Chapter 1344: Reunion

Reunion

In a daze, Jian Changsheng also slowly opened his eyes.

My head hurts so much...

Jian Changsheng felt like he had drunk fake alcohol. Although he woke up, his mind was still a muddled mess like paste. A faint residual pain lingered all over his body, as if he had been severely beaten.

He groped around and struggled to sit up, looking around blankly:

"Where... is this?"

"It's Hearts' Underground Palace."

Jian Changsheng turned his head to look, only to see Jiang Xiaohua sitting quietly cross-legged on the ground, without the slightest trace of poisoning visible on his entire body.

"Hearts'... Underground Palace?? This guy even has an Underground Palace???" Jian Changsheng finally recovered his wits and remembered what he had encountered before falling unconscious. He sized up Jiang Xiaohua with a strange expression,

"I don't know... those Poisonous Insects bit me, and as a result, they themselves fainted." Jiang Xiaohua answered very innocently, "Hearts' subordinates couldn't lift me, so I walked over here myself."

Jian Changsheng: ...

Jian Changsheng was about to ask something else when a burst of painful and violent dry heaving continuously rang out from the side.

"Bleurgh..."

"Bleurgh——!!!!"

He saw Sun Bumian squatting on the ground, his face pale and contorted, as if trying to throw up all his bile.

"What happened to him?" Jian Changsheng asked in confusion.

"Oh, he got French-kissed by a toad."

"???"

Sun Bumian vomited for a full ten minutes before a trace of color finally returned to his face. Afterward, he just sat there blankly, his gaze hollow and despairing, as if he had lost his desire for life.

Jian Changsheng also rested for a while. Only after the feeling of exhaustion completely disappeared did he stagger to his feet.

With his head shaking, he dazedly remembered a pitch-black and bizarre face again... He didn't remember where he had seen that face, but in his blurry memory, this face actually existed... Was it Hearts? No, that should be impossible...

Could it be that he hallucinated after being poisoned and fainting?

"Where's Hearts?" Jian Changsheng asked.

Jiang Xiaohua thought for a moment, "He said he was going to prepare dinner for us, and that Poisonous Insects would come to pick us up in a while."

"Hmph, at least he still has some conscience." Jian Changsheng spoke unhappily, "We came all this way to see him, and as a result, we were almost poisoned to death by his underlings... If this isn't compensated with a sumptuous banquet, it really can't be justified."

Hearing the words 'sumptuous banquet', the weak Sun Bumian's ears twitched on the side...

Under the massive vomiting just now, he had already thrown up everything he ate over the past two days. It was exactly the time when he needed to replenish food. He forced himself to forget the appearance of that extremely disgusting toad and walked straight toward Jian Changsheng and Jiang Xiaohua.

"Speaking of which, I noticed something wrong here just now..." Sun Bumian spoke in a deep voice.

"What?"

"This Underground Palace is a place of Great Inauspiciousness."

Sun Bumian pointed at the floor of the Underground Palace beneath him, his gaze incomparably serious.

It hadn't been long since Sun Bumian recovered from his poisoned state, and he hadn't even actively initiated Fortune-Misfortune Divination, but the ferocious Aura here was so dense that it didn't even need Fortune-Misfortune Divination to inform him... Being able to make him, an Auspicious Omen, feel danger meant it was no longer ordinary "Ill Omen".

In fact, even without being an Auspicious Omen, as long as a human stood here, they could feel the abnormality of this place. The bone-chilling cold and the goosebump-inducing discomfort were all proving that this place was fundamentally unsuitable for human survival.

"Why did Hearts pick such a place for himself?" Jian Changsheng's brows furrowed tightly,

"It seems we really have to take him away quickly. Living in this place of Great Inauspiciousness for a long time, something will happen sooner or later."

Just as the three were talking, a burst of rhythmic knocking on the door rang out.

Knock knock knock——

The three looked at the room door simultaneously. After glancing at each other, Jian Changsheng took the lead and stepped forward, directly opening the room door.

In the next moment, he was almost so frightened he drew his sword and slashed!

He saw an upright centipede with dense, thin legs standing right at the doorway. It was actually standing there like a human, using its mouth to knock on the door. While full of politeness, there was also a scalp-numbing bizarre feeling...

"Damn, what has Hearts trained this bunch of centipedes into? They can even fucking stand up and knock on doors??" After being startled, Jian Changsheng couldn't help but swear.

The centipede didn't seem to realize what kind of psychological impact its standing up to knock on the door had brought to the three of them. It only gave a light hiss before crouching down and crawling toward a certain direction.

"Let's go, it should be taking us to find Hearts." Sun Bumian stepped forward and said.

The trio followed the centipede and shuttled through the Underground Palace. This Underground Palace was larger than they had imagined, and the corridors were intricately complex. On both sides were tightly shut room doors; a conservative estimate would be hundreds of rooms.

The three were a bit curious; why did this Underground Palace look like a hotel, setting up so many "guest rooms"?

Jian Changsheng wanted to open these rooms to take a look, but felt it wasn't quite appropriate, so he could only continue following the centipede forward first... After taking several consecutive turns, a dim room that looked like a dedicated banquet dining hall appeared before the three.

A long table was furnished in the center of the dining hall, like the elegant places where vampire dukes and other royal nobles dined together in old movies. Brass candlesticks were placed on the long table, with several white candles burning slowly. Coupled with a row of Torchlights on the surrounding walls, it could illuminate more than half of this space.

On the long table, an expensive carved tablecloth was spread, with four sets of clean and tidy tableware placed on it. Porcelain plates, cups, chopsticks, knives, and forks, everything that should be there was there...

And behind each seat, a small centipede lay prostrate respectfully, waiting for dispatch like a servant.

At this time, at the end of the long table, a figure draped in the Great Crimson Theatrical Robe was facing away from the three. The flickering candlelight on the table projected his shadow onto the wall, swaying silently like black flames.

As if sensing the trio's arrival, he slowly turned around...

A white smiling mask met the trio's faces.

"Spades, Diamonds, Clubs... long time no see." Chen Ling's light chuckling voice came from under the mask.

Seeing that white mask, the three were all slightly taken aback, seemingly a bit puzzled as to why Chen Ling suddenly put on a mask.

But to them, whether Chen Ling wore a mask or not, it was Chen Ling anyway. Without a second word, Jian Changsheng quickly stepped forward and threw an arm around Chen Ling's neck, baring his teeth and scolding with a smile:

"Good on you, Hearts!! We came all this way running over to find you, and as a result, we were almost eaten by your Poisonous Insects... Tell me, how should this matter be handled??"

"Exactly." Sun Bumian stood with one hand on his hip, starting to complain quite unhappily,

"This little life of mine was almost lost in your hands... And that toad you sent, I don't even want to talk about it... Bleurgh!!!"

Halfway through Sun Bumian's words, the corners of his mouth started twitching again, and he ran straight to the corner of the wall to continue dry heaving.

Jiang Xiaohua just stood in place, scratched his head, and spoke sincerely:

"Hearts... we were very worried about you."