Chapter 564: Everyone’s Here, Right?

5:47.

Zhenwu Mountain Scenic Area ticket office.

“Haaah—!”

The ticket clerk left on duty stood up with a stretch, picked up the ring of keys from the desk, switched off the lights, and walked out of the booth.

The sky had gone completely dark. The last bus from Shizhou City had already arrived and was parked in the scenic area lot. Until daybreak, no more tourists would be coming here. A long night lay ahead; calling over a few buddies from the sightseeing cable car station and the security office for a little drink sounded like a fine way to pass it.

“Tap-tap—tap-tap—!”

He had just stepped out of the ticket booth when he heard a flurry of hurried footsteps, as if someone were sprinting toward him. Looking in the direction of the sound, he soon saw a dusty, disheveled “girl” rush into view.

The “girl” stopped in front of him, braced “herself” against the wall to steady “her” balance, and panted hard, “her” flat chest rising and falling violently. “She” seemed utterly exhausted. “Her” cherry-pink little mouth opened, but for a long moment “she” could not manage a complete sentence.

“I, I… Shizhou… bus… left… Lu…”

The ticket clerk fought down the urge to pluck the twigs out of the “girl’s” hair. He listened blankly for a while before his eyes lit up.

“Oh—! I get it. You mean the last bus, right?”

“It left already. Been gone almost ten minutes. If you want to get to Shizhou City now, you’ll have to walk to the little town five kilometers away and catch a ride there, won’t you?”

“Personally, though, I’d suggest staying the night at one of the mountain homestays and coming back for the first bus at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. Those five kilometers are all mountain road, and once it’s dark there’s barely anyone out there. Not very safe.”

At that, Fang Ji froze, and the light in his eyes dimmed.

Back at Hongyan Villa, he had heard that Lu Yibei had only just left for Shizhou City, and that the last bus from Zhenwu Mountain to Shizhou City would not depart for more than half an hour. He had thought catching up to Lu Yibei would be easy. In a sense, he really had caught up.

At his closest, he had been only about a hundred meters from Lu Yibei.

Yet reality was often cruelest at the very instant one glimpsed a radiant hope, hurling down a heavy, endless gray in its place. Fang Ji had thought that narrowing the gap to a hundred meters was a milestone. If he could get just a little closer and call Lu Yibei’s name, surely he could make him stop.

He had never imagined that would be the high point.

After that, he had run into one accident after another.

A passing disciple of the Great Pure Palace mistook him for an ex-girlfriend who had swindled him out of money and affection, and tangled him up for a while. Though the misunderstanding was quickly cleared up, and the other party even tried to invite him to a meal as an apology.

He was nearly caught in the crossfire of the Mountain-Guarding Divine Beast, which, after being neglected by Lu Yibei and then frightened by Huá Sāng, had gone off alone to vent. A jet of water blasted into the wall. Though Fang Ji was not hurt, he did gain the enviable chance to pet the divine beast.

In front of the Xuanwu Terrace sightseeing cable car ticket station, he accidentally stepped on two watermelon rinds someone had tossed aside, slid several meters straight into the greenery, and rolled down a small slope. The slope was not too steep, and the summer vegetation was lush, so he was not injured. He even unexpectedly found a gold necklace some tourist had dropped. But by the time he climbed back up, the sightseeing cable car had closed for the day…

Without the cable car, he could only sprint all the way down the mountain road, hoping to make it before the last bus departed. Falling rocks, wrong turns, vicious dogs blocking the path… after stumbling through one scare after another, he finally reached the bus stop, only to still be ten minutes too late.

It was as if an invisible barrier stood around Lu Yibei, turning that hundred meters into an unreachable distance.

“Can I really… not catch up?” Fang Ji murmured.

By all rights, after so many accidents, he should have given up tracking Lu Yibei long ago. But because of that familiar, intimate aura on Lu Yibei, it was as though a voice in his heart kept urging him onward, forcing him to keep going.

In the silence, he reached into his trouser pocket. The instant his fingertips touched the Paper Cicada Immortal, his body stiffened slightly. Then he pulled it out, glanced at it, and frowned.

At some point, the Paper Cicada Immortal had been damaged. A small slit had opened in its round little belly, and the glass vial inside its abdomen had cracked as well. A thick, tar-like liquid was seeping out, staining most of its tiny body black.

“It’s leaking? When did that happen… Why would there be liquid inside the Paper Cicada Immortal?” Fang Ji muttered, full of doubts.

According to the information about the Paper Cicada Immortal that he had suddenly “remembered,” it should have been nothing more than a simple puppet. Normally, there would not be any container full of strange liquid inside it.

“Beep-beep—!”

A car horn sounded.

He looked over and saw a military-green Wrangler pull up in front of the ticket office gate.

The ticket clerk seemed to know the middle-aged man behind the wheel. Hearing the horn, he waved with a smile. “Yo, Old He, where are you headed this late at night?”

“Back to the city!” The middle-aged man leaned over and replied, “It’s my daughter’s birthday tomorrow. I’m heading back early to prepare a surprise for her.”

“Ha, you really do spoil her!”

As they exchanged greetings, the middle-aged man noticed Fang Ji standing behind the ticket clerk. He raised an eyebrow and pointed at him.

“And that young lady is?”

The ticket clerk froze, only then realizing Fang Ji still had not left. He hurriedly explained, “This young lady says she wants to go to the city, but she missed the last bus…”

Halfway through, something occurred to him, and his eyes lit up.

“Hey, right, Old He. Aren’t you going to the city too? Why not give the young lady a lift?”

At that, Fang Ji lit up as if he had just heard that the next period’s PE class would proceed as scheduled. He quickly chimed in, “Yes, yes, uncle, I’m going to the city too. Could I trouble you to take me along?”

“As long as… as long as we catch up to the bus ahead! I-I can pay you the fare!”

“That’s right, Old He,” the ticket seller said. “The last bus only left a little while ago. Maybe you can still catch it!”

The middle-aged man looked at the ticket seller, then at Fang Ji, his expression troubled. “Well, it’s not that I don’t want to help, but I’m a grown man driving a young girl along mountain roads at night. If something happens… how am I supposed to explain myself?”

“…”

The ticket clerk looked as if he wanted to speak, but stopped.

Seeing this, Fang Ji hurried two steps forward, his face flushing red, and explained, “I… I’m a boy. It’s fine!”

The middle-aged man and the ticket seller: “???”

A boy?

Uh, how to put this… If a boy looks like you, he still needs to be careful when he’s out and about!

And so, two minutes later, Fang Ji successfully hitched a ride and set off on a journey whose future was uncertain.

————

Night hung heavy. Not long after the sun had set, darkness had impatiently swallowed the last trace of light in the mountains.

The bus to Shizhou City wound its way along the mountain road. The cabin lights were off, and the faint orange glow of the aisle lamps sketched out the silhouettes of four passengers.

As if deliberately keeping their distance, they sat in different parts of the bus, using the dim light as cover to watch one another in secret, each with their own thoughts.

The driver, wholly focused on the road, had no idea that behind him, psychic senses and gazes had already tangled together like a ball of yarn clawed into a mess.

The air inside the bus had drawn tight like a sieve, filtering out the wind beyond the windows and the rumble of the engine until only slow, heavy heartbeats remained.

Huá Sāng sat sideways in the first row by the door. Her peripheral vision lingered on Salih and Shem for two seconds, then shifted to the last row, to the girl sitting by the window on the left.

Thinking back on what had happened earlier, she felt the entire affair was far too strange.

She was certain that the figure she had seen while falling through the waterfall cluster, bare-chested and with his pants halfway down, had been Lu Yibei.

But after that, whether among the waterfalls or around the small lake below them, she had not seen another trace of Lu Yibei.

Logically speaking, both her Spirit Pattern and her Spirit Seal had a strong affinity with water. The psychic energy fluctuations stirred up by rushing water should have had almost no effect on her psychic perception.

Even if Lu Yibei had melted into that turbulent current, she should have been able to sense him.

But…

Lu Yibei’s psychic energy fluctuation signature had vanished into thin air, leaving no trace behind. Huá Sāng searched around the waterfall cluster for a while and, only after considerable effort, found an unfamiliar psychic energy signature. She followed it all the way to the bus stop, only to see the girl sitting in the back row.

Surely Lu Yibei couldn’t turn into a girl the moment he touched water, right? It wasn’t like he was some character who had walked out of an old-school manga…

Huá Sāng thought.

If she hadn’t run into those two men who had once spoken with Lu Yibei, she would already have been ready to turn back, return to the Great Pure Palace, and continue slacking off.

This time, Lu Yibei had magically disappeared right in front of her, making her even more interested in the secrets surrounding him.

Her mindset had quietly shifted from “too troublesome, can’t be bothered to look into it unless the answer smacks me in the face” to “if it isn’t too troublesome, investigating a little wouldn’t be impossible.”

In addition, the faint pain coming from her heart also left her somewhat worried.

It felt as though countless sharp thorns had pierced into her heart, and after the wounds miraculously healed, those thorns had been grown over by flesh and blood.

That sensation had suddenly appeared after Lu Yibei disappeared. Huá Sāng felt that perhaps there was some subtle connection between the two things.

And now, those two men and the girl who had appeared right after Lu Yibei vanished were on the bus at the same time. That barely counted as the trail linking up again. All she had to do was follow them.

This belonged in the category of “not too troublesome.”

Not too troublesome.

…

While Huá Sāng was lost in thought, Salih and Shem were speaking quietly in voices only the two of them could hear.

“Elder, do you truly think the Holy Son has some connection to that young lady in the back row?” Salih asked.

“Without a doubt!” Shem said with certainty. “I followed the fragrance of the Flower of Miracles all the way here. There is absolutely no mistake!”

In fact, from her, I smelled a fragrance even richer than the Holy Son’s… Shem added inwardly.

If he weren’t completely certain that the Holy Son was male, and that he had merely gone missing rather than fallen, he would almost have thought that girl was the new Holy Son.

“Then could it be possible that the girl is the Holy Son, transformed?” Salih ventured. “Changing from head to toe in such a short time—even gender and psychic energy fluctuation signature—could also be considered a kind of miracle!”

“…” Shem pondered for a moment, then nodded slightly. “You have a point. We need to find an opportunity to confirm it.”

As he spoke, he glanced at the girl in the back row, then shifted his gaze to Huá Sāng and stared at her for a long while.

“That person who was following the Holy Son is still here. For now, it isn’t convenient to approach that young lady. Looks like we can only wait until after we get off the bus and find another chance,” Shem said in a low voice.

“Elder…” Salih asked, “After we get off the bus and make contact with that young lady, if we confirm that she truly has a close relationship with the Holy Son, what should we do?”

Shem thought for a moment, then said seriously, “First, contact the other elders and inform them that we’ve already found the Holy Son. Second, do whatever needs doing.”

“Hm?” Salih frowned, confusion appearing in his deep-set eyes and brows.

“Idiot. To put it simply, whatever the Holy Son tells us to do, we do!” Shem scolded in a low voice.

Hearing this, Salih glanced from the corner of his eye at the girl in the back row and nodded thoughtfully.

In other words, if we confirm that young lady’s identity, then whatever she does, we follow along and do it too, right?

…

That girl in the front row, and those two men, are most likely two of the three groups that were following me earlier. I can’t believe that after putting in so much effort, I only managed to shake off one group.

And those flip-flops…

I’ve definitely seen them somewhere recently!

Lu Yibei thought, her eyes hidden beneath the brim of her cap as she looked toward the back of the girl by the bus door. Fragments of memory kept flashing before her eyes, finally freezing on Huá Sāng. Then the figures of the girl and Huá Sāng gradually overlapped in her mind.

Huá Sāng?

She’s Huá Sāng?!

Lu Yibei was startled by the thought that flashed through her mind. She stared blankly at the girl’s back.

She had seen those Hello Kitty flip-flops on Huá Sāng’s feet—back at Hua City Airport, when Huá Sāng had used her legs to lock down the arm of that gun-wielding thug.

Her eyes had clearly caught the instant Huá Sāng raised her leg: her toes had clenched tightly to keep the flip-flop from falling off.

Although such a tiny movement was easy to overlook and would usually be forgotten after one glance, Lu Yibei’s memory had always been excellent. Even if she had ignored it at the time, after thinking back on it, she was still certain she had seen it before.

Right after that, she compared Huá Sāng’s figure with the girl’s in her mind and suddenly realized that the two were almost exactly identical, from the contour of the chin to height, shoulder width, and even hair length.

Putting all that information together, she was about seventy percent certain that the girl was Huá Sāng. But…

That was still far from enough!

Wasn’t seventy percent certainty basically the same as none at all?

After all, her psychic sense had not detected any psychic energy fluctuation from that girl.

True, back in Hua City, Huá Sāng had also sealed all her psychic energy fluctuations inside her body out of concern that the night erosion within her might leak out, making her impossible to detect.

But aside from psychic energy fluctuations and those similar details, that girl’s appearance was still far too different from Huá Sāng’s.

If she had to make a comparison, it would be like a dirty little cat covered head to toe in mud versus a tiny Ragdoll kitten that had just been bathed, blow-dried, smelled wonderful all over, and was meme-worthy levels of cute.

Even if both were cats, it would still be hard to equate them.

If it was finally confirmed that she really was Huá Sāng, Lu Yibei only wanted to say one thing: women truly were terrifying creatures.

As for how to confirm whether she was Huá Sāng…

A test would tell!

At this thought, Lu Yibei’s gaze narrowed slightly.

Although she was very certain that Huá Sāng couldn’t possibly recognize her—whether as Lu Yibei or as Calamity, it was impossible!

After all, at this moment, not only had she completed her haunting transformation, she had also slightly adjusted her appearance and figure. Even her psychic energy fluctuations had been disguised by the jacket, which was simulating the aura of some unknown psychic from the Tang City trip to cover up her own.

But not recognizing her was one thing. Whether Huá Sāng might grow suspicious through other details was another matter entirely.

What I need to do now is confirm whether she’s Huá Sāng while also helping dispel the doubts in her heart.

Of course, adding just a tiny bit of cognitive misdirection in the process isn’t too much, right?

At this thought, Lu Yibei’s gaze narrowed slightly as she recalled an ability she had not used in a very long time.

Even if Huá Sāng knew Lu Yibei and knew Calamity, she absolutely couldn’t know Yun Meng, who had unfortunately met her end at Shihekou High School.

As long as I read Yun Meng’s memories and imitate the behavioral patterns within them, it will be almost equivalent to becoming another person from the inside out.

Under heaven, aside from Meow Meow-chan, who can communicate with me through eye contact, no one could possibly connect the girl in front of them with the name “Lu Yibei”!

Lu Yibei thought. She stood up, took off her hood, walked gracefully over to Huá Sāng, sat down beside her, and said in a sweet voice, “Big sister, I’ve been watching you from the back for a long time.”

Huá Sāng tilted her head and looked sidelong at the girl beside her, saying warily, “Why were you looking at me?”

Lu Yibei raised a hand to cover her little mouth, hiding the flaw that she couldn’t make herself smile, and said with a laugh, “Hehe, of course it’s because Big Sister is pretty! Big Sister, your skin is so nice, I’m so jealous. Can you tell me what brand you usually use for skincare?”

The first card to play when getting close to a girl—talk about cosmetics!

Damn it! Where did this green-tea girl come from? So annoying!

Huá Sāng grumbled inwardly, then said coldly, “Oh. Miaojie SPA.”

Lu Yibei: “???”

What the hell is Miaojie?

It sounded kind of familiar?

She searched through the dazzling array of cosmetics and various spa and beauty treatments in Yun Meng’s memories, but found no related information at all.

Seeing the girl in front of her freeze, Huá Sāng considerately explained, “Miaojie is a brand of steel wool scrubbers.”

Lu Yibei: “…”

Who the hell uses steel wool to take care of their skin!

No wonder it sounded familiar. So I’d seen it in Dad’s kitchen.

I was wondering why my whole body felt like it was burning just now. I thought I’d gotten sunburned from spending too long under the sun at Xuanwu Terrace this afternoon! Lu Yibei thought.

She was now at least ninety-nine percent certain that the girl before her was Huá Sāng. In this world, only an extraordinary woman like Huá Sāng, who could stop an Alchemy bullet with her chest, could possibly withstand a steel wool spa and emerge so smooth and radiant after the treatment. She opened her mouth, wanting to say something to Huá Sāng, but just then, the bus suddenly braked sharply and pulled over to the roadside. Immediately after, a familiar voice rang out from outside the window. “Driver, wait! Wait!”

Fang Ji had arrived right on schedule, just as he said he would, as long as he caught up to the bus. The moment he caught up, the middle-aged man’s off-road vehicle conveniently blew a cylinder and came to a halt right in front of the bus. Sensing the faint connection from the damaged Paper Cicada Immortal on Fang Ji, Lu Yibei’s eyebrows furrowed into a knot. Wasn’t this the young lady who was with Fu Xinyi before? She was the one who picked up the Paper Cicada Immortal? Good heavens, everyone’s here now, huh?