Chapter 83#

Ji Yang hadn’t expected that his next visit to Zhouling would turn out like this.

The You family showed no fuss at all about someone showing up injured. As a temporary place to rest and regroup, Ji Yang had to admit — he really liked it here.

Lu Li was arranged to stay in the You family’s courtyard.

The small house only had Nie Xu and Ji Yang.

Last night had been too chaotic and rushed; it was only today that things had finally settled down somewhat.

Back at the small house, Ji Yang contacted Peng Jiaying and simply told him he’d be delayed in returning, without going into detail about what had happened. After all, kidnapping was still a terrifying thing for an ordinary person.

But after everything that had happened, when it involved himself, it somehow felt almost normal.

“Is everything really okay?” Peng Jiaying didn’t quite believe it. “Lin Yue and the others are on the morning flight back. I gave them a day off. The discovery of major cultural relics on South Island made the front-page headlines. If anything’s wrong, you have to tell me. Don’t just stay by yourself.”

Ji Yang glanced at the person standing in front of the kitchen island and said, “I’m not by myself.”

“Who else?” Peng Jiaying couldn’t help being fussy. “It’s not someone bad, is it?”

Ji Yang got off the stool, walked into the kitchen, set the phone on the island counter, and put it on speaker.

Nie Xu turned around with a plate and gave Ji Yang a questioning look with his eyes.

Ji Yang tilted his chin toward the phone. “Peng Mom is worried whether I’m with some shady person or other.”

Nie Xu glanced at him, then looked at the phone on the island counter.

He spoke: “It’s me.”

The line went silent for a moment, then a quiet: “…Assistant Nie, you’re there.”

Nie Xu gave a brief “Mm.” He squeezed lemon into the transparent bowl of shredded chicken in his hands and said, “Don’t worry.”

“Haha.” Peng Jiaying laughed awkwardly twice. “With you around I’ve got nothing to worry about. I just didn’t expect it. I heard earlier that people from the Chamber of Commerce went to the Ji family, so I thought you’d be busy.”

A great many things at the Ji family were still in the process of transition and signing. The news about South Island’s cultural relics had just been exposed. In the public eye, Nie Xu at this moment was still bound to the Ji family — sharing both honor and loss.

Nie Xu didn’t offer any extra explanation about that. He only said: “Ji Yang won’t be able to come back for the next few days. As for everything related to the South Island–Zhouling route under Yiyuan, if there are any issues, go to the secretary’s office on the 38th floor of Jianyuan. Someone there will handle it.”

Peng Jiaying hesitated, then acknowledged.

Nie Xu picked up a piece of shredded chicken from the bowl and held it to Ji Yang’s lips. “Taste it — see if the seasoning’s right.”

Ji Yang opened his mouth and ate it. Surprise lit up his eyes. “It’s really good.” He braced his hands on the island counter. “You’ve got culinary skills too? I never knew.”

Nie Xu took the bowl away and, with his back to Ji Yang, said, “I rarely cook. It’s not that I can’t. Didn’t you say you didn’t have much of an appetite? I made something to whet your appetite. You need to avoid certain foods these next couple of days. This is a local free-range chicken — the natural flavor is stronger.”

Ji Yang’s fingers traced along the countertop. He stared at that back for a while before remembering the call was still going.

Ji Yang picked up the phone again and walked back out.

“Old Peng.” Ji Yang went out through the side and walked to the corridor where he’d been eaten alive by mosquitoes the last time he visited.

Peng Jiaying let out a long breath and said softly, “From the sounds of it, you two are living together.”

“I don’t think so,” Ji Yang said doubtfully.

Peng Jiaying: “Not living together? Before you set off for South Island, you just told me you moved out of his place, and now you’re together again. I can’t even picture someone like Assistant Nie washing his hands and cooking meals. And you’re telling me nothing’s going on between you two?”

Ji Yang leaned against the railing, his gaze drifting into the house. He smiled. “I just said we’re not living together. I didn’t deny that there’s nothing between us.”

Peng Jiaying: “So there is something?”

“I think I’ve fallen,” Ji Yang said.

Peng Jiaying: “…How is it that those words coming out of your mouth sound so weird? The impression you’ve always given me is that you fall easily. Don’t tell me you only just now realized you have feelings for someone?”

“It’s different,” Ji Yang said.

On the corridor hung wild chrysanthemums that Grandma You Li had dried. Ji Yang pinched one between his fingers. He caught its faint scent — a delicate interweaving of subtle sweetness and bitterness.

He didn’t tell Peng Jiaying exactly how it was different.

Over the many fleeting moments of the past, Ji Yang had always felt that he liked Nie Xu.

That unnamed rush of impulse on the way to Building No. 4 that night. The way his heart had pounded when he was kissed. That chaotic night when he was “helped.” Even the countless moments of meeting each other’s eyes — in all of them, Ji Yang could feel that Nie Xu, to him, was different from everyone else.

He had always said before it was because Nie Xu fit his aesthetic type.

This time, from the moment Nie Xu arrived at South Island, through the twists and turns and heart-stopping thrills along the way — even in that moment when Nie Xu had chased him down and found him, adrenaline surging — Ji Yang didn’t feel that anything necessarily had to change or be broken through.

It was instead this moment of calm right now, that figure busy in the kitchen, that had been carved deeply and permanently into his heart.

Ji Yang even felt that perhaps many years from now, he would still remember a scene like this:

Nie Xu, in a small wooden house just like the one he’d lived in as a child, carefully preparing lunch. The way he rolled up his sleeves and held the knife. The way he carried the dishes to the table one by one. The way he turned around to call him to eat. Every frame felt like an eternity worth commemorating.

Was it because calm had always been a luxury for them?

Ji Yang wasn’t sure.

All he knew was — things were different now.

Nie Xu wasn’t just different from everyone else. It wasn’t just that he fit Ji Yang’s aesthetic. Nie Xu had quietly taken up residence in his heart long, long ago — it was just that Ji Yang himself had never noticed.

Oh. So this is what it feels like to want to remember someone this deeply.

“What are you spacing out about?” When Ji Yang came back to his senses, Nie Xu was standing right in front of him.

Ji Yang placed the dried chrysanthemum back where he’d found it, brushed off the crumbs on his fingertips, and smiled. “Nothing. I just think I’m too shallow.”

“What do you mean?” Nie Xu nudged his shoulder, signaling him to go back inside.

Ji Yang pointed at the table, where the dishes were abundant in both color and variety. “I think a man who can cook is just way too handsome. So I’m ashamed to admit I was moved. If I were straight, I’d probably be the type who’d marry an excellent woman, hope she’d handle the domestic chores, and then after a few years, start finding her boring.”

Nie Xu pulled out the chair for him. “You can spare yourself the useless hypotheses.”

Ji Yang sat down and picked up his chopsticks. “How is it useless?”

Nie Xu walked around the table and sat across from him. He first took Ji Yang’s bowl, ladled a serving of soup, and handed it to him. “You don’t have that risk. You couldn’t marry a woman anyway.”

Ji Yang, ever defiant: “With a face like mine, there might be girls with the same orientation as me who’d want me to be their shield.”

Nie Xu looked up. “You can try and see if such an opportunity exists.”

Ji Yang lost under that gaze. He said no more and lowered his head to drink the soup.

His right hand was injured. Lifting the spoon pulled at it. He hissed. The spoon fell back into the bowl with a ting.

The next second, Nie Xu’s chair had moved right up beside him.

He picked up the bowl and held the spoon to Ji Yang’s lips.

Ji Yang fell silent. “Actually, I can use my left hand too.”

“Drink,” Nie Xu said, and only that one word.

Ji Yang had no choice but to comply and lowered his head to drink.

After feeding him two spoonfuls, Nie Xu suddenly said, “When we return to Fanzhou, I’ll arrange a checkup for you.”

Ji Yang was stunned for a moment.

From the time of the incident until now, they hadn’t really discussed the reasons behind what had happened, nor had they deliberately reviewed the process. It was only now, with Nie Xu bringing it up so calmly, that Ji Yang had to face the fact that there might be something inside his body.

Ji Yang asked him: “Ji Chengyi didn’t care if Lu Li died — it was because he was afraid Lu Li would reveal things about the ‘Blue Sea Project,’ right? So what exactly is in that data?”

Nie Xu: “That project has been nearly dormant for years. Based on what we’ve gathered so far, it contains not only the technical plans and database to restart the experiments, but also financial records and the real-name list of participants.”

“No wonder,” Ji Yang muttered.

Something this important, inside his body?

The feeling was very, very strange.

He instinctively reached up and touched his arms, his legs, all over — halfway through, Nie Xu stopped him.

“It’s at the back of your neck,” Nie Xu said. “During that kidnapping when we were kids, I noticed there were implantation marks on the back of your neck.”

Ji Yang’s mouth fell open in shock. He reached up to feel.

“There’s nothing now,” Nie Xu said.

Ji Yang was bewildered. “Hm? What do you mean?”

Nie Xu: “I’ve checked. Chip implantation typically leaves a surgical incision scar. But right now there’s nothing on the back of your neck. So it’s either…” Nie Xu looked at Ji Yang here. He didn’t force him to accept his conclusion. Instead, following Ji Yang’s understanding, he continued: “This body was too young when it was implanted and healed so completely that no trace remained — or there’s some other reason. Either way, it still needs to be investigated. That’s why I’m arranging a checkup.”

Ji Yang was silent for a few seconds, then nodded.

He said, “There’s no better option, is there?”

“Don’t worry,” Nie Xu said. “I’ll handle it.”

Ji Yang didn’t know how exactly he planned to handle it. He was thinking of a more important question.

“If this body’s mother was Elara, then how did it end up as the fourth young master of the Ji family? That doesn’t make sense.”

Nie Xu scooped up another spoonful of soup and held it to his lips. “I’ve thought about that question too. There’s only one explanation.”

“What?” Ji Yang asked, still not drinking.

Nie Xu touched the spoon to his lips until Ji Yang drank the mouthful before saying: “It’s not your identity that’s the problem. It’s Elara. Qi Songqing went to a great deal of effort and never managed to find any records on this Elara. That proves we had the wrong direction from the start. She may not have only the name Elara, which is not well known to the world — she may have had another name.”

Ji Yang froze.

In the fragmented memories, when he had learned that the woman was already dead, that overwhelming sense of bewildered pain rising up through his small body seemed to surge up once more.

Ji Yang unconsciously finished the sentence Nie Xu hadn’t.

“Yu Fei.”

Nie Xu said “Mm,” his calm voice carrying a soothing tone. “It’s just a guess. Don’t think too much about it for now.”

Ji Yang acknowledged.

He was completely fed through the entire meal by Nie Xu. By the time it ended, he still wasn’t sure what exactly he’d eaten.

He felt a pressing urgency in his heart — a desire to know everything.

Leaning against the doorway of the wooden house, spacing out, his mind turning over thoughts that led nowhere.

The late-autumn wind shook leaves off the tree in front of the house.

Behind him, Nie Xu had finished up.

Ji Yang heard his footsteps approaching.

Ji Yang turned and glanced at him. Then, unprompted, he turned sideways and tugged at the collar of his light blue sweater. “I’ve been thinking for ages and I can’t figure it out. Did you not look carefully before? Take another look. Is there really no mark on the back of my neck at all?”

Ji Yang waited. Nie Xu said nothing.

He was about to turn back—

The next second, he was pressed against the doorframe, unable to move. Nie Xu’s right hand cupped his jaw and the side of his neck. A faint, biting sting registered at the nape.

Ji Yang let out a soft sound. He heard Nie Xu speak in a low voice:

“Confirmed. There’s nothing.”