Chapter 304 - 131: Night Raid

Chapter 304: Chapter 131: Night Raid

"You mean, the person I’m looking for—"

"Is you."

A bad feeling suddenly washed over Zhang Shutong. He subconsciously reached for his phone, but Lu Qinglian lightly plucked it from his grasp.

"To be precise, Grandma is the one looking for you."

"Why is she looking for me?" Zhang Shutong recalled his experience in the last timeline. He didn’t know why he had gone to the Cyan Snake Temple, but he had developed an anxiety disorder after returning.

’Wait, has something like this happened before?’

The thought suddenly occurred to him, but the answer was unknowable. He still clearly remembered what Lu Qinglian had said on the mountain not long ago: "Try to stay away from my grandmother. I’m not sure how long I can hide you." He couldn’t understand why she was now saying something completely contradictory.

Then, Zhang Shutong figured something else out—

A question he had subconsciously ignored: what would he miss by staying in the city hospital for a week?

The answer was:

The very chance to meet Lu Qinglian!

When he really thought about it, Lu Qinglian would never leave the island to visit him. If he went off-island, it meant he wouldn’t have any opportunity to interact with her for the entire next week.

Zhang Shutong’s hand clenched the bedsheet.

"You’d better explain things clearly."

"Do I need to spell it out for you?" Lu Qinglian retorted softly. "You’re all alone here. You have no way to resist, and even if you did, I could still take you away."

"You said before that you had to hide me from your grandmother. What’s happened since I passed out?"

"I should be the one asking you that. What happened *to you* after you passed out? You seem very resistant to the idea of going to the temple." She tilted her head. "Did you have a similar dream before, or... have you been dreaming again?"

Zhang Shutong stared at her intently, then suddenly relaxed.

"You did that on purpose, didn’t you? You’ve been trying to trick me into talking this whole time."

"So you noticed." As she spoke, Lu Qinglian’s intimidating aura suddenly vanished. She listlessly broke off a segment of a tangerine and popped it into her mouth.

"If you really wanted to kidnap me, you would’ve done it already instead of wasting time talking to me." Zhang Shutong felt his back was slick with sweat. "I know you saved my life, but could you please not be so terrifying?"

"Terrifying you? Hmm, you can think of it that way for now." Lu Qinglian stood up, chewing the tangerine segment daintily. "Clay figures."

"Clay figures?" Most people would have found those two words baffling, but Zhang Shutong knew she was answering his initial question—what exactly that woman was.

He wasn’t sure why those two words sounded somewhat familiar, as if he’d heard them before, and yet also as if he hadn’t.

"What are ’clay figures’?"

"Exactly what they sound like."

"Why did they turn into those two people?"

Lu Qinglian glanced at him.

"It was my first time seeing something like that, too."

...

「Inside the villa. The study.」

A man hung up the phone and wearily pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Come in."

He spoke casually, and a man in a black windbreaker entered and came before him. The bodyguard bowed and presented a sealed, waterproof bag to the man.

"President Gu, the avalanche site has been cleared. We found some plastic fragments, probably from the motorcycle." The bodyguard paused, then added, "There was one other thing, but it was probably dropped by that student, too..."

Gu Jianhong took the plastic bag. It was still slightly cool to the touch, but the melted snow had been wiped completely clean. He opened the seal and pulled out a piece of cardstock.

It was a photograph.

The photo was soaked through.

In the photo was the young man he had seen in the hospital room that morning.

However, the person in the photo could only be described as a boy. Although it was the same person, he was much younger than the one in the hospital room.

It was a face full of boyish innocence.

He looked to be seven or eight years old.

It was an ordinary photo, the kind one takes as a souvenir on a trip. He was the only one in the frame.

The seven-or-eight-year-old boy had short, choppy black hair and a brilliant smile. The background was...

The island’s harbor.

Gu Jianhong turned the photo over and found four small words written in black marker:

—Nice to meet you.