“This woman, could she be some mountain spirit or demon? I’ve seen that pit. It’s bottomless, and there’s really no way up at all. Ordinary people who fall into it are bound to die. There’s no way they can climb up. But this woman actually brought Ning’er back safely in one piece. And look at her mannerisms and how she dresses. Why do I feel that even the late Empress Dowager’s poise and bearing couldn’t compare to hers?” Xiao Anning’s father, Xiao Shengsheng, said with a frown.
This name, Xiao Shengsheng, was a painful part of his past that he was unwilling to talk about. He could only blame himself for not being able to talk when he was born. As a result, his father had chosen such an embarrassing name for him, and he’d had no power to resist.
“So what if she’s some mountain spirit or demon? She saved Ning’er! I don’t care who she is. She saved Ning’er, so that makes her our greatest benefactor!” Princess Yong An had always been fiery-tempered, simple, and straightforward. Then, to her husband, she said furiously, “Leave it to you to think up mountain spirits and demons, indeed! Why didn’t you guess that she’s a diety? Why, your son has safely come home. You don’t think that’s what she really is?”
Princess Yong An’s speculation as to Tian Miao’s identity, in a certain sense, was pretty much accurate.
Xiao Shengsheng, seeing his wife’s raised eyebrows, hurriedly tried to appease her. He had no desire to sleep on the ground that night. “No, no, no! Why would I think that?” he said in a gentle voice. “My lady, please be appeased. Please be appeased. Our Ning’er has Heaven blessing him. That’s why he was saved by some higher being. It’s my fault for not being more careful with my words. My guess is that this lady is some master who happened to be in retreat or cultivation down in the pit and saved our Ning’er by chance.”
Princess Yong An’s anger was placated, and her tone softened as she said, sounding more relaxed, “Where in the world would there exist mountain spirits and demons, deities and devils? This lady really doesn’t look like a mortal. Let’s ask Ning’er what happened, and we’ll naturally come to know what happened.”
“Anning, you tell us. What exactly happened down there?” The Duke took one look at his silly son and was somewhat relieved. Oh, so his son wasn’t so silly to the extreme after all. He could come up with an answer that was slightly more reasonable and plausible. The look that Xiao Shengsheng’s father cast him gave him goosebumps. Why was it that he detected a hint of disgust mingled with the look of relief he saw in his father’s eyes?
“It was Tan Weizhi who pushed me down. He must’ve planned it all a long time ago. I wasn’t on my guard at the time,” Xiao Anning said in a deep voice. “I thought that I was going to die for sure after falling down into that pit, but I ended up rolling all the way down only to be saved by Miss Tian. She’s very skilled in martial arts. But I don’t know why she appeared at the bottom of the pit.”
Xiao Anning subconsciously left out the details of his visit to the OmniStore. That experience was simply too inconceivable that telling everyone about it would only create trouble for Boss Tian. And deep inside, Xiao Anning intuitively felt that it was all because of Tian Miao that he wasn’t the least injured from rolling down into that pit, so it wasn’t a lie to say that Tian Miao had saved him.
“This Tan Weizhi. What audacity! What gave him the guts to actually dare to do such a vicious thing to Ning’er?” Princess Yong An gritted her teeth, a furious look on her face. “I’m definitely not going to let him off the hook for this. And the Tan family too!” she said.
Anning’s grandmother, who had been silent all this time, suddenly said in a very cold voice, “Let’s interrogate him first and ask him why he did such a vicious thing to Ning’er.” The moment she said these words, Ji Liruo’s gentle and virtuous look appeared in her mind. The cause of all of this was most likely, yet unfortunately, that young lady. What she didn’t know was whether that young lady had had anything to do with this matter or not.
“We will thank Miss Tian properly tomorrow. We will ask her what she wants, and if it’s something within our means, we will do it.” Xiao Shengsheng felt very grateful to Tian Miao. He didn’t dare to imagine what would’ve become of their family if something untoward had happened to Anning. The whole family probably would’ve been ruined, right?