Til Death Do Us Part (Yanqing x Yunli)

Chapter 3: The Missing Link

We cut back to present time, where Yanqing is now in his bed, scrolling through his phone before sleeping for the day. As Yanqing was reminiscing about his last interaction he had with Yunli, he unconsciously found himself scrolling through the text messages he sent to her. The last time he saw Yunli was about two months ago, and it seems as though ever since, Yunli seemed to have ghosted Yanqing, with him sending multiple text messages, but seen without reply. The latest text by Yanqing was 2 hours ago.

"Hey"

"You're arriving tmr, right?"

Yanqing looked at his unread text message, and sighed. He has no idea why Yunli was suddenly being so cold to him. First few times he could understand, maybe she was busy at that time. But two months? Doesn't sound right at all. 

And so, Yanqing just placed his phone down for the night, and kept thinking about the last time he and Yunli talked. He then remembered how Yunli kinda left without much explanation, and she sounded a bit mad that time. Did he say something wrong to offend her? Yanqing couldn't recall. Yanqing, deciding to let it slide for now, tried his best to take this situation off his mind, and get some good night's rest. As tomorrow, an important meeting was going to be held.

It was the next day, and Yanqing had freshened up, ready for the day. He was waiting by the port to welcome the guests from the Zhuming on behalf of Jing Yuan, to further discuss about their ship merging project. As Yanqing was standing on the starskiff port, waiting for the slow fleet from the Zhuming to arrive, he saw something leap out of the Zhuming ship, and landed on a nearby building on the Luofu. 

Yanqing couldn't see it clearly, but from a distance, he could make out that it was a figure of a person, and with how large the leap was, it wasn't any ordinary person. Yanqing let out a curious groan, and signaled for some guards to investigate covertly as he waits for the ship to arrive.

As the ship entered the port, the arbiter-general of the Zhuming: General Huaiyan walked out of the starskiff, and Yanqing along with some of the guards beside him gave him a slight bow.

"Welcome to the Luofu, General Huaiyan." Yanqing said.

"Oh, at ease, Yanqing. I'm pretty much a regular now, with our *secret project* coming up."

Yanqing let out a humoring laugh in response.

"The Luofu's grateful for the general of the Zhuming for taking their time in discussing our humble request."

Huaiyan laughed as he walked past Yanqing.

"Right then, shall we get going?"

Yanqing nodded his head.

"Of course, general."

However, as Yanqing was following behind Huaiyan's slow footsteps, he was looking back at the starskiff, and was looking at the doors. Many guards started making their way out of the starskiff, and each held into their own positions once they were out. By the time the guards had all got out of the starskiff, Yanqing was still looking at the doors. They were open, but nobody was exiting it anymore. Yanqing stopped walking to continue staring at the door, as if hoping that something would be coming out of it. Suddenly, General Huaiyan called out to him, breaking Yanqing out of his trance.

"Young Yanqing, is something the matter?"

Yanqing looked back towards general Huaiyan's direction.

"My apologies, general. Let's continue."

Then, Yanqing started walking, and as he looked back at the starskiff one last time, the doors were starting to close.

"Where could she be?"
Thoughts started forming up on Yanqing's mind, which revolved around this one simple question.

However, Yanqing had no time to ponder about these trivial stuff, and continued escorting General Huaiyan to the seat of Divine foresight.

That is, until Yanqing's curiosity got the better of him.

"General Huaiyan, may I be pardoned for a question?"

"Hmm? What is it, young Yanqing?"

"Is... Yunli going to be attending today's meeting?"

General Huaiyan stroked his beard.

"Ahhh, little Yunli wouldn't be attending any of our meetings for the time being. She has been chosen with an extremely crucial task, and that's where her focus will be for now."

Yanqing nodded, but still remains vigilant about the situation.

"I see..."

"Something more important than the Merger Project? What else could it be?" Yanqing felt like something was going on, but decided not to act rashly on just a gut feeling. For now, he would have to put this aside.