Sharing One Life with My Nemesis - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Breaking someone out of death row was harder than killing Xie Huaiyan.

Especially when the man himself refused to cooperate.

I had just picked open the second lock when he said in a low voice, “The third brick on the left has a bell wire.”

I stopped.

“How do you know?”

“I checked on my first day here.”

“Then why didn’t you run?”

“If I ran, who would stay in the open and take the heat for the Jiang Family Case?”

My hands froze.

He went on, “As long as I’m still in the Bureau of Prisons and Punishments, Lu Xingzhou will keep his eyes on me. Only then will you have a chance to look for the Draft Manuscript.”

All at once, I wanted to curse him out.

Not because I felt sorry for him.

Because this man was always like this. He never said anything, took everything onto his own shoulders, and in the end still acted as if I owed him understanding.

I cut the bell wire.

“Xie Huaiyan.”

“Mm?”

“If you’d learned to speak like a normal person sooner, I might have hated you a little less in my last life.”

He fell silent.

I looked back at him.

His eyes were lowered, his lashes casting a shadow beneath them.

“In your last life, you wouldn’t have believed anything I said.”

I wanted to argue.

But when the words reached my lips, I swallowed them back down.

On the day the entire Jiang Family was arrested, I saw him with my own eyes standing before the emperor, presenting that secret letter stamped with my father’s private seal.

I heard the court officials erupt in an uproar. I heard the emperor’s fury. I heard my father say, “Huaiyan, do you believe it too?”

Xie Huaiyan did not raise his head.

He said, “The evidence is irrefutable.”

Those four words nailed the Jiang Family to the board.

Who would believe he had been trying to save anyone?

The last lock opened.

Xie Huaiyan changed into a jailer’s uniform and followed me out through the hidden ventilation passage.

The wound on his shoulder split open again, and I was in so much pain that cold sweat drenched my forehead.

He glanced at me.

“The Soulbound Gu amplifies pain.”

I gritted my teeth.

“Shut up.”

“Walk slower.”

“You shut up.”

“There’s water ahead.”

I stepped right into it, cold water swallowing the top of my foot.

Xie Huaiyan sighed.

“Jiang Tingyun.”

“Call me again, and I’ll stuff you back into that cell.”

Sure enough, he stopped talking.

By the time we climbed over the rear wall of the Bureau of Prisons and Punishments, the sky at the horizon had already begun to pale.

At the ruined temple in the north of the city, Ah Man was gone.

Only a chipped bowl sat upside down before the Buddha statue.

A slip of paper was pinned beneath it.

There was only one line on the paper.

“If you want the Draft Manuscript, trade Xie Huaiyan for it.”

It was signed: Lu.

I stared at that character, my fingertips turning cold.

Xie Huaiyan reached out to take the paper.

I pulled it away.

“You knew Ah Man would be taken?”

“No.”

“Then how did Lu Xingzhou know I’d come looking for her?”

Xie Huaiyan looked out at the daylight beyond the ruined temple.

“Because this wasn’t the first place I told you about.”

My chest tightened.

“What do you mean?”

He turned back to look at me.

“In your last life, before you died, Lu Xingzhou got Ah Man’s name out of you.”

The tranquilizing pill flashed through my mind.

The night before the execution, I hadn’t fallen asleep.

I had been drugged, then questioned.

My voice came out hoarse.

“What did I say?”

Xie Huaiyan did not answer right away.

Outside the ruined temple, the sound of hooves suddenly rang out.

Lu Xingzhou stopped before the temple gate with a squad of the Black Armor Guard.

He still had that same gentle, clean-cut face.

When he saw me standing together with Xie Huaiyan, the smile in his eyes faded.

“Tingyun.”

“Why did you choose him again?”