An opera actor. It had been four years since he last heard this title. Xu Hang felt his limbs go numb, and his chest felt sick.
He feels like vomiting.
Peng Bo’s words were not shouted loudly, so Gu Fangfei, who had already walked out of the door, did not hear them. Seeing that Xu Hang did not follow her out, she turned back and asked, “Mr. Xu?”
Xu Hang turned his head and said, “You go first. I’ll talk to this Special Assistant Peng.”
Gu Fangfei nodded and left. After she had gone far away, Xu Hang frowned and waved away Peng Bo’s hand with disgust: “Let go!” He took out a handkerchief from his sleeve, wiped the places that Peng Bo had touched again and again, and then threw the handkerchief away in disgust.
Peng Bo saw that his actions were obviously meant to humiliate him, so he got angry: “Yo, what’s the matter, a low-class thing suddenly transformed himself and really thought he was the master?”
“You got the wrong person.” Xu Hang’s eyes were as piercing as a dormant knife in the dark night. “Please watch your mouth and don’t bite everywhere.”
“Oh, I remember now. Jin Hongchang seems to have died, so you escaped? Just now, Miss Gu called you something… Mr. Xu?”
“I’ll say it again, you got the wrong person.”
“What’s the matter? Ah? Do you think that no one will know about your dirty deeds just because you climbed up with the daughter of the Gu family? Bah! If I go to the front and shout about your past behavior a few times, hehe, let’s see what you can do! Oh, by the way, you might as well not sit down to eat. There’s no need for the Lihua Group to sing today, you can go up and sing instead!” Peng Bo was a bully to begin with. When he saw Xu Hang today, he couldn’t help but lose his temper.
His dog-eyed and contemptuous face was as deadly as poison in Xu Hang’s eyes. The more disgusting his smile was, the more Xu Hang wanted to push him into the pond.
Because he was one of the few people who knew about the shame Xu Hang had suffered over the years.
When Xu Hang was eleven years old, his parents died. He left Shucheng and traveled thousands of miles to Jinjia Tang to live with his uncle Jin Hongchang. From then on, it was a nightmare.
No one knew that Jin Hongchang had adopted his nephew. Xu Hang grew up in Qiyuan and never left for seven years.
The first thing Jin Hongchang ordered Xu Hang to do was to learn opera.
Singing opera is clearly a lowly livelihood, the lowest profession. Xu Hang had been raised as a young master of a rich family until this age, so naturally he refused.
Then, Jin Hongchang no longer had the face of a kind uncle. He dragged Xu Hang into a dark room, whipped him, clamped him with tongs, and pricked him with golden needles… these were not the most terrible punishments. The most terrible thing was that Jin Hongchang used a piece of ice carved with patterns and forced Xu Hang to kneel on it.
The cold air from the ice cubes penetrated through the knees and into the bones, which was more painful than any whipping. What was more serious was that the patterns on the top were cut into the flesh, like kneeling on knives. Moreover, he could not move with this kind of kneeling punishment. If he moved, the pattern would be blurred. If Jin Hongchang did not see the wound with patterns on his knees the next day, he would have to kneel for another day.
“I ask you, will you learn it or not?!” After he fainted for the third time, Jin Hongchang grabbed his head and asked.
Xu Hang looked at the beautiful scenery outside the door and felt that it was dazzling. Every pore in his body was crying out in pain. His thoughts drifted far away and then drifted back. Finally, he said, “…I’ll learn.”
From then on, it was the years of babbling sound. He trained his voice day and night, walking around the stage, learning the picking flower move with his fingers, drawing eyebrows and eyes, dancing the Chinese classic water sleeves dance, and reciting opera scripts.
Fight; look away, fight… and just like that, the performance was completed.
At the age of sixteen, he made his first stage appearance, wearing a phoenix crown and colorful dress.
The stage was located inside Qiyuan, and everyone in the audience was not an ordinary person, and almost none of them were Chinese.
Most of them were Japanese officers or foreigners with blond hair and blue eyes, who were not to be messed with.
However, these people, who appeared well-dressed, highly respected and powerful, on the outside, entered Qiyuan and sang in unison, with obscene and dirty eyes, obsessed and mean looks, like old turtles in a black mud puddle.
“I once held his hand and slept on his pillow. But the heavens also said that our fate was shallow.” Xu Hang rolled up his water sleeves and tossed them lightly. His eyes moved, and there was a gasp from the audience. Some people even changed their sitting position on the stool impatiently.
If it was an ordinary performance, how could it be stunning?
What Jin Hongchang asked him to sing were “The Plum in the Golden Vase” and “The Precious Mirror of Ranking Flowers[mfn]They’re both erotic fictions.[/mfn]“, which were obscene songs.
Perhaps those who are particularly rich and powerful always have unspeakable hobbies that they keep secret and dare not publicize, and Jin Hongchang is a ferry that helps them convey these hobbies.
More than ten years ago, there were wars everywhere, and ordinary people did not have time to escape, so how could they have the leisure to listen to operas? Naturally, there were no opera groups. Jin Hongchang originally wanted to raise a few children from poor families to train; coincidentally, at this time, Xu Hang appeared.
A weak and effeminate child of an aristocratic family, no matter how much he was humiliated and scolded, still has the noble characters in his bones, a child from a poor family was not comparable to them. Jin Hongchang was an old rogue who had spent half his life studying all kinds of messy things. He fell in love with Xu Hang’s character at first sight.
Thanks to the opera sung by Xu Hang, Jin Hongchang got asylum from the Japanese for the first time, started a business, made a fortune every day, and bullied others.
That night, Jin Hongchang was very happy. He got drunk with his wife and son. Then he kicked open Xu Hang’s door, pointing his big tongue at him, and said, “You! Tomorrow… you have to, hiccup, sing well, and your eyes have to be more… more charming… to make the Madam and… Mr. Chadham… happy!”
Xu Hang sat on the bed, looking at Jin Hongchang’s drunken ugliness with his cool eyes, like a lake with monsters hidden in it, without any ripples. After Jin Hongchang left, he suddenly got up from the bed, ran out of the door, crawled on the ground, and retched for a long time.
In those days, the Japanese and foreigners would not offend each other. Everyone wanted to pull this black-haired boy, who was as thin as Chinese porcelain, off the stage, put him in their pocket, and take him away to raise. However, in this delicate balance, whoever took action first would tear the other’s face.
Of course, Jin Hongchang was a shrewd man. He had been keeping Xu Hang like a treasure in his chest and had not used him since early. This was because he wanted to wait for a strong support that he could truly rely on for the rest of his life.
And Xu Hang managed to preserve his innocence in this delicate relationship.
Until the Japanese were driven out of Hezhou City and the foreigners retreated to the concession area, then… Duan Yelin appeared.
Perhaps what Duan Yelin said was right. Xu Hang should be grateful that he was the one who showed up; otherwise, he wouldn’t know what kind of ending would be waiting for him.
But to Xu Hang, he was also an out-and-out invader.
