PROOFREAD BY AFREANA

Chapter 47.2

The outside of the gambling house looked clean, like an ordinary courtyard.

The main door was open, and the inside was quite huge. A few burly men who looked like guards were seated in the front yard. There were a few closed compartments, and one of them was half-open with the bookkeeper inside writing something. Further inside, one can hear the noisy sounds.

An Ruochen was stopped by someone just before she reached the door of the hall. A burly man with a cross face asked her, “Girl, are you looking for someone? Or are you here to play?”

An Ruochen said calmly, “Both. The boss lady of the Zhaofu Restaurant said she would bring me here to play, so she should be waiting for me inside.”

The burly man said, “She’s not in.”

So the people in this gambling house know Zhao Jiahua?

An Ruochen raised her eyebrows: “How come she’s not here? We had an appointment. Do you recognize her face?”

“She is really not here.”

“Where is Boss Liu? They agreed to let me play. Is Boss Liu here?”

“No.” The burly man replied quickly, looked An Ruochen up and down, and asked, “Who are you?”

An Ruochen interrupted him by saying, “He clearly said that he is like brothers with Boss Lou and will open a private room for me to play with them. If the game is good, I will refer it to my friends.”

The burly man frowned: “I have not heard of any arrangement today. Who exactly are you?”

An Ruochen also frowned and sounded rude: “Why I must tell you? They know who I am! If they come, tell them that it is rude to stand someone up.”

The burly man was shocked. Before he could say anything, An Ruochen turned around abruptly and walked away imposingly under the watchful eyes of several guards.

After exiting the gate, she breathed a sigh of relief. Since she became the steward of the Purple Cloud House, she deliberately wore dark clothes and styled her hair in an old fashioned way. In short, she strived to be dignified and proper like a steward. Today she wore a gray jacket paired with a dark green dress, with only a wooden hairpin on her head and no maids around her, an old lady housekeeper forcing herself to pretend to be a young lady.

An Ruochen imagined the scene, and she was so embarrassed that she almost had to shake her goosebumps. But who cares? This trip was considered a success. It was okay to be disgusting.

An Ruochen looked at the sky and planned to hurry back to Purple Cloud House first to catch up with Big Long before he left. She has to tell him about the gambling house. Maybe the General will have a method. She was still calculating while walking around the Zhaofu Restaurant with her feet to observe more. 

As An Ruochen walked, she suddenly stopped. Turning around and taking a few steps back, she looked at the two bells hanging in the middle of the window pane of the second floor.

The bells were not there when she looked at the window the day before. She was sure of it. If there were, she would never forget it. And only this window had them. In other words, it was not the restaurant’s decoration.

‘And the bell. Keep an eye on the bell. Maybe you can find the key person.’ Zhao Jiahua’s words rang in her ears, and An Ruochen’s heart thumped.

The bell, the bell! That’s it!

Wait, if the bell is a code word, then is it possible that “Mr. Xie” (??is actually a “Xie” (?)?

An Ruochen’s brain buzzed with excitement.

Xie (?)!

Is that right?

Not Mr. Xie (?), but (?)?

The “key person” Zhao Jiahua was referring to, did she mean Mr. Xie (?)?

Therefore, searching for the surname Xie (?) all over the city was wrong. The General was correct. He had assumed that the name was a code name. Xu Matchmaker ran all over the city and was familiar with all family households. But, she secretly met him in a room hidden from public eye, indicating that Xu Matchmaker did not know him.

A foreigner with no accent and many underlings in the city must have been lurking for a long time, at least for several years. There are too many such people in Zhonglan City. It was like a needle in a haystack. But now, the clue was right in front of her eyes.

An Ruochen’s heart was beating wildly with eagerness. She tried to keep her composure and walked into the Zhaofu Restaurant.

Mr. Xie walked for a while and coincidentally saw An Ruochen entering the restaurant. He frowned, pondered over it, turned around, and returned.

An Ruochen went straight to the second floor. The window was at the end of the left-hand aisle of the stairs. There are private rooms on both sides of the aisle. An Ruochen swept a quick count, six rooms. She walked over and saw three of them were open and empty. Three of them were closed, and the sound of several people laughing and joking came from inside. An Ruochen knocked on the door, went in, and observed. After saying sorry for going the wrong way, she then withdrew.

There was no man of similar age and stature. A waiter greeted her and asked, “Is the young lady looking for someone or want to have a meal?”

An Ruochen said, “My friend doesn’t seem to be here.” As she spoke, she retreated to the stairway and looked around, not seeing any suspicious characters. No one was paying attention to her or avoiding her gaze. The waiter saw she did not look like she wanted to eat, so he walked away.

T/N : I forgot to put footnotes! As I previously mentioned, the character Xie??? and Xie ???has the same pronunciation. But??? can be pronounced as Jie, too. As a surname, ??? is pronounced as Xie. ??? means a solution, answer. Zhao Jiahua word’s ‘find the bell then you will find the key person’ means ‘find the bell then you will find Mr. Xie.’