NFBE Chapter 397 - 382: Rules of Power
Chapter 397 - 382: Rules of Power
Liu Minghui’s mind was racing, his schemes practically audible, but Gu Yalan was no fool. If she were, she never would have stood out from so many other candidates to become the young lady of the Gu Family.
Gu Yalan instantly understood why Liu Minghui had come to see her.
But while others might not know, she was very clear about one thing: her title as the young lady of the Gu Family was nothing more than a glamorous façade. Within the Gu Family, she held no real status whatsoever.
’He wants me to go and mediate with the Gu Family? Liu Minghui is barking up the wrong tree.’
But she couldn’t let Liu Minghui know that.
After a moment’s thought, Gu Yalan asked, "Have you found out who did it?"
In her heart, she already had two suspects in mind.
"Was it Shen Yue or Ye Junhan?"
Gu Yalan raised a delicate eyebrow, her mind already spinning. ’If it was one of them, perhaps... I could use this as an opportunity to return to the Gu Family. Not their main headquarters, of course, but one of their strongholds in the Central Base.’
Things had been chaotic in the Central Base recently. Worried about her brash husband, she had gradually sent a considerable number of valuables back to the Central Base to be hidden away over the years.
But now that chaos had broken out, it was no longer safe to leave her things there.
Yet Gu Yalan didn’t trust anyone else to bring them back for her. ’Those treasures were so hard to come by. They’re my fallback plan. How could I possibly entrust them to someone else?’
That was why she had been scheming all this time, looking for a suitable opportunity to make a trip back herself and retrieve her belongings.
But the Gu Family’s presence in the Central Base wasn’t a place she could return to just because she wanted to...
Unexpectedly, Liu Minghui shook his head. "It wasn’t them." His men had been keeping watch. Shen Yue was still in the city rebuilding the disaster zones, operating in plain sight. As for Ye Junhan...
Ye Junhan had indeed disappeared tonight, but right now he was still outside at Gu Garden, playing hide-and-seek with Yan Xun.
He had neither the time nor the opportunity to sneak into the valley behind the estate.
Moreover, Ye Junhan was a Thunder Ability user. Before coming to find Gu Yalan, Liu Minghui had personally inspected the valley. Neither the mutated humans nor the mutated beasts had any wounds on them. They looked as if they had simply fallen asleep, their lives silently reaped in their dreams.
In other words, before they died, neither the guards in the valley nor the mutated humans and beasts showed any signs of a struggle.
It was utterly baffling.
Even more bizarrely, without exception, the Crystal Cores in their heads had all mysteriously vanished.
Ye Junhan was not capable of such a feat.
In fact, Liu Minghui had another suspect in mind.
However, he had already contacted that side before coming here. That person... had been at the farm all evening.
Upon hearing about the state of the mutated beasts and humans, Gu Yalan also thought of Gu Xi.
"Could it be her?" Gu Yalan looked at her husband, her expression a mix of shock and doubt.
Liu Minghui frowned slightly. "It’s not her. Someone’s been watching the farm. She was still there half an hour ago. And the guards in the back hills work in two-hour shifts, but they check in with central control every ten minutes..."
This meant that someone had silently completed a horrifying slaughter in under ten minutes.
A technique like that...
If it wasn’t the Blood-colored Asura, then it could only be... that person.
For a particular reason, Gu Yalan had long since stopped daring to even mention that person. She looked up at her husband, her eyes filled with fear and uncertainty.
After a long moment, she could no longer contain her fear and asked in a terrified, uneasy voice, "Could it be... that person?"
Liu Minghui didn’t speak.
In the world today, besides the Blood-colored Asura of the past, only that person was capable of such a feat.
’But that person... seemed to have no motive to do so?’
Gu Yalan reminded him in a low voice, "Didn’t they say that person went to Farm 0101 last night? Could it be..."
Very, very few people knew about the rumors between that person and the Blood-colored Asura back then, but they weren’t non-existent.
Originally, Gu Yalan and Liu Minghui had been unaware, but then Dr. Qi came to City A, didn’t he?
Dr. Qi was arguably the person in the world today who knew the most about the old Doomsday Squad.
When he visited Gu Garden this time, the couple, Liu Minghui and Gu Yalan, had gone to great lengths to pry information out of him.
And, of course, Dr. Qi hadn’t disappointed them.
So now, the husband and wife couldn’t help but wonder if that person had used their Gu Garden to curry favor, all in an attempt to win back the Blood-colored Asura’s affection.
After all, in that person’s eyes, City A was nothing. They probably wouldn’t even blink an eye if the entire city were destroyed.
But if that was truly the case, then they... The couple looked at each other, and both saw terror in the other’s eyes.
After a long moment, Gu Yalan’s fear finally overwhelmed her. She asked tentatively, "About what happened tonight..."
But Liu Minghui suddenly cut her off. "Yalan, you haven’t been back to the Gu Family in a long time."
Gu Yalan froze for a second, only to see her husband looking at her with deep affection. "With the situation in the Central Base right now, you must be worried about your family. It’s my fault. I’ve been too busy lately and haven’t had a spare moment to accompany you on a trip back to your family’s home..."
Gu Yalan understood. ’He wants to run.’
Of course, she wanted to run too.
After all, City A was no longer safe.
But City A was the Liu Family’s home base. The two of them had painstakingly built it up for years; they couldn’t just abandon it.
"Liu," Gu Yalan said, snuggling gently against him. "There’s something I haven’t dared to tell you. My eldest uncle hasn’t been well these past few days..."
The "eldest uncle" Gu Yalan mentioned was the Gu Family’s representative in the Central Base, said to be the eldest son of the head of the Gu Family.
But Liu Minghui had been the Gu Family’s son-in-law for over twenty years and was now a powerful regional leader in his own right. Over the years, he had naturally cultivated his own information channels and network. He had a faint suspicion that the current Mr. Gu at the Central Base was not actually from the Gu Family’s direct lineage...
Of course, Liu Minghui had no idea where the true direct lineage of the Gu Family actually was.
Nor did he dare to investigate.
Because once, he had merely entertained the thought, and the very next day, the adjutant sent to carry out his inquiry died right in front of him.
From then on, Liu Minghui treated Gu Yalan even better, and he regarded the Gu Family as a profound taboo, harboring an unspoken dread for them.
But now... Liu Minghui held his wife, his face grim, and sighed inwardly.
The circumstances were beyond his control.
Even if the Gu Family was a dragon’s pool and a tiger’s den, it was still better than City A right now.
Everything that happened tonight was undoubtedly a reminder of one thing: whether he was the Mr. Liu of the past or the powerful Mr. Liu of today, in the eyes of certain people, there was no difference at all.
...An overwhelmingly powerful ability could ignore all the rules of power in this world and take his life at any moment!