Chapter 315

Chapter 315: 308: Extra: if route grand reunion 3 Chapter 315: 308: Extra: if route grand reunion 3 On the road, Ah Na told Wen Changling about an incident that happened during the summer vacation. At that time, Xie Qingze and Wen Yuan had just gotten married not long ago, and many in the village were gossiping, saying extremely distasteful things, even in the presence of the people concerned. Once, Ah Na overheard them.

Ah Na was usually good-tempered and measured in his actions, but he was also protective. Being young, he felt the need to vent his anger. That night, he called up Ming Ao to block the chimney of the house belonging to the gossiping old lady. This old lady was notoriously superstitious, and a non-smoking chimney was a bad omen, so she forced her whole family to start eating vegetarian food—ironically, her son was a butcher with an endless supply of meat, so a lot of chaos ensued at home.

Blocking the chimney was just the beginning, the crux of the matter was that Ming Ao had joined Ah Na in acting up that night, arranging for someone to cover his part-time job, but the person who covered for him died. There were eyewitnesses who identified the perpetrator as the victim’s good friend. Surveillance also captured another four individuals near the crime scene, who were tourists from the capital in Fragrant City; the police took statements from all of them.

Because of the indirect relationship with Ming Ao, Fu Mingyue took this matter very seriously. She privately met with the families of the victim and the accused, and she sensed that something was wrong, with the parents of the accused giving unfavorable testimony that conflicted with what others had said. Strangely enough, the parents moved away in silence the second month after the incident, not even bothering to get a decent lawyer for their son.

Fu Mingyue had an intuition that maybe the accused wasn’t the real culprit. The most suspicious were those four outsiders who had appeared at the crime scene, each one from a wealthy and influential family.

If Ah Na hadn’t asked Ming Ao to block the chimney that night, would Ming Ao have been the one who died? Fu Mingyue couldn’t just sit back and do nothing, but as an outsider, there was little she could do besides providing financial aid, managing to hire the best lawyer she could afford for the boy in detention.

To raise the money, Fu Mingyue fought in underground fights behind her coach’s back and then got reported, resulting in a one-

year ban from sports.

The two girls were lying on the bed, one on each side, talking about this incident.

“Who reported you?”

Speaking of which, Fu Mingyue became irate, “Chen Baishi.”

Wen Changling was aware of Chen Baishi. He wasn’t in the same class as Fu Mingyue, but they had the same teacher. Chen Baishi was a student athlete, while Fu Mingyue was a professional athlete and had even taught him kick-boxing for a few days, making her somewhat of a senior to him.

“It was also my bad luck to run into him at the boxing venue.” Fu Mingyue took note of this, “Just don’t let me see him again.”

Unfortunately, fate had other plans. Not long after, Fu Mingyue encountered Chen Baishi again. At that time, she had been banned from competing, and the coach arranged for her to train the younger students, among whom was Chen Baishi.

Chen Baishi was older than Fu Mingyue by a year and was taller and bigger than many boys of his age. He had a clean buzz cut which, along with his simple demeanor, made him appear somewhat slow-witted.

“Senior sister.”

Still daring to show up, how bold, why not just fly to the sky?

Fu Mingyue’s gaze swept over him from head to toe, all that muscle, must be resistant to punishment, “Come, let your senior sister give you some practice.”

Inserting a closing remark—

Years later, they ended up together. Fu Mingyue once asked Chen Baishi why he had reported her back then.

“I was afraid you would get hurt.”

Fighting in underground boxing meant signing a life-or-death waiver, it was literally trading life for money.

*****

At the end of the year, Xie Qingze made a phone call to Xie Shang.

“Changling has returned to the country. When will you come to Wind Town so I can introduce you two?”

“There’s no need to meet.”

“How can there be no need? You’re relatives, after all.”

What bloody relatives, Xie Shang thought to himself.

“You two should get along really well. Changling is very smart, excels in her studies—she might even surpass you.”

Here it went again, heaping nonstop praise on his stepsister. Thanks to Xie Qingze’s blessings, Wen Changling’s name had already infiltrated Xie Shang’s life without him ever having met her.

Xie Qingze, being fond of everything related to his stepdaughter, held great affection and admiration for Wen Changling: “She’s particularly good at physics and has won many awards. She skipped grades since she was young. She’s the youngest in their lab. During the summer holidays, her teacher took her to work on a secret project. She was the only one still studying in the whole group—”

Before he could finish his praise, someone interrupted: “Mom says it’s your turn to start the fire.”

The girl’s voice, distorted through the mobile phone’s speaker, sounded like a sudden stone thrown into the calm surface of a lake, unexpectedly capturing all of Xie Shang’s attention. The person who had been active in Xie Qingze’s descriptions suddenly took on a concrete form. He couldn’t help but be curious; his grandfather had investigated that family of three, and there wasn’t much information about Wen Yuan’s daughter: exceptionally intelligent, hard of hearing, with an unknown biological father.

Xie Qingze said her hearing was damaged due to choking on water at a young age, which caused her to lose her hearing.

“I need to go start the fire now, got to hang up,” Xie Qingze ended the call.

Wen Changling had spent almost half a year abroad due to the secret project and couldn’t contact her family during that time.

She had only returned to the country at the year’s end.

At twelve, she had won the National Physics Competition gold medal, at fourteen, she claimed the gold medal at the International Junior Physics Olympiads, and at sixteen, she went to Chevalier to study Physics at Kim Chowton University. At the beginning of this year, she was selected to join the GFI Physics Research Lab as the sole foreign physics engineer.

It was not without reason that Xie Qingze often mentioned her with praise; although the village of White Peach Village did not like Wen Yuan’s family, Wen Changling was a famous prodigy, known far and wide, who had made a name for herself in the physics community at a young age. People couldn’t help but praise her whenever her name came up.

After the New Year, Xie Shang took a trip to Wind Town, but he did not inform Xie Qingze. The vagrant was no longer on Sky Bridge, and the snails had gone into hibernation. He stayed only for two days before returning to the capital. Both his grandfather and father disliked him going to Wind Town, so he didn’t tell anyone.

Last May, on the first night after he returned from Wind Town, he had a dream—clumsy and ridiculous. He was an adult and it was not the first time he had such a dream, but it was the first time the person in the dream had a concrete appearance, no longer a blur.

He locked that cover paper in his cabinet and never took it out again. After that, he made short trips to Wind Town during each vacation, gradually turning it into a habit.

After returning from Wind Town, Ms. Su Nanzhi, his mother, asked him, “Your uncle said you didn’t visit him, so what do you do in Wind Town every time?”

Wind Town has many tourist attractions famous nationwide, but Xie Shang wasn’t fond of static landscapes. He preferred adventure and excitement, so the mere scenery wasn’t enough to entice him. He was immensely curious about the town that had “trapped” Xie Qingze, and equally curious about the people he’d met there, feeling like something mysterious was drawing him in. Or perhaps it was just discontent; he couldn’t accept that Xie Qingze was just stuck in the continuous mountains.

“Your grandfather mentioned that hundreds of years ago, Wind Town was the Land of Witchcraft and Gu. Surely you haven’t been,” Madam Su speculated boldly, “cast a spell on, like your uncle?”