"Where to next?"
Mom yawned lazily.
"Should we go there first?" Zhang Shutong didn't rush to answer, instead turning to ask the person behind him.
"Let's go there first." Lu Qinglian nodded her chin.
The "there" both of them referred to was the Forbidden Zone. According to what they'd discussed while coming down the mountain, they planned to investigate the Forbidden Zone one more ti. Though he couldn't see anything himself, Lu Qinglian might be able to discover sothing unusual.
"Your relationship seems to have gotten better." Mom tilted her head curiously.
Not really.
Zhang Shutong thought to himself.
A relationship based on getting kicked?
And her ankle was sprained too.
Zhang Shutong was willing to call it a one-kick friendship.
He ignored Mom's teasing and instead described the Forbidden Zone's location in detail.
"What are you going there for?"
"...To play."
"You really are treating your mom like a chauffeur. What about little Lu?"
"I'm the one who wants to go see that place, sorry to trouble you."
Lu Qinglian's flat voice ca from behind.
Zhang Shutong glanced at her. Her expression was sowhere between smiling and not, that playful smile again—though according to her, it was an interested smile. He knew what she ant: she was mocking him for telling another lie.
Of course, she was also helping him cover for that lie.
Mom sighed.
Zhang Shutong sighed internally too.
He'd bet that if he were alone in the car right now, his dear mother would have impatiently dumped him on the roadside already.
The car drove to the Forbidden Zone. This was the difference between won and n—Old Song had asked if he needed to co along, but Mom just said you go down yourselves, don't call . After saying this, she reclined her seat, turned up the air conditioning, and leisurely lay down.
"Don't stay too long."
"Okay..."
Zhang Shutong pushed open the car door and instinctively surveyed the surroundings first. There wasn't a trace of people nearby, though he could still see the tire tracks left from last night.
Faint mist shrouded this body of water. Everything was a blanket of white. The sky stretched high and vast, the surroundings boundless. Reeds swayed gently in the wind.
This ti his pace was slower because Lu Qinglian's foot was injured.
Zhang Shutong took the initiative to walk ahead, pushing aside the reeds while reminding her, "Watch your step, there are fishing lines."
"Why are there fishing lines?"
"Uh... probably tied by so idiot fisherman."
Zhang Shutong gave a perfunctory answer and pointed toward the shore:
"It was right there, crouching by the lake. How should I describe her posture? It was like both her hands were also propped on the ground. Have you ever watched kung fu movies?"
He'd wanted to use the Toad Stance from one as an example, but Lu Qinglian just shook her head:
"I can roughly understand. Continue."
"Then when my flashlight shone on her face, she happened to turn her head. Oh right, her hair was loose at the ti, not like yours now."
The girl currently had her hair tied in a high ponytail.
"She only ran when she saw you approaching?"
"Yes."
"But we made a lot of noise walking over." Lu Qinglian frowned.
"I thought it was strange too. At the ti I thought it was you, that you'd recognized and were doing sothing unsavory, or rather sothing I definitely couldn't discover, so you suddenly ran..."
"How fast?"
"It felt like just the blink of an eye."
"You should be grateful she ran. Judging by that speed," Lu Qinglian thought for a mont, "if she'd attacked you, you couldn't have escaped."
"True." Saying this made Zhang Shutong feel sowhat shaken. "Can you tell anything?"
"I can't tell." Lu Qinglian thought, "But I've temporarily co up with two possibilities."
"First, she clearly heard the sound but waited until she saw your face clearly before avoiding you. That's very abnormal. Your reasoning is that she must have had a reason she couldn't be discovered by 'you,' but the premise for this is that she knew 'you' from before."
"She knows ?" Zhang Shutong frowned. "Just to be safe, let confirm one more ti—from first year of middle school onward, the 'Lu Qinglian' I've known has always been the one standing before now, right?"
"Correct."
"Then what's the second possibility?"
"Very simple—she has hearing problems but reacts to light sources." Lu Qinglian's thinking was very clear. "You ca by car. I just paid attention to the sound of your family's car—the engine is very loud, but she didn't notice. Yet when you shone your flashlight, she imdiately turned her head."
"Putting it that way, this possibility does seem quite likely." Zhang Shutong murmured. He looked at Lu Qinglian for a long while before finally couldn't help asking, "Are you sure that person really wasn't you?"
"I already said, I never ca here last night." Lu Qinglian said calmly. "If you still doubt , we can end our cooperation here."
"I an, is it possible you don't rember it yourself? Like sleepwalking or sothing?"
"No, I was fully conscious all of last night."
So it really wasn't the sa person, but two identical people.
He imdiately thought of last Saturday when he was heading ho and had run into Lu Qinglian. They'd exchanged a few words. That Lu Qinglian should have been the real one. At the ti she'd headed south, toward the villa's direction.
Which ant she still went to the villa.
Zhang Shutong recalled their earlier conversation.
Those frozen snakes were a ans of "transmitting ssages."
In other words, on Saturday night, she might have discovered sothing unusual about the villa through the snakes and rushed over.
But in the end still failed to prevent Gu Qiumian from being killed?
Yet this ti with the heavy snow, even those snakes were useless.
The two of them walked around the shore so more, wanting to find her footprints, but she'd run straight into the reeds—there was simply nothing to discover.
"Let's go back." Zhang Shutong said with a headache. "There's no point staying like this."
"Mm, where to next?"
"How about we check out the villa?"
"Alright."
Zhang Shutong walked ahead again. He noticed Lu Qinglian's foot really was quite serious—she had to constantly support herself on the reeds on both sides, like using crutches:
"How's your foot?"
"It's alright."
Zhang Shutong didn't quite understand what this "alright" ant.
Thinking from her perspective, if he himself said "alright," it would an it hurt quite a bit. If it was truly "alright," he would say "it's fine."
"By the way, aren't you cold in those clothes?"
Zhang Shutong noticed her cheeks, which had just regained so color, had turned pale again.
In the past Zhang Shutong thought she wasn't afraid of the cold. Now he realized she might just simply be cold-resistant, or perhaps... emotionally dense?
She seed to be the type who, once focused, would ignore her own physical sensations.
"A little, but I can bear it."
"I thought you weren't cold."
"Why do you always say such useless things?" Lu Qinglian sighed.
Zhang Shutong had no response to that.
Back at the car, Mom was applying lipstick in the makeup mirror:
"So where to next, my two little friends?"
Zhang Shutong was used to this by now. His mom also had a vain personality. He just asked:
"Are the buses still running today?"
"Should be."
"Then just drop us off at the bus stop."
There was only one bus route on the island, and it could get near the villa—though not all the way to that mountain road. But since cars couldn't make it up today anyway, a little farther or closer didn't matter.
"Finally learned to feel sorry for your old mom?" She suddenly seed quite happy, though who knew why.
So she didn't ask what they were going to do, just said okay and started the car.
When outsiders were present, Mom never asked him why he was doing sothing, giving him plenty of face.
But Zhang Shutong rembered Lu Qinglian's foot was still injured. Making her walk all that way non-stop seed pretty heartless. Though if he asked whether she could handle it, she'd probably just respond with "alright" again.
So Zhang Shutong changed his mind:
"Actually, let's just go ho first."
He glanced at Lu Qinglian and found she showed no reaction, just turned her face to look out the window.
"You're changing your mind again. Hurry up and say where you're going, I'm in a rush."
"Ho."
"You really don't need to take you anywhere else?"
"No need."
"Then let's make a bet—what happens if you call again today?" Mom said mischievously. The woman had beautiful phoenix eyes, and when she narrowed them, the corners tilted up slightly—which definitely ant trouble.
"No bet." Zhang Shutong didn't take the bait.
"Oh right, what about those friends of yours? Didn't you say you were going up the mountain to play with them?"
"They already went back ho in their family's car."
Zhang Shutong answered half-truthfully.
Playing with his buddies was false.
But they really had co together by car today. Zhang Shutong hadn't asked in detail, but it should have been Ruoping's dad who brought them.
"So a man's word is his bond, okay? Don't call . I'm really leaving the island later?"
"Leaving the island for what?" Zhang Shutong was startled, thinking that in the previous tiline Mom had clearly still been on the island.
"To find your dad, of course. Candlelit dinner—he said he booked the restaurant." His parents had a great relationship, and Mom admitted frankly, "Not long after you guys left, he called . Said he saw it snowed on the island, and since it's Friday, asked if I wanted to bring you to the city to have fun. I said you had plans with other classmates, so we'll have our romantic ti together."
"Uh..."
Zhang Shutong was still processing this information.
No wonder she was applying lipstick.
No wonder she was all smiles.
Turns out Dad and Mom were going on a date.
And they hadn't planned to bring him along.
Though his parents were usually busy, their work situations were still quite different. Mom worked on the island while Dad sotis traveled around, attending lectures and conferences and such. So even though it snowed today and they didn't have to work, only Mom ca back.
He vaguely rembered Dad had been in the city these past few days.
"Jealous." Zhang Shutong really was jealous.
His parents were basically his ideal couple. They'd known each other in college. Mom had been a wild personality when she was young, like a witch who feared the world wasn't chaotic enough, with countless suitors, yet her heart was firmly tied to Dad.
His dad really did dote on his mom too. After all these years, the woman was still as carefree as she'd been in her youth, hardly even growing wrinkles.
Now they even had a candlelit dinner planned.
Zhang Shutong thought about how he still had to run around everywhere later, not even knowing where dinner would be, while those two would be having a romantic dinner in so restaurant's private room. His feelings were a bit complicated.
But there was no helping it. Back in the day, Tongtong had grown up in an environnt where they constantly showed affection. He rembered when he'd just started high school, the two of them had transferred back to work in the city. Finally having so leisure ti, instead of imdiately throwing themselves back into work, they drove around the country for a while.
At that ti Zhang Shutong had just gotten his Regression ability and had a blast being a lone wolf.
Influenced by those two, his standards for a partner were quite high. Finally in high school he t a senior, but despite having fate, they had no fortune together. He'd been single for many years after.
Zhang Shutong thought of the past and couldn't help feeling lancholic.
Seeing him not speak for a long ti, Mom pinched his face. "Lonely? Want to co along?"
Zhang Shutong reluctantly swatted her hand away. "No need, I still have things to do later."
"See, I knew it." Mom laughed again. "You and little Lu have fun."
The car quickly returned to the apartnt building.
The two got out.
Zhang Shutong said goodbye to Mom.
Lu Qinglian had basically not spoken the whole way, except for occasionally nodding when Mom asked her sothing, or sotis shaking her head. Few words but polite—no parent wouldn't like this type of girl.
But Zhang Shutong knew she was putting on an act. Like how she often seed like a natural airhead, and he'd nearly been fooled too, when in reality she was a thoroughly terrifying woman.
"I should have already said this—our ti is very tight. This kind of arbitrarily changing plans is really troubleso," Sure enough, as soon as the car drove off, Lu Qinglian imdiately dropped the act. She frowned slightly. "You'd better have a reasonable explanation for why we ca to your place. And not so boring reason."
"There aren't that many plans. I just brought you sowhere to rest. I only just rembered—those shoes of yours can't possibly walk that mountain road. At minimum you need to change shoes." Zhang Shutong said helplessly. "You say I'm suspicious, but I'd say you're about the sa."
"That's the only reason?"
"That's the only reason." He pointed at the stairs again: "Need to carry you?"
But Lu Qinglian fell silent. She just shook her head and slowly climbed the stairs holding the handrail.
"Thank you."
After a mont, Lu Qinglian said softly.
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