Chapter 34: Would You Refuse to Accept an Interspecies Romance?

“I was wrong.”

Inside the empty Gu family villa, Lin Jiangye’s loud words came with their own echo, drifting outward layer by layer.

The mansion stretched beyond sight. Old Madam Gu liked lively crowds, and this place had once been extremely glorious.

Unfortunately, in a single day, accidents had happened one after another. Some people had died, some were injured, and even the exhausted butler had been given three days off… In the blink of an eye, the splendor was gone. The two of them seemed to be standing inside a huge, dimly lit empty shell, their only companions being jade ornaments, bonsai, and golden-bodied deities enshrined everywhere.

Thinking about it carefully, it was rather frightening. But Lin Jiangye was very busy and temporarily had no mood to experience this special horror atmosphere.

He touched all the kind-faced Buddha statues, went close to the bonsai to pick a few leaves and taste them, and knocked around everywhere to search for mechanisms.

Yu Wangxiao was observing the display shelf used as a partition between the living room and dining room. He had not lied. Old Madam Gu had indeed once been his friend; one could call it a friendship across generations. When it came to shopping and discussing jade and tea leaves, the two of them had always gotten along very well.

He had seen many of the ornaments on the display shelf before, and some could even be called familiar. Yu Wangxiao felt slightly nostalgic. He picked up an especially exquisite and translucent jadeite cabbage and immersed himself for a while in admiring the carving craftsmanship.

Lin Jiangye’s loud “I was wrong” floated over without warning right then. The effect was very good, like hearing thunder strike.

“…What happened?” Yu Wangxiao took a deep breath and carefully placed the jadeite ornament back in its original spot, afraid that next time he might truly be frightened into dropping something.

“Weren’t you a little unhappy just now? Recently, I’ve always been able to quickly notice when you’re unhappy.” Lin Jiangye came over and wrapped his arms around Yu Wangxiao’s arm, quite pleased with the new skill he had mastered. “Even if I don’t know the reason, I can immediately tell that I’ve annoyed you.”

“It has nothing to do with you. It’s my problem.” Yu Wangxiao laughed despite himself. “Is that some kind of superpower?”

“Wu, I suspected that too… But it’s because your face is becoming clearer and clearer in my eyes, so I’ve become more sensitive. Super sensitive.”

Yu Wangxiao paused. “To you, are faces unclear?”

“Of course. If it weren’t for the memories of that ‘Lin Jiangye,’ I would absolutely struggle to move an inch in this world and find it hard to survive.” Lin Jiangye shook his head, deeply emotional.

“Tell me more. I want to hear.” Yu Wangxiao rarely felt his curiosity rise and squeezed his hand.

“Actually, I have slight face blindness. You understand. Humans and I aren’t even the same species… Most people, in my eyes, are distinguished only by voice, facial structure, and fixed accessories like glasses. It’s very hard for me to directly recognize who is who through faces.”

Yu Wangxiao became even more curious. “Tuantuan, you don’t look any different from humans. Why would…”

“Right, but I usually don’t look in mirrors, so my impression isn’t deep. The colleagues I saw every day also looked all kinds of ways. None of them were human.” When Lin Jiangye said this, he instinctively glanced at the night sky outside the window before continuing softly beside him. “My supervisor was a wild boar with very soft fur. One of my colleagues looked like the character ‘大.’ Can you imagine that? Like three thin noodles overlapping, with no face or facial features. The head was also half a noodle and could be cut off and eaten.”

“…”

Lin Jiangye spoke with great interest, while Yu Wangxiao fell into thought, rarely feeling deeply shocked.

He truly had never considered this matter before. Subconsciously, when thinking of unknown existences, he had still imagined them in human form. Lin Jiangye’s previous social life might have been very interesting.

At this moment, Lin Jiangye suddenly narrowed his eyes and stared at him. He pressed Yu Wangxiao’s shoulders and pushed him into the corner of the wall, his tone inexplicably serious. “Wait, Yu Wangxiao, I suddenly thought of a question. Would you refuse to accept an interspecies romance?”

“…Mm? No. I like you very much.” Yu Wangxiao did not resist. He leaned against the wall unhurriedly and looked at him, but the confusion in his eyes was almost tangible.

“Then suppose when I came to hook your soul back then, I was a wild boar with very long hair, or three noodles, or a deep-sea lanternfish with buckteeth?” Lin Jiangye pressed forward step by step, heartbroken. “Yu Wangxiao, you don’t like me at all. You like this human face!”

Yu Wangxiao: “…”

Lin Jiangye grabbed his wrist with his other hand and suddenly pulled it up against his face. As if venting anger, he bit Yu Wangxiao’s tiger’s mouth, licking and gnawing it, then sincerely sighed. “This world is too dark! Human hearts are hard to predict. If I weren’t born looking like a human, you would definitely think being eaten by me was only a nightmare.”

Yu Wangxiao: “…”

“Too bad. Luckily, I transmigrated into a human body. If I had accidentally transmigrated into a wild boar on the mountain behind your old residence, weak and helpless… the next day after you saw me, everyone would sit down at the table and eat roast suckling pig, right? Bad man, heartbreaker, appearance supremacist, fickle big pervert.”

Yu Wangxiao: “…”

Situations where he was unable to argue were extremely rare. Yu Wangxiao even wanted to laugh a little, but he held it back.

Having his wrist gripped tightly with no way to break free brought a nearly powerless, passive feeling. His palm was warm and damp, with a burning, stinging sensation. He did not dislike it.

So he placed his right hand against Lin Jiangye’s face and took the initiative to move a little closer, their lips quietly touching.

He softly said, “You can scold me for everything else, but I’m not fickle.”

A soft itch spread over his lips. As if possessed, Lin Jiangye stepped forward and pressed Yu Wangxiao back into place, biting the corner of his lips and murmuring, “…Then delete that adjective. You’re a big pervert.”

“Mm, I’m a big pervert.” Yu Wangxiao relaxed completely, his back naturally pressing tight against the wall, letting the pressure from the person before him cover him completely.

Crack—

Boom—

Unfortunately, this was not a suitable place for romance.

Unexpected situations could appear at any time.

Continuous loud sounds roared beside their ears. Lin Jiangye reacted very quickly. He reached out to shield Yu Wangxiao’s head and pulled him backward, protecting him behind his body. Then he widened his eyes in astonishment.

The wall paint peeled off, cement shattered, and looking at the huge crack split open in the middle of the wall, the two of them silently looked at each other.

Logically speaking, the weight of two people leaning against a wall should not have caused the slightest damage.

However, Lin Jiangye had been focused on kissing and had completely ignored the level of energy he had consumed tonight, as well as the very important issue of controlling his strength.

The hand he had unconsciously placed behind Yu Wangxiao had directly pushed the wall open.

A faint glow flickered from within the crack. Lin Jiangye carefully narrowed his eyes and looked. “It’s hollow. There’s a room.”

A strange room that no one knew about, without doors or windows.

“Just break it directly. I’ll compensate Gu Jiu’an. Tuantuan, do you need tools?” Yu Wangxiao still seemed a little unsatisfied and spoke softly with curved lips.

“No need, no need. But my clothes are a little expensive…”

“It’s fine. There are still many clothes.”

“Wu, you’re a little expensive too.” Lin Jiangye quickly took off his suit jacket. After thinking about it, he covered Yu Wangxiao’s head with it to keep off dust. Then he rolled up his sleeves and punched twice with loud bangs, not holding back at all.

Yu Wangxiao reacted extremely quickly and retreated one step. Listening to the loud sounds continuing one after another, the crack turned into a huge opening in the blink of an eye, and the scene inside the room instantly became fully visible.

It was built with red bricks, painted with red putty, and finally covered with large amounts of gold leaf as wallpaper, pasted over the walls with an extremely seamless fit.

The floor tiles were made of gold bars. All of them were gold bars, from different banks, and some had been privately melted down. Yu Wangxiao shone a flashlight inside, and what entered his eyes was a dazzling, luxurious golden scene. It was practically blinding.

“Tuantuan, you’re really impressive.” Yu Wangxiao held his jacket and said softly. His favorability visibly rose again.

This was exactly the place they were looking for, the secret room Lin Jiangye had personally seen in the ghost infant’s memory.

Originally, they had planned to carefully search the Gu family and find the mechanism that might open the secret room… Who would have thought that after accidentally kissing, the secret room would be found just like that?

Violent methods really were very convenient and fast. Yu Wangxiao looked warm and gentle when handling things, but in essence, he also seemed to quite like violence when it appeared before his eyes.

The pink light screen trembled like water waves, sprouting a deep, gorgeous red hue. It reflected Yu Wangxiao’s deep side profile and scattered through the magnificent secret room.

The favorability was almost full. Only the final ten percent remained.

Lin Jiangye rubbed his stomach and told himself he really was not hungry. He held Yu Wangxiao’s hand, stepped over the broken wall, and entered the secret room.

An exquisite lotus embroidery product hung high on the south side. Beneath the embroidery was a gold-plated Buddha statue. The ushnisha was sculpted quite delicately, the expression kind and compassionate, seeming both male and female. The slightly lowered eyes appeared to smile without smiling, giving one an invisible sense of “being watched.”

It was as if no matter which corner of the room one walked to, one could never escape its gaze.

“This thing is a little evil… Mm? It’s hollow.” Lin Jiangye knocked on the Buddha statue’s head, pressed both hands to either side of its skull, and abruptly exerted strength.

Crack!

The huge head was effortlessly broken off by him. The scene was somewhat horrifying, but it still could not compare to the evil objects hidden inside that hollow body.

Lin Jiangye picked up the Buddha statue, turned its broken neck downward, tilted it, and shook it.

One, two… A large pile of round golden children fell to the ground. They were carved extremely meticulously. They looked different in age and height, and even the finest structures of their facial features were all distinct.

“These should be the little ghosts Gu Yuan privately raised… Not unexpected. But little ghosts don’t exist. We’ve verified that they simply can’t be raised.” Yu Wangxiao frowned slightly, his disgust very obvious. “He probably failed many times, but he never gave up. A person like this no longer had any bottom line or reason.”

“Even if little ghosts don’t exist, don’t get too close. I’ll look.”

Lin Jiangye put down the Buddha statue, bent down, picked up one of the little golden children, and leaned close to observe seriously with narrowed eyes.

As he looked, he suddenly froze. He immediately picked up several more golden children and repeatedly verified them. His heart suddenly chilled, and he said in a low voice, “I discovered that face blindness still has benefits. I looked especially carefully last time. Because I was afraid that if I saw them again, I wouldn’t be able to tell who was who.”

“Tuantuan, what you mean is…” Yu Wangxiao quickly understood him, his eyes instantly turning cold and dark.

“His name is Zhang Xiaole. Her name is Zhang Xiaohuan. They were cleft-lip twins.” Lin Jiangye spoke very slowly. He put down the golden children and took a deep breath. “Yu Wangxiao, I’ve seen these children. I know all of them.”

Yu Wangxiao gently held him, his voice still warm and steady, as if stating an established fact. “Lin Bingsheng can die tonight.”

“I’m fine, and your hands shouldn’t be dirtied. This is the Lin family’s matter, right?” Lin Jiangye smiled, soft silver-white moonlight surging in his eyes.

“If anyone kills him, it should be me.”