CHAPTER 336: CHAPTER 211: ARRIVAL IN BERGEN

When Xia Pingzhou opened his eyes, he saw a girl in a white dress still leaning on his head, her eyes drooping as she slept soundly.

Their sleeping heads against each other resulted in their hair being a bit messy.

This two-hour flight wasn’t too long nor too short. Ji Minghuan basically kept his eyes closed the entire time, using the Number One Body to play games with Su Zimai and Gu Qiye in the living room at home. By the time he switched to the perspective of the Number Two Body, the plane had already arrived at Bergen, Norway, and was slowly descending.

He couldn’t help but marvel, Su Zimai was truly a troublemaker through and through.

The original chaotic battle with the three siblings was going so well, but they had to drag in their dad to make it a 2V2. Whoever teamed with their dad was unlucky; Ji Minghuan felt these two hours dragged on like years, it was practically life-extending.

He decided that he must record in his personal memoir, "Black Cocoon Chronicle," that you should never try playing games with Ghost Bell. The game’s most overpowered "Blue Arc" somehow turned into a clumsy character that could only stumble left and right and discharge electricity in place, ridiculously exaggerated.

After some thought, Ji Minghuan suddenly realized this might be karma, recalling how he mercilessly messed with Anluns a few times at Oda Takashige’s café when he was playing cards with his teammates back in the day. Not only would he blast his teammates with a bomb, but he’d also use both the Joker cards on them.

And now it was all coming back to him.

"So... this is how it feels to have a lousy teammate?"

Xia Pingzhou shifted his head, causing Ayase Origami’s forehead to bump into his hard shoulder.

She woke up in pain, quietly raising her pale face, belatedly staring at him motionless.

"We’re here."

Xia Pingzhou said, ignoring Ayase Origami’s gaze, and looked down to adjust his phone to the local time.

It was about 5:50 in Norway now. As the sun began setting in the west, the sky was almost dark. Looking out the window, the fjord city sitting on the western coast was slowly fading into dusk.

After they got off the plane, there was still no sign of Jack the Ripper; they seemed to have left earlier.

They didn’t know the meeting point with the team, since the hacker hadn’t mentioned it, and Jack the Ripper left without a word.

"Where do we meet them?" Xia Pingzhou asked.

"Ask the kid," Ayase Origami replied.

Her phone was out of battery; she didn’t seem to have the habit of charging it before sleeping. So she took Xia Pingzhou’s phone and opened the chat interface with the hacker.

The first sentence that met her eyes made her freeze on the spot.

[Xia Pingzhou: I love you.]

[Hacker: Are you sick?]

Ayase Origami rested her chin on her hand, raised her head, and silently sized up Xia Pingzhou.

Xia Pingzhou remained silent.

After a while, he changed the subject: "Bergen, Norway’s second largest city, and the largest city in western Norway. It’s located on the steep fjord line of Norway’s west coast, nestled by a harbor and seven hills. The city center is close to the Bay of Green and directly connects to the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a picturesque harbor city."

This was the descriptive text Ji Minghuan noted down while reading a travel magazine. His memory was originally quite good, and ever since Kong Youling brought him into the spirit space, he began to be able to convert each of his memories into books, storing them inside a library.

Which means, he wouldn’t forget anything.

Whenever needed, he could enter the library in his mind, pull books from the shelf, and review past memories.

Ayase Origami continued to stare at him without moving, not saying a word.

Moments later, she typed on Xia Pingzhou’s phone.

[Xia Pingzhou: Where, meet?]

[Hacker: Bryggen Pier, some team members haven’t arrived yet, I’ll have those already in Norway pick you up.]

[Xia Pingzhou: Who?]

[Hacker: Huh?]

[Xia Pingzhou: Is, who?]

[Hacker: Huh?]

[Xia Pingzhou: Team, members, who?]

[Hacker: Are you not very good at typing on a phone? Switching to manual assistance.]

Ayase Origami awkwardly, slowly typed, stopping midway when she saw this line, her fingers paused in mid-air.

She silently lowered her head, her bangs covering her eyes.

Xia Pingzhou coughed lightly twice: "He’s like that, rather straightforward and sharp-tongued when speaking to me, don’t mind it."

Ayase Origami remained silent, returning the phone to Xia Pingzhou, seemingly planning to give that little prodigy a beating once they met him.

After leaving the airport, the two of them set off from the lakeside park in the center of Bergen, occasionally glancing at the scenery, heading towards the Bergen port.

The lake shimmered under the sunset, and the church’s bronze bells chimed gently in the salty sea breeze.

As they passed a coastal highway, a tri-colored bus marked "4 Hesjaholtet" drove past them, the wind slightly lifting Ayase Origami’s white dress hem.

Before long, they reached Bryggen Pier.

This was the rendezvous point designated by Anluns, a pier dating back to the Middle Ages, rich in history and once listed as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

In sight were vibrant wooden boathouses, and white seagulls spread their wings and danced in the sunset.

At the harbor, the masts of small yachts cast long shadows in the afterglow, and a cream-painted tour boat slowly docked, with the colorful pointed roofs of the wooden houses dazzling the eyes.

Xia Pingzhou accompanied Ayase Origami to the pier’s convenience store and bought a power bank, showing her how to use it, charged her phone, and then the two of them sat on an oak bench on the pier.

They watched the sea under the sunset for a while, the sound of the waves continuously lapping, and at some point, Ayase Origami had become lost in thought, her gaze directed towards the distant Mount Floyen. The majestic mountains had the cable car’s wires gilded with a layer of gold in the afterglow.

"I want to ride that," Ayase Origami gently raised her hand, pointing to the swaying cable car in the distance.

"Let’s go after this mission is over," Xia Pingzhou said.

At the moment the sun sank into the North Atlantic, the entire fjord dimmed: the vivid wooden houses, the verdant distant mountains, the steel-grey sea, all blending in the hazy twilight into a burning oil painting. Seagulls flew in the sunset, skimming over the sails and masts of fishing boats.

Taking advantage of the fading last light, Ayase Origami suddenly wrapped her arm around Xia Pingzhou’s shoulder, picked up her phone, opened the camera, and took a photo from top to bottom.

"Click," went the sound, capturing the girl’s plain white cheeks on the screen, with a large sun wheel on the sea horizon and a sparkling sea, and white seagulls flying in the sky behind her.

In the photo, Xia Pingzhou’s face was expressionless, Ayase Origami also had no expression, like a robot and a doll group photoshoot.

"You’re really bad at taking photos," Xia Pingzhou said honestly, "Let me do it, I’m a photography expert."

Ayase Origami lowered her eyes, looking again at the photo she took.

"Really bad?"

Xia Pingzhou nodded.

"I sighed."

After waiting for a while, seeing the group members had not arrived, Ayase Origami pulled Xia Pingzhou into a small restaurant on Bryggen Pier. Both had just gotten off the plane and had little appetite, so they only ordered a reindeer sausage to try something new.

After eating, they left the restaurant and walked around the port. The sky had already darkened, and the black waves lapped against the shore, breaking into white spray.

At this moment, two figures hurriedly approached them, one with blonde hair and blue eyes, dressed in an English suit, with a permanent arc at the corner of his mouth; the other wearing a cap, with a ponytail, dressed in a casual t-shirt and jeans.

They were clearly Anluns (Slot Machine Boy), number 9 of the White Crow Travel Brigade, and Tong Zizhu (Ghost Face), number 4.

Tong Zizhu looked at Xia Pingzhou and silently took two steps back.

For this young man who called her mom the first moment he saw her, she always maintained a certain sense of reverence.

Xia Pingzhou looked at Tong Zizhu and was about to say something when Tong Zizhu raised her hand to interrupt him:

"I’m not your mom."

She paused: "Although my Celestial Driver is good at disguise, I’m actually only 19 years old, understood?"

"I didn’t think of you as a mom," Xia Pingzhou said.

"Good, I don’t want to be anyone’s mom," Tong Zizhu said.

The two shook hands and reconciled, reaching a consensus.

Xia Pingzhou silently raised his head, expressionlessly meeting Tong Zizhu’s gaze, thinking that in a few days when entering the Whale Terrarium, a shark will suddenly appear calling you mom, and this is the price you pay for pretending to be my mom.

Ayase Origami turned her head, glancing at them coolly. She was not particularly close with Anluns in the group, and Tong Zizhu was a newcomer who had only joined recently, so she was even less familiar with her.

Anluns came over, as usual, putting his arm around Xia Pingzhou’s shoulder, very enthusiastically asked, "Oh... how has the travel with the young lady been?"

"It’s okay, just wandering around, nothing special," Xia Pingzhou replied.

"Really? You both seem quite happy..." Anluns said, turning his head to look at Ayase Origami, "Young lady, can I borrow him for a bit? I want to take him to the nearby casino to play and have a little chat."

Ayase Origami raised her eyes, quietly glanced at Anluns, and then a paper slip flew from her sleeve. She then took a pencil from her sleeve and scribbled on the paper, handing it to Anluns.

Anluns raised an eyebrow, reached out with another hand from his suit pocket, and caught the paper.

Looking down, it read: "Lend-a-Cat Agreement, Three-Point Covenant, Time and Place."

Anluns paused, then helplessly raised the corners of his mouth, took the pencil, wrote the time, place, and his name on the paper, promising to return Xia Pingzhou in about two hours.

Ayase Origami retrieved the paper, and gave a slight nod to indicate her consent.

"Then let number 4 take you to meet the other group members, and I’ll go with the newcomer first," she said.

With that, Anluns took Xia Pingzhou away, heading straight to the hidden underground casino in Bergen.