Imperial Treasure
Chapter 162 - 123 The Third Side, Emerging from Water

Chapter 162: Chapter 123 The Third Side, Emerging from Water

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Whoosh!

At the end of the brook, a sudden torrent of water surged down, turning the originally graceful and gentle stream into a raging river that rushed down to where they were downstream.

Upon seeing this, everyone immediately retreated to the side, and the village elders were particularly frightened.

"This is so strange! It’s not the rainy season, and it hasn’t rained in days; where did this flood come from..."

"Exactly!"

"It’s like we’ve seen a ghost!"

Suddenly, someone shouted in terror.

"Look! There are dead bodies!!!"

Jiang Yunxiu was startled, surely it couldn’t be, he was just speaking off the cuff.

Everyone took a closer look.

If not the bodies of people, what else could be rolling atop the water?

It seemed...

They looked like many corpses.

Whether it was the villagers or people like Jiang Yunxiu, everyone swarmed toward the slightly more spacious mouth of the brook. There was a river channel on this side because the villagers had previously blocked off the river, releasing only one passage, to keep an area below for the villagers to wash clothes and to prevent rotten wood and such from the upstream from flooding and clogging the river mouth.

So, now that these bodies were being flushed down, they soon got trapped at the mouth of the river channel.

However, due to the collisions and piling up, some bodies turned over...

And seemed to be intact, without any signs of decomposition.

This scene shook off many people’s sense of taboo, and several began preparing to enter the water to retrieve the bodies.

Jiang Yunxiu was a doctor and thus unafraid of such things, so he rolled up his sleeves and trouser legs, ready to enter the water....

Yet, he hadn’t expected that the person next to him would also enter the water.

"I say, Chi Zi, don’t you have a germaphobia? Aren’t you afraid?" Jiang Yunxiu’s words didn’t cause Yi Chilian to pause; he had already entered the water and said to Jiang Yunxiu, "I’ve endured your socks; there’s nothing more unbearable than that."

Jiang Yunxiu: "...."

How much do you actually despise me?

And what do you mean by endure? Damn it, you had someone clean the entire dorm room that very day, and also sent a box of new socks...

What a filthy rich weirdo!

So many people entered the water to retrieve the bodies, but before they could get close to the pile of corpses, suddenly...

Jiang Yunxiu’s expression subtly changed.

"Chi Zi, behind you..."

People on the shore were also crying out one after another because they saw the shadow moving behind Yi Chilian, something slender and somewhat long...

The ripples were light and clear.

Behind?

Yi Chilian instinctively turned his head.

Splash!

A head emerged from the water!

"Ah!!!"

Someone screamed out loud!

One person’s scream inevitably leads to others joining in, and so, many people started shouting in alarm.

The older generation was outright yelling about the dead coming back to life...

However, upon closer inspection, the head that had emerged now showed an upper body, one hand wiped the face, pushing the hair back behind, droplets of water slid down the face revealing snowy white skin, lustrous eyes, and a delicate and serene countenance...

The slender body...

"Sui Yi!!!"

The screaming immediately turned into a chorus of astonished cries!

----------

Sui Yi hadn’t expected the first thing she would see upon surfacing to be Yi Chilian, and even less had she expected to be met by so many familiar faces.

Compared with the boundless death and eeriness of that tomb world, everything in front of her seemed like a dream.

A dream... Sui Yi felt that what she had seen in the collapsing world was far more dreamlike.

As for Yi Chilian, seeing this beautiful girl who had emerged from the water for the third time and appeared before him, he couldn’t help but feel a state foreign to him on ordinary days—being dazed.

But it was only for a moment; he immediately took off his coat and draped it over Sui Yi.

This girl, who let her wear so little clothing!

Can’t she wear something other than a white shirt!!!

Yi Chilian glared.

Sui Yi: "...."

--------

Jiang Yunxiu had also not anticipated that Sui Yi would appear out of the water, let alone that all these people had not died!

They had merely fainted.

So one by one, they were all taken to the car and transported to the hospital for treatment.

Sui Yi was supposed to go to the hospital as well, but the young girl was insistent on not going, she and Yi Chilian both refused, but with a sidelong glance, she calmly said.

"Aren’t you a doctor... Can’t you tell if I’m all right?"

This immediately stirred up Jiang Yunxiu, and he was prompt to check, me here, me here, me here..

--------

At Sui Yi’s family home.

It was quite clean, Yi Chilian sat on the sofa beside him, looked around the room with an indifferent gaze, silently sipping tea, seeming entirely unconcerned about the situation between Jiang Yunxiu and Sui Yi beside him.

Meanwhile, Jiang Yunxiu pressed the stethoscope against Sui Yi’s pale white arm, listened for a moment, then put it down and said, "Well, it looks like your constitution is probably fine now."

As he spoke, he turned to look at Sui Yi who he hadn’t seen for many days, and upon seeing her face, he immediately broke into a smile, "Sui Yi, we haven’t seen each other for so long, and you’ve grown quite a bit taller, haven’t you? You must be about one meter sixty-eight now, right? Hmm, your facial features have also matured..."

With that said, he too began to feel a vague surprise in his heart, this Sui Yi...

Yi Chilian also turned his head to look at Sui Yi and noticed a whiff of subtle fragrance drifting over from their side; he was certain that this scent did not emanate from Jiang Yunxiu.

Having just taken a bath, Sui Yi’s former dishevelment had faded away. Compared to her previous greenness, her facial features had changed significantly, now clear and exquisite, with an ethereal beauty. Each movement of her eyes held a captivating and irresistible charm.

Her height had also shot up by several centimeters, reaching one meter sixty-seven, hadn’t it?

Long legs, slender waist, delicate body, tall and slender, skin like creamy jade, her hands especially beautiful. When holding a teacup, her fingers were long and elegant, well-formed and lovely, the tips gently cradling a brown teacup, which perhaps due to the contrast of color, made her fingers appear as white as snow, like the freshly sprouted bamboo nodes in the forest...

It seemed that this girl was transforming at an astonishing rate, as if shedding her cocoon and turning into a butterfly.

No, perhaps not a butterfly, but a phoenix instead.

Yi Chilian watched until he became somewhat absent-minded, and only when he saw that Sui Yi’s hair ends were still somewhat wet from not being dried thoroughly, resting on her shoulders, creating faint marks on her white shirt, did he snap back to reality.

Bit by bit...

His breath tightened slightly, and it was only when he heard Jiang Yunxiu calling him that he came back to his senses.

"Look at you, you look like someone whose brain has swollen from being soaked in water, Chi Zi,"

"Swollen? Do I look like it to you? A doctor shouldn’t be making such hasty judgments about people," said Yi Chilian with a cold glance.

"Ha, it seems I looked wrong... I think something else might be swollen on you..."

"...."

Jiang Yunxiu was now looking at him with a playful and teasing smile in his eyes.

It was rare for Yi Chilian to feel flustered, but he maintained his composure and shot back, a habitually playful banter between the two men, in which Dr. Jiang usually ended up on the losing side,

This time was no exception.

Swollen? Swollen what...

Hearing this, Sui Yi glanced at Yi Chilian, was there anything different about him? Not like his usual cold nobility?

After the banter, Yi Chilian and Jiang Yunxiu simultaneously turned to look at Sui Yi, both tacitly choosing not to ask her about her circumstances before she had decided to open up about them,

However, Yi Chilian’s gaze flitted over the iron sword that Sui Yi had dragged out of the water before.

That sword was very ordinary, no notches, not sharp, icy and somber, its design... delicate, long, elegant, clean.

Nothing more.

Or perhaps, there was also restraint.

That was why Yi Chilian did not dare underestimate this sword.

Restraint means mystery.

Even though it now looked very much like a noble’s decorative sword owned by sons of aristocratic families in ancient times, it was not at all ornate, and seemed unlike those swords.

But, when Sui Yi held the sword, he was certain that it evoked an astonishing feeling,

Quite astonishing, as if her whole being had been completed.

She was born to wield a sword, and this sword was born to be hers.

Hers...

Yi Chilian finished his cup of tea and set the cup on the table.

"The tea is of poor quality, but the water is decent. Next time I’ll send you a pack of tea leaves so you won’t have nothing to offer your guests," he said, with a tone clearly different from Dr. Jiang’s.

It was full of the class disparity typical of a noble tycoon, and Mr. Yi’s unique... proud restraint.

Sui Yi and Jiang Yunxiu exchanged a knowing glance and smiled silently.

--------

The reason she did not reveal everything to these two men was due to some matters that were unspeakable, hard to articulate, and those that could be spoken, once mentioned, would easily lead to the revelation of unsaid issues, which naturally equated to deception. So it was better left unsaid.

This was Sui Yi’s way of thinking.

Consequently, after she had seen off the two men, she was left in her room, caressing the sword that she had been holding in her hand since awakening.

The origin of the sword, she had no clue where to begin searching.

Just like the fragment that had formed from the Jade Bi, arriving mysteriously, and in the end, merging into her body.

The second fragment had brought her not only the second transformation of her physique,

but had also increased her Magnetic Sensation by fivefold, which, when converted, meant her Inner Strength had advanced by as much as fivefold.

But it was the fragment of memory pertaining to a heritage that felt foreign and strange to her that mattered.

The reason she called it a heritage was because she felt these memories could not have been hers originally; they must have been conveyed to her by the mirror’s fragment.

Some techniques of the Sword Dao, scattered, discontinuous, knowledge of some strange ancient artifacts or plants, and...

The name of this sword.

"Demon Que"

As she caressed the sword’s blade, Sui Yi searched it up and down but still could not find the characters for Demon Que. Typically, ancient swords, if they had any provenance, would have their names cast upon the blade.

This sword did not.

Was it an ordinary sword?

Yet, it did have a name...

"Perhaps, I’ll have to wait for you to tell me," she said.

Sui Yi felt that this sword was fated for her, or else she wouldn’t have felt her heart being completed, as though a missing piece had been filled, the moment she touched it.

It was as if she’d finally found her direction in life.

But whenever Sui Yi recalled the sculpture on the Jade Bi, her life’s direction seemed shrouded in mist.

If Gong Jiu and the others saw it... (To be continued. If you like this work, you’re welcome to vote for it at Qidian (qidian.com). Your support is my greatest motivation. Mobile users, please read at m.qidian.com.)