âFine! Since you insist, Iâll consider it a fight between two geniuses for the time being!â
âI wonât mind even if your idol is Forrest Gump, the fictional character who lives by the spiritual victory!â
âSeems you know yourself well! Fortunately, my idol is Holmes! Sorry, Iâm not as childish as you are! I canât believe youâre so obsessed with The Prince of Tennis!â
âDrop the act! Youâre slandering to my face, arenât you? Youâre so good at sarcasm! Iâve learned a lot from you!â
âReally? Then donât forget to pay me! Or maybe I can take money out of your account online through a hacking program!â
âBah! Donât be too arrogant! Itâs not certain who will win!â
âWhy are you so angry?â Could it be that⦠your dad forgot to transfer money to you again?â
âMiâ¦â
âCome on! Donât be so irritated! Chinese and foreign traditions are different. Itâs normal for a 20-year-old young man in China to depend on his parents for his college education and livelihood! No! Youâre so naïve, so you must still be a boy!â
âOk! Iâm not going to tease you again! I canât wait to see your masterpiece!â
âHum! I wonât show you unless you beg me!â
âHey! Have you never heard of the old Chinese saying ârelying upon oneself is better than begging others?â How can I ignore the traditional Chinese ethnic only for the artificial intelligenceâ¦â
âDonât try to lecture me with the traditional ethnic! Youâre showing off that you came back to China a few years before I did, right? Letâs wait and see!â
âWonât you leave after dinner? I heard that you couldnât even afford the utilitiesâ¦
âMi⦠keâ¦â
âA gentleman uses his tongue but not his fists! Does your laptop run on solar batteries?â
âYou damned hacker, itâs none of your business! If you want to attack my computer system, just go ahead!â
âIâve never thought of it! I just want to test your computer skills. You know the A.M. Turing Awardâ¦â
âMycroft Holmes, you still have lots more to work on!â Liu Zixiu, who had been unconscious for a whole day, suddenly let out a roar at dawn.
Now those people, who had stayed overnight in the farmerâs house, had just got up and started freshening themselves up. The blind old lady was so hospitable that she took out all the food in her house to make breakfast for them.
Nangong Du was sitting by the furnace to warm himself up when he suddenly heard someone shouting. After quite a while, from the âslangâ which did not make any sense to anyone, he could tell that it was Liu Zixiu who had woken up. He felt much relieved. As Zixiu sounded energetic, he thought he would be fine!
When he hurried back to the bedroom, he saw Liu Zixiu sitting on the bed with a hand propping his forehead, as if lost in thought.
âWhoâs there?â The man who had just woken up seemed to be very sensitive, and he was even a little annoyed when he spoke.
Only then did Nangong Du realize himself overreacting. He looked calmly at Liu Zixiu, who was staring at him in surprise. Before he got close to the bed, he ordered, âGet out of the bed and freshen yourself up. Weâll leave in half an hour!â
âWeâll leave?â Zixiu widened his eyes. âWho are you? Where am I?â he asked in confusion.
âHuh?!â Nangong Du was stupified. Although Liu Zixiu was usually very disrespectful to him, he would not have the guts to make fun of him. Besides, the situation was dangerous and even the whereabouts of Liu Wuyi were unclear. Shouldnât Liu Zixiu be on pins and needles now? How come he behaved like this? Could it be⦠An assumption that even shocked himself popped into his mind! Could it be that Liu Zixiu lost his memory again?
He immediately denied his own assumption. âWhatâs wrong with you?â He couldnât wait to know what happened.
âWait a minute! Let me think about it!â Zixiu suddenly chimed in.
Hearing that, Nangong Du came back to his senses. He was the distinguished prince of the Nan Kingdom. Why should he follow Liu Zixiuâs instructions?
Putting on a grim look, he paced to the bed and yelled, âLiu Zixiu! I have no time to talk to you! Get out of the bed right away!â
However, it was obvious that Zixiu had turned a deaf ear to what he said. He covered his head with his hands, as if he was meditating on something. After quite a while, he suddenly shouted, âOh! Iâve got it! Youâre Nangong Du, the pervert!â
The pervert? Nangong Du hated Liu Zixiuâs insulting form of address for him to the core! If he hadnât suspected that Liu Zixiu was a spy, he wouldnât have had sex with such an arrogant idiot! He, Nangong Du, hadnât been so âhungryâ that he would eat anything that came to his lips! Liu Zixiu was so stupid! Would a pervert do nothing to someone who shared the same bed with him for days? Would a pervert listen patiently to someone talk about his troubles at midnight?
Without sensing the other partyâs rage, Zixiu looked at Nangong Du blankly and asked with a frown, âAm I Liu Zixiu?â
Nangong Du was finally completely infuriated. With a murderous look flashing in his indifferent eyes, he spat the words out, âNo matter who you are, if you donât want to die, get your arse out of the bed right now!â
ââ¦â Zixiu stopped talking in a panic. In fact, he was so frightened that he had got a cramp in his calf.
Actually, except for blurting out a sentence when he woke up, he had been pretending to be amnesiac again. This was probably an instinctive response to self-preservation.
He was startled not only because of Nangong Duâs ferocious attitude but also because he thought he had regained his memories, which were too strange to comprehend! Those memories flashed through his mind like a movie. Er⦠Now he had remembered what a movie was! Every frame of the movie showed his past experiences. Those people and things were completely different from what he had seen in the past three years. If he had to find specific words to explain, they would be âa huge difference between the ancient and the present!â
This brought him a shocking impact. Although Einsteinâs theory of relativity said that people could travel back to their past through the time tunnel, so far no one has made it a reality! So, Zixiu had no idea what to do next. He had too many questions. First of all, he wanted to know if everything he was seeing was reality or illusion.
Seeing Liu Zixiu still in a daze, Nangong Du knew that he couldnât waste his time waiting for him anymore. He dragged Zixiu out of the bed, and threw him into the carriage before the latter could even wash his face!
The Yus were setting up bowls and chopsticks in the hall. When they saw Nangong Du carry Zixiu out angrily, they did not dare to walk over and say something to calm him down. Actually, they were in awe of âZixiuâs cousinâs husbandâ!
The blind old lady did not know what was happening. Hearing someone striding out, she immediately walked out of the kitchen, trying to ask her âguestsâ to stay a little bit longer. As it would take two days to get from here to the next inhabited place, out of kindness, she had prepared some food for them to eat on the way.