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Chapter 377 - A husband turned into an uncle
Chapter 377 - A husband turned into an uncle
Chapter 377 A husband turned into an uncle
Lu Jiangbei said, “When they crossed a wooden bridge on the way to bring you to Baisha Mountain Villa, the top of the soft sedan was blown off by the wind and fell into the river. Lord Ning worried that you would get caught in the rain so he jumped into the river to pick it up. Xue Xiao was shocked by what he did and thought he and you had some intimate relationship. However, as soon as they arrived at Baisha Mountain Villa, Lord Ning suddenly threw the sedan on the ground and almost broke it into pieces. He pulled off the sedan curtain and said while glaring at you, ‘Who is this woman? Is she dead? Why am I here? What’s going on?’ Xue Xiao was shocked again and didn’t know what to say. Then, Lord Ning left. Xue Xiao went to check your condition and found the fractures in your body got worse. He couldn’t understand why Lord Ning didn’t bear to let the rain hit you before while he suddenly became so careless.”
He Danggui was also shocked. Did Zhu Quan lose his memory again? But it was good to know he couldn’t recognize her now.
Lu Jiangbei poured a bowl of goat milk paste that had been cooled from the pot and handed it to He Danggui. He continued, “After Xue Xiao had told me this, I immediately thought that maybe Lord Ning had eaten your ‘Li Xin Gui’ so that he became weird.” He looked at He Danggui calmly and said with a smile, “I’ve said that I won’t tell anyone your secret or do bad things to you. Danggui, can you tell me the truth? Do you like Lord Ning? Have you used ‘Li Xin Gui’ on him?”
Forget about the two accusations he made first. He Danggui noticed the change in Lu Jiangbei’s way to call her. The friendly and natural “Miss He” turned into the awkward “Danggui”. Gosh! He Danggui frowned and replied, “I don’t even know what Li Xin Gui is. Why would you say that? As for Lord Ning, I’ve never met him before and didn’t know what he looks like. Since he and I don’t know each other, isn’t it good? He’s completely a stranger to me.”
“Drink it.” Lu Jiangbei pushed the bowl to her mouth and urged gently, “This is a bowl with frills. Be careful not to spill it on the quilt.” Seeing her beginning to drink the paste, he continued, “I’m not very familiar with Lord Ning but I knew one of his acquaintances who told me that he had disguised himself as me and visited Luo’s Family before. Later, he had also sent you priceless treasures of the royal family secretly and now they are stored in Qibao Money Shop. Am I right?”
He Danggui choked and coughed hard. Lu Jiangbei passed her a handkerchief considerately and reproached, “Drink it slowly. No one is robbing you of it. I told you I had no vicious intent and it didn’t matter that I knew your secret. It’s because you and I have a history that you can never imagine or believe.” He wanted to pat her on the back gently while she avoided his hand directly. He withdrew his hand naturally and continued, “Danggui, I heard people in your grandfather’s family treated you very badly and even though you had a big family, you still had to live all by yourself. To avoid any misunderstandings... If you don’t want to marry me, what about you regard me as your uncle? I can treat you well rightfully in the future, then.”
Uncle? Regarded him as her uncle if she didn’t want to marry him? How huge the difference was between the two identities! What was he talking about? He Danggui glared at him with her eyes wide open and intended to make holes in the ice mask on Lu Jiangbei’s face and see his expression now. However, the mask just looked very translucent. It stuck to his face and even pressed it a bit hard. She couldn’t figure out whether he was serious or joking at all.
He wanted to treat her well? Why? Why did he suddenly become so intimate to her? Didn’t he just call her “Miss He” politely before?
Uncle? Why did he want to be her uncle instead of her Master, brother, or foster father? She thought of the weird words Liao Zhiyuan had said before in Bing Hua Dian Inn. “Mr. Gao, you’ve wronged him. There’s a reason you don’t know. It’s a secret between Master Prophet and us. Since there’s no outsider here, we can talk about it. Our boss doesn’t love the lady in my arms or the princess she was in her previous life. He loves the princess’s mother, the world-famous imperial concubine that the emperor now...” If the princess Liao Zhiyuan mentioned was her, the princess’s mother would be her “mother” in the previous life. Lu Jiangbei said he could be her uncle. It was worth thinking about...
After she glared at him for a long while, He Danggui’s eyes became sore but Lu Jiangbei still looked very calm and just let her fix her eyes on him with his arms folded. Then, he urged, “Don’t make the paste too cool.” At the same time, he became very thick-skinned and talked to her as her “uncle”. He said while smiling and raising his jaw, “Thus, Danggui, I knew you were lying when you said you didn’t know Lord Ning. Tell me, do you like Zhu Quan? Do you want uncle to help you?”
He Danggui felt a surge of emotion but she looked calm. After drinking about half a bowl of goat milk paste slowly, she looked up and replied, “Master Lu, although you’re old enough to be a senior in front of me, I’m as subtle as dust and you’re a high-ranking official who will be the chief leader of Lu Feng Escort in the future. I don’t dare to claim kinship with a powerful man like you. Please forgive my being ungrateful but you become intimate suddenly and it makes me uncomfortable. You should change the way you call me. It’s just ‘He Danggui’ or ‘Miss He’.”
Otherwise, Lu Jiangbei showed his intransigent attitude rarely and said in a firm tone, “I’ve made up my mind. It’s reasonable you can’t accept it now. You will get used to it gradually. I know you will. Thus, Danggui, you can regard me as the person who is closest to you and don’t need to hide anything from me. Tell me, what happened between Zhu Quan and you?” He got closer to her and stared at her with his head tilted, “Tell me the truth and I will help you. Talk to uncle. What do you think about Zhu Quan and Mr. Duan respectively?”
He Danggui finished the half bowl of goat milk paste and looked at him with her cheeks puffed up. She swallowed it slowly and wiped her mouth with the handkerchief. Then, she said, “I want one more bowl of it, uncle.” She handed the empty bowl to him.
Lu Jiangbei smiled and took it. While he turned around to fill the bowl, he heard her question, “What position does Gao Shenjun, Master Gao, hold in Imperial Guards? I heard someone mention him before. It’s said that he is a kung fu master.”
Gao Shenjun? Lu Jiangbei was confounded for a moment. He turned around to give her the bowl with eight frills and replied, “I’ve never heard about anyone named this in Imperial Guards. Maybe the name you heard was ‘Gao Shenxin’? That’s Gao Jue’s pseudonym. In his early years when he traveled around the world, he had ever gone undercover in a Hmong village to steal a mysterious poison and he just used the name of ‘Gao Shenxin’ there. Now we all regard ‘Shenxin’ as his courtesy name.”
Gao Shenxin? He Danggui looked down and drank the paste while thinking about it. She heard the name for the first time. Was there any connection between Gao Jue and Gao Shenjun? Moreover, Liao Qing’er had ever told He Danggui that she saw Gao Jue cutting off the part of eyes in a portrait of himself before burning it. At that time, He Danggui didn’t pay much attention to it because subconsciously, she thought Imperial Guards always tortured the criminals so it was normal for them to feel depressive and psychologically distorted. They needed outlets. It was already good since Gao Jue had just burned a portrait but not himself.
What’s more, Gao Jue ever explained to her that he gave her the amazing blue hairpin that was crystal clear and glittering just because her eyes looked similar to that of someone he knew when he was young. That lady died long ago. To commemorate this old friend, he brought the hairpin with him. After meeting He Danggui, he felt she was kind and said it was such a waste to let a man like him keep the hairpin. Then, he gave it to her on a whim. After she got home, she observed the hairpin and found a Chinese character, Qing, carved on it. That should be the first name of some lady. Thus, all her doubts were dispelled because Gao Jue and she weren’t familiar with each other at all before he gave her the hairpin so he wouldn’t know her courtesy name. Maybe he still didn’t know it now. Therefore, the character of “Qing” in the hairpin couldn’t be her name.
However, now Lu Jiangbei told her Gao Jue had used the pseudonym of Gao Shenxin while traveling around the world. That made her have some guesses. She believed the eyes of different people wouldn’t have many differences. They all consisted of the white parts and the black pupils. Why did Gao Jue think her eyes look similar to that lady’s? If there was someone who did have similar eyes with her, the person must have been Tenth Princess who had been disfigured. When Tenth Princess put on a skin mask, she would look exactly like He Danggui. As for Tenth Princess’s face, Zhu Quan and Qi Xuanyu said it was burned before but He Danggui saw a dozen of deep and shallow scars on it caused by knives on the shadow walls.
Maybe the old friend Gao Jue mentioned was Tenth Princess and that hairpin was her legacy? Would the tall man with a cloak named “Gao Jun” that had strangled Tenth Princess cruelly be Gao Jue?
Gao Jue, Gao Jun, Gao Shenjun, Gao Shenxin... Were they names of one man?
Just as Qing’er said, it was so psychopathic of Gao Jue to cut off the eyes of the person in the portrait. But would he cut Tenth Princess’s face, rob her of her hairpin, and send it to He Danggui who was the reincarnation of her?
Uh, Gao Jue might not be so bad... By the way, before being killed by Zhu Quan, Gao Shenjun said he was the biological father of Zhu Quan. If so, Gao Jue would be Zhu Quan’s father, wouldn’t he? It sounded awkward... That couldn’t be possible. Gao Shenjun’s kung fu was very powerful, which was more than one times better than that of a master like Zhu Quan who was thirty-three years old. In front of him, Zhu Quan was like a fool. How powerful he was! Gao Jue didn’t have that kind of powerful kung fu. He seemed to be on the same level as Zhu Quan...
He Danggui took another sip of paste and when she looked up, she caught Lu Jiangbei’s guilty look. She couldn’t help wondering if he had told her the truth. Was it true that there was no one named Gao Shenjun in Imperial Guards? She just asked about the man casually but Lu Jiangbei seemed to have hidden something from her. He also mentioned Gao Jue on purpose. Was he trying to change the subject of their conversation? Was Gao Shenjun so mysterious that outsiders weren’t allowed to know his existence?
She was slightly tired of thinking about these things. Tenth Princess and she actually didn’t have any relationship. She wasn’t very anxious about avenging the pain she suffered from in her previous life now. Since Sun Meiniang was punished, she hadn’t longed to bring trouble to Luo Chuangu and Luo Baiqiong so much. People would get tired of hating others sometimes. The strings would break if they were stretched too tight. When she was with Meng Xuan, she felt better. Meng Ying also told her to stop. Should she adopt his idea? As for her old grudges with Shangguan Mingri, Zhou Jinglan, and Xu Siniang, she had vented her anger in the Fantasy Dream so she could let the past be the past. And she wasn’t qualified to ask about the mystery of Tenth Princess’s case or how wronged she was.
“Well, uncle.” He Danggui was trying to adapt the new appellation, “What kind of poison was He He Qi Ri Qing? Why would my palm be cut as soon as I touched that poisonous string of keys that day? Why is there still poison in my body since I’ve taken the antidote? When will I get rid of it utterly?”
“You won’t. You have to live with it in the future.” Lu Jiangbei replied, “But it should be a blessing in disguise for you. With He He Qi Ri Qing and Li Xin Gui in your body, you will be immune from all other poisons and fear no coldness or hotness in the future. Even people like us who have practiced kung fu for lots of years can’t be so lucky.”
He Danggui got surprised and said, “Lucky? I think I’m so unlucky. Why do people all say that He He Qi Ri Qing can help us be immune from all other poisons? If so, why don’t you take it and its antidote? Then, you will all be as lucky as I do, right?”
Lu Jiangbei explained patiently, “Danggui, you don’t know that once a person is poisoned with He He Qi Ri Qing, it will be highly uncertain if he can be saved even if he has the antidote, and one part of the guiding medicine of the antidote is Li Xin Gui which is very hard to find.” He paused and looked into her eyes weirdly, “But how do you know that He He Qi Ri Qing can help us be immune from all other poisons? Who told you that?”