Phoenix Destiny
chapter-312-30041322

After an unknown amount of time, Lu Mingshu slowly regained consciousness.

She heard the birds chirping and could smell the grass.

Lu Mingshu tried to lift up her arm, only to find that it was impossible to do so. She was seriously injured.

She lay in silence for a while. Not long later, she could hear shuffling beside her, and she felt someone putting a pellet into her mouth.

The pellet tasted bitter. Lu Mingshu gulped it down, and soon, the medication dissolved in her stomach, healing her internal injuries.

She opened her eyes and tried to sit up.

"You're awake?" Xie Lianzhen, or rather, Yan Wugui – who looked like Xie Lianzhen – smiled at her warmly and held her up, checking the injury to her shoulder. "I'm not as good as him in medicine, I can only clean up the wound for you."

He then opened up his mustard seed pouch and took out a bottle of ointment, applying it on her wounds.

"Him…" Lu Mingshu stared at Yan Wugui blankly. She didn't know whether it was the injury she suffered in the fight or the shock of Yan Wugui suddenly appearing, but she was at a loss for words now, unsure what to do.

Yan Wugui smiled thinly while winding the bandage around her. "Haish, you're all grown up now!"

Hearing this, Lu Mingshu snapped out of her daze and pulled up her clothes frantically.

Yan Wugui chuckled at her actions. He didn't know where to touch, and he started coughing furiously.

"What happened?" Lu Mingshu turned around, worried for him.

"Nothing much." Yan Wugui shrugged it off. "Just a small injury."

They were both in the fight together, so of course Lu Mingshu would know how serious his injuries were.

Both of them were now covered with injuries. Lu Mingshu had more external wounds and Yan Wugui suffered from more internal injuries.

"Where are we?" Yan Wugui asked after he saw that Lu Mingshu was fully awake. "You told me to follow you, so the teleportation was done by you, right?"

Lu Mingshu did not answer. She did not want to lie to Yan Wugui, but the secret of the Heavenly Wheel could not be told to others.

Luckily, Yan Wugui did not persist. He only asked that once and went back to clean her wound quietly, coughing from time to time.

Yan Wugui looked up after he finished cleaning Lu Mingshu's wound. "Why don't you ask?" he asked Lu Mingshu softly.

"What am I supposed to ask?"

"The relationship between me and him."

"Then there is nothing to ask." Lu Mingshu lowered her head.

Yan Wugui sighed. "What if I said I want you to?"

"…" Lu Mingshu remained silent. After a while, Lu Mingshu responded, "I already suspected when you sent me the boots. After trying to probe him since he kept looking for me, I guessed that you were very close to him. Maybe brothers or something? I don't know. It never crossed my mind that…"

Both of you would be the same person.

Back when Wei Chunqiu told her more about Xie Lianzhen – about things that were not known to many – Lu Mingshu already guessed that Yan Wugui might be the previous Alioth Star Lord's descendant. His surname was Yan, and he was in the fifth clan. And if that was the case, the relationship between Yan Wugui and Xie Lianzhen would not be so simple.

After that, Xie Lianzhen kept on forcing her. At that point, she thought that maybe that would be when she had to face a new situation. However, Lu Mingshu did not want to drag Yan Wugui down with her unless it was her last resort.

But the answer to everything was beyond her expectations.

"Are you guys two separated souls but trapped in the same body?"

"No." Yan Wugui slowly shook his head "I am him, and he's me."

That meant they were two different personalities of the same person? This situation was rare. She had only read about it in her books, and she least expected to see it with her own eyes.

"So, both of you know about each other's existence, huh?"

Yan Wugui chuckled and looked down. "I knew about him right from the start. My existence is just a result of him being unwilling to face reality. Initially, he thought he was ill, but after tiny hints, he found out about me."

Time would be lost when Yan Wugui took over his body, and for someone as meticulous as Xie Lianzhen, after some painstaking investigation, it wasn't hard to find out the cause.

Lu Mingshu opened her mouth to ask something, but she didn't ask since she felt that there was no point.

Ask about who the owner of the body was? Or what Xie Lianzhen was actually planning to do? These actually didn't seem to be important anymore.

But Lu Mingshu wasn't very surprised, and she was calm. Maybe because Lu Mingshu had already guessed long ago that they were somehow related, it didn't have too great an impact.

Xie Lianzhen and Yan Wugui may have been different, but it was suspicious if one connected the dots.

Xie Lianzhen became unable to walk as a child. He physically recovered some time ago, but he was still unable to walk because of some psychological factors. So then, how was a guy who spent twenty years or more in a wheelchair still so healthy and strong? Furthermore, when Yan Wugui sent over the pair of boots, he was able to get a maidservant to deliver it for him and keep his identity under wraps, which was enough to show that he had status in Zhongzhou.

The weirdest thing about Yan Wugui was that nobody knew about his existence. When he came to Jade West Mountain Forest, he came in as a disciple of the Seventh Truth Platform. A disciple on a learning trip would surely leave some traces, not disappear into thin air. However, it would be a piece of cake if he was Xie Lianzhen. Xie Lianzhen was in charge of the trip, so to him, it was just altering the name list.

"Uh…" Lu Mingshu wanted to ask if Yan Wugui knew about everything that happened between her and Xie Lianzhen, but she was unable to bring it up.

They had not met each other for a long time, their time together was very short, and they were not very close to each other. To be very frank, she was closer to Xie Lianzhen than Yan Wugui; they interacted a lot during the Qilin Festival and even fought together during the attempted coup.

Yan Wugui felt her pain and raised his hand to pat her head. "Don't overthink. You like him, so you're upset that I appeared?"

"Of course not!" Lu Mingshu denied immediately without second thought. But soon after, she thought that she denied it too quickly, making it seem suspicious. Lu Mingshu sighed and bit her lips in annoyance.

Fortunately, Yan Wugui decided to leave it there. "Okay, you're still young, thinking about this too much is bothersome anyway. Let's solve the problem that's right in front of us now."

Right in front of us? Oh yeah, we are now in another world.

Lu Mingshu calmed herself down and said, " Both of us are seriously injured, and we still do not know where we are. How about we find a place to recuperate?"

She observed the surroundings. It was a desolate area with greenery everywhere. It was an amazing scenery.

"This place is fine, but if there's nobody staying here, there might be demonic beasts." Yan Wugui stood up, then crouched down with his back facing Lu Mingshu. "Come, let's go and look for a place to stay for a while."

"You…" Lu Mingshu felt confused by his actions.

"Hop on!" He turned his head around.

"I…"

"Can you even walk right now?" Yan Wugui pointed at the injury to her legs. "Stop trying to be brave. If you are unable to walk, you will just drag me down."

"…oh."

Lu Mingshu stood up and slowly got on his back.

Yan Wugui grabbed her legs tightly and carried her up.

"Eh? You have gained weight," he said.

Lu Mingshu rolled her eyes. Nonsense, it's been five years, of course I would have grown.

"So are you still going to call me your father now?"

Lu Mingshu stared at him blankly. "What?"

Seeing her reaction, Yan Wugui burst out in laughter. "Do you still remember my words? I thought it would take ten years, but it seems like it only took five years."