Chapter 146
Pan Yue's hand tightened as he pulled Pan Shulin to check him over: "How are you? Are you alright? Were you hurt?"
Pan Shulin shook his head, his face pale. Pan Yue then looked at the drenched ger standing to the side; this person was his younger brother's attendant. Though the attendant was also pale, his condition seemed far better than Pan Shulin's, which offered Pan Yue some small relief.
Pan Shulin trembled as he clutched Pan Yue's sleeve: "Brother, I'm fine, but A-Yao... A-Yao he..."
"Xi Yao?"
Pan Yue's heart jumped with alarm, and he hurriedly searched around. Sure enough, among the group of people, there was no sign of Xi Yao.
His heart turned cold, a trace of panic flashing in his eyes.
Xi Yao was the city lord's only younger brother. Before diving underwater, Cheng Li had repeatedly warned Pan Yue that he must protect him at all costs.
"Where is he?!" Pan Yue asked the beastmen beside him.
The beastmen shook their heads: "When we arrived, we only saw Young Master Pan."
Pan Yue looked at Pan Shulin. Pan Shulin trembled and said: "A-Yao slipped and fell first. I called for help while trying to pull him, but I couldn't hold on, and we both fell into the water."
Both fell into the water? Then what about underwater?
Pan Yue looked at those beastmen again. The beastmen looked at each other and said: "...We didn't see the young master when we went into the water to rescue Young Master Pan..."
Hearing this, Pan Shulin lowered his eyes, concealing their gloomy gleam, and pretended to sob sadly: "A-Yao fell earlier than I did, he must have been washed away by the water..."
Pan Yue's expression tightened with alarm. "Shulin, where exactly did you fall in?" he asked urgently.
Pan Shulin pointed in a direction with a trembling hand. Pan Yue quickly transformed into his beastman form and leaped into the water.
A moment later, he emerged from the water and went down again... After repeating this many times, he came back onto the boat disappointed, his face full of grief and guilt: "What should we do? How do we explain this to the City Lord and Brother Cheng Li..."
"Explain what?" As soon as Pan Yue's voice fell, Cheng Li boarded the boat from the water nearby.
Pan Yue's face turned pale. He stepped forward, head lowered: "Brother... Brother Cheng... The young master..."
Pan Yue found it difficult to speak. Cheng Li scanned the area once, saw Pan Shulin and his attendant dripping wet, and his heart shook. He hurried to look inside the cabin, it was empty.
Frowning, Cheng Li turned back to look at Pan Yue and asked: "What happened to the young master?"
Pan Yue took a deep breath, gritted his teeth and said: "He... fell into the water and disappeared."
"!" Cheng Li's eyes widened in disbelief. "Where did he go into the water?" he demanded, his voice sharp.
Pan Yue led Cheng Li to a spot and pointed out the direction. Cheng Li was about to jump in and search when Pan Yue quickly spoke up: "I searched several times. Nothing."
"..." Cheng Li's face turned somewhat pale: "The young master cannot come to harm."
With that, he plunged headfirst into the water. He remained submerged for a long time before finally surfacing to gasp for air, only to dive back down immediately. Seeing this, Pan Yue said to the other beastmen on the boat: "Everyone listen up, all beastmen follow me into the water to search. We must find the young master."
"Yes," everyone complied.
The attendant saw this and walked over to Pan Shulin. He looked at Pan Shulin, a trace of guilt and fear in his eyes.
Pan Shulin gave him a firm nod, reached out to hold his hand, and looked at him. They appeared to be comforting each other, but in reality, Pan Shulin was reassuring the attendant. His expression seemed to be telling the attendant to rest easy...
Where the sea met the sky, a magnificent silver fish leaped from the water. It was nearly the size of a small boat, with a smooth, rounded head, a pointed beak, and fins whose sharp tips resembled blades. Its tail was large and luxuriant, trailing behind it like elegant, sheer gauze as it moved through the water—both mysterious and beautiful.
Most peculiarly, it had a fin on its back that grew in an extremely strange manner, like an open umbrella. The umbrella surface was transparent and thin, but inside were many white bony spines that supported the fin. The fin was usually folded up; when folded, it resembled a single bony spine on its back. But after emerging from the sea, the fin opened. Layer upon layer of transparent gauze spread out. As the sea wind blew, the gauze drifted with the wind, flowing elegantly like decorative curtains deliberately hung.
Beneath these gauze curtains, which should have revealed only the smooth surface of the fish's back, lay a person...
That person was dressed in a white long robe, now soaked and clinging to his body, outlining his delicate frame. His black long hair was wet and stuck to his cheeks, making his face appear extremely small, as if a single palm could completely cover it.
His features were exquisitely delicate, as if painted by a master's hand. Though he possessed an extremely outstanding appearance, his skin was now deathly pale, and a shadow of death lingered between his brows. His eyes were tightly closed, and he remained motionless, showing no signs of life.
The drifting gauze curtains had mucus on them, occasionally brushing over his body and face. He showed no reaction.
The silver fish seemed to notice this condition. It opened its pointed beak and let out a cry, as if mourning.
Soon, it stirred up huge waves. Its large, fluffy tail suddenly flipped up. The transparent gauze of the tail fin carried a viscous substance that slapped onto that person's face. Some of it entered the person's mouth through his slightly parted, pale lips...
A short while later, that person moved his lips slightly, and some color returned to his complexion. The person let out a very soft moan...
The silver fish seemed to hear him. Its dark, intelligent eyes rolled with lively spirit.
It happily jumped twice on the sea surface, as if mindful of the person on its back, it jumped very low and swam extremely slowly...
"Stop this nonsense, it's impossible for me to run away with you. I don't like you at all." Scattered images flashed through his mind, finally settling on Cheng Bai's impatient face.
"Brother Bai, I don't believe any of what you're saying. If you don't like me, why would you spend every day with me recently? What I said about running away together just now was serious. Brother Bai, think about it carefully. I'll wait for your message back in the pavilion."
Wang Jin's mind flashed to the scene of Xi Yao sitting blankly in the pavilion for an entire day. He had been waiting for Cheng Bai's message.
Then, the scene changed to a piece of paper being slipped through the door crack, exactly like when Wang Jin had discovered that letter before.
The paper was in his hand. Xi Yao opened the door but couldn't see anyone.
Xi Yao opened the paper. Written on it was—Meet at the city gate tomorrow at Chenshi (7-9 AM). The signature was Cheng Bai.
Overjoyed, Xi Yao gathered the gold and silver jewelry and change of clothes he had hidden, and secretly slipped away...
Wang Jin's fingers twitched slightly. His eyes opened a slit, but were forced shut again by the blinding sunlight. After several attempts, once he had adapted to the light, he slowly opened his eyes.
What met his eyes was a clear blue sky... the view was open, the scenery incredibly beautiful, but Wang Jin was in no mood to appreciate it.
He remembered everything now... the memories the original owner had lost.
That day, the original owner had slipped away to the city gate, thinking he would meet Cheng Bai. Who would have thought that waiting for him weren't Cheng Bai, but several unfamiliar beastmen.
Those beastmen told the original owner that they were sent by Cheng Bai to take him to Cheng Bai. The simple-minded original owner didn't think much of it and went with them.
As a result, those beastmen took the original body deep into the jungle and tried to kill him.
The original owner nearly lost his life to them several times. In his desperation, he used beast taming art, summoning fierce beasts to block those beastmen, and escaped.
But this was only the beginning of the original owner's nightmare. He lost his way in the jungle, and further confused by his own terrible imagination, he thought those beastmen were sent by Cheng Bai to kill him. Heartbroken and despairing, he nearly died in the jungle several times, but was saved each time by his uncontrollable beast taming ability...
Those beastmen kept pursuing him to kill him, most were killed by the fierce beasts the original owner summoned. The last beastman, before dying, revealed the truth. Only then did the original owner know that it was Pan Shulin who sent him the letter to lure him out of the city and sent people to kill him.
But by then, he was completely lost in the jungle and couldn't find his way back at all.
Trapped in the forest for many days, finally, in a daze and utterly exhausted, the original owner stumbled into the hunting grounds of the Danmu tribe and collapsed there. He was picked up by a beastman from the Danmu tribe, fell seriously ill, and without timely treatment, lost his memory and went mad...
Later, in the Danmu tribe, he suffered repeated bullying and ultimately died there...
Wang Jin took a deep breath. So the 'last time' Pan Shulin mentioned referred to the original owner's disappearance...
Pan Shulin had wanted to kill the original owner from a very long time ago...
But why?
Pan Shulin and the original owner had no grievances and weren't acquainted. It was true that Pan Shulin had always looked down on the original owner, always sneering and making sarcastic remarks when they met, but other than that, the two had no other interaction. What kind of great hatred made Pan Shulin resort to such a ruthless hand?
A person surfaced in Wang Jin's mind—Cheng Bai.
Cheng Bai was engaged to the original owner. Pan Shulin had always liked Cheng Bai.
Could it be that he tried to kill the original owner because of this?
But Cheng Bai had always been rejecting the original owner.
Even so, Pan Shulin still wanted to kill the original owner. He was so vicious.
A wave of anger welled up in Wang Jin's heart. When the original owner slipped away, he thought he was eloping with Cheng Bai and deliberately cleared his tracks to avoid being followed.
This, however, meant that no one knew the actual circumstances at the time, and everyone uniformly believed the original owner had left voluntarily. The original owner was from the Xi family; as long as he didn't proactively provoke fierce beasts in the jungle, and unless the beasts were starving, they generally wouldn't attack him. So even knowing the original owner had slipped away on his own, no one thought he would be in life-threatening danger.
After learning of Xi Yao's disappearance, City Lord Xi Ning and Cheng Li immediately arranged for people to search, even driving Cheng Bai out of Ning'an City to search...
Although everyone had some doubts about the original owner running out of the city on his own, no one thought it had anything to do with Pan Shulin, let alone that he was the one who orchestrated it. Even more audaciously, he concealed it from everyone and sent beastmen to assassinate the original owner.
After the original owner died in the Danmu tribe, Wang Jin's soul took over the body upon revival but lost all memory. He could not recall any of these events, and so Pan Shulin's crime remained concealed until now.
If he hadn't remembered this time, Pan Shulin's crime might have remained hidden forever, never uncovered.
Pan Shulin was deeply hidden.
This time he wanted to kill him, a large reason was definitely because he learned that he had taken the medicine and was about to remember everything. He was afraid that Wang Jin would expose his crime, so he planned to strike first!
Wang Jin was so angry his fingers trembled.
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