Chapter 78
Chapter 78. An Unexpected Encounter
[Zero.]
Crack—
The mirror shattered.
A slender figure, bare from the waist up and clad in nothing but a pair of trousers and socks, appeared abruptly in the void of a space that vanished the instant he emerged, and immediately began to fall from the sky.
"Aiyo……hss……"
The fellow was blessed with extraordinary luck — plummeting from such a great height, he somehow didn't slam straight into the ground and get flattened into a pancake, but instead landed amidst a densely layered canopy of thick foliage.
He clung for dear life to a relatively stout branch, his entire body dangling from it with all four limbs, like a koala bear.
"Good grief……this is awfully high off the ground!"
"Why do I feel like I've developed a fear of heights."
The half-naked man craned his neck to look down, and found that he was currently a full ten meters above the ground.
"Don't look, don't look……deep breaths, deep breaths……"
The half-naked man slowly adjusted his posture on the branch, engaging his arms and legs one after another, shifting himself from an upside-down hang back into an astride position.
Creak—
Feeling the branch groan beneath him, he broke out in a cold sweat on the spot and went completely still, not daring to move a single muscle.
"Please don't snap — if I can make it down to the ground safely, I'll definitely find you a few fine specimens to graft with afterwards."
Having said that, the half-naked man retreated step by step toward the trunk.
He was preparing to slide down along the trunk.
Just as he was nearly close enough to reach it, he let out a long breath. "Tsk, a tiger fallen to the flats, bullied by dogs……this young master is merely in a temporarily weakened state — and yet even a tree branch dares to lord it over me."
'Once I've recovered my strength, I'll definitely give you a good trim!'
With that thought, the half-naked man stuck out a leg and gave the branch a kick.
Snap—
"?"
"Wait, you……"
Thud!
The half-naked man paid the price for his loose lips all the same — the branch gave him absolutely no face whatsoever, and choosing to embrace a philosophy of 'if I go down, we go down together,' consigned itself to oblivion alongside the half-naked man.
Crash……
The half-naked man and the snapped branch plunged downward together, the two of them simultaneously falling into—
A fountain.
Both hitting the water at the same time sent up quite a considerable splash, and the half-naked man, acting on pure instinct, immediately grabbed onto the branch and bobbed to the surface, paddling and flailing his way toward the stone platform at the fountain's edge.
"Phew……" Draping his arms over the stone platform, he wiped his face and finally had the presence of mind to take stock of his surroundings. "Who dug this fountain pool so deep?"
"You……who are you……"
Just then, a faintly familiar, delicate feminine voice entered his ears.
The half-naked man followed the sound and looked over, and there in the glow of the night's Magic Gas Lamps, he saw a young girl of beautiful and delicate features, clad in a thin gauze garment through which her jade-like skin was enticingly half-visible, leaning against the long bench of a pavilion, staring at him with wide, startled eyes.
The girl was not wearing shoes. Her bare jade-white legs were pressed tightly together and drawn in, her delicate jade feet tucked beneath her well-rounded hips, all ten of her jade toes curling inward on instinct, revealing the slightly wrinkled, tender pink soles of her feet, flushed with warmth beneath their fair surface.
Her pale blue hair had been splashed wet by the spray the half-naked man had made upon hitting the water; droplets trickled down between the strands and soaked into the thin gauze draped over the girl's body.
And that gauze, already diaphanous to begin with, now clung tightly to the supple contours beneath it in the wake of the soaking, lending an altogether different kind of allure to the soft and beautiful girl.
"You are……Luo Nan, Luo Nan von Medillion?"
The girl hugged her own body, a pair of beautiful eyes fixed intently on that perverted exhibitionist who had crawled out of the fountain wearing nothing but a pair of oversized trousers and socks.
Luo Nan gave his head a shake, looked up, and studied the girl carefully — she was the picture of a startled little rabbit.
"Rose Anlute? What are you doing here?"
He was rather baffled. He had calculated this through a thousand times and ten thousand times — that after returning to the Material Plane from the Dimensional Rift Space, the first person he might encounter could be Anya, could be Tanya, or could be Serela; it was even possible he might be teleported directly in front of "her."
But never once had he anticipated that the first person he would see would be Rose Anlute.
That woman — one of the most highly suspected masterminds behind the scheme to harm him at Serela's homecoming banquet!
The thing Luo Nan despised most in this life was wicked women, and most especially wicked women who had done him wrong.
"Luo Nan, you……how dare you ask me……don't you know where you even are?"
Rose felt that her current state left her vulnerable to being taken advantage of by Luo Nan. She drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around her knees, and used her thighs to cover her soaked upper body entirely.
But the girl seemed to have overlooked the fact that beneath her thin gauze, apart from a set of somewhat suggestive pink lace undergarments, there was no other fabric whatsoever.
One could only say — the girl managed to cover the top, but not the bottom.
"Mm? Where am I?"
Prompted by Rose's reminder, Luo Nan finally thought to take a careful look at his surroundings. Within a tranquil garden, an exquisitely crafted little pavilion stood at the center; the pure moonlight filtered through the very tree crown he had just fallen through, casting dappled shadows on the ground below.
Looking further into the distance, a four-story main building of considerable scale and elegant architecture was unmistakably the centerpiece of this manor.
With vision fully reconstructed by the Thunderflash Step, even without augmenting his perception with Battle Aura, Luo Nan could still faintly make out the emblem on the side of the main building.
Against a dark violet background, at the center hung an antique-style bronze lantern giving off a soft silver-white radiance.
A bronze lantern?
Luo Nan immediately searched his memory for that keyword.
The Anlute Family Crest!
Which meant……
He had been transported into the Anlute family's residence?
That must be it.
Upon realizing his current predicament, Luo Nan felt a sudden throb of pain in his head.
He hadn't even had the chance to settle accounts yet with Rose Anlute!
Although this woman had not actually done anything to frame him after Serela's pointed verbal warning — he still felt certain that Rose Anlute would have done so.
For no other reason than that in the original storyline, it had been precisely because the original Luo Nan had attempted to commit an act of indecency against her that Anya had come crashing in to stop it, sending his already poor reputation plummeting to rock bottom.
"Help—" Mm!
Just as Luo Nan was lost in recollection, Rose unexpectedly seized the moment while he wasn't paying attention, and — hugging her body — twisted her head to shout toward the outside of the little garden.
That shout gave Luo Nan such a fright that he leapt to his feet.
With no time to think, he crossed the distance to the pavilion bench in two or three strides and, without further ado, pressed his large hand over Rose's cherry lips.
Beneath his hand, all was softness and smooth delicacy.
Whatever the case, although this woman had once tried to harm him, one had to give credit where it was due — the face and figure were genuinely not bad, the skin felt wonderful to the touch, like something that would drip water if you gave it a squeeze, and there was also that well-nurtured, natural fragrance……
Wicked women, however lovely, were the harmful kind!
Luo Nan temporarily suppressed the 'critiquing habit' that had awakened from within his unawakened memories, and lowered his voice to speak to Rose:
"What are you screaming for?! Can't you see I fell from the sky? This is a misunderstanding!"
The girl, however, remained full of terror; her long lashes trembled lightly, and those endearing almond-shaped eyes seemed to film over with a layer of misty moisture.
Not only that — Rose's jade body, now nearly bare of the thin gauze, was also shifting about restlessly; she squirmed and trembled, and the droplets of water on her chest traced their way into the groove between, sketching out an elegant curve.
Luo Nan felt something soft pressing against his waist from below and, glancing down, only then did he realize — he had lunged over in far too great a hurry just now, and the posture the two of them were now in was somewhat……overly suggestive.