Guanshan Muyu

chapter 33

Qi Yan was so busy these days that he was out all day and came back only at night, and that day was no exception.

It was late at night when he returned home. Before Qi Hui could open the door for him, a small, fluffy white dog rushed out from the yard, pouncing around Qi Yan and barking.

Qi Yan took a good look at it.

“Yuzhu? Why are you here? Where is your master?”

He looked around, thinking that Xia Xun had also come.

Yuzhu put its paws on his knees, trying to reach his hand to make him touch its neck.

When Qi Yan touched it gently, a rolled-up slip of paper fell out of Yuzhu’s collar.

He unfolded it and took a look.

On the paper two fragmented characters were written in a crooked and twisted way.

The first thing Qi Yan recognised was the word ‘人’ (people), a character with only two strokes, and even in it one stroke was not connected to the other.

After looking at it for a long time, he could barely make out what the previous character was.

—It was the word for ‘save’, and ‘攵’ in it was written as ‘文’.

Both of these characters were written by Shaobo.

She had wanted to write ‘save life’, but when she opened the character book that Xia Xun had bought for her, she could barely recognise ‘save’, but she didn’t know how to write ‘life’, so she had to write ‘save people’.

She thought, Qi Yan is so smart, he should be able to understand.

Qi Yan frowned and read it aloud.

“Save… people? Something happened to Xia Xun?”

The steward of Xia Mansion was Qi Yan’s spy planted beside Xia Hongxi, so Qi Yan immediately asked Qi Hui to bring the man here to ask him questions.

In the past, in order not to arouse suspicion, every time the steward came to deliver a message, he needed to find the right time for it. After receiving Qi Yan’s order, it often took several hours before the steward could come out to meet him.

This time was different; in less than an incense stick’s time, he appeared at Qi Yan’s place.

Qi Yan didn’t have time to wonder about it and asked at once: “What happened to Xia Xun?”

The steward told him the whole story.

He was not present when it happened and had no knowledge of it then; only afterwards did he hear Xia Xing’s servant mention it.

The man described it in graphic detail, and the steward listened with trepidation. Qi Yan had ordered him to protect Xia Xun as much as he could without revealing his identity.

Not only had he failed to do so, but he had also let Xia Xun suffer such a serious injury, knowing nothing about it.

He had been on tenterhooks all afternoon, and in the evening, he finally waited for Qi Yan to summon him.

When Qi Yan heard him out, he turned pale.

Still keeping calm, he suppressed his anger and asked: “…Xia Hongxi is at the cusp of the storm and Xia Xing comes for Xia Xun, why does he want to cause more trouble at this point?”

The steward replied: “The only thing I can say is that I have tried to get to Young Master Xia secretly to check on his injuries, and when I went to his courtyard, I found that the front and back courtyard gates were tightly closed and there were special guards, so it would be difficult for Young Master Xia to get out even if he had wings. Xia Xing is obviously not just making trouble, there is another plan.”