Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
Cheng Cheng couldn’t figure it out on his own until Jiang Pengji reminded him. Now he had someone he suspected.
Jiang Pengji pretended to be indifferent. “Have you thought of anyone?” she asked Cheng Cheng casually after she noticed his face had changed.
Cheng Cheng wasn’t going to speak it out loud, even if it was indeed the person he was thinking. He was just suspicious, anyway.
Jiang Pengji wasn’t going to dig deeper. She turned to look at Cheng Cheng’s wife.
They were both used to a luxurious and fine life. When was last time they had been in such a nasty condition?
She asked a realistic question. “I’ve learned that most of your guards were killed by the bandits… However, now we are in the middle of nowhere. The nearest tourist station is a couple days away. What do you plan to do?”
Cheng Cheng was injured and his wife had been treated so well that she had never done any chores at home. How were they going to survive in such a wild place?
With Jiang Pengji’s question, it was clear that Cheng Cheng was at a loss.
Jiang Pengji continued before he could respond, “If you don’t mind, and you trust me enough, I will take you two to the nearest station to help you settle down. Then you guys can try to contact your family. You will still be in danger if you have no idea who you are dealing with.”
Cheng Cheng felt ashamed and thanked Jiang Pengji. If Jiang Pengji didn’t offer to give them a ride, even though there were no more bandits going after them, they would have trouble keeping themselves alive.
Compared to Cheng Cheng’s anxiousness, his wife seemed to be straightforward. She wasn’t hiding her fondness for Jiang Pengji, especially when she saw what Jiang Pengji did for them. “You have out of the ordinary skill and have an outstanding aura. I’m just wondering… What family do you belong to?”
“The Liu’s in Hejian County. My first name is Xi. My father is Liu She. If you don’t mind, you can call me Lanting.”
Cheng Cheng and his wife heard what she had said and they were both astonished––except, they were astonished about different things. Cheng Cheng’s wife’s attention was on “A young man with talent who happens to be the best candidate to be a son-in-law.”
“You are Liu County Chief’s son?”
Liu She was the man that a number of young girls wasn’t able to ignore when he was young. His story with his wife Gumin had become a legend.
Cheng Cheng’s wife had never seen him, but she definitely had heard about him. It was unexpected that a talented man like Liu She had a son who was a master in martial arts.
The bandits had nearly pushed them into a dead end but they turned out to be extremely fragile in front of this young boy.
In only a short time, Cheng Cheng’s wife was thinking about something else. She had put the label of “Good Son-in-law” on Jiang Pengji. She believed that whoever had the luck to marry him would be extremely fortunate.
It was a shame that her daughter was still too young to talk about marriage. Otherwise she would like to set a marriage with him.
What Cheng Cheng focused on had nothing to do with Liu She. He simply paid attention to Liu Xi as an individual. “Are you twenty yet?”
He didn’t look like like he was in his twenties. He would be, at most, thirteen or so from his looks.
Jiang Pengji was stunned and she realized why Cheng Cheng was asking. She explained to him, “My literal name was left by my mother, who has already passed away. She prepared it for the time that I turned twenty. But my parents were deeply in love, so after my mom passed away, my father started using this name for me.”
If they had given her the name already, then they might as well just use it. It saved the trouble of giving her a nickname.
Cheng Cheng was speechless. It was very abnormal, which sounded like something Liu She would have done.
The blood on Jiang Pengji was mostly dried and the original pattern on her clothes was hard to see. Jiang Pengji gave the orders to her guards to protect Cheng Cheng and his wife, and then she went to an isolated place to clean up. It was not possible for her to wash off the blood from her body, but at least she could wipe off the blood on her face.
“You are truly good-looking. I’m just curious––are you engaged with someone yet?”
The more Cheng Cheng’s wife looked at Jiang Pengji, the more satisfied she was with her. She had a refined look and elegant facial features, which were slightly girly, but it happened to be the definition of the pretty boys in the current trend. She couldn’t stop trying to be a matchmaker for him.
Jiang Pengji nodded and shook her head. “I had one before. But Master Liaochen predicted that it would be better for me to not get married early or else it would do harm to me. In order not to waste the best time of the girl who I got engaged with, we had to call it off.”
Cheng Cheng’s wife heard this and quickly quit the idea of trying to make a match for him. She felt it was a shame for him.
She didn’t question the genuineness of Jiang Pengji’s words at all.
The marriages in the gentry clans were not games. If it wasn’t for some inevitable reasons, no one would break off an engagement. The reason Jiang Pengji gave was undebatable.
Cheng Cheng was deep in thought while he stared at Jiang Pengji’s face until his wife sneakily pinched him. Her husband was used to be instructional. That would ruin a nice atmosphere if he started to lecture her.
Cheng Cheng said to her with a bitter smile, “You misunderstood me. I only found that this young friend looks so familiar to me. It feels like that we have seen each other somewhere before.”
“If Lanting is Liu County Chief’s son, naturally he looks like his father. Why are you thinking about this?”
Cheng Cheng stopped speaking. The truth was he had never actually met Liu She. They both acknowledged each other but they had never met.
The circle of the gentry clans was not too big but it was not too small. He had never met Liu She but they had common friends. They both had heard about each other from their mutual friends. Therefore, when Cheng Cheng claimed that Jiang Pengji looked familiar to him, it definitely wasn’t because she looked like Liu She.
He kept pondering and all of sudden he remembered that he took a glance at an unfinished painting from his young friend several months ago.
It would have been Liu Xi if the girl in the painting was a bit younger. Her look was less mature and her eyes were more gentle. But Liu Xi was Liu She’s second “wife’s son” and his daughter was kept in the isolated yard.
Was it possible that the girl sleeping in the blooming flowers in my young friend’s painting is Gumin?
It sounds scary, but it is not entirely impossible. My young friend is one of the best apprentices of Master Yuanjing. Master Yuanjing had some connection with Gumin when he was young. It is very likely that he learned about Gumin’s appearance from Master Yuanjing.
“Are you encountering some difficulties?” Jiang Pengji led the way, holding a sword ahead of them. She tried to clear out a way through the bushes more thoroughly than before in order to make it easier for the injured people, like Cheng Cheng and his wife, to walk through. “You don’t look good.”
Cheng Cheng stayed silent. He wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to tell the young guy in front of him that another young guy, who wasn’t much older than him, could draw his mother very well.
“Nothing much. I was just wondering who was trying to put me to death…” Cheng Cheng used a reasonable excuse to cover it up. “I have some speculations, but I don’t think he would do something ferocious like that after I thought it through.”
That was what was eating away at him.
Jiang Pengji wasn’t questioning much, even though she could tell that Cheng Cheng wasn’t being entirely honest with her. She wasn’t going to dig hard since it was not her business.
“Langjun, you are finally back. Guards found some traces of fights nearby…” Xu Ke had seen their vague shadows coming out of the woods a far distance away, so he trotted forward. He quickly swallowed back what he was about to say when he saw their condition.
His Langjun seemed to have had a blood bath after going to get some water… They had been gone a long time for just going to get some water.
He felt like he was missing out on a good show by only being away from the Langjun for one hour.
