Black Belly Wife
Chapter 206: The Leader Is Here (1)

Continued from the previous chapter→

Suddenly, Chu Changge's face quickly became smaller and farther away, and a few moments later, it disappeared. Murong Yunshu reached out to grab but could not touch anything. And beside her, there seemed to be the sound of a woman screaming in agony.

"Are you okay?" Someone asked in her ear.

Murong Yunshu's eyes began to focus. A while later, the figure in front of her gradually became apparent, and a masked girl came into view. "It's you?" She exclaimed in shock.

The masked girl was startled when she heard her exclamation and asked, "You recognise me?"

"I've seen you before, at the ruined temple." Murong Yunshu stood firmly by the wall and elaborated, "I was inside the carriage at that time."

The masked girl breathed a sigh of relief. "So you are referring to that time......" The masked girl did not say more halfway through her sentence.

Murong Yunshu took a meaningful look at her, then turned her sight to the fallen fake Lihen Palace Master and asked, "Did you save me?"

Masked girl: "M-hm."

Murong Yunshu: "You followed us in from the beginning?"

Masked girl: "M-hm."

After getting two affirmative answers in a row, Murong Yunshu stopped asking questions and turned to Mister Shi Er. "Quickly lead the way."

Mister Shi Er looked puzzled, "Lead the way to what?"

Murong Yunshu: "The way to get out of here."

"Uh." Mister Shi Er's expression stiffened for half a second before smiling awkwardly and stammered, "If......if I say...... I don't know how to get out. Will you kill me?"

Murong Yunshu frowned. "What do you mean?"

Mister Shi Er's face was full of guilt as he replied awkwardly, "Literally."

Murong Yunshu frowned even more. "When you first designed this layer, you were ready to be buried with the silver?"

"I was ready to be buried with the silver?......oh no......no." Mister Shi Er rambled in his statement. "I was designing this last layer of mechanism for those trying to steal the silver. I didn't expect that I would one day fall into it too, so I only considered the entry, not the exit."

"......"

Mister Shi Er: "But the door can be opened from the outside. Don't get discouraged. Maybe someone will come to our rescue soon."

"That must have been in their minds too." Murong Yunshu stated while looking at the bones on the side.

Mister Shi Er was rendered speechless.

After a while, Murong Yunshu spoke again, "You didn't tell me about this last mechanism."

Mister Shi: "I almost forgot about it myself. If I hadn't forgotten that there was this one last trick, why would I flee when I learned that the silver from the silver warehouse had been stolen? Good thing I remembered about it later. So, after being captured by the Lihen Palace Master for no reason halfway, I learned that someone in the Lihen Palace had colluded with Hua Tiansheng. This traitor not only planned to take over the position of the Palace Master, she even thought about the Murong House's silver warehouse. I might as well beat this person at her own game by acting out a play with the Lihen Palace Master, that was, to gain the trust of that traitor, the woman in purple."

Hearing this explanation, Murong Yunshu remembered that day in the Lihen Palace when she and Chu Changge joined forces in killing the Lihen Palace Master. She quickly asked, "In that case, you were captured by the Lihen Palace Master and were brought to the Lihen Palace? And the Lihen Palace Master was pretending to be dead that day?"

"That's right." Mister Shi Er nodded and told her his story. "About ten days ago, Si Niang and I chased after you guys towards Tianlong Mountain. On our way, I was captured by a woman wearing a mask. She took me to a very strange place, where the seasons were like spring, the scenery was charming, and the girls were beautiful. But there was no man. Even the birds were all female. The woman in the mask kidnapped me and asked me a question." Speaking of this, Mister Shi Er paused for a moment. He looked sideways at Murong Yunshu, expecting her to ask with great interest, 'what question did she ask you?'. But he heard her spit out these words nonchalantly instead. "Get to the point." Mister Shi Er received a huge blow and responded with a look like he had a bloodied face, "That's the point."

"Then, get to the key point." Murong Yunshu said.

The corners of Mister Shi Er's mouth twitched slightly. "All of them are the key points." I'm going to fight with you today. See what you can do to me! Mister Shi's heart was soaring until he heard her say, "Then, there's no need for you to talk anymore." In short, Mister Shi Er instantly suffered an internal injury from her words. All right. She couldn't do anything to him, and she didn't need to because, in her eyes, he was an acquaintance when he cooperated with her and just a passerby when he didn't. Please read this chapter at xinshou blogspot com.

Mister Shi Er suddenly began to agree with Li Wunai's point of view⸺all people who had a friendship with Murong Yunshu more or less had masochistic tendencies. And this masochistic tendency was mainly manifested in their behaviour of sticking their hot faces to the cold *ss. Because he had an overwhelmed desire to do so at this very moment. In fact, he already did it just now.

"That's......here's what actually happened." He forced out a laugh before he continued with the key points. "The woman in the mask asked me if I wanted to save you and Chu Changge. I said yes. She then disguised me, took me outside a stone formation and asked me if I could break it. The formation was obviously a doppelganger, and I told her it wasn't that hard to break. I thought she would let me break the formation right away, but I didn't expect her to let me do anything. She just took me away and arranged to stay in the guest room. She explained that if someone came to replace me, no matter what they wanted me to do, I should just agree with it."

After taking a new breath, he continued, "Then, someone did come looking for me. That person was the woman in purple. She promised me glory and wealth and asked me to join her in usurping the position of the master in the Lihen Palace. I immediately understood the Lihen Palace Master's intention. It turned out that she wanted to use me to replace the person who betrayed her. So I agreed to the woman in purple's proposal. After breaking the double formation that day, I waited outside until you and Chu Changge planned to kill the Lihen Palace Master. I stayed on the woman in purple's side and did not make any move. However," he stopped talking as he turned his head to look at the fake Lihen Palace Master and said, "After you locked Murong Yunshu and Chu Changge into the dungeon, I quietly sent the Lihen Palace Master outside."

The fake Lihen Palace Master's face was hideous as she stared at him hatefully. "You......have the audacity to set me up." She would have cut him into small pieces if she had not been wounded by the masked girl.

Mister Shi Er laughed and said, "Compared to you, this courage of mine was nothing. I only schemed against you, a buffoon, by conspiring with the Lihen Palace Master. You, on the other hand, are actually plotting against Murong Yunshu and Chu Changge, and I truly admire you for that. If I had your courage, I would have been reincarnated by now. Maybe I would have been reborn with a good birth, enjoying inexhaustible wealth and prosperity." As he spoke, a look of longing appeared on Mister Shi Er's face, as if a beautiful reincarnation era had appeared before his eyes.

"I can lend you some courage." Murong Yunshu said with extraordinary kindness.

Mister Shi Er's face stiffened. The corners of his mouth trembled a few times before he responded, "I appreciate your kindness. Compared to a scenic reincarnation, I would prefer to continue this life without any courage." After saying those words, he noticed the corners of Murong Yunshu's mouth were twitching slightly, prompting him to hurriedly change the subject. "To be honest, I was shocked when I found out that the knife wound on the Lihen Palace Master was real. But when I thought about it, with your and Chu Changge's intelligence, it wouldn't be that difficult to injure her."

Seeing that Mister Shi Er had returned to the main topic, Murong Yunshu stopped teasing him and asked, "Where is the Lihen Palace Master right now?"

"I don't know. I secretly sent the Lihen Palace Master out of the Lihen Palace. I left the jinchuang medicine behind before returning to resume my duties. I was afraid of arousing her suspicion." Mister Shi Er said while looking at the fake Lihen Palace Master.

After Murong Yunshu heard what he said, she glanced at the masked girl and then told Mister Shi Er, "Try to search her body and see if you can replace any antidote."

"Li Wunai and the others had been hit by the lust of a Thousand Desires, and I had secretly put the antidote in the tea you guys drank a long time ago. It's just that the lust of a Thousand Desires is different from ordinary poisons. It's extremely long-lasting, fast-acting, but slow to detoxify. Even if you take the antidote, it will take three to five days to fully recover. I stole the antidote some days ago, and if I'm lucky, they'll be able to recover their powers by tomorrow." Mister Shi Er said.

Hearing Mister Shi Er's words, the fake Lihen Palace master hurriedly touched her chest. She discovered that the antidote in her possession had gone missing. She immediately became furious. "You......" As soon as the word 'you' left her mouth, her true qi got mixed up and turned upside down as she was consumed with extreme anger. She spat out a mouthful of blood, making her face pale and weakening her breath. She was dying. It seemed that even a light breeze could blow her life away.

Murong Yunshu coldly glanced at her and continued to ask Mister Shi Er. "What about the poison given to Chu Changge?"

"There is no antidote for that." Mister Shi Er sighed in frustration and said, "The reason I have been lurking for so long and delayed in identifying with you is to replace the antidote for the seven-day sleep from her to save Chu Changge. But no matter how much I probed and searched, I only got one answer—there is no antidote."

In an instant, Murong Yunshu's body swayed and fell backwards just like a big, solid mountain suddenly collapsed. Luckily, the masked girl quickly held her from behind and used her internal energy to adjust Murong Yunshu's disordered veins. A few moments later, Murong Yunshu regained her senses, and with her mind finally calm, she whispered to the masked girl, "Thank you."

"There's no need for that." The masked girl let go of Murong Yunshu and moved a few steps to the side, putting a distance between them, obviously not wanting to stand in the same position as her.

The masked girl's action made Murong Yunshu puzzled that she had to look at her face a few times before saying, "You're pretty good at not paying attention to me."

The masked girl was stunned, and her eyes showed the embarrassment of her mind being seen through by somebody. She hung her head and pondered for a while before saying, "I don't like people dying in front of me. If you want to die, please die far away. Don't let me see since your death will only dirty my eyes."

Murong Yunshu raised her eyebrows. This woman was quite a character.

As if Mister Shi Er had found a new world, he blurted out to Murong Yunshu, "Her style of speech is similar to yours. Both sound so annoying."

Murong Yunshu's eyes narrowed slightly. "Don't you think that adding the latter sentence makes your speaking style equally annoying?"

Mister Shi Er immediately felt a cold breeze rising at his back, prompting him to instantly atone with an apologetic smile. "A slip of the tongue. That was naturally a slip of my tongue. I actually want to express that the tone of her words and the tone of your speech are very similar. That is so......so......" Mister Shi Er's thoughts whirled around while he was dripping with sweat. He was stuck with the word 'very' for a long time before his conscience came up with the word 'good'.

So good? Murong Yunshu slightly raised her eyebrows before accepting his 'compliment'. Then she returned to the subject and said to the fake Lihen Palace Master. "There may not be an antidote, but there must be a detoxification method, right?"

When the fake Lihen Palace Master heard her words, the corner of her mouth hooked up into a ferocious, evil smile as she said, "That's right. There is indeed a detoxification method for the poison. I can also tell you that you have to replace someone who has a deeper internal force than him. That person has to put some of his internal force into his body. This is to draw out the internal force that has fused with the seven-day sleep poison inside him."

Before the fake Lihen Palace Master finished speaking, Murong Yunshu seemed like she had fallen from an extremely high cliff. She felt that heaven and earth were so far apart that she couldn't even hear the sound from the mountains and rivers. [+]

Mister Shi did not pay attention to Murong Yunshu's reaction and said, "Not to mention that there are few people with deeper internal force than Chu Changge in this world. Even if we found someone, the other party might not be willing to detoxify him. After all, the detoxification cost is too great, which is equivalent to exhausting one's lifetime powers."

The fake Lihen Palace Master laughed. "That's right. Everyone in this world is selfish. No one would be willing to trade their entire power for the life of an irrelevant person. Chu Changge will definitely die."

Mister Shi Er sighed. That was right. Those who were willing were incapable, and those who were capable were unwilling.

On the other hand, the masked girl stood aside and stared at Murong Yunshu expressionlessly. Her eyes were not even moving, as if she was very interested to see her reaction.

After a long time, the ashen-faced Murong Yunshu suddenly raised her head, with the corners of her mouth overflowing with a smile. It was a dazzling smile, just like a blazing sun, with the brightness of the light and the heat of a burning fire as she looked down at everything conceitedly. 

This smile surprised and confused all the three people that were present. They could not understand why she could still smile brightly at this moment when Chu Changge's life was in danger. "Are you, are you all right?" Mister Shi Er asked worriedly. The final radiance of a setting sun came to his mind. People were fine for a while before they died. Would the heart bloom fiercely once before it stopped? The more Mister Shi Er thought about it, the more frightened he became. He hurriedly said comfortingly, "Heaven never bars one's way. Chu Changge is blessed with a great life. He will definitely be able to replace an antidote to the poison. You must not take your life lightly."

"Take my life lightly?" Murong Yunshu, as if she had heard a big joke, curled her lips and laughed. "Even if I want to take my life lightly, I have to replace a place that has a good feng shui first. In this world full of demons, it's not easy to replace one. Otherwise, I would have died in a good feng shui place long ago. How do you expect people to even breathe here?"

When Mister Shi Er heard her words, he nearly spat out a mouthful of blood. Would she feel uncomfortable if she couldn't catch anyone's weakness from time to time? Mister Shi glared at her and asked, "Do you know it's a crime to piss people off?"

Murong Yunshu: "There is such a ridiculous law? Who made it?"

Mister Shi Er: "Your son."

"Did he?" Her son was this useless?

"He did. I haven't finished my sentence. It was your son's cabinet ministers. They were so angry with your son that they made this law that 'pissing people off is considered murder'. They even attached a note that stated, the Emperor who breaks this law is as guilty as the common people." Mister Shi Er reminded a certain woman that this legend had been sung in the Jiugua House for quite some time with her own tacit approval.

Murong Yunshu raised her dark eyebrows and said coldly, "How useless."

"You would actually call your own son useless?" Even Mister Shi Er felt incredulous.

"I was talking about that bunch of cabinet ministers. They can't even outspeak an eight-year-old child."

"......" You don't even look at the origin of that eight-year-old child.

"Not only they can't even outspeak him, but they would also go as far as creating such a ridiculous decree."

"...... " Isn't that what people do for self-preservation? Who let your son inherit your 'fine tradition'? But the cabinet ministers did exaggerate a little. Shouldn't they be the generous ones? They should just take the Emperor's words as mere children's words. Mister Shi Er sighed. "Their hearts are indeed too fragile." After hanging around with the Murong Mansion people, he knew that an indestructible heart was essential for survival there.

Murong Yunshu: "The heart's job is only to pump blood. What's fragile is their brain."

"...... " Are people who know about medicine devoid of literary and artistic cells? People like Feng Cheng, who had been known as someone who had surpassed Hua Tuo, would not understand to such an extent. Mister Shi Er suddenly felt that the absurd decree was reasonable in this demon-ridden world. Especially for people like him, who had been suffering from the scourge of demons for a long time. He truly needed the protection of the law very much.