Chapter 197 I'll Take You Away
Mu Jianjian felt Ye Xuanzhi's body trembling slightly, and gently placed her hands on his body. "The situation at the time was unpredictable, so it's not your fault."
Ye Xuanzhi was silent for a few seconds, then suddenly stretched out his arms and pulled the girl away. "Jianjian, are you alright? You must have suffered a lot after being caught here."
Looking at the man's teary-eyed and extremely aggrieved expression, Mu Jianjian almost thought that it was he who had been arrested, not her.
He suffered a lot.
What does that mean?
Mu Jianjian felt a little guilty as she recalled that she hadn't done anything in the courtyard of the beautiful older sister in the past few days. "Actually, it was okay. I met a very beautiful older sister who took care of me, so I didn't suffer much."
"A pretty lady?" Ye Xuanzhi's face showed suspicion. "Why would she help you for no reason in a place like the Red Chamber? Be careful not to be deceived."
Mu Jianjian snorted lightly, not taking the other person's words to heart. "How did you know I was here? Where's my senior brother? Where's Yueyue?"
"Look how anxious you are. I'm the one who came to you, and you didn't even ask how I was doing," Ye Xuanzhi said, but then he told Mu Jianjian what he knew.
In Ye Xuanzhi's account, he used his mystical methods to calculate that Mu Jianjian's approximate location was at the northernmost point of the continent, thus knowing that she was probably in the territory of Duyunfang.
As for Dream of the Red Chamber—
"Hehe, isn't this the place with the most people in the Red Mansion? I've been staking out here to gather information for several days now. It's quite a coincidence," Ye Xuanzhi rubbed against Mu Jianjian, ignoring her disgusted look, "I'm going back to Xuanmen to report tomorrow, and I didn't expect to see you in the main hall."
"Aren't we very destined for each other?" Ye Xuanzhi said, "Including our previous encounters and reunions, and now, my father once said that the meeting of two people is a destiny drawn by invisible threads. I didn't believe it before."
Mu Jianjian: ...
The key point is that he didn't say a single word.
"What about my senior brother and Yueyue?" She pushed away the man whose head was tilted to his shoulder with disdain and asked anxiously.
After Mu Jianjian finished speaking, she saw Ye Xuanzhi's hesitant expression and remembered how he had avoided the topic earlier. Her heart sank to the bottom. "Did something happen to them?"
“Nothing bad has happened, it’s just that…” Ye Xuanzhi sighed, “they are not in very good condition.”
He slightly raised his eyes and looked at the girl in the floral dress. "You were captured by unknown people in the palace that day. Not only me, but Fellow Daoist Sang also wanted to chase after them, but she was seriously injured at the time. She tried to break through but was instead attacked by her inner demons. Later, she was rescued by Linghu Zhuoyu."
"And then? Is Yueyue alright?" Mu Jianjian's heart jumped.
“Linghu Zhuoyu said she was fine, but her personality has changed drastically; she's not the same as before,” Ye Xuanzhi seemed to recall something. “Back then, you were captured and disappeared without a trace. Even after the Demon Lord ordered the entire capital to be sealed off, they still found nothing—”
"Demon Lord?" Mu Jianjian repeated the word he uttered, "Why did Nangong Yining..."
“It’s not Nangong Yining, it’s Chi Wenqing.” Ye Xuanzhi’s expression became serious as he met the girl’s gaze. “This battle is publicly claimed to be Nangong Yining’s attempt to use the grand banquet as an opportunity to eliminate future troubles and control other forces. But we all know that it is actually the people from the Upper Realm who want to make the move.”
Mu Jianjian bit her lip, "Is Senior Brother... alright?"
Taking advantage of the battle with the upper realm, he killed Nangong Yining and seized power. The dangers involved are self-evident.
"He's fine, but I don't know anything else," Ye Xuanzhi said, somewhat annoyed by the girl's distraught appearance. "Your senior brother will be alright. He's become the Demon Lord now, so he's probably living a comfortable life."
He wasn't the first one to find Jianjian!
Those people seemed to care about Jianjian, but they didn't do anything afterward. After staying in the Kyoto Palace for a few days without any news of Jianjian, Fellow Daoist Sang returned directly to the Xuanshuang Sect. Meanwhile, Jianjian's childhood sweetheart, Ye Wuluo, got very close to Chi Wenqing, seemingly just symbolically searching for her.
Recently, there have even been rumors circulating within the Xuan Shuang Sect that "Fellow Daoist Sang is Jianjian's half-sister," seemingly to downplay the news of Jianjian's disappearance. It's unclear whether these rumors are true or false.
However, he felt terrible just hearing this news, so he decided not to tell Jianjian.
"Oh." Mu Jianjian nodded after hearing Ye Xuanzhi's words, feeling a little sad.
Reason told her that it was great that her senior brother had gotten everything sorted out and escaped the dark path of the original book, but when she heard Ye Xuanzhi say "comfortable" and thought about her own predicament of being trapped in the Red Chamber and unable to move an inch, her emotions ultimately prevailed.
I feel so awful!
Why hasn't she come to find her after all this time?!
"Don't say 'oh,' I'll take you away from the Red Mansion and back to the Xuan Shuang Sect, okay?" Ye Xuanzhi said immediately when he saw the girl's head was lowered.
Mu Jianjian slowly shook her head, "Let's not even talk about how easy it is for you to take me with you when you leave tomorrow. Look at what's in that cup."
She raised her hand and pointed to the porcelain teapot on the rosewood table in the room in front of her.
Ye Xuanzhi frowned slightly, walked a few steps to the table, picked up the porcelain pot, opened the lid, and after smelling it a few times, his expression changed drastically. "This is... 'Manluo'?"
Why is "Manluo" here?
Mu Jianjian gave a bitter smile as she recalled the original book's description of the female protagonist, Sang Wanyue, embarking on her journey to Yingzhou and visiting the Red Mansion of Laiduyunfang.
Upon closer examination, it seems that the author never elaborated on the reason for coming to the Dream of the Red Chamber; everything seemed to be a pretext to cover up the romantic subplot of the female protagonist encountering the fourth and fifth male leads.
But when Mu Jianjian saw "Manluo" in the Red Chamber, could she have imagined that Yueyue came to the Red Chamber in the book to capture the person from the upper realm who was spreading "Manluo" behind the scenes?
“Yes, a large portion of the tea in the Red Mansion is mixed with ‘Manluo’ (a type of herb), and the smoke is also infused with aphrodisiac fragrance,” Mu Jianjian said helplessly, looking at Ye Xuanzhi. “I want to wait here for Yueyue to arrive so that we can work together to find the people from the Upper Realm here…”
"Besides, when I still had my true energy, I could try to escape from the Red Chamber with you, but now that my true energy is sealed, it will probably be difficult to get out of the heavily guarded Red Chamber."
"Your true energy is sealed?" The two met in a hurry, and only now did Ye Xuanzhi notice the abnormality on the girl. He used his divine sense to perceive it, but he could not feel any fluctuation of true energy!
"Who did this? Was it someone from the Upper Realm?!" Ye Xuanzhi then realized that since their first meeting, Mu Jianjian had been the one asking questions, rarely mentioning the danger she had faced. "You—"
"After the people from the upper realm captured me and sealed my true energy, they brought me to Jin Hongze. While they were leaving the city, I escaped to the secret passage under the dilapidated temple in the capital, but I was captured and taken to the Red Chamber of Duyunfang."
"Jin Hongze?" A ruthless glint flashed in Ye Xuanzhi's eyes. He remembered that the people from the Golden Crow Temple said that their young master had disappeared after that night. It seemed that he hadn't disappeared, but had probably run straight back to the Golden Crow Temple!
“I have a high-grade magic artifact that can draw the array eye. I can take you away and leave from here,” Ye Xuanzhi said anxiously, feeling sorry for you. “Let’s not worry about ‘Manluo’ for now, okay? Your safety is more important than that.”
Since there were people from the upper realm in the Red Chamber, he was even more worried about Jianjian, who had no cultivation, being left alone here.
Mu Jianjian slowly shook her head.
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