Did I come too late?’
Chen Yuan couldn’t be sure.
He had always fast-forwarded through this kind of background plot before, so he couldn’t pinpoint the exact timing.
But since he was already here, he figured he might as well wait a few days.
Chen Yuan found a place to sit and ordered a few local seafood specialties.
Lianshan City was inland, so it was basically impossible to get fresh seafood. At best, one could find some frozen or dried goods during the winter.
Here in the Beihai Collection, however, the seafood was fresh and plump, and the taste was truly excellent.
After his meal, Chen Yuan waited in the restaurant. He stayed until evening, when a seventeen or eighteen-year-old girl in a red dress walked in.
The girl had a lovely and delicate face, with a tall, slender figure. Although she was still young, it was clear that she had the makings of a great beauty.
Her eyes, however, were hollow and lifeless, only occasionally flashing with a bone-chilling hatred.
The girl took out a wooden plaque and hung it on the upper section of the board. But instead of leaving, she squatted down beside it, waiting for someone to accept her mission.
Chen Yuan narrowed his eyes to read the words on the plaque.
"Annihilate the entire Zhu Family of Lonely Mountain City!"
The vast majority of missions in the Wan Tong Restaurant were to hire Jianghu people for merchant voyages or to explore ruins Overseas.
A smaller portion involved conflicts between gangs and sects; missions involving killing were as rare as a phoenix feather.
After all, to put it nicely, they were called Assassins, but in reality, they were just struggling, low-level Jianghu people, not professional hitmen.
A mission to annihilate an entire family was practically unheard of.
Seeing the young girl, the Jianghu people in the Wan Tong Restaurant immediately began to murmur amongst themselves.
"That kid’s here again. How many times does this make? No one’s going to take that mission of hers."
"Sigh, that poor girl has had it rough. I heard she was just betrothed to the Wang Family of South Mountain City. Now the engagement is off and her entire family has been wiped out. The Zhu Family is truly ruthless."
"If the Zhu Family weren’t so ruthless, how could they have come to dominate Lonely Mountain City in less than thirty years? The Five Tigers of the Zhu Family are no pushovers. Especially the fifth one, Zhu Chengzong—he’s already joined the Blazing Sect, a Major Sect in Yong Province. Naturally, the Zhu Family’s status soared along with his."
Amid the discussions, an old man in his fifties or sixties, wearing a shabby sheepskin coat, walked up to the girl, sighed, and tried to persuade her:
"Young lady, you should leave quickly. No one will accept your mission. That’s the Zhu Family, the overlords of Lonely Mountain City. Who would dare provoke them? You’ve been posting this mission for two days now, and the Zhu Family has probably already gotten word of it. Knowing their ways, they’ll surely send someone to eliminate you and cut off any loose ends. If you leave now, you might just escape with your life."
The girl shook her head, the hatred in her eyes nearly spilling out.
"I’m not leaving! It would be even better if the Zhu Family sent someone. Even if I die, I’ll take a pound of flesh from them!"
The old man shook his head and gave the girl a pitying look, saying no more.
He could already foresee what fate awaited the girl once the Zhu Family arrived.
Chen Yuan, however, let out a soft sigh. ’She’s finally here. Good, I’m not too early and not too late.’
The girl before him wasn’t a character from the first version of the story, but one of the bosses from the third version: the "Crimson Demon Venerable," Chu Hongshang.
Don’t be fooled by her current harmless and pitiful appearance.
A little over a decade from now, she would be the one to stir up countless bloody storms in the Jianghu, killing so many that the phrase "rivers of blood" would not be an exaggeration.
A brief account of Chu Hongshang’s past wasn’t revealed until the end of the third version of the story.
She was originally the legitimate daughter of the Chu Family, a Small Noble Family in Lonely Mountain City, and had been betrothed since childhood to a Legitimate Son of the Wang Family from South Mountain City.
Lonely Mountain City had another family, the Zhu Family. They hadn’t been powerful before, but in the last twenty to thirty years, they had developed rapidly, becoming the most prominent clan in the city.
The Zhu Family acted with an iron fist, seeking to dominate Lonely Mountain City completely and refusing to tolerate the existence of any other power within its walls.
Thus, the Zhu Family initially approached the Chu Family with a marriage proposal, hoping to marry Chu Hongshang. This would merge the two families into one, allowing them to take control of Lonely Mountain City without shedding any blood.
The Chu Family was small, numbering less than a hundred people even including its Side Branches. They had no great ambitions and did not wish to contend with the Zhu Family.
But the Chu Family had strong moral principles. They believed that since their daughter had been betrothed to the Wang Family of South Mountain City since she was a child, she could not be promised to two men. And so, they politely declined the Zhu Family’s proposal.
The Zhu Family, however, took this as a sign of disrespect, believing the Chu Family was deliberately making excuses to refuse them.
As the saying goes, "How can one allow another to snore beside one’s own bed?" To them, refusing a marriage alliance was the same as declaring enmity. And so, they found a pretext to launch a surprise attack, annihilating the entire Chu Family.
The only survivor was Chu Hongshang, who had been invited to visit the Wang Family at the time and thus escaped the disaster.
However, upon learning that the Chu Family had been wiped out, the Wang Family immediately threw Chu Hongshang out, tore up the marriage contract, and severed all ties with her.
The Wang Family’s alliance with the Chu Family had been one between equals, as both were Small Noble Families of average strength.
Now that the Chu Family was gone, marrying Chu Hongshang would not only fail to bring them the support of a powerful in-law, but it might also offend the Zhu Family. Therefore, they decisively broke off the engagement.
The Chu Family had been willing to offend the Zhu Family to honor the engagement, yet the Wang Family broke it out of fear of that very same family.
One wonders if the members of the Chu Family, knowing this from the afterlife, would regret their decision.
Now, Chu Hongshang had nowhere left to turn. Her heart dead with despair, she had come to the Wan Tong Restaurant to post a mission, hoping someone would help her get revenge.
Naturally, no one was willing to accept such an outrageous mission. Furthermore, word had reached the Zhu Family, who were now sending people to kill her.
Perhaps Chu Hongshang herself knew how absurd the mission was, and that no one could help her.
But she was already without hope, harboring a death wish. If the Zhu Family’s men came for her, she intended to drag them down with her, even if she couldn’t defeat them!
Just like that, a few days later, the Zhu Family sent men to finish the job and eliminate her for good.
At that critical moment, an expert from the Ten Thousand Demon Sect, a Major Sect of the Demon Dao—the "Blood-Handed Fairy," Shi Xueyan—was returning from Overseas. Passing through the Beihai Collection, she happened to witness this very scene.
Shi Xueyan saw Chu Hongshang’s fearlessness in the face of death and her world-shaking hatred. Sensing that she was promising material, Shi Xueyan took her in as a disciple and brought her back to the Ten Thousand Demon Sect.
The Ten Thousand Demon Sect had a cruel system where disciples fought and killed one another in a process of survival of the fittest.
No one knows what Chu Hongshang experienced in the Ten Thousand Demon Sect, but by the time she reappeared, she had already become one of its three great Demon Venerables: the Crimson Demon Venerable.
Among the three Demon Venerables, Chu Hongshang’s temperament was the most brutal and capricious; for her, annihilating an entire family over a single misplaced word was a common occurrence.
Some Sects and Noble Families were wiped out without ever knowing what they had done to offend her.
In the original story, Chu Hongshang didn’t even show any respect for the Sect Leader of the Ten Thousand Demon Sect.
The only person who could make her submit was the extremely mysterious Martial Arts Alliance Hierarch from the final Chapter of the story, Chen Jiutian.
He had unified the Martial World and the Jianghu, forcing the Daoist, Buddhist, and Demon Three Veins to submit to his rule. In the description provided in the final Chapter, Chu Hongshang appeared again, merely as a part of Chen Jiutian’s backstory.
One could say that Chu Hongshang was the most powerful character from the original story that Chen Yuan had encountered since his transmigration.
Of course, right now, she was just a pitiful, helpless little girl filled with despair.
Chen Yuan stood up, walked over to the mission board, and took down the plaque that Chu Hongshang had hung.
Chu Hongshang’s eyes widened as she stared at Chen Yuan in utter disbelief.
"Let’s go. I’ll help you annihilate the entire Zhu Family."
Chen Yuan pulled the girl up from where she was squatting on the ground and, under the incredulous gazes of every Jianghu person in the Wan Tong Restaurant, walked out of the establishment.
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