Chapter 162.2

As he spoke, Fan Shulin’s voice dropped lower and lower, until he could only stubbornly mutter, “At least I’m not that old yet.”

“Brother Fan, if you want to find someone, I can keep an eye out for you. But some women really aren’t suitable.”

“Ah, I know. She’s pretty. I wouldn’t be able to keep her.”

Yin Meng was pretty?

Tan Wenbin really had never paid attention to that.

Maybe they were all too familiar with each other, so nobody really noticed appearances anymore. Besides, not everyone was like Ah Li, where one glance was enough to tell she was extraordinary.

“Brother Fan, don’t worry. I’ll keep an eye out for you. There aren’t many girls in our department.”

“Then what the hell are you talking about?”

“But there are lots of boys. Don’t be so rigid about the gender part.”

“Hahaha.”

The two of them burst out laughing together.

It had already been a fairly awkward topic, and ending it this way was quite fitting.

Still, after the laughter died down, although Fan Shulin had indeed given up on Yin Meng, he also sank into a kind of melancholy, the sorrowful feeling that a relationship had already slipped away from his side.

Tan Wenbin turned his head and flicked ash from his cigarette.

He knew this type well. Men who had never dated loved to stage some grand, tortuous, world-shaking romance in their own heads before they had even had much contact with a girl, sometimes before the girl had any feelings at all.

“I’m going to check on the other two.” Fan Shulin stubbed out his cigarette, got up, and left the room.

The moment he left, Yin Meng pushed the door open and came in.

Tan Wenbin studied her closely.

Yin Meng: “What?”

Tan Wenbin: “You know, now that Aunt Liu helped whiten your skin last time, you actually are pretty.”

“Really?” Yin Meng spread her arms and deliberately spun around in place. “Thanks for the compliment.”

“No wonder Divine Physician Fan came trotting right over the second you called him. Being good-looking really does have its advantages.”

“Then no wonder I had no business when I used to run my shop. So it was because I wasn’t pretty enough back then?”

Tan Wenbin rolled his eyes at her and laughed as he cursed, “Even if you’d been a heavenly beauty back then, what the hell difference would it make? Nobody walks into your shop just because you’re pretty to buy a coffin.”

Yin Meng shot Tan Wenbin a glare.

The door was pushed open. Li Zhuiyuan stood at the entrance holding Ah Li’s hand. Tan Wenbin and Yin Meng immediately wiped the joking grins off their faces.

“Little Yuanhou.”

“Little Yuanhou.”

Li Zhuiyuan: “Sorry, I killed the mood.”

Yin Meng lowered her head, holding back laughter.

Tan Wenbin: “Not at all. You can be lively while staying serious.”

Li Zhuiyuan asked, “How’s your tailbone?”

“I need to rest quietly for a while. I won’t be going back to the dorm during that time. I’ll recover here, and Mengmeng will take care of us.”

As he spoke, Tan Wenbin handed the dorm’s front door key to Li Zhuiyuan.

Yin Meng shrugged, clearly accepting the arrangement.

Li Zhuiyuan said to her, “Then I’ll be troubling you. Make a little more good food for them these next few days and help them recover.”

Yin Meng: “Got it.”

Tan Wenbin howled, “No, please!”

Li Zhuiyuan and Ah Li left. Earlier, he had already checked on the unconscious Runsheng and the sleeping Lin Shuyou.

Yin Meng shut the room door and patted her chest with one hand.

“Little Yuanhou’s deadpan jokes are so cold they kind of scare me.”

Tan Wenbin reached up and rubbed the corner of his mouth. He had shouted too dramatically just now and pulled it.

“Normal. When Ah Li is with Little Yuanhou, he becomes a little more human. We ought to consciously cooperate a bit too.”

“I’m still more used to the way Little Yuanhou used to be.”

“You mean tying a whip around your neck and making you do whatever he said? That’s what makes you comfortable?”

“What kind of crappy metaphor is that?”

“It’s crude, but not wrong.”

“That’s actually true.”

“Heh. I think you’ve spent too much time around Runsheng and started copying him by throwing your brain away too.”

“Nonsense. Runsheng’s really smart.”

Tan Wenbin deliberately pinched his throat and said in a cutesy voice, “Yeth, our Runsheng is tho very clever and bright, really the great wisdom hidden beneath simplicity.”

…

After Lu Yi took food downstairs, he came back up and ate with Li Zhuiyuan and Ah Li, though he sat over by the counter.

“Brother Lu Yi, you can sit a little closer.”

“No need, Little Yuanhou. I can eat and go over the accounts at the same time.”

“You really do work hard. At this rate, you can go back and inherit the family business later.”

Lu Yi shook his head. “The nature of the enterprise hasn’t changed. It isn’t my family business.”

“That was a poor choice of words on my part. Sorry.”

“Haha, I’m the one being too particular, Little Yuanhou. Actually, I’ve been thinking about building something of my own. I really like this kind of business, the sort where you deal with people face-to-face.”

“Then when the owner of this bandit camp comes back, you can talk with him more. He has lots of ideas, and he’s not short on capital.”

The “owner of the bandit camp” referred to the name on this shop’s business license.

Xue Liangliang was the sort of person who had escaped low tastes. He clearly had all the talent in the world for making money, yet had very little desire for it. Right now, he only wanted to do two things:

One was to help build the nation.

The other was to return to Nantong.

Lu Yi did not bother with polite refusals and said directly, “All right. When the chieftain comes back, I’ll ask him for some pointers.”

After that came a relatively quiet mealtime.

Lu Yi was not really sitting alone at the counter to do bookkeeping. He always finished what needed doing the same day, and there was no way his accounts still were not settled this late at night. But how to put it? People had a kind of presence. If he sat with Little Yuanhou and that girl, he just could not eat comfortably.

Keeping a little distance and watching them eat, though, was its own kind of enjoyment. It was more pleasing than the television adaptation of Dream of the Red Chamber.

Watching them while eating made even the big bone in his hand seem to take on a refined, delicate grace.

The reason, in the end, was simple. Actors in a television drama were still acting, but for Ah Li, this was her real life.

Unfortunately, Aunt Liu did not usually come to the shop to buy things. Otherwise, she and Lu Yi might actually have found some common ground.

After dinner, Li Zhuiyuan walked Ah Li home.

As long as he had not collapsed unconscious or exhausted himself past the limit, he felt too embarrassed to sleep in Ah Li’s room, even though he truly loved the feel of the carpet in her bedroom.

“Ah Li, I’ll tell you the story of this time in a few days, once I remember it.”

After saying goodbye to Ah Li, Li Zhuiyuan used the front door key Tan Wenbin had given him to open the dorm entrance and return to his room.

After washing up, he prepared to go to bed.

Li Zhuiyuan moved the bronze mirror to a different position and activated the dorm’s isolation array.

At that one simple action, Li Zhuiyuan froze.

He looked around at the array he had personally set up, feeling an odd doubt rise from deep within him. Why did this arrangement suddenly feel like complete garbage?

After only a brief thought, a new layout plan immediately formed in his mind. He could incorporate feng shui into the array, and once activated, it would not only isolate the dorm room but also block outside noise.

The secret arts from the Black Book had advanced enormously, and his attainments in arrays and feng shui had also undergone a qualitative leap.

Li Zhuiyuan spread open his palm and activated Walking the shade.

A cluster of black karmic fire appeared in his palm.

With a light movement of his fingertip, the karmic fire began to spin and dance.

With a little more focused control, the black karmic fire actually shifted one after another into the shapes of a kitten, a puppy, an elephant, and other animals.

Honestly, this kind of transformation was completely useless in actual combat.

But the former him had been incapable of such delicate control over spellwork.

So,

During that missing stretch of memory, was I studying hard?

To a certain extent, skipping or fast-forwarding through the painful process of studying hard and arriving directly at the point of mastery was the sort of ability that would make every student drool with envy.

But Li Zhuiyuan was thinking about more than just that.

He walked to Tan Wenbin’s desk, pulled out a book, then lay back on his own bed and switched on the bedside lamp.

He did not actually have a habit of reading before sleep. Once he left the desk and got into bed, he normally rested straight away.

But today, he made an exception.

In the boy’s hands was volume five of Strange Records of the Jianghu.

As he turned the pages, he could smell the faint scent of Buddhist sandalwood lingering in the paper. Of course, the contents were already far too basic for him now.

But as he read through each type of Dead Sinker, and then the line beneath it that said “eliminated by the Orthodox Demon-Suppressing Arts,” the suspicion in his heart began to grow stronger and stronger.

Just as Liu Yumei had not initially connected that slaughtered family to her own Little Yuan, Li Zhuiyuan had actually been the same.

This was no longer a matter of failing to see what was under the lamp. This was a sunspot.

Li Zhuiyuan could no longer avoid it. Once several clues appeared, that most impossible answer had, in a sense, become the only one.

There were probably still quite a few people in this world who could teach him arrays, spellwork, and feng shui. But those capable of bringing him to a qualitative leap in such a short time were very few.

Most importantly, that person also had to know how to teach him the secret arts from the Black Book.

That was not something just anyone could learn. As far as he knew, the only other person in the world who could use that secret art was currently suppressing himself beneath the peach grove.

And the moment they met, he had to trust him.

That person also had to be willing to help him.

Willing enough, even, to help him scheme against The Great Emperor of Fengdu.

So,

It could only be you,

Wei Zhengdao!

Although the missing memories themselves still had not been specifically recovered, once Wei Zhengdao was established as the key point, the causal chain of the whole matter suddenly became clear.

Because you did not need to fuss over “exactly how it was done.” As long as Wei Zhengdao was there, things that could not be done before often became possible. Then, with him as the center, everything else could be pulled together around that point.

The only question was, was Wei Zhengdao still alive?

No. Judging by the habits Li Zhuiyuan had inferred from him, whether that missing stretch of memory had anything to do with his death or not was beside the point. As long as he continued following his previous pattern of behavior, that was enough.

Which meant this:

If he was dead, Li Zhuiyuan would be happy.

If he was not dead, Li Zhuiyuan would go over and finish him off, then hold him a grand funeral.

Li Zhuiyuan put the book down, turned off the light, and went to sleep.

Even though he had already slept for two days and two nights before coming back, there had been too much work in his dreams. He truly had not rested well.

That night, Li Zhuiyuan had a dream, a very rough and simple dream.

In the dream, he saw a vague figure sitting on a cute little white horse. Accompanied by a nursery rhyme, the figure rose and fell and spun round and round.

And there, in that shallow and simple dream, Li Zhuiyuan watched him happily ride the carousel over and over again.

When the boy woke up the next morning, that nursery rhyme was still echoing in his mind like a demonic refrain: “What do you call your father’s father…”

Li Zhuiyuan was skilled in physiognomy and fortune-telling. Dream interpretation was only a minor branch among them, but even he truly had no way of explaining such a bizarre and uncanny dream.

At dawn, Li Zhuiyuan walked out of the dorm. He was going to take Ah Li for a walk on the athletic field and help her gradually get used to being outside.

“Little Yuanhou, Little Yuanhou!”

Lu Yi stood in the shop doorway, waving in this direction.

Li Zhuiyuan walked over.

“Little Yuanhou, the chieftain called for you. I was just about to go to your dorm and get you.”

“Thank you, Brother Lu Yi.”

Li Zhuiyuan walked over to the counter. By then the call had already ended. Usually, the person on the other end gave enough time for someone to be fetched, then called back shortly afterward. Of course, you could also call back yourself if you did not mind the phone charges.

The boy pressed a button, checked the recent calls, scrolled up, and looked at the area code.

Sure enough: Nantong.

…

By the water’s edge, there were two kinds of beings that were hardest to understand.

One was the Dead Sinker. You never knew where it might be.

The other was fishing enthusiasts. They were everywhere.

Early in the morning, one, two, three… a whole group of fishing enthusiasts gathered by the riverbank and cast out their rods.

On the road behind them were parked bicycles, tricycles, motorcycles, and one Santana.

Yesterday, someone had hooked a huge catch here. In his excitement, he had hung it from his handlebars and, instead of rushing home, proudly ridden three full laps through the streets first.

When ordinary people on bicycles ran into cars or pedestrians blocking the way, they rang their bells. He had just kept slapping that fish across the mouth.

Once the news spread, a crowd had gathered at this fishing spot early this morning.

The winter morning wind was bitter and desolate. Everyone was shivering from the cold, yet no one dared leave.

Because something more painful than coming up empty-handed yourself was hearing that someone next to you caught a huge fish right after you left.

But at the moment, their attention was drawn to a young man some distance away.

When the young man arrived at the riverbank, he even waved and greeted them, then took off his clothes and set them aside under a rock.

Right after that, he leaped into the river.

At first, everyone assumed he had come for winter swimming.

The youngest among them was already past thirty, so they could only keep sighing in admiration: youth really did mean abundant vitality.

After diving into the river, the young man quickly came back up to the bank.

Then he began a second jump into the river.

The group could not help but sigh again: youth did not just mean abundant vitality, it also meant incredible stamina.

After that they began bragging to one another about how strong and vigorous they had been in their younger days.

When the young man surfaced and returned to shore a third time, he seemed anxious and began shouting at the surface of the river:

“Hey, wife, I’ve come to find you! I’ve come to find you!”

After yelling several times in a row, he jumped back into the river once more.

The older fishermen all looked at each other.

This was bad. Very bad. This guy was not here for winter swimming. He was here to die for love!

A human life was at stake. The fishermen immediately dropped their rods and gear and ran over as fast as they could, but by then the young man had vanished.

The river stretched wide. If he really had drowned, no one would even know where to drag for him. This place was very close to Chongming Island. Before long, the current could sweep him all the way out to sea.

Just as everyone was panicking, a turn for the better appeared. That young man surfaced again and returned to shore.

He was extremely agitated, shouting nonstop, “Hey, why won’t you answer me? I came to find you, I came to find you!”

The fishermen all rushed him at once and dragged him ashore. The young man still struggled, apparently intending to jump back in. The fishermen simply pinned him down and tied him up first with fishing line.

Then they gave up fishing entirely and gathered around him, turning into life mentors as they started counseling him through his emotional troubles.

For middle-aged men, the pleasure of talking about this was no less than fishing.

One after another, they used themselves as examples. Well, mainly because men who could leave their beds at dawn and run to the riverbank to fish in weather like this probably did not have the best marriages to begin with.

Xue Liangliang found it both funny and helpless, but in order to get away, he could only pretend to listen intently, then repeatedly “come to realizations,” followed by “sudden understanding,” then “deep reflection,” and finally “solemn vows.”

The fishermen talked until their mouths went dry, yet remained utterly absorbed in it all. Seeing that the young man really did seem to have seen through the emptiness of love, they helped untie the fishing line.

After thanking them over and over, Xue Liangliang ran away from the riverbank.

As he ran, the fisherman with the motorcycle even deliberately followed him for part of the way, worried he might switch to another section of the river and jump in again.

In the end, Xue Liangliang simply got on the man’s motorcycle and had him drive him into town, where he found a small shop that had just opened and picked up the phone.

Lu Yi answered. He had gone to fetch Little Yuan.

Xue Liangliang stood there beside the phone, lips pursed, hands rubbing together, counting down the seconds as he waited.

Then the phone rang, and he snatched it up at once.

“Hello, Brother Liangliang, it’s me, Little Yuan.”

“Little Yuan, my wife doesn’t want me anymore!”