Xia Yu tilted her head, looking at Pei Yan’s surprised expression, and nodded at him: "Yeah, you didn’t forget to bring a change of clothes, did you?"
"I do have a change of clothes." Pei Yan said while touching his ring. Since the Spring Festival, all the clothes he wore had essentially been marked, and he had prepared over a dozen clean sets in the ring.
However, he looked around at the fish pond, puzzled, and asked, "But where are we staying? What are we eating?" Saying this, he stood up and walked over to Ye Jiumu, kicking his chair: "You don’t really expect us to eat the fish he catches, do you? If that’s the case, I might as well use a fishing net."
"This is the agency’s property. Catching one or two fish is no problem. If you dare to use a net, I dare to eat it." Ye Jiumu replied without looking up, countering Pei Yan.
"Don’t worry, we all brought sleeping bags this ti knowing you wouldn’t prepare, so we brought one for you too. We’ll rest in Jiezhi Space at night, as for food..." Xia Yu interjected.
After saying that, she pointed to a small brick house by the fish pond: "See that? That’s usually where an old man from town watches over the fish pond. But he’s been given over a week off since they told him a boss was coming to fish, so the freezer there has enough food to last us a week. No need to worry about starving."
With food, drink, and lodging all sorted, Pei Yan sat heavily in a chair, fully relaxed, and fixed his eyes on the fishing rod in Ye Jiumu’s hand, quietly waiting for a bite.
However, after staring for a long ti, Pei Yan’s eyes beca strained, and the fishing rod in Ye Jiumu’s hand still showed no signs of movent, leaving Pei Yan bored. He turned his head to watch Shangxing, who was sitting alone at the other end of the fish pond, engrossed in a novel under the drizzle.
Peaceful, drizzle, lakeside, giant, literary—each word vividly danced in Pei Yan’s mind. The sight made it hard for him to associate the current Shangxing with the gorilla-like figure who had swiftly captured three Divine Desire People on their first eting.
"Is it okay for us to all be sitting here? Won’t Captain Shangxing feel isolated?" Pei Yan murmured to himself after watching for a while.
"Isolated? Don’t overthink it. Shangxing usually prefers quiet over noise. He’s a good group leader and will make a great captain. He looks after us well but if you’re alone with him, you won’t have a lot to talk about," Xia Yu said, shifting lazily on her lounge chair with her eyes closed.
"Why?" Pei Yan questioned, then answered himself, "Is it because of the generation gap?"
"Generation gap, yeah, a generation gap. There’s a gap between us and him," Ye Jiumu, who was rubbing his tired eyes, chid in. "Shangxing is the most inquisitive person I’ve ever seen. From history to literature, to economics and math, when he’s not on a mission, he’s either in the library or in a study class. His hobbies include things like operas and plays. Can you understand opera?"
After Ye Jiumu spoke, he glanced at Pei Yan, who quickly shook his head. Although Pei Yan occasionally watched art films and had been taken to plays by his sister, he guessed he wouldn’t last half an hour watching an opera before dozing off in his seat.
"Yeah, when I first t him, he was reading Les Misérables and Journey to the West. Later, he started on A Brief History of Ti, and recently, he was reading The Lord of the Rings and One Hundred Years of Solitude. What’s he reading now?" Xia Yu asked, squinting towards Shangxing.
Pei Yan also looked over and exclaid in surprise, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."
"Honestly, seeing Shangxing makes feel like I’ve failed at life. Compared to him, I’m practically illiterate. If Shangxing had received an education early on, he’d surely be a top student," Xia Yu said, pressing her hand to her forehead in genuine admiration. This was her heartfelt admission. Aside from being exceptionally athletic, her academic performance had always been a ss.
She used to comfort herself by attributing it to talent until she t Shangxing. Then she understood everything was just an excuse, realizing deep down she was just lazy. From that mont, she resolved that if she couldn’t excel in studies, she would perfect her loved combat skills. This resolve was one reason why she trained so hard after joining the agency.
Just then, the focus of everyone’s attention, Shangxing, suddenly closed the book in his hand, placed it back into his ring, stood up, patted his backside, and turned to walk towards the brick house on the other side of the fish pond.
"I’ll go check it out." Bored out of his mind, Pei Yan dropped a word and jogged to catch up.
Soon after Pei Yan left, Xia Yu glanced at Zhao Yuanhu beside her, who was anxiously watching Pei Yan leave. She teasingly pursed her lips and said, "Go on, follow him."
"Aren’t you two going?" Zhao Yuanhu stood up and asked, looking at the two of them.
Ye Jiumu nodded at Zhao Yuanhu and responded, "Nope, we’re lazy and will just wait here for a ready al. Thanks!"
"Alright then, I’ll go take a look too."
Watching as Zhao Yuanhu gracefully walked further down the dirt road of the fish pond, Ye Jiumu couldn’t help but remark, "Now that’s what I call a Jiangnan beauty," before giving a fake disdainful glance at Xia Yu with a sigh.
Xia Yu said nothing in response, casually picking up a few pebbles from the ground and skipping them across the water towards Ye Jiumu’s fishing spot.
Unbothered, Ye Jiumu held the fishing rod steadily and said, "You’re wasting your ti ssing around here. You may as well go over there and join in the excitent."
"They’re also carrying out a task. Don’t be so sour," Xia Yu said, finishing her pebble skipping and patting the dust from her hands. She lay back in her chair and playfully kicked Jiumu.
Ye Jiumu turned back and asked, "Do you think Pei Yan will realize it?"
"That kid always looks so harmless but in reality, he’s very sharp. He might not understand at first, but it won’t take long for him to figure it out," Xia Yu said aningfully, casually tossing a coat over her shoulders and watching Zhao Yuanhu entering the house in the distance.
Not long after Pei Yan and the others departed, in Cen Xiaoran’s office in the Investigation Hall.
"Cen Hall, Pei Yan and the others have already set off," i Simiao and Gu Shenghui reported, standing in front of Cen Xiaoran’s desk.
Cen Moran said nothing, pulling three copper coins from his pocket and holding them in his hand. He clasped his hands tightly, closed his eyes in thought, then brought his palms together to shake the coins and tossed them onto the desk. Listening to the copper coins clatter and form two tails and one head, his brow furrowed as he picked up the coins to shake and throw them again, repeating the process six tis.
To outsiders, this might seem like a typical Wandering Sorcerer’s fortune-telling trick. Even an expert in The Book of Changes might dismiss the elder’s unorthodox Hexagrams and Trigrams thod with a chuckle.
But Gu Shenghui and i Simiao, facing Cen Xiaoran, didn’t think that way. Before acquiring his abilities, the newly appointed Hall Master knew nothing about fortune-telling, yet his abilities were so coveted and revered that not even the Immortal Palace Masters in the Daoist Realm could compare. The elder had been approached nurous tis and invited to join the Immortal Palace as a Guest Minister, but he had declined all the offers with kind words.
User Comments
0 comments from readers