Chapter 265 - Help! (1/2)

Lin Feng, Chongxi, and I shared a quick look. “It’s been so long,” Chongxi wondered and said aloud, “We won’t know whether it’s the same spot she had mentioned as we’re going to. How about a look then?” Lin Feng nodded and said, “Might as well. Since we would be nearby anyway.”

Hearing this refilled Yuanyuan with excitement. She screamed to come along and so did Edelweiss and Xiao Yu. “I’m coming along too, since all of you would be going,” Big Sister added. “Come on, all of you,” I pointed out and said, “Look at the time. It’s not that we’re going now.” Only then everyone realized that it was already six in the evening. The debacle at the police station had taken up so much time that we hardly had any drop of water the whole day.

However, for Chongxi, something else came to mind: food. He jabbed a finger at the clock on the wall. “All right, enough talking. It’s time for dinner! Let’s settle that first! The food in ancient times is nowhere near as delicious as anything here! I’ve been waiting for so long!”

Big Sister turned to Chongxi with an applauding look and nodded, looking just as she had long starved herself. Big Sister and Chongxi together were a force so formidable that nothing would be able to stand between them and food and it was imperative that we settle their dinner before we could look into doing anything else.

I took out my phone from a drawer and plugged it to a portable charger and switched it on. Lin Feng produced a set of car keys from another drawer. “Well, I do hope my driving skills are still intact. It has been years since I was last gripped a steering wheel!” he said as he took the lead to move towards my old Volkswagen parked outside.

A flurry of pings and rings came just as soon as my phone flared to life. They were unread SMSes, WeChat messages and so forth, numbering to at least a few hundreds of them. Among them all which included Zheng Shuang’s, I saw even a few from Lu Shengnan.

I took my time during the ride to the restaurant to take a look at the messages Lu Shengnan sent me. She had been trying to get a hold of me since the second day we left on our quest through Time. After getting not even a dial tone which indicated my phone was off, Lu Shengnan tried bombarding me with barrages of WeChat messages. The first few ones were asking why my phone off was, and the ones later urged me to return her call as soon as possible. Those came after told me nothing I did not already know; that Huang Li has lodged a police report against me and so on. I began scrolling down without reading most of them until the last few messages caught my notice. They came from three days ago, saying, “What’s happened to you? Huang Li has come looking for me. She wanted me to go somewhere with her but I refused. I was scared. I told her that I was busy and we should talk tomorrow.”

Then another pair of messages from her said, “There are people from Huang Li’s family coming for me! I’m so scared, help! They are coming!”

Then the last message from her, which came yesterday, the night just before we returned, carried only one word: Help!

I bit my lip as I re-read the word again and again, my heart thumping with dread. Edelweiss noticed the foreboding expression on my face and asked, “Why? Is there anything wrong?” I handed my phone to her and gestured to the message Lu Shengnan sent me. She looked at it and gave a yelp of fright.

Lin Feng and Yuanyuan, both sitting upfront, jerked their heads back in unison, shrieking, “What’s wrong?!” “It’s Lu Shengnan,” I replied, “She’s been taken by Huang Li. Her last message came yesterday, saying only one word: HELP.” “Ah?!” Lin Feng gasped, so shocked that his foot nearly stepped on the brakes. “For so long we were in the past, I have been thinking. Was Lu Shengnan an accomplice of Huang Li’s? No matter how I thought, I could find no way to prove that she was. Until now, everything is still obscured. I have no way of knowing if she’s really in trouble or not.”

“At anyhow,” Lin Feng nodded and said, “We’d be busy in no time.” He depressed the brakes, applying more and more force as the car began to slow. Xiao Yu’s car had come to a halt just in front of the barbeque skewers restaurant that we used to frequent so long yet not so long ago.

Big Sister has been riding with Chongxi in Xiao Yu’s car and they got down when they reached the restaurant. Lin Feng hurried right up to Chongxi and said, “The Lu Shengnan girl is in trouble. Divine what’s happening to her and whether anything she’s said is true.” He took my phone from me and passed it to Chongxi.