Chapter 45 – 038: Meeting PreviewJune 20th, in the afternoon, Huanjing Third High School.

As the school bell rang throughout the building, the two-month summer vacation was announced. The students, who had already been restless, dragged their backpacks out of their drawers and noisily ran out of the classrooms, the festive sound of desk legs scraping the floor echoing in every corner of the building.

Ke Mingye slung his backpack over his shoulder, standing still at his desk. He commanded the puppet, which had been crouching in a toilet stall, to stand up while he texted Bai Ziling on his phone.

“Where did you say the cinema is?” he asked.

“Yandai Street, it starts in half an hour,” Bai Ziling replied quickly. Her text style was as brief as her way of speaking.

Ke Mingye was taken aback, thinking, Why do you have to watch a movie at Yandai Commercial Street, it must be to monitor us playing the instance. But he still replied to the message calmly.

“Are your family members coming too?” he asked.

“Everyone but my parents,” Bai Ziling typed, “You and big sister come by the same school, take the public bus.”

No sooner had the message been sent than Ke Mingye turned his head and noticed someone outside the classroom staring at him—it was Bai Qiuwu, dressed in a school uniform.

She glanced at her phone then gently tapped the window with her finger, signaling him to move faster.

Ke Mingye pursed his lips, walked out of the classroom, and left the building shoulder to shoulder with Bai Qiuwu. Along the way, he attracted quite a few glances but didn’t mind, as he was busy controlling the Deception Puppet that followed them.

The three of them maintained a steady pace to the bus stop outside the school, the puppet blending into the crowd.

Before long, a bus heading to Yandai Commercial Street arrived. Bai Qiuwu and Ke Mingye got on one after another, followed by the Deception Puppet amid a group of students.

In the slightly swaying bus, Bai Qiuwu stretched languidly, the upward motion of her uniform outlining her body’s curves.

The setting sun shone through the window, casting a light golden hue on her cheeks, and the downy hair by her ears fluttered gently like bird feathers.

“Finally, it’s vacation,” she said.

“Yeah, we’re liberated,” Ke Mingye responded, though his gaze subtly shifted toward the puppet in the corner of the bus.

Suddenly struck by a curious idea, he wanted to see if Bai Qiuwu could recognize the puppet’s original appearance, so he controlled the puppet to move forward a couple of steps and grab the hanging ring next to her.

Bai Qiuwu turned her cheek and glanced at the puppet’s face.

As the puppet drew closer, she seemed to realize something, and a barely perceptible red sheen crossed her pupils.

Immediately following that, the face of the puppet transformed in her perception into a grotesquely unusual humanlike visage, its corners of the mouth almost reaching the ears in an upward curve.

Are the Eyes of Golden Flame really that powerful?

Ke Mingye observed Bai Qiuwu’s changing expression out of the corner of his eye; he was pretty sure she had seen the puppet’s true appearance. While silently breaking out in a cold sweat, he lowered his head to open a short video app.

Bai Qiuwu glanced at the puppet and was silent for half a second before speaking to him, “You…”

“What’s up?” Ke Mingye controlled the puppet to turn its head towards her and asked.

“Your shoelace is undone, classmate.”

Bai Qiuwu said this as she casually swept back a strand of hair from her forehead and calmly directed his gaze to the oversized shoes.

“Oh, thanks.”

The puppet said as it crouched down and tied its shoelaces leisurely. Ke Mingye even deliberately changed to a shoelace tying method he didn’t usually use, to avoid his sister associating it with himself.

He wondered why he hadn’t triggered the contact reward with Bai Qiuwu. Was it because she was using her normal identity, rather than her hidden identity “Black Wukong”?

Having arrived at this conclusion, he felt somewhat disappointed.

Since the instance location and the place where the family was watching a movie were both at Yandai Commercial Street, not too far apart, he had planned to send the Deception Puppet straight from Meiyijia into the cinema after finishing the instance, burst into Theater Number Three, roll twice in front of his five siblings, and hop onto the stage to act cute and introduce himself.

Doing so, he might have bagged all the rewards for the “contact family mission” objectives.

But now it seemed unlikely.

Moreover, he felt that if Bai Zini saw the puppet tumble twice on stage, she would probably be shocked to the point of dropping her jaw, ignore everything else, and chase after it, which would not be too good.

“You’re welcome.”

Bai Qiuwu stared at the puppet’s face again, then shifted her gaze back and said to Ke Mingye beside her, “I just remembered I have something later, how about you go to the cinema alone?”

“No way.”

Ke Mingye knew what she was planning and firmly vetoed it.

He looked up at Bai Qiuwu, sighed and said, “If you don’t go, then I won’t either. I’ll follow you, do whatever you do. It’s rare for us all to watch a movie together, can you stop bailing out all the time, it’s really disappointing.”

Bai Qiuwu, finding him amusing, asked, “But usually at home, aren’t you the one who ducks out on us the most?”

“We’re talking about you now, don’t change the subject. You see, even our second sister asked me to keep an eye on you because you always disappear suddenly, ditching us.”

Ke Mingye continued his tirade and turned the phone screen toward her, showing her his recent chat history with Bai Ziling.

“Alright, I won’t run away this time, and you’re not allowed to either.”

Bai Qiuwu said indifferently while shifting her face again, pretending to look out the car window but glanced sneakily at the school uniformed youth amidst the crowd.

At that moment, she saw him, expressionless, holding up a piece of paper.

On it in black and white was written, “Black Wukong, meet at 8 p.m. on Huanjing’s No. 7 Overpass. Don’t approach me, don’t make any sound, or the people and your brother in this car will be in danger.”

The moment she read the text, Bai Qiuwu’s gaze turned cold, like a beast ready to spring. She slightly frowned, and a layer of scarlet mist spread out in her pupils, as if fire was burning within.

Just then, Ke Mingye’s voice came from beside her, breaking her concentration.

“Let’s not ditch each other.”

Bai Qiuwu turned her head back, not looking at Ke Mingye’s profile, but lowered her head, covering her wide-open eyes with her hand. Her pupils expanded and contracted, conveying a burning sensation like fire.

She had experienced this many times; whenever her emotions got out of control, the Eyes of Golden Flame would involuntarily reveal themselves.

At that moment, her face was shadowed by the locks of hair on her forehead, but the blood-red color in her pupils couldn’t be erased.

Bai Qiuwu struggled to even her breathing, her eyes trembling incessantly as they stared at the ground, her lips barely moving, murmuring to herself almost inaudibly.

“Calm down… calm down… calm down.”

She breathed deeply, over and over, slowly closing her eyes. When she opened them again, the flame burning within had quietly died down, and the color of her pupils had returned to normal.

Ke Mingye noticed her odd behavior, then twisted his head to look at her, “Sis, what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, just not used to these contact lenses.”

Bai Qiuwu casually dismissed it, lowering her hand that had been covering her eyes and slowly lifting her head.

She took out a literary magazine from her backpack and quietly flipped through it in the dying light.

Seven minutes flew by quickly, and the bus slowly stopped at the entrance to Yandai Commercial Street. Along the bustling street, Ke Mingye ensured Bai Qiuwu got off the bus with him, and they walked towards Yandai Cinema City.

From a distance, Bai Zini was already shouting and waving at them, standing next to Ke Xiaomo, Ke Yongzhu, and Bai Ziling.

Meanwhile, the Deception Puppet also got off the bus, mingling in the crowd, and soon arrived at a secluded corner of the commercial street, heading towards the electronic game store near Meiyijia.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by lotustale.com