Chapter 472: Chapter 339: Growing Suspicions (Part 3)
"Little Butterfly sister, I’m okay."
"You’re just bluffing!"
Doctor Du finished checking me over and then went to examine Little Red, luckily she was only looking at superficial and internal injuries, not checking the heart pulse.
And I deliberately moved my arms and legs to show her I was healthy, so she didn’t examine too closely.
Seeing this trick worked, when it was its turn, Little Red directly performed a ’robot dance’ for Doctor Du.
This made Doctor Du angrily curse, saying that we both must have broken our brains.
Mr. Tang also moved to the cave entrance; he might not have seen the fight earlier, just saw Little Red and me climb out of the sand pile, with the big bug lying next to us.
His expression was full of disbelief, and he didn’t say a word. Huang Zaijiang, standing next to Mr. Tang, is quick to speak and a bit boastful. Seeing our victory, he said to Mr. Tang, "How about that, impressive, right? If we had our woman warriors around, you wouldn’t have had to suffer that pain."
Mr. Tang, however, appeared uneasy. He casually responded, and afterward I noticed that he seemed afraid to look directly at Little Red and me, only stealing glances with the corner of his eye.
Other people noticed too, since we’ve been together 24 hours a day, any obvious change in attitude is quite clear.
Qinghan, as the team leader, is in charge of soothing the emotions of those rescued. He proactively approached Mr. Tang for a chat, initially thinking he was just scared by seeing Little Red and me being fiercer than the big bug and wanting to keep his distance.
But after a deep conversation, Qinghan discovered that wasn’t the case at all. It turned out Mr. Tang already ’felt’ Little Red and I weren’t human.
So the look in his eyes wasn’t one of reverence for ’higher beings’, but fear of non-human creatures.
Qinghan came up with a bizarre background story to calm his doubts, saying I just had a special constitution and many adventures, much like the protagonist in a novel who always meets a white-bearded old man.
The old man insisted on teaching me skills because he valued my talent. I felt Qinghan might even claim I had a complete Five Elements Spirit Root suited for immortal cultivation soon. But Mr. Tang didn’t react much.
He didn’t say if he believed it or not, and afterward, he still acted the same, always evasive around Little Red and me.
Miss Tang initially cooperated with Qinghan to persuade him, telling him not to overthink, saying it’s because he’s been living underground for too long, scared by those evil spirits and ferocious creatures, so it’s natural to be a bit sensitive.
I carefully recalled the process of killing the big bug, wondering if I had exposed any obvious flaw that let Mr. Tang immediately conclude we’re not human. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any; he was the last to leave the cave and the last one to see the scene. Doctor Du had even completed his check before Mr. Tang came out, so any evidence should not have been noticed solely by him.
But Mr. Tang wouldn’t fear us for no reason. These days, Little Red and I have done a good job of disguising—eating, drinking, even deliberately slowing our walking speed to appear ’weak’ in line with everyone else.
Miss Tang trusted her father deeply and initially thought he was just too frightened, leading to heavy suspicion. After two days, her attitude started to change.
Huang Zaijiang said the father-daughter duo had a private conversation. He saw but pretended he didn’t notice, later telling us he didn’t know what Mr. Tang said to Miss Tang, but afterward, her attitude toward Little Red and me became increasingly distant.
Qinghan even privately told me Miss Tang wanted to talk to him. With such a small group, information network has formed...
I naturally nodded and said okay, go and talk with her, I’m waiting to hear some exclusive news.
In the end, Miss Tang didn’t reveal any key information to Qinghan; she just urged him to investigate my background further.
Her tone was extremely sincere, using years of friendship as a guarantee that she wasn’t unjustly accusing me. She was sure there was something wrong with me.
Hmm? Why do I know the tone she spoke with? Oh, because when they had their private chat, I was squatting in the little crevice above the corner of the mountain where they were talking.
Later, after Miss Tang left, they agreed to return separately after a short interval to avoid raising my suspicion. Qinghan stood there and said, "Heard everything?"
I crawled awkwardly out from that little crevice, dusting off the dirt on my head and body, giggling, "Quite clearly."
"You should really be sent to the props group," Qinghan raised his hand to help dust off the sand in my hair.
The props group he mentioned is a particularly tedious department working on disguising various items for eavesdropping—mailboxes, washing machines, safes. As long as an object can fit a person inside it, they’ve camouflaged it.
So other colleagues jokingly refer to them as the props group, anyway, they can stash a person anywhere.
