Chapter 107 "Now, we will avenge you..."
Emerging from the water, Atresia was already hiding in the trees, waiting for us.
Deira asked me to climb a tree, but I couldn't. So she let me step on her shoulders and climb the nearest branch. Beatrice was still pulling me up from above, and I managed to climb up with difficulty.
I asked Beatrice how she learned to climb trees—she grew up in prison.
“My mother taught me countless times how to climb from our cell to the entrance of your cell,” she said.
"But I didn't learn it." I've climbed over this hole several times.
“You’ve done quite well,” Di Yaruo said. “Without the experience of climbing up the cave entrance, you wouldn’t have been able to climb up even with our help.”
Following the trunk of this big tree, we climbed up another big tree, and after climbing three big trees, we scaled the high wall separating the prison from the outside world.
"Don't be afraid of death, and don't scream after you jump, or all your efforts will be wasted." Di Yaruo took out three pieces of cloth from her bosom and stuffed them into our mouths and her own.
She made a gesture, and the three of us jumped down together; I kept my eyes closed.
Just then, thunder rumbled again, and the heavy rain that had stopped for a while started again. The three of us tumbled into the muddy ground almost simultaneously. I almost cried out, but the rag and the sound of the downpour muffled my voice.
Ignoring the pain, we helped each other to our feet and stumbled forward, managing to escape from the prison...
Two hours before dawn, we took a shower and changed into some simple, clean clothes in a small hotel room.
We hadn't bathed or washed our hair for years, and we smelled terrible.
“Now, we’re going to avenge you,” Di Yaruo said to me while drying her hair.
"Revenge?" I was stunned.
"Yes, as a thank you for helping us escape from prison."
I stood there stunned for a long time, letting the night wind drift in through the window to tousle my extremely long hair.
A long time ago, Di Yaruo asked me, "Why did you come here?"
I told her about my past as a tutor and how I spent my wedding night with the young bride. Her expression was strange. "Is your young mistress marrying into the Melissang family?"
"have no idea."
A strange look appeared in her eyes. "This family has a secret tradition of hunting down the bride on her wedding night. Only the lucky bride who escapes is qualified to become a member of the family. In the last ten years or so, the situation has changed slightly. If the bride is of good standing, the head of the family will secretly inform the bride's mother to prepare an elite guard to help the bride escape death. But for brides of average standing, the head of the family will say nothing and let the bride be brutally murdered."
"You mean... the Iani family... deliberately harmed me after knowing this secret?" I felt a chill run down my spine.
She laughed, "You think the young bride and her whole family plotted against you?"
I didn't say anything.
"You said you ran into an acquaintance from many years ago and, with this acquaintance's help, solved your identity verification problem?" she countered.
"yes."
"Later, your mistress suddenly got married, and you even saw a prince's chief mistress at the wedding?"
"Yes." My breathing became rapid.
“So,” Di Yaruo said slowly, “this chief mistress probably also knew the secrets of this family, so she wanted to use someone else to do her dirty work. She did her best to facilitate this marriage, but she didn’t expect that the groom would be killed by the bride. So she took advantage of the situation and pinned the murder on you. In the end, although you didn’t die, she still achieved her goal—you were imprisoned for life.”
I can't believe it.
She then asked, "Are you and the sugar daddy of this mistress old acquaintances, or perhaps even have some kind of ambiguous relationship?"
I bit my lower lip. "I once saved him, a prince."
She burst into laughter. "No wonder, the prince's chief mistress, even more glamorous than the prince's wife. Why would such a glamorous woman attend the wedding of a lowly nobleman, unless she has some special purpose? Perhaps she wants to see what you look like and whether it will affect her relationship with the prince."
She looked at me and smiled. "Then, she felt threatened and planned this incident."
"Impossible." I still don't believe it.
"Let me put it this way," she said. "Under normal circumstances, the son of a tycoon would never marry the daughter of a low-ranking noble family, even if she were the tycoon's illegitimate son." She continued, "Tycoons control wealth, and the powerful ones can even monopolize one or more economic lifelines. They simply don't look down on low-ranking nobles. Although they may sometimes intermarry with impoverished nobles, those are always high-ranking impoverished nobles."
"So when you told me that your young mistress was going to marry the illegitimate son of a tycoon, I was surprised. There must be some great benefit involved for the illegitimate son of a tycoon to be willing to marry a low-ranking nobleman."
I recalled the cold and disgusted expression on the groom's face as he looked at the bride, and my body grew increasingly stiff.
"You mean, this chief mistress is the one who got me imprisoned?!"
“Yes, but the real culprit is your friend of many years.” She changed the subject. “It was she who revealed your secret of being here, which is why the chief mistress decided to assassinate you.”
My body was completely stiff. What seemed like an accidental cover-up murder might actually be a meticulously planned scheme. Was I too naive, completely unsuspecting, or is this world just too crazy?!
“Your friend must have a good relationship with the chief mistress, so he leaked your information to her.” She laughed. “Haha, I guessed who that sugar daddy prince was. Although I’ve been locked up here for many years and know nothing about the outside world, I still guessed it.”
She laughed and said, "You're just a commoner, how could you possibly know a prince? So it can only be Bernard, who's locked up in the Black Castle."
She smiled broadly, "Otherwise, given your status, you wouldn't even be able to get close to a prince, let alone have an ambiguous relationship with him!"
The conversation ended awkwardly for me. But I didn't expect that she would still remember it, even though she had just used the Five Poisons Powder to take revenge on the woman who framed me and put me in jail.
“I like to carry these things with me, no matter where I am,” she replied. “Besides the human skin mask and the Five Poisons Powder, I have other good things, but I don’t need them now.”
“Your manager, Sha Ling, that traitorous bastard,” a contemptuous smile flashed across her face, “will be bathing tomorrow morning with a balm laced with five poisonous powder, covered in the same red sores as the chief mistress.”
I stared intently at her. It was hard to imagine that this person, who had been imprisoned in an underground jail for many years, could unleash such astonishing power.
After bribing the palace gatekeeper with a silver note to find out the location of the social ball attended by the chief mistress, he then bribed a street thug with another silver note to find a way to bribe the people at the social ball. Disguised, he sneaked into the banquet hall's restroom and used several strings of special firecrackers that would explode under external pressure to block the pipes. He also tampered with the flush button so that when the chief mistress pressed it, the firecrackers would explode violently.
“If she’s urinating, that’s fine, she’ll just pee. But if she’s defecating,” she chuckled, “she’ll be covered in excrement and pee.”
"How did you come up with these ideas?" I asked.
“My sister loves these underhanded tricks, I learned them from her.” She shrugged. “But I don’t actually like these dirty tricks, but these are all I have now.”
I fell silent. What was even more terrifying than these methods was her ability to complete everything in just one or two hours—from planning to finding help—with astonishing efficiency. Who exactly was she?!
Night was falling, and dawn was approaching. Beatrice was already fast asleep on the deck, and Deira covered her with an old blanket.
“We were lucky to run into the chief mistress at the high-society club, so we were able to use this method. If we were in the palace, I wouldn’t be able to help.” As she spoke, Di Yaruo covered Beatrice more tightly with the blanket. “Although Sha Ling is the real culprit in this matter, I can’t do anything because we’re in the palace. I can only use my largest denomination banknote to bribe the maid who was just beaten by her and was already resigned to death. I’ll sprinkle her perfume with five poison powder to barely make her suffer some punishment.”
As luck would have it, the street thug we bribed happened to know the family of one of Sha Ling's lowly maids. Knowing that the maid had been beaten and was determined to commit suicide, he took out another silver note and bribed the maid.
"Even the heavens seem to want to help you," Di Yaruo exclaimed.
"Why do you want to avenge me?!" I finally asked this crucial question.
"To win over a reliable helper," Di Yaruo smiled. "And playing pranks happens to be something I'm good at."
As the sky grew brighter, faint sounds of commotion could be heard from the sea, and one or two boats appeared in the distance.
"They caught up so quickly!" Di Yaru exclaimed as she quickly woke Beatrice and led us quietly around to the stern, where we untied a spare lifeboat. After jumping into the lifeboat, we quickly started paddling.
Di Yaruo possessed exceptional survival skills; she knew exactly where the spare boat was, how to unlock the heavy chains, and even how to row. Under her guidance, I rowed in the right direction, and the small boat moved further and further away from the ship we had been on.
Di Yaruo then took out a compass from her bosom, glanced at it briefly, then squinted at the vast sea and once again guided me to row in a certain direction...
——
Three days later, we landed in an island royal city.
We disguised ourselves as men, blended into the chaotic market, and rented a mud-brick house in the most densely populated area.
The muddy, difficult-to-walk paths, the dilapidated and old mud houses, the market crowded with thieves and hooligans, and the smell of sea breeze and fish everywhere.
I go out to buy groceries during the day and occasionally take a walk.
Di Yaruo only went out at night to scout out the terrain and situation, but never interacted with outsiders. She said she didn't want to talk to people of low status.
As for Beatrice, she was still a little girl who had just been released from prison. She couldn't adapt to this chaotic world and couldn't stand seeing so many people every day, so she hid indoors all day long.
So, buying groceries and daily necessities, haggling with people, and occasionally answering curious questions from locals were all handled by me. I would use a prepared excuse: "Our hometown was hit by a snow disaster, and we fled here."
I use gestures to speak. Although I don't speak the local language, I can communicate well with them through gestures, eye contact, and facial expressions.
I regained some confidence in front of the "all-powerful" Di Yaruo, because she knew nothing about daily life.
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