To drink the wine, or to eat the excrement, that is the question.
Gongsun Li's gesture of offering wine gave Atobe a signal: there might not be poison in the wine.
Of course, eating excrement on the spot was just something he said to himself; he hadn't made a bet with anyone. If Feng Bujue were present when he said that, he'd probably be half-full by now.
"Uh... then I shall accept this respectfully..." Atobe hesitated, just as he was about to reach for the wine cup, when suddenly, a quick shadow flashed past, and the cup of wine Gongsun Li offered vanished in an instant.
And one more person appeared in the room.
"Hmm... just smelling this fragrance, one knows it is good wine." The speaker was a young man in his twenties, slender, with delicate features, dressed in a brown, close-fitting suit, with a jade belt around his waist, and black boots on his feet. At this moment, he was holding a half-opened paper fan horizontally, and the wine cup rested steadily on the fan, not a drop spilled.
"Hmph... I was wondering who it was, but it's just you, the ill-mannered Tang family young master." Shi Yanran recognized the person and immediately offered a taunt.
"Eh~ I, Tang Shize, am not ill-mannered, just difficult to teach." Tang Shize replied with a smile, "You can say whatever you want about me, I don't care, but don't beat around the bush and say that my family only knows how to give birth but doesn't know how to raise children. If my father hears that, you'll be in trouble."
"What, are you trying to scare people with your father?" Shi Yanran said, "The mere Tang Clan compared to my Myriad Radiance Pavilion..."
"Enough." Gongsun Li immediately stopped Shi Yanran. He really wanted to kill this woman; this Pavilion Lord's wife was such a troublemaker. They were already overwhelmed with the affairs of this broken-sword teahouse, and now she wanted to say some inconsiderate things out of momentary anger. Could the Tang Clan be offended casually?
"Young Master Tang." Gongsun Li said to Tang Shize in a humble but not subservient manner, "I invited this Young Hero Jin to drink wine, why did you step forward to snatch the cup?"
"Hehe..." Tang Shize laughed, "I just happened to be passing by the door, and smelled the fragrance of this wine, so I couldn't help myself."
Although everything has a cause, his reason was obviously nonsense...
In fact, this Tang Shize was simply here to cause trouble. And he wasn't looking for Gongsun Li or Shi Yanran; his target was Young Master Atobe.
Want to know why? Simply put, it was because of Murong Ying.
Specifically, this Tang Family Young Master Tang Shize, known in the martial world as "Quick Hands Plucking Flowers," had been in love with that Cloud Beyond Immortal for many years. Don't let this kid's appearance as a libertine fool you, or his nickname that could easily be mistaken for a flower thief; he is actually a very shy person when it comes to relationships.
This Young Master Tang's feelings for Murong Ying could be considered true love. Originally, they were well-matched in terms of social status and age, and as long as he could successfully strike up a conversation, the chances of success would be quite high. But Tang Shize, who was usually eloquent, would become mute in front of Murong Ying; not only would he have trouble speaking, but his brain would suddenly stop working properly.
Thus, after a disastrous tentative confession five years ago, Tang Shize was given the divine skill "Ten Touched But Refused" by the goddess. The blow from this event has not completely disappeared to this day...
Today was another day that Tang Shize stalked Murong Ying like a crazed fan. Of course, he was only watching her from afar, and would not do anything base or sneaky like peeping.
What happened next, everyone already knows. Tang Shize saw Young Master Atobe enter Murong Ying's guest room, and only came out after a whole afternoon.
If Young Master Tang had eavesdropped at the door to hear what was going on inside, then the misunderstanding wouldn't have existed. But he wasn't the kind of person to do such a thing, so he began to speculate wildly on his own...
In the end, he came to the conclusion: the people of the Broken Sword Teahouse are too arrogant! You can dominate the entire martial world, but you absolutely cannot hit on my Murong sister! I'm going to fight you!
Therefore, there was the scene just now.
Tang Shize was naturally not "just passing by" the door; he had been circling around the vicinity God knows how many times.
After Gongsun Li and Shi Yanran entered the room, Atobe didn't bolt the door; he was mainly afraid that these two NPCs would attack him, so he left a way out, just closing the door loosely. He didn't expect this to make it even easier for Tang Shize to break in.
Young Master Tang came in at this moment, not for anything else, but to embarrass Atobe. He didn't care what the relationship was between the Myriad Radiance Pavilion and the Broken Sword Teahouse; in any case, from the current situation, they were offering you good wine, and he was going to interfere.
This act of snatching something from someone's lips is a blatant provocation. In the martial world, if one person does something like this to another, then without a doubt, they want to exchange a few blows.
At this moment, Tang Shize was still holding the fan horizontally, only saying that the wine was good, but not drinking it; bluntly put, he was waiting for Atobe to come forward and snatch it, to practice with him.
But Atobe's reaction shocked Tang Shize on the spot.
"Oh!" Atobe said, his eyes shining, "Good!" He actually smiled involuntarily, truly "involuntarily," from the bottom of his heart, "Please, please, please... don't be polite, consider this cup my toast to you."
In his opinion, this guy was simply rushing in to test the poison for free...
Tang Shize's feeling at this moment was like painstakingly slapping someone in the face, only to find that he had helped them kill a mosquito.
"Heh..." Shi Yanran sneered maliciously; a woman's intuition had already told her something, and the three words "Murong Ying" quickly surfaced in her mind. She knew where Young Master Atobe had gone in the afternoon, and she had also heard about Tang Shize's thoughts towards the Cloud Beyond Immortal, so she quickly understood what was happening before her eyes...
"Young Master Tang, look at Young Hero Jin's magnanimity." Shi Yanran mocked coldly, "And look at your behavior; any woman would know who to choose." This woman's words were indeed poisonous, directly hitting the other party's sore spot.
"Hmph!" Tang Shize had already been suppressing a burst of anger in his heart, and it immediately flared up at this provocation. "You surnamed Jin! I want to fight you!" Before the words were finished, he flicked the paper fan in his hand, and the wine cup fell to the ground in response. A cup of "forgetting past grudges" was thus ironically spilled all over the ground.
Truly, old hatreds had not been extinguished, and new grudges were born.
For some reason, as soon as Young Master Tang smashed the cup, Gongsun Li and Shi Yanran instinctively jumped back, as if the sound of the cup breaking was like the bell on a boxing ring; was this considered announcing the start of the first round?
"Hey! Big brother, what are you doing..." Atobe felt inexplicably confused, instantly turning from joy to surprise, thinking: Is this guy crazy? He seemed quite happy when he was snatching the wine to drink, but when I let him drink it, he went berserk instead; is this the legendary tsundere attribute?
Before he could finish speaking, the wind from the fan arrived first, the edge of the fan arrived later; the wind from the fan concealed poison, the edge of the fan contained power; one illusory and one real, one dark and one bright.
Atobe was caught off guard and was already in a position where he could not avoid it...