Chapter 616: In Imminent Danger

Chapter 616: Chapter 616: In Imminent Danger

Ren Si scoffed, looking at her. "That’s what I think, too. Dislike is dislike. If she had a problem with it, she shouldn’t have given birth to me on that day. I can’t decide my own birthday, after all. But I came to terms with it a long time ago. She may not like me, but she still has to raise me, right?"

Shen Ningning said nothing, only watching Ren Si with a look of heartfelt sympathy.

Ren Si tutted. "Don’t you pity me. I don’t need it. Your situation isn’t much better than mine. I’m actually the one who wants to ask—don’t you hate us? Why were you willing to come back?"

At this, she feigned surprise. "You didn’t poison the food you brought me, did you?"

Shen Ningning played along, trying to scare her. "You guessed it. I poisoned it. We have no quarrel, but I still want you dead. You’ll start feeling the pain any second now. Scared?"

Ren Si dropped her chopsticks and clutched her stomach, crying, "Oww, oww," as if she were in terrible pain.

But when she saw Shen Ningning watching her and trying to stifle a laugh, Ren Si couldn’t keep up the act.

She laughed and sat up straight. "Darn, I really can’t fool you. Good thing I could tell you weren’t the type to hurt anyone the moment I first saw you."

"How can you be so sure? Like you said, I should hate you all. Your mother seduced Governor Ren. It would only be right for me to avenge my own mother, wouldn’t it?"

"That’s true, but if you really hated them, you wouldn’t have written all those letters checking in on Father. To be honest—and I hope this doesn’t upset you—my mother intercepted all those letters. She never gave them to Father. She probably didn’t want you two to get in touch again."

Shen Ningning lowered her gaze. ’Ren Liuyue probably tried to mend her relationship with her father in private, didn’t she? What a shame. Governor Ren and her stepmother conspired to kill her.’

Ren Si said, "You brought me food today. I’ll remember this kindness. From now on, I’ll keep an eye out and make sure no one in this manor bullies you."

Shen Ningning snapped out of her thoughts and broke into a smile. "You, protect me? I think I’ll pass. Ren Er and Ren San gang up on you, and Mrs. Ren doesn’t even take your side. You should just worry about protecting yourself."

Ren Si grew flustered. "That’s just because I don’t want to stoop to their level! Before you arrived, I overheard Father telling Mother to be careful of you because you would attract lightning and disaster. But now I don’t think that’s necessarily true. They’re just afraid Heaven will find out about their guilty consciences. Besides..."

"Wait," Shen Ningning cut off Ren Si’s chatter. "What did you just say? They knew I could summon lightning before I even arrived?"

Ren Si nodded. "Yes. Father said you would bring disaster, including floods. I thought it was all just sensational nonsense, but when I saw you really could summon lightning, I started to believe it a little. But I know you only did that to scare them into leaving you alone, so I figured the floods would be for the same reason."

Shen Ningning was utterly stunned. Something was very wrong.

’Summoning the lightning was a spur-of-the-moment decision. How could Governor Ren have known beforehand?’

’Could it be that Governor Ren already knows my true identity? That he knows I’m not Ren Liuyue, but Shen Ningning?’

’No...’

’If he knew, he would have been on his best behavior from the start instead of testing me repeatedly.’

’Don’t tell me he can predict the future?’

Once Ren Si finished eating, Shen Ningning was in no mood to stay. She grabbed the food container and left in a hurry.

The drizzle had turned into a downpour. With a heavy heart, she rushed back to her room and told Mo Lingwei what she had discovered from Ren Si.

Mo Lingwei’s gaze sharpened. "If what she said is true, then it explains why Ren Pengyi built such a high flood barrier. He thinks you’re going to cause a flood."

"How is that possible? Causing a flood would hurt people and do me no good. Why would I ever do that?" Shen Ningning knitted her brows.

Mo Lingwei stood by the window, his narrow, dark eyes fixed on the relentlessly rainy sky. The rain had been falling for the better part of the day.

He turned to look back at Shen Ningning. "Can you make the rain stop?"

Shen Ningning nodded. "That’s easy."

She reached into her sleeve, pulled out two golden fruits, and crushed them. Then, she waited quietly.

Usually, a golden light would quickly shoot into the dark clouds, scattering them and restoring calm to the sky.

However, the two golden fruits Shen Ningning had crushed failed to stop the rain.

She frowned. ’That’s not right...’

So, she immediately crushed three or four more.

To her surprise, the rain kept falling.

Shen Ningning sensed something was amiss. "I’m going into the Immortal Realm to check."

’Could something have gone wrong in there?’

Mo Lingwei waited patiently. A moment later, Shen Ningning emerged, her face pale.

"There’s a Thunder Hall in the Immortal Realm, and it’s glowing red. It’s saying something about ’magnetic field interference.’ I don’t understand. What should I do?"

"You can’t fix it?" To Mo Lingwei, all of this sounded like something out of a fairy tale.

And as for ’magnetic field interference,’ he couldn’t even begin to comprehend what that meant.

Shen Ningning shook her head. "I don’t know how to fix it, only how to use it."

She suddenly remembered that Master Gu had been a senior spaceship engineer who worked with her mother. If she wrote to him, he might know something.

Shen Ningning quickly took out paper and a brush to write a letter. Mo Lingwei summoned a Hidden Guard and ordered him to deliver it to the Capital City with all possible speed.

The young woman stood before the window, a faint worry in her dark, luminous eyes.

She gazed through the rainy night toward a distant, towering mountain. Its peak was capped with white snow—it was Tianshan Mountain, her destination.

’I hope this rain doesn’t affect the Snow Lotus on Tianshan Mountain.’

Mo Lingwei saw her concern and took her hand. "I’ll start making arrangements in the next day or two. We’ll head up the mountain as soon as we can, retrieve the Snow Lotus, and then decide what’s next."

The next day, however, a Hidden Guard brought news.

A spy had been discovered in the city and had reportedly fled toward the Snow Mountain.

As a result, the path to the Snow Mountain had been sealed off. Even the villagers living at the mountain’s base had been evacuated to the city.

The area around the Snow Mountain was now being patrolled by soldiers, and no unauthorized personnel were allowed to ascend.

Upon hearing this news, Shen Ningning was completely certain. "Governor Ren must have known what I was planning to do."

"He might not know what *you* were planning, but rather what was about to happen on the Snow Mountain. Otherwise, with his cunning, he would have made a move against us by now," Mo Lingwei mused thoughtfully.

Shen Ningning also fell into a thoughtful silence.

This was the first time either of them had ever encountered a situation like this.

Right now, the only thing Shen Ningning was sure of was that Governor Ren didn’t yet know she was impersonating Ren Liuyue.

But he definitely had some method that made it seem as if he could predict the future.

Just then, the Hidden Guard whom Mo Lingwei had assigned to monitor Governor Ren’s movements returned.

"Your Highness, we’ve discovered that Governor Ren has sent men to the village where Fang Huan used to live. They’re bringing one of his relatives here. I’m afraid your and the Princess’s identities will be exposed."

"Why are they bringing someone here?"

"The official reason, I hear, is to transfer Fang Huan’s family records from his jade slip, formally making him a son-in-law who has married into the Ren family."

Governor Ren had found a perfectly legitimate-sounding excuse, but in reality, he must have grown suspicious of Shen Ningning and Mo Lingwei’s identities.