Chapter 198 - Playboy Teacher
Chapter 198 Playboy Teacher
“You may have doubts about my character, but you can’t doubt my skill in neutralizing poison!”
Baili Rui glared at the woman before him when he heard her words of retort.
“Character? Are you talking to me about character? If not for you, Mr. Gusu, I wouldn’t end up in this state!”
Yunzhu cried out, and then disappeared into the secret passage.
“Mr. Gusu? She, she’s Yunxi!”
Baili Rui, who was full of mettle, had never felt so ashamed.
He widened his eyes and stared into the pitch-dark secret passage.
In an instant, Baili Rui looked defeated.
“Wait for me, Yunzhu!”
Lin Mengya was about to run after Yunxi when she observed that her teacher seemed to have his life sucked out of him.
He went into a daze while staring at the purplish red blood in the dish.
“What’s this all about, Teacher? What’s the story of Mr. Gusu and Yunxi all about?”
Lin Mengya was in a dilemma whether to run after Yunzhu.
Yunzhu’s condition had not stabilized. Lin Mengya was afraid that a blow to Yunzhu now would cause her to go delirious.
She would not be able to take the blow at this moment, given her already battered body.
Her teacher was not in any better state either. After weighing the situation, Lin Mengya decided to remain behind with Baili Rui.
“Sigh, it’s all down to destiny.”
Baili Rui took a pearly hairpin out of his pocket.
Although it appeared to be an outdated design, it was nevertheless intricately made.
However, from how the pearls had lost their luster, Baili Rui must have taken the hairpin out every now and then to look at it.
“Teacher, once I heard Yunzhu said that she fell in a love with a man. Are you that man?”
The Baili Rui before Lin Mengya’s eyes may seem to be very embarrassed, but she was able to tell that he used to be a charming man when he was young.
For reason that Baili Wuchen was raised by Baili Rui, these two were rather similar in their mannerisms and temperament.
Baili Rui was in fact the more mettlesome of the two.
Without a doubt, he had to be a lady-killer when he was young.
Qinghu had once mentioned that Yunzhu had ended up in this state because of one man.
The more Lin Mengya looked at her teacher, the more she was convinced that he had the capacity to be such a playboy.
However, prying into this matter was no longer simply to satisfy her curiosity now.
If she failed to calm Yunzhu, her Sanjue Hall would become an unrealized dream.
“I’m not sure if she ever loved me, but I’ve definitely loved her. I had no idea how she came to this state, but I’m certain that to her, she’d rather die than to live in this manner.”
Lin Mengya did not push it, seeing that her teacher did not have the intention to tell her the story.
She shook her head and got up to leave.
“Lass, will you pass this back to her? Please just say to her that I had let her down fifteen years ago.”
Baili Rui glanced at the pearly hairpin in his hand with a reluctant look, but finally handed it over to Lin Mengya.
She gave her teacher a helpless look. It was no wonder he could continue living in a dark place without any sunlight.
When the heart was dead, what else could one not let go?
“No, Teacher, running away from the problem is not a solution. If you’re sincere about asking her for forgiveness, you should give this to her in person.”
Lin Mengya gave the hairpin back to her teacher. She thought it would be better for those two to settle their problem face to face.
When Lin Mengya eventually exited the secret passage, she was surprised to bump into Yunzhu at the gate of her courtyard.
Yunzhu had not covered her face with the veil because she was too shaken up.
At this moment, purplish-red blood was oozing out of the tiny pinhole which Baili Rui had punctured.
In the dark of the night, her aged countenance, together with the purplish-red blood on her face made her a phantom-looking figure.
“You may continue to be shaken up if you wish to die.”
Lin Mengya kept her distance out of fear, but she said those words as a reminder.
Lin Mengya was not sure if her words had an effect on Yunzhu, nevertheless, Yunzhu finally calmed down.
“If you’ve told me earlier that he was going to be the person who would cure the poison in me, I would rather die.”
Yunzhu, who had regained her composure, put the veil back onto her face.
However, he did sound a little cold, as if there was great hatred between them.
“I’ve no idea in the beginning the reason you hated Teacher so much. Fifteen years had passed after all, you can’t be joking if your life is at stake.”
Lin Mengya had the impression that the person whom Yunzhu wanted Lin Mengya to save was the man Yunzhu’s loved.
However, from the look of it, Yunzhu seemed to have a deep relationship with her teacher.
Sigh, no matter how smart a person was, the matters of the heart would always wreak havoc to his rationality.
“Hate? He’s not even worthy of my hatred. You’re right, I will continue to live well, so he would know that he had made a mistake abandoning me.”
Oh my god! Was this what the tragic story of a playboy abandoning his young love all about?
Suddenly, Lin Mengya’s curiosity was stirred up. Nevertheless, she tried to look calm and disinterested.
“How about we go into the room to talk about this?”
Lin Mengya convinced herself that it was not her intention to listen to her teacher’s illicit love while having cracking melon seeds between her teeth.
It was just because the night was dark and it would not look good if someone saw them.
Yunzhu gave Lin Mengya one look and nodded.
Tonight seemed like a perfect time for her to finally reveal the matter which she had kept deep in her heart for years.
Night had remained in the dungeon to take care of Long Tianhao. Qinghu had not returned from checking out the Art Courtyard, while Lin Zhongyu stayed with Long Tianhao in the dungeon as a standby fight the foot soldiers.
The four maidservants were the only ones left to accompany Lin Mengya in the Liuxin Courtyard.
However, when the maids saw Yunzhu, Baizhi, being the timidest among the four, dragged Baiji with her to hide in her room. She was too afraid to come out of her room.
Baishao and Baisu, who were bolder, remained in the room with Lin Mengya and Yunzhu.
For the first time in a long time, Lin Mengya had no one to protect or watch over her.
At this moment, Lin Mengya and Yunzhu sat by the table, looking as if they were good friends.
“Back in that year when I first joined Peach Blossom Dock, I was assigned the task of gathering information in Qing Brothel since I was a special prostitute who only served government officials.”
Yunzhu began narrating the painful memory of how the two of them met and hung out.
She was the woman who had to entertain men everyday, while he was a playboy, who was also the most outstanding physician in the neutralizing of poison in the human body.
Their rendezvous was as beautiful as what usually happened in drama scripts.
Keeping their identity secret from one another, they fell in love in troubled times.
“After two years, he suddenly disappeared. I searched the whole world, but failed to find any trace of him.”
A smiled appeared on Yunzhu’s face when she talked about those endearing times.
However, at the mention of his disappearance, Lin Mengya sensed a hint of sadness in Yunzhu’s eyes.
Apparently, the departure of her teacher came as a great blow to Yunzhu.
“After he left, how did you escape from Peach Blossom Dock?And how did your face get ruined?”
At this juncture, the tinge of endearment brought about by her memory suddenly vanished.
“Subsequently, his buddy sent me a message telling me that he was getting married. I knew my place as a prostitute, that I would never become his wife. I had simply wanted to check his wedding out. Little did I expect that he would be so heartless. He said he was afraid that I would cause harm to his wife. If I insisted on going, I had to ingest an herb prescribed by him, which would forbid me to mobilize my internal powers for three days. Unfortunately, I bumped into my enemy who was after my life on the way to attend the wedding and was thus forced to mobilize my internal powers, which then led to the flare-up of the effect of the poison. In order to save my life, his buddy used his body as an exchange, which was why I found a way of escape, but I turned out into what you see of me today.”
Yunzhu was obviously filled with hatred for Lin Mengya’s teacher. What he did was too much. Even Lin Mengya, who was a mere observer, was filled with rage after listening to Yunzhu’s narration.
At first, she had thought that her teacher was an upright and straightforward man.
Never would she have expected him to be such a debauched man.
No, that did not sound right!
Lin Mengya pondered carefully and realized that her teacher had never mentioned that he had a family even since she became his disciple.
“But I’ve known Teacher for a while, and I’ve never heard him talk about having a wife or children.”
After Lin Mengya raised her doubts, Yunzhu dazed for a moment, and then continued with indignation, “Humph! I’m sure he must have abandoned that woman as well. He is good at it.”
Lin Mengya could understand Yunzhu’s hatred towards her teacher, but she also knew to look at this matter objectively.
She was positive that the expression on her teacher’s face was sincere.
Unless there was something else which had been kept a secret from her.
“Rest assured that I will investigate the matter until I get to the bottom of this. As for the poison which is still in your body, you can’t delay any longer to get rid of it.”
“I would rather die than to put my trust in this man!”
When Yunzhu remained adamant about her decision, Lin Mengya was left with no other choice but to agree to let her handle everything else.
It was only after Lin Mengya continued to placate Yunzhu that she eventually left, still embittered.
Finally, left alone in the room, Lin Mengya went into deep thoughts.
What exactly happened?
Long Tianhao recuperated quickly under the watch and care of Baili Rui.
Although he still looked a little too pale these few days.
On the other hand, Lin Mengya had claimed to have fallen ill, so that she did not step out of her room at all. Even the others in the Liuxin Courtyard chose not to go outside unless they really had very important matters to tend to.
Long Tianhao subsequently found out what he had done.
However, whenever he attempted to go to Liuxin Courtyard to apologize, Qinghu and Lin Zhongyu would come in his way and stop him from entering the courtyard.
Even Night was chased out by Qinghu.
Left with no choice, he would hide at the surrounding area to keep watch.
“Your Highness the prince, we have searched all the kitchens in the entire mansion. This was what we found in the small kitchen in the Art Courtyard!”
Long Tianhao had instructed Lin Kui to do a thorough investigation into this in his fury.
It was never his intention to suspect his own mother, because Baili Rui had told him that he would die of bleeding through the seven apertures of his head if the poison in him was not neutralized in time.
It could have been anyone in the mansion but not his mother.
However, against his common sense, Lin Kui found it only in the kitchen in the Art Courtyard.
“Have you confirmed it?”
Long Tianhao looked into the garden and realized that the entire ground turned red from the fallen leaves.
In a few days, the branches of the trees would not have any leaves left on them.
“I’ve handed it over to Mr. Baili for assessment, and it was indeed the poison you ingested that day.”
The information came like a bolt from the blue to Long Tianhao.
Why, why would his mother poison him?
“Your Highness, if you would listen to me, I don’t think Concubine De was necessarily the one who poisoned you although the poison was found in the Art Courtyard. So many people go in and out of the Art Courtyard. Perhaps someone had done it to frame Concubine De, don’t you think so?”
Once again, Long Tianhao could see a glimpse of hope.