Chapter Ninety-Six: Was He Seeing Things?

Just as Wei Yilin was still trying to make sense of everything, Wei Ruo poured the drug from the bottle onto a handkerchief and strode forward to press it over his nose and mouth.

With his hands and feet still bound, Wei Yilin had no way to resist.

He stared wide-eyed at Wei Ruo, and before his disbelief could deepen any further, consciousness slipped away from him.

After he fainted, Wei Ruo untied the ropes so that he would not suffer injury from being bound too long and cutting off the circulation to his limbs.

Then she turned back, carefully checked the pulses of the two Japanese pirates, and confirmed that they were thoroughly dead. Only then did she clean up the scene and take the remaining dried sweet potatoes and the sack from the ground.

At last, she staggered away from the area.

She kept clear of the crowd searching for Wei Yilin. She could not let anyone see her in such a miserable state.

“Miss! Miss!”

At the sound of Xiumei calling to her, Wei Ruo’s heart lifted. Seeing that no one else was with Xiumei, she hurried toward her.

“Meimei, I’m here!”

“Miss!”

Seeing how disheveled Wei Ruo looked, Xiumei grew anxious at once. “Miss, what happened to you?”

“I’m fine. Take me back to the carriage. I have to clean myself up immediately. Then I’ll tell you where Wei Yilin is, and you can take people to find him.”

Xiumei did not know why Wei Ruo was doing this, but after all these years she understood her well enough to know that the situation was urgent and must be handled exactly as she said.

With Xiumei’s help, Wei Ruo successfully avoided everyone else and returned to the carriage.

While Wei Ruo was tidying herself up, Xiumei followed the address Wei Ruo had given her to search for Wei Yilin. On the way she ran into Nurse Zhang, whom she specifically brought along.

Nurse Zhang wore a grim expression. “If anything were to happen to the young master, what would we do then?”

“It’ll be all right, Nurse. Let’s keep looking. Maybe we’ll find him.”

“Look over there, Nurse. Doesn’t it seem like someone’s lying on the ground?” Xiumei asked, pointing from far away to a spot halfway up the hillside.

“Wait a moment. My eyes aren’t very good; I can’t make it out clearly.”

“Forget looking. Let’s just go up and see!” Without another word, Xiumei pulled Nurse Zhang along and headed up the hill.

Once they drew nearer, Nurse Zhang was frightened senseless.

“A corpse! There’s a corpse!” She had spent most of her life in the confines of a wealthy household and rarely saw such a scene, so her face instantly went white.

“Nurse, the young master is over there!” Xiumei said, pointing to Wei Yilin beside the body.

“What? The young master? Is the young master all right?” Nurse Zhang wanted to go forward, but fear held her back.

Xiumei stepped up and lifted Wei Yilin into her arms. “The young master is fine. He just fainted.”

Then she told Nurse Zhang to fetch the others. “Nurse, hurry and go call everyone over! I’ll stay here and watch him!”

It took Nurse Zhang a moment to recover before she finally understood. “All right, all right, I’ll go at once.”

She staggered down the mountain, shouting for help at the top of her lungs all the way.

While Nurse Zhang went to call the others, Xiumei, being cautious, searched the surroundings once more to make sure there was no sign of her own young miss.

Wei Yilin was jolted awake by a burst of noise. Opening his eyes, he saw Madam Yun.

He was in her arms, and right in front of him were Wei Qingwan, whose eyes were red from crying, and Wei Yichen, who looked deeply worried.

Around them stood the guards and servants of the Wei household who had come to the southern city to search for Wei Yilin. Nearly everyone from the Commandant’s Residence had arrived, except for Wei Ruo.

After a blank moment, Wei Yilin burst into tears.

“Mother! Mother!”

Madam Yun held him tightly, her heart aching.

Wei Qingwan also hurried over. “Yilin, it’s good that you’re all right!”

“Big sister... big sister...” Hearing Wei Qingwan’s voice, Wei Yilin cried even harder.

After crying for a while, he looked around and asked, “Mother, where is Wei Qingruo? Where is she?”

“Yilin wants to see your eldest sister?” Wei Qingwan asked, utterly astonished. She could not understand why, at a time like this, he would want to see Wei Qingruo.

“Yes. Where is she? Where did she go?” Wei Yilin pressed.

“Yilin, what’s wrong? Why do you suddenly want to see your eldest sister so badly?” Madam Yun asked, equally puzzled.

“I saw her... she...” Wei Yilin thought back to the last thing he had witnessed.

His mind was a muddle. Wei Qingruo, who had been clinging to life and fawning over the pirates only moments earlier, why had she suddenly killed two Japanese pirates with her own hands?

“Mother, where are those two Japanese pirates? Where are they?” Wei Yilin asked anxiously.

“Yilin, don’t worry. It’s all right now. Those two Japanese pirates are already dead,” Madam Yun hurriedly reassured him.

“Who killed them? Did any of you see?” Wei Yilin pressed.

He was desperate to confirm whether the final scene he had seen had been real.

“We don’t know that yet. By the time we found you, they were already dead,” Madam Yun replied.

They still had no answer to this question. It seemed someone had arrived before them, killed the two Japanese pirates, and rescued her son.

They simply did not know why that person had never shown themselves.

“It was Wei Qingruo. It had to be her. She’s the one who killed those two Japanese pirates!” Wei Yilin grew more and more certain that what he had seen was real.

“Yilin, what are you saying? If it was Big Sister who saved you, there’s no reason she would keep it from us after saving you,” Wei Qingwan said quickly.

“No, she was with me...” Wei Yilin had only just begun when Wei Ruo appeared.

“Brother Yilin, what’s wrong? Were you looking for me?”

Wei Ruo pushed through the crowd and came into Wei Yilin’s line of sight.

Her face was clean and bright, with only a little dirt and dust on her clothes.

And in the southern fields, getting a bit of dirt and dust on oneself was perfectly normal.

Wei Yilin stared at Wei Ruo in utter shock, his expression becoming increasingly complicated.

Seeing him fixed on Wei Ruo, Wei Qingwan’s fingers tightened into a fist, and she hurried to say, “Yilin, you must be mistaken. Sister only just arrived. It couldn’t have been her who killed the two Japanese pirates.”

Deep down, Wei Qingwan did not want the credit for rescuing Wei Yilin to fall into Wei Ruo’s hands, so she deliberately emphasized that Wei Ruo had only just arrived and could not possibly have been there.

What she did not know was that this was exactly the outcome Wei Ruo wanted. Compared with the small credit of rescuing Wei Yilin, the fact that a thirteen-year-old girl had been abducted by Japanese pirates for more than an hour was far more terrifying.

“It can’t be. I clearly saw it!” Wei Yilin shook his head. That scene had been far too vivid.

“Yilin, you were frightened today, and then you fainted. Perhaps you were seeing things while unconscious,” Madam Yun guessed.

“I...” Hearing Madam Yun and Wei Qingwan’s reassurances, Wei Yilin was no longer so certain.

Had he really seen an illusion?

Had all his memories of Wei Ruo from just now been false?