CH 24

Wen Chan seemed not to be able to hear any sound at all. Wind passed through and all that existed fluttered about. But in his eyes, only this red figure that stood before him was reflected and there was no room for anything else.

Fate was boundless and those who were related by fate would surely meet.

People who weren’t supposed to show up on Wuyue Island unexpectedly showed up one by one.

These people, Zhong Wenjin, and Xie Zhaoxue who would definitely be with Liang Yanbei, have broken away from their original trajectory of life and were rushing toward a direction that Wen Chan didn’t know about. Could it be that because of his rebirth he changed the lives of those around him?

In that case, even if it was like this now, would it achieve the same end1?

Er Pi was stepped on by Liang Yanbei. So he was still anguished, wailing and incessantly screaming, “Big brother, help me — !”

Liang Yanbei felt that he was a bit noisy. As soon as the point of the sword turned down, the sharp blade immediately pierced the throat of Er Pi and blood gushed out. A large stretch flowed out in a minute, and Er Pi became completely silent.

He walked across the corpse and with a somewhat careless expression on his face, he conveniently threw off the blood beads on the blade by a flick of his hand, “You have a lot of courage to commit murder during the daytime.”

When the leader of the mountain bandits saw the aggressiveness of the person who arrived, he couldn’t help but want to retreat. The punch in the chest just now made him want to vomit blood several times. Obviously, he couldn’t hold it anymore.

Thinking about it, he tried his best to perk up a smile, “This little brother, if you have something to discuss, I wonder if you are here for wealth or for people?”

If it was for wealth then scatter money. If he was there to release people and was for this noble Ninth prince, then that would be great! Let alone somebody coming to save this hot potato, even if no one came to save him, he still wanted to tie the person to a horse, and send him as far as possible.……

Liang Yanbei glanced at Wen Chan and said without the slightest hesitation, “For a person. It’s the one next to you, let him come over now.”

When the leader of the mountain bandits saw him appearing to be negotiable, he secretly rejoiced in his heart and said, “It’s okay to let him go. But you and I have to make a gentleman’s agreement. I will let him go and you, little brother, have to leave immediately. Don’t hurt the people in my stockade.”

“A gentleman’s agreement?” Liang Yanbei looked at him who was in a bandit outfit and repeated with a laugh. The curved appearance of his eyes looked inexplicably harmless, “Okay, as long as you let him go, I promise not to hurt the people in this stockade.”

“Young master Liang, these people are nasty. You shouldn’t agree.” Ah Fu was scared that Liang Yanbei would really let them go like this. His quick mouth was met with the glare of the leader of the mountain bandits.

With Liang Yanbei’s promise, the leader of the mountain bandits didn’t bother to argue with Ah Fu. He returned the jade pendant in his hand to Wen Chan and asked people to move out of the way.

Wen Chan saw that there were no obstacles around him and Liang Yanbei. He put away the jade pendant and re-buttoned his clothes. His movements looked very calm, but those pair of white ears were stained a bit red.

The man on the opposite side was staring at him, waiting for him to walk over. Wen Chan quietly took a deep breath — in order to maintain his composure.

Qin Qi and Shu Hua surrounded Wen Chan, following his unhurried steps away from the group of mountain bandits.

Wen Chan walked to Liang Yanbei’s side and swallowed a mouthful of saliva first before asking, “Why are you here?”

“Ninth Royal Highness……”

Before he could finish speaking, Wen Chan interrupted him in a low voice, “Don’t call me that when we are away from home.”

“Oh — ” Liang Yanbei made an understanding look and shouted with a smile, “Young master Wen, can we leave first and then talk about it in detail?”

Wen Chan’s lips moved. and he seemed a little reluctant. He looked quite helpless, “I just promised somebody else that I would leave as soon as I get someone.”

In fact, what Wen Chan wanted to say was to take Zhong Wenjin along with him. But just when he opened his mouth to explain, he saw a few people suddenly coming over with light footwork. All of them were wearing red and black sleeveless clothes. But among them, there was one person who was wearing yellow and white clothes and looked relatively conspicuous.

He and Liang Yanbei were dressed up differently. With a white jade and red stone crown on top of his head, he was dressed in wide-sleeved white clothes with yellow gauze. If you look closer, you could see the yellow gauze glittering under the sunshine. He stepped on pointed ingot boots2 and when he stepped forward, the golden beans hanging on the boots were exposed, looking rich and gorgeous.

He shook his clothes, pouted his mouth, and walked over, “Liang Yanbei, you guys have gone too far. You threw me away after using me and was gone in the blink of an eye.”

As he was talking, he suddenly caught sight of Wen Chan who was standing beside Liang Yanbei. He looked at him with inquiring eyes and instantly showed a look of great surprise, “Why is he here?”

Wen Chan was surprised, “Your excellency has seen me before?”

“No!” That man answered very quickly and put away his surprised expression. But Wen Chan didn’t believe it at all.

Receiving Wen Chan’s suspicious gaze, that man took out a folding fan from his belt behind him. He unfolded it with a “swish”, covered half of his face, coughed dryly, and pretended to be very disgusted, “Tsk, are these all the people from this stockade? It’s a shame I brought so many people here!”

Wen Chan found that this person really displayed his wealth everywhere. Even the folding fan was inlaid with silver vein lines. It was unknown if it was made of silver.

When the leader of the mountain bandits saw that someone was coming again, and there were still a lot of them, he panicked, “That little brother……”

“I know, a gentleman’s agreement.” Liang Yanbei raised his eyebrows at him, “Don’t worry. I will leave now.”

After saying this, he passed the sword in his right hand to his left hand to hold it and then grabbed Wen Chan’s arm. He said with a broken mouth, “I will let you be a gentleman by dying.”

“Where are you going?” The glittering man shouted.

Liang Yanbei turned his head and gave him a bright smile, “Dan Ke, haven’t you always wanted to be a hero? Here is your chance.”

“What to do with these people?” He closed the folding fan to point it at the bunch of mountain bandits.

“Do whatever you want.” Liang Yanbei said. After speaking, he blew a frivolous whistle, “Let’s go.”

When was getting Wen Chan pulled away by him, the leader of the mountain bandits was still yelling hysterically. But he had been thinking about a question in his mind: Why did it seem like he had heard the name Dan Ke somewhere before?

Liang Yanbei didn’t pull him for a long time. He let go of his hand as soon as they got off the low slope. But what he didn’t expect was that as soon as he let go of his hold, Wen Chan stopped his steps and didn’t move.

He looked back at Wen Chan and saw that the young man was thinking about something. A pair of beautiful eyes were lost in thought. He turned back two steps, “Young master Wen, do you have something in your mind?”

Wen Chan was pulled back to his senses by his voice. He raised his head and asked him while watching him attentively, “Have you seen me in Fengcheng?”

He remembered that when he was in Fengcheng that night, the short young master who had a talk with him was calling himself Dan Ke. But he was completely different from the rich young master he had seen just now, and there was even a significant disparity in their heights.

At that time, there were two more men standing next to him and started whispering after staring at Wen Chan from the beginning to the end. Now that he thought about it, he guessed that the two men who were staring at him at that time should be Liang Yanbei and Xie Zhaoxue after disguising themselves.

After being stunned for a moment, Liang Yanbei admitted it without any concealment, “Yes. It’s just that you didn’t recognize us at the time.”

Nonsense, I can recognize ghosts when you dress up like that, okay? Wen Chan silently cursed and asked, “Then why didn’t you take the initiative to say hello to me?”

“Didn’t we do it because we were afraid of scaring you?” Liang Yanbei said indifferently. And then, as if remembering something, his tone suddenly changed and became a little plaintive, “Ai —— I don’t know why. But every time you see me, you have to leave. You look as if you don’t want to see me for thousands of years. I don’t have the courage to move forward. I still don’t have the courage to come in front of you by chance anymore……”

Wen Chan knew that he was in the wrong, and didn’t answer his words.

Unexpectedly, when Liang Yanbei saw him like this, he became unsatisfied with small gains3 and snorted, “Then for that bird that I sent before, I still haven’t received a thank you until now…… I almost forgot who I gave it to……”

Wen Chan couldn’t stand it anymore. So he took the initiative to take a step with his legs, “Let’s go, let’s go.”

Liang Yanbei caught up with him, smiling mischievously. Just after a few steps, he saw two people coming over. One was dressed in white like snow, looking graceful and calm. The other was covered in mud and blood from head to toe. You could still see a little white in that pair of eyes. The contrast between the two who were walking together was huge.

The one in white was Xie Zhaoxue who had just rescued Zhong Wenjin. His double-edged sword was covered with blood that was dripping down and was the only bright color on his body.

And the clothes of Zhong Wenjin beside him were just dirty, and most of his body was stained with blood. It seemed that he had gone through a fierce battle. His walking posture was rather complacent. With his hands behind his back, he smiled exposing a mouthful of white teeth. He simply didn’t care that his body was dirty and muddy.

As he approached, Xie Zhaoxue paused on his steps and looked at Wen Chan with a look of surprise, “His Ninth Royal Highness is really here.”

“What do you mean? Can I still lie to you?” Zhong Wenjin was not happy when he heard it, and he snorted angrily when Xie Zhaoxue’s meaningful glance swept at him.

“Ninth Royal Highness is not injured, is he?” Xie Zhaoxue asked Liang Yanbei.

“No. Let’s go first and take people out quickly.” He shook his head and glanced at Zhong Wenjin disgustedly, “Somebody needs to clean up.”

In fact, it was not only Liang Yanbei who regarded Zhong Wenjin with disdain, even Wen Chan, who had a good temper, was quite uncomfortable. And Zhong Wenjin was separated and was walked all the way to the entrance of the stockade.

The horses of the mountain bandits were originally tied to the entrance of the stockade. At this time, there were not only a few more horses but also a vermilion carriage. The carriage had a pointed roof. The four corners of the roof were upturned, and large golden tassels hung down from it. The carriage was sealed on three sides, and there were blinds on the left and right sides. A few inches under the window was a large word “Dan”, which highlighted the owner of the carriage.

Qin Qi pulled the horse for Wen Chan. Ah Fu ran over, crouched on the ground, and said, “Young master, step on this little one to get on the horse.”

Wen Chan felt helpless for a while. He walked over and was about to mount his horse, but was suddenly held by a hand. He turned his head and saw that it was Liang Yanbei.

Without waiting for Wen Chan to ask, Liang Yanbei pointed at the luxurious horse carriage and said, “Your Highness, you go and sit in the carriage. I will ask your guard to drive the carriage for you.”

Wen Chan glanced at the carriage, “It’s not good to sit in someone else’s carriage without authorization……”

“Compared with your Royal Highness’s noble body, Dan Ke only deserves to ride on a horse. Just leave him a horse.” Liang Yanbei smiled as if he was joking. He pulled Wen chan away by two steps and said to Qin Qi and Shu Hua, “You guys go drive the carriage.”

Qin Qi and Ah Fu also wanted Wen Chan to ride in a carriage. At least their thoughts were a bit similar to that of Liang Yanbei. Wen Chan’s body was delicate and was suitable for riding in a carriage. So the two ran with jolting buttocks4 to untie the rope tied to the horse, leaving only Shu Hua who was still waiting for Wen Chan’s order.

“I also want to ride in a carriage.” Zhong Wenjin heard the conversation here and came over shamelessly, “I’m almost exhausted from being here these days. I can’t ride a horse at all.”

Liang Yanbei was in the middle of untying the horse’s rope, and when he heard these words, he threw a glance at him and asked, “Do you have a noble status as his Royal Highness?”

Zhong Wenjin choked, “Of course not.”

“Then what qualifications do you have to ride with his Ninth Royal Highness?” He walked over while pulling the horse and handed the horse’s rope to Zhong Wenjin. He said with a smile, “Follow closely. If you get lost, your little uncle will have to bother looking for you again.”

different routes to the same destination (idiom); fig. different means of achieving the same end

lit. win an inch, want a foot (idiom); fig. not satisfied with small gains / give him an inch, and he’ll want a mile

Eage