VIP Volume Chapter 45: Surviving Great Calamity

"Did you do it on purpose?" Ye Xiaoxuan's face was tinged with a bluish hue as he sat on the bench, looking at Wen Xiaoyu and questioning her.

Wen Xiaoyu appeared utterly bewildered, innocence written all over her face. "What do you mean? What did I do on purpose?" Ye Xiaoxuan, fuming, said, "You deliberately revealed our relationship in front of Jiaran, didn't you?"

Wen Xiaoyu kept her head down, silent for a long moment before finally looking up, her gaze unwavering as she asked, "Does it matter to you?"

Now it was Ye Xiaoxuan's turn to be dumbfounded, and he asked absentmindedly, "Matter to me? In what way?" Wen Xiaoyu glanced toward the kitchen and lowered her voice, "You care about her feelings, don't you? Is she really your cousin?"

Ye Xiaoxuan looked flustered, unsure how to answer. Wen Xiaoyu wasn’t about to let him off the hook, pressing him insistently, "Do you like her? But because of your relationship as cousins, you pretend to be my boyfriend to forget her, yet deep down you still like her, isn't that true?"

Ye Xiaoxuan was caught completely off guard, his face flushing red as he waved his hand at her. "Don't be ridiculous! Where did you get the idea that I like her?"

Wen Xiaoyu pointed to her chest. "Intuition! Women’s intuition, you wouldn’t understand. Xiaoxuan, let me ask you something, and I want the truth."

Ye Xiaoxuan glanced at her nervously. "Don't ask. I really don't feel that way about her..."

Wen Xiaoyu braced her hands on her knees, bending forward so her clean, delicate face was only inches from Ye Xiaoxuan’s, their noses nearly touching. Her breath was fragrant as she asked, "Xiaoxuan, I'm not asking about all that. I just want to know—do you like me?"

Ye Xiaoxuan gazed into her dark, autumn-water eyes, intoxicated by her youthful scent. His heart stirred, and he nearly couldn’t resist kissing her rosy lips. He nodded and admitted, "I do!"

Wen Xiaoyu smiled, quickly pecked him on the lips, and said, "Then I don't need to worry. You two are cousins; you've grown up together, your bond is deep, but that’s not love, just the stirrings of adolescence. Now that you have me, your heart will gradually find its proper place."

Ye Xiaoxuan chuckled and pulled her into his arms, saying, "Then you'll have to stay here and keep an eye on me every day, or who knows who I might develop those stirrings for!"

Wen Xiaoyu snorted. "You wouldn’t dare! Let me go, I’m going to chat with cousin. Honestly, if she weren’t your cousin, I’d be a little worried. But with that relationship, there’s nothing to fear."

Ye Xiaoxuan asked curiously, "Why?" Wen Xiaoyu pursed her lips. "You act all careless and roguish, like a hooligan, but you actually have principles. You just don’t like to do things the proper way."

Ye Xiaoxuan was stunned for a while, then asked seriously, "Is that supposed to be a compliment?" Wen Xiaoyu snapped her fingers. "Of course! If you weren’t that kind of person, who knows how many people would be lining up to court me, and why would I ever look twice at a country bumpkin like you? Hmph!" With that, she turned and entered the kitchen.

Ye Xiaoxuan had long experienced the power of her sharp tongue—not only could she handle men, but women too! In less than two minutes, the kitchen rang with the sweet laughter of two girls. Ye Xiaoxuan had to admit, even the usually reserved Jiaran seemed to get along well with her.

When the dishes were brought to the table, Ye Dajun and Hao Six-Fingers arrived. Hao Six-Fingers cradled two bottles of wine and said to Ye Xiaoxuan, "To celebrate your miraculous survival, let’s drink ourselves silly tonight!"

Wen Xiaoyu pointed at Hao Six-Fingers in surprise. "Your arm..." Ye Xiaoxuan shook his head. "The one in the water wasn’t his. I didn’t think much at the time, but later realized—Six-Fingers is right-handed, and the severed arm we saw was a left hand."

Ye Dajun stared at him in horror. "You saw dead bodies in the lake?" Ye Xiaoxuan nodded. "More than twenty."

Hao Six-Fingers exclaimed, "More than twenty?! When we came back to shore, there were seven or eight people who got off the boat. Fifty of us went out, and over forty died?"

Wen Xiaoyu asked anxiously, "Did you see Sister Hua?" Hao Six-Fingers nodded. "She’s fine. Zhao Yanping, the chief engineer, the first mate—those people didn’t make it. A few who looked like teachers, though, survived."

Wen Xiaoyu and Jiaran had just returned from delivering food to Ye Xiaoxuan’s father, and hearing the conversation, they sat down. Wen Xiaoyu bit her finger and said, "I think I understand roughly what happened. So, after we were sucked into the whirlpool that night, the lake was calm again. Then Brother Dajun and Brother Yongmeng fell asleep, and when they woke up, more than half the people on board were dead, only a handful made it back. Is that right?"

Ye Dajun and Hao Six-Fingers nodded together. "Yes."

Jiaran shuddered and instinctively leaned closer to Ye Xiaoxuan, but when she saw Wen Xiaoyu, she hurriedly moved her bench next to Ye Dajun and said to everyone, "When the boat came back, I went to see—there was blood everywhere, absolutely terrifying! The corpses were lined up along the lakeshore, all mangled and bloody. Captain Zhao said some fell into the lake during the storm and probably didn’t survive."

Hao Six-Fingers was even more frightened, clinging to Ye Dajun's arm. "I’ve never seen so many dead people in my life! Spent the whole night sleeping among corpses, just thinking about it gives me goosebumps! Dajun, if I’m not drunk later, you have to take me home—I wouldn’t dare walk alone!"

Ye Xiaoxuan, who had been silent, furrowed his brow and asked Ye Dajun, "When did you fall asleep, and when did you wake up?"

Ye Dajun thought for a while, scratching his head. "We didn’t have a watch, so I’m not sure. We slept two or three hours after you fell into the water, woke up the next night."

Hao Six-Fingers nodded. "Yeah, never slept so well in my life. If Dajun hadn’t pushed me, I wouldn’t have wanted to get up. Just felt really tired."

Ye Dajun said, "As soon as we came up to the crew quarters, something felt wrong—the smell of blood was overwhelming! The deaths were so gruesome, you could smell the stench of death without even entering the cabin."

Ye Xiaoxuan stared at Ye Dajun and Hao Six-Fingers. "So you weren’t sleeping in our own rooms?"

Ye Dajun glared at Hao Six-Fingers and cursed, "This guy insisted the lower deck was safer! In such a big storm, only the hold was truly secure, so he dragged me down there to hide. Otherwise, I’d have known what happened that night!"

Ye Xiaoxuan took a deep breath and said, "You should thank Six-Fingers! Because you hid in the hold, you weren’t slaughtered like the crew. I think you didn’t just fall asleep—you were drugged, just like the sailors."