Chapter 151: The Pursuit |
Shen Anran stood in the pitch-black night, watching the retreating figure of Ruan Zhenhui, her brow knitting deeper with concern.
She hesitated in place for a moment, knowing she should not be following her own mother.
But the unusual way Ruan Zhenhui had behaved this evening was troubling, and Shen Anran could not set her mind at ease. In the end, she made up her mind and quietly slipped after her in secret.
Before long, Ruan Zhenhui's figure moved like a swift nightingale through the dark, using her familiarity with the manor's layout to effortlessly avoid servants and the night patrol guards as she threaded quickly through the vast estate.
At the same time, Shen Anran followed without losing a step, though the further she went, the more uncertain and unsettled her expression became.
Because the direction Ruan Zhenhui was heading seemed to be precisely where her father Shen Liancheng's quarters were located.
Just at that moment, Li Musheng, who had been searching in the direction Hu Rui'an had left and gone around a full circle without finding any trace of him, suddenly came to a stop on the rooftop of a courtyard building.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, looked out at the mother and daughter pursuing each other one after the other through the darkness ahead, and raised an eyebrow, quietly wondering to himself, "They seem quite familiar with this manor. Should I ask them for directions?"
Zhanliu Manor was genuinely large, with a complex and extensive network of paths, and the various courtyards all looked broadly similar to one another. It really was rather easy to lose one's bearings, and finding a particular person was not straightforward at all.
The courtyard at this moment was dark throughout. The gate was half-ajar, and not a single room within had a lamp burning. It gave every appearance of being entirely unoccupied.
Ruan Zhenhui stood at the courtyard gate with an anxious expression, clearly hesitating for a moment, but then called tentatively into the courtyard, saying, "Liancheng, are you there?"
Her voice carried clearly through the night air, but the courtyard gave no answer at all.
Seeing this, Ruan Zhenhui's expression shifted slightly, and she called in once more.
With still no reply, she seemed to relax somewhat, and let out a quiet breath of relief.
Then her figure slipped through the half-open gate and disappeared into the courtyard.
Shen Anran, watching from not far away, had a succession of expressions cross her face.
She seemed at a loss for a moment, struggling to accept that her mother would slip secretly into her father's courtyard like a thief in the night.
Even so, Shen Anran quickly composed herself.
She neither rushed into the courtyard to reveal herself and stop Ruan Zhenhui, nor turned and left and pretended to have seen nothing.
She withdrew into the darkness behind her and stationed herself outside the courtyard, waiting in silence.
Shen Anran knew her mother's character very well, and so she trusted there was some reason she did not know about behind all of this.
What she wanted to do now was quietly understand why her mother was doing what she was doing.
Before long, Ruan Zhenhui slipped back out of the courtyard with a pleased expression, a distinctive porcelain bottle now in her hand.
She did not linger, however, and immediately hurried back the way she had come.
Shen Anran, watching from the shadows, did nothing more than quietly fall in step behind her once again.
And deeper in the darkness of the night, Li Musheng rubbed his chin, his gaze withdrawing from the porcelain bottle in Ruan Zhenhui's hand.
He noticed that the bottle looked identical to the one on the manor steward's body that had contained the antidote to the Drunken Immortal's Death.
"Could this woman be sneaking here to get the antidote, also to save someone?"
Li Musheng's expression turned thoughtful.
He then thought about it briefly, and quietly set himself in motion to follow along.
In truth, he still had absolutely no idea where Hu Rui'an was, and did not know where that Commissioner had ended up after being poisoned so severely.
For the moment, he could only try this and hope for the best.
And shortly after Ruan Zhenhui and the others had departed, a figure appeared in the previously dark and deserted courtyard, emerging without so much as a whisper of sound, like a ghost materializing from thin air.
Zhanliu Manor Master Shen Liancheng, clad in his dark robe with its cloud patterns, stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His brows and features were like ink lines drawn across a mountain, and his gaze drifted in the direction Ruan Zhenhui had gone. His eyes narrowed, filled with an unfathomable depth.
The next moment, Shen Liancheng became a streak of shadow and vanished from where he stood, following silently and invisibly.
Ruan Zhenhui moved swiftly all the way back, even a touch faster than she had come, slipping through the manor without incident and returning to her own courtyard.
The first thing she did upon arriving was hurry straight into the room, light the candle, lift the bed curtains, and urgently check on Hu Rui'an's condition.
She knew all too well that if the Drunken Immortal's Death had taken too deep a hold and the antidote was not administered in time, there was a very real chance a person could remain unconscious and never wake again.
She wasted no time in giving him the antidote. Before long, Hu Rui'an slowly opened his eyes, though at this moment his entire body was without strength, his True Qi could not be circulated, and he could not even speak.
Meanwhile, on the rooftop above the room, Shen Anran in her long green dress lay carefully against the roof tiles, having shifted one tile aside, and was covertly observing what was happening below.
When she saw that an unfamiliar man had appeared in her mother's bed, and that Ruan Zhenhui was in the most intimate of ways administering medicine to him, she stared in pure disbelief for a moment and very nearly lost her composure and cried out.
But she pressed her hand over her mouth in time and made no sound. Instead, it was from beside her that a man's voice suddenly rang out, saying, "So this is where he ended up. Commissioner Hu has a few tricks, I'll give him that."
In that instant, Shen Anran's entire being jolted in shock. Her body went rigid, and she whipped her head around to look.
There beside her, a remarkably handsome young man was crouching with his chin in his hand, peering down with great curiosity through the gap in the tiles at the scene below.
She had detected absolutely nothing of his presence before this moment. She had not the faintest idea when he had appeared.
What was more, had he not been talking to himself aloud, she would never have noticed him at all, even though he was crouching right beside her.
With that realization, Shen Anran quickly channeled the True Qi within her body, and her figure shot back sharply, silent as a swallow taking flight in the night, withdrawing by more than a zhang and landing soundlessly on the other side of the rooftop.
In an instant, Shen Anran was on full alert, watching Li Musheng crouched on the roof with an expression of startled wariness.
Even so, she did not dare make a sound, for fear of alerting her mother in the room below.
At the same time, Li Musheng paid Shen Anran's reaction no particular mind, and simply looked down at Hu Rui'an and Ruan Zhenhui below with an expression of amused disbelief.
He had genuinely not expected that Commissioner Hu would turn out to be this kind of Commissioner Hu. All that talk about conducting a covert search of the manor overnight and clearing obstacles for the Tianjin Guards' plan to exterminate Falling God Peak, yet here he was, getting cozy with a woman of the manor.
Normally looked quite proper too, for a man of his age to be sneaking out behind everyone's backs like this to pursue a woman. Truly, some people had no sense of priorities.