Chapter 9: The Yin-Yang Eyes of the Dali Temple.

The guard at the door turned and respectfully saluted the newly appeared girl, addressing her as “Miss.”

Looking at the girl standing before him with an expectant look on her face, Qian Junyou truly didn’t know how to reply. He couldn’t just ask her who she was directly, could he?

Should he say he had lost his memory? Whether others believed it was one thing, but many matters afterward might become difficult to handle. And this guard at the door—only calling her “Miss”? Couldn’t he at least include a surname?

Judging from the way she addressed him and her tone, their relationship didn’t seem too bad. Feeling somewhat awkward, Qian Junyou quickly searched his mind for a safe, all-purpose response.

“Mm, what a coincidence. One day apart feels like three years. Miss, you’ve truly grown more and more beautiful!”

The smooth-talking Qian Junyou spoke with a silly grin on his face.

“Heh, didn’t you say the exact same thing the last time we met? Can’t you change your lines?”

“Huh???”

He actually ran into reused dialogue?

“So, little brother~ why did you run all the way out to this desolate place? Planning to pick some wild flowers somewhere?”

“I… heard there was a big fire here yesterday and many people died. I happened to have read a book called Advanced Firefighting and thought I might as well try to put it to use. Reading ten thousand books is not as good as traveling ten thousand miles, right? So I came to take a look. You’re here… to help as well?”

Because of his major in university, “Qian Anhao” had indeed taken a course called Advanced Firefighting, though most of the content was about the use of modern firefighting equipment and fire prevention.

The girl’s eyebrows lifted slightly. A flash of surprise crossed her smile before she covered her mouth and giggled.

“Hahaha, Brother Junyou~ Did you take the wrong medicine today? You’re actually concerned about something like this? I thought your coachman had simply taken the wrong road~

Such a major case happened here, and so many people died. Of course I had to come! Did you think I came here for sightseeing?”

As she spoke, the girl gave Qian Junyou a flirtatious wink. A mysterious emerald green and deep blue light reflected in her pupils.

In Qian Junyou’s mind, Xueya’s voice transmitted through divine sense:

“Young Master, this is the Yin-Yang Eye. It allows communication with the dead. She should be from the Court of Judicial Review, most likely from the Su family.”

Although the Su family did not belong to the Five Great Families, they were still a prominent noble clan. The Minister of the Court of Judicial Review was one of the Su family’s stewards.

The young girl skipped over to Qian Junyou, lightly placed one hand on his waist, leaned against his chest, and took a deep breath, savoring it slowly like tasting fine tea.

“Mm… correct. It’s still that charming scent, though it seems to be somewhat restrained. Brother Junyou~ I may have underestimated you. If… you really want to go inside, I can take you in for a stroll.”

Hearing this, the guard at the door looked somewhat anxious and said awkwardly from the side:

“Miss, this… might not be appropriate, right?”

“It’s fine~ I’ll stay with him, and I’ll explain everything to my brother later.”

After speaking, the girl turned her gaze back to Qian Junyou and added softly:

“However… little brother, I’m not helping you for free~”

“What… do you want?”

Because the girl’s aura was far too strange, Qian Junyou felt a chill run down his spine. Along with the fear came a trace of excitement.

“Brother Junyou~ You’re really pretending to be confused while understanding everything. I’m only interested in your body~ And didn’t you say that night that you would take responsibility for me?”

“Huh?!”

“What do you mean ‘huh’? If you’re ready… then come on in~”

Before Qian Junyou could react, the girl grabbed his belt and pulled him into the post-disaster scene. Xueya hurriedly followed behind them.

Half a month ago, several villages outside the capital had suffered from severe flooding. The common people were displaced and struggling for food and clothing. With the Hero Soul Festival approaching, the court decided to show imperial grace and appease the populace by spending a huge sum to hastily build a temporary town on empty land outside the capital and relocate the disaster victims there to celebrate the festival together.

On the day of the Hero Soul Festival, a total of 745 disaster victims had been successfully resettled.

The disaster struck at the second quarter of the Xu hour that night (7:30 PM). A massive fire burned 832 people to death, including 87 officials and soldiers.

Afterward, Bai Shuxi’s father—Vice Minister of Works Bai Zhongting, who had been in charge of the town’s construction—was thrown into prison in chains. However, that would happen on the third day.

832 people, all burned to death? Just how was this town built that it could burn everyone alive without a single survivor…

At first, Qian Junyou had found this plot extremely stupid. Only after reading further did he learn that someone had deliberately sabotaged it.

But in the original novel, because it wasn’t closely tied to the main storyline, the author had only mentioned it in passing.

Inside the disaster camp, most of the houses had been built with hemp cloth and wooden stakes. To save space, the buildings were placed very close together. The vast majority had already collapsed from the fire, allowing a full view of the entire camp.

A small square had been cleared by the river where porridge cooked with relief grain used to be distributed. Now it was filled with corpses covered in white cloth.

Behind the square stood a relatively proper building used to store relief grain. It too had been burned into a ruined state.

“Uh… Miss Su?”

“Hm? What is it, little brother?”

Still unsure of the girl’s name, Qian Junyou tentatively called out while looking ahead. Hearing her reply, he breathed a sigh of relief. Looks like he hadn’t guessed wrong—she should be the eldest young miss of the Su family.

“Mm, I wanted to ask… Right, have you looked at the corpses over there? How are they?”

“I made the trip for nothing~ All the people were burned to ashes. Their three souls have scattered and their seven po spirits are gone. Not even much flesh remains.”

Miss Su spread her hands with a helpless expression. Qian Junyou thought for a moment before asking again:

“In this world, is there any treasure, spell, array, or demonic technique that makes fire burn even stronger when water is poured on it?”

“That’s impossible~ The world follows the order of Yin and Yang. The five elements generate and restrain each other. There is no principle of water generating fire or fire overcoming water.”

After listening, Qian Junyou’s brain began working at high speed. It was currently the transition period between summer and autumn, with large temperature differences between day and night. The village was built beside the river, so at night the air humidity saturation was extremely high. Objects with lower surface temperatures would even form a layer of “dew.”

Logically, there was no reason for such a fierce fire to break out. And after the fire started, as long as the young and able-bodied were mobilized to help extinguish it, it shouldn’t have resulted in everyone being burned to death… unless… the method was wrong.

Qian Junyou knew plenty of things that could produce fire when meeting water, but that required the physical and chemical laws of this world to be the same as his original world. Moreover, those substances were chemically very active and difficult to find naturally.

“Su Qingyan— come try this—!”

A man in the distance shouted in this direction, seemingly calling for Miss Su.

“Ah, my brother is calling me. Brother Junyou, you can look around by yourself for now. See you later~”

Even though she had said she would stay with Qian Junyou, Su Qingyan trotted away after speaking. Before leaving, she even pinched Qian Junyou’s butt.

“Damn! This girl…”

After circling the entire disaster camp once, Qian Junyou found nothing. The whole camp had been burned into scorched earth, looking as if it had been hit by napalm bombs. The scene was utterly tragic.

Over at the corpses, people from the Ministry of Justice and the Court of Judicial Review wouldn’t let him get close. In the granary, just as his father had said in the previous loop, all the grain had been replaced with dry straw and burned completely.

Walking into the granary, Qian Junyou picked up a wooden stick and poked around in the piles of ash, but he couldn’t find even a single grain of rice.

Logically, if the grain had been swapped and taken away after arriving here, there should have been at least some traces left on the ground.

Finally, at the edge of the granary, he found some unburned dry straw. The surface of the straw was damp and mixed with a large amount of colorless crystals and some white powder.

Seeing this, a bold guess formed in Qian Junyou’s mind, though he wasn’t completely sure. Still, as a science student, his chemistry grades in high school had always been quite good.

He then found a small jar and collected some of the white powder, crystals, and liquid, planning to take them back for further investigation.

If things went well, he could rely on his modern scientific knowledge to show off, solve the case, gain fame, and shake off Miss Bai’s entanglement. How wonderful!

Just as he finished collecting the clues and was about to leave, he suddenly felt a little dizzy. Those eerie demonic whispers began echoing in his ears again.

Sure enough, a familiar voice came from behind:

“Who’s there? Sneaking around?”

He turned around and instinctively took several steps back. A wave of panic surged in his heart. It was actually, again—

Bai Shuxi!

She met eyes with the turned-around Qian Junyou for a second and asked calmly:

“Hm? Could this be… the Prince Heir?”

Qian Junyou had almost forgotten that no matter where he went after leaving the Prince Rui’s residence, he would run into Bai Shuxi. This girl was practically a goddess of death. He was almost driven mentally insane by the black-clothed man’s stabs.

That cold sword, hard and long, had stabbed him so many times. Who could endure that? Pain of that level wasn’t something one could get used to after being stabbed a few times.

Fortunately, Bai Shuxi was only standing outside the building talking to him. The distance was relatively far, still within Qian Junyou’s range of resistance.

“So it’s Miss Bai! What a coincidence. What brings you here?”

However, at this point in time, Bai Shuxi’s father had not yet been imprisoned, and she had not yet thought about seeking help from the Prince Rui’s residence.

Bai Shuxi looked at this idle noble young master with some speechlessness. Over the past month, this person had repeatedly sent people to follow and investigate her just to track her movements.

He would occasionally create childish and boring “chance encounters,” using all kinds of methods to “invite” her. When soft approaches failed, he resorted to force, even with threats and coercion.

In her eyes, the current Qian Junyou was still a shameless scoundrel with terrible behavior. Bai Shuxi crossed her arms, sighed, and smiled helplessly:

“Coincidence? Young Master is joking. How can there be so many coincidences in the world? This humble girl is simply accompanying my father to take a look. After all, this town was personally overseen by my father during its construction.”

Bai Shuxi gave Qian Junyou a pitiful look, then turned her head and continued:

“I just didn’t expect Young Master to come all the way out to a place like this. If you only came for this kind of ‘chance encounter’ scene, Shuxi feels it’s really unnecessary. I advise you to go back early and do something more meaningful.”

“Mm, I have some slight understanding of fire prevention and firefighting, so I came to take a look. Maybe I can help… Hm!?”

Carrying a heart full of fear, Qian Junyou didn’t react immediately. Only halfway through speaking did he realize that something about what Miss Bai had just said felt off…

So this little girl thought he had come here for a “chance encounter” with her!? Holy shit, wasn’t that too narcissistic? He was dodging her like the plague, yet she still thought it was an “encounter”?

Hearing Qian Junyou’s half-spoken sentence, Bai Shuxi shook her head in disappointment, furrowed her brows, and smiled bitterly:

“Sigh… I didn’t expect Young Master’s interests to be so broad. Still, I advise you not to bother here. The people from the Court of Judicial Review and the Ministry of Justice are all well-read and highly experienced.

You flipping around here won’t be of much use. It would be bad if you were misunderstood.

If Young Master is truly interested in this field, you might as well go back and read more books on the subject. If needed, Shuxi can recommend two for you.”

Bai Shuxi’s clear, pitying gaze swept over Qian Junyou’s entire body, making the muscles at the corner of his eye twitch in anger.

She… was she saying he hadn’t read any books? Why did she always speak so offensively?

In the previous few loops, Qian Junyou had either lost control and pounced on her the moment they met, or she had come to his house to beg for help. This kind of direct conversation was their first.

Thinking back to the previous loop where Bai Shuxi had refused to leave his living room and stood there looking pitifully begging for his help, he instantly felt a belly full of fire with nowhere to vent.

“Miss Bai! Aren’t you being too narcissistic?”

“Narcissistic?”

Bai Shuxi frowned, looking somewhat puzzled, but it didn’t sound like a compliment…

Qian Junyou laughed coldly and said:

“You couldn’t possibly think… that this young prince came to a place like this just to meet you, right!”

“Then Young Master, you…”

“No way? No way! There couldn’t really be a girl who sees a guy and immediately assumes he’s here for her, right?!”

“I… didn’t!”

Faced with Qian Junyou’s string of sarcastic remarks, Bai Shuxi’s face flushed red with anger as she retorted furiously.

He wasn’t like this yesterday! Why did he suddenly seem like a completely different person today? After pestering her for over a month, had he finally decided to let go?

But that was fine too. She didn’t want to have any more dealings with this person anyway. If he had truly lost interest in her, that would be for the best!

“Besides, the books this young prince has read are not fewer than…”

“Young Master, please do as you wish! Shuxi still has matters to attend to and will not keep you company. It’s best not to waste your energy on such boring things anymore.”

Bai Shuxi had no intention of saying anything more to Qian Junyou. She didn’t even wait for him to finish speaking. She shook her head and turned to leave.

After watching Bai Shuxi walk away, Qian Junyou ground his teeth, put his hands on his hips, and let out a long breath.

He was so angry he almost wanted to laugh. He had gotten up so early and ridden in a carriage for a full four hours just to help her solve the case, only to be spoken to like that. Really…

And that arrow he had blocked for her last time—that was clearly the protagonist’s job! The difference was that the protagonist had divine arts protecting his body. After being shot, only a piece of jade on his chest had shattered.

Qian Junyou knew who the archer was—a member of the Spirit Gate Sect mentioned in the original novel. But why he wanted to kill Bai Shuxi, the novel had left that plot hole unfilled.

Although as a villain he needed to change the female lead’s impression of him in order to survive, Bai Shuxi’s attitude was truly hard to swallow…

Cursing inwardly, he called for Xueya and prepared to head back. Tomorrow was already the third day. Once her father was thrown into prison, he’d see if she still had the face to come beg him!