Chapter 360: The First Guest
The claws of the dark devil from country Y reported in the news have not actually extended to continent O, but this does not prevent the craze for bloodline theory from rekindling within continent O, nor does it prevent some people from taking advantage of the situation to fish in troubled waters.
To be frank, Zhou Yushi is usually the one who fishes in troubled waters, but this time, he almost became the fish being fished.
In Country F, there are many people who have been abandoned by Bellinda, and there are also many who have failed to woo Bellinda. Most of them are able to accept it with an open-minded attitude, but there are also a small number of extreme admirers.
As luck would have it, he and Belinda were both half-bloods, and their respective wizarding parents were either missing or dead. In short, there was no way to find out the details, which made them also suspected of being Muggle wizards.
After this suspicion hypothesis came out, it was really an outrage. It was okay at work, because Belinda's colleagues were all Muggles, and the research institute where Zhou Yushi worked was in Beauxbatons, where he had built up his interpersonal relationships for more than ten years. But as soon as they left the workplace, all kinds of brainless people came to harass them.
They said they were discriminating against hemp-blooded wizards, but their eyes were all glued to Belinda in disgust. Everyone knew what they were thinking.
However, Zhou Yushi is not a pushover, as he has good interpersonal relationships outside of school. He has sued several people who have harassed him but have not caused any actual harm to Nurmengard. This attitude of pursuing the matter to the end has made his and Belinda's lives much calmer.
But there are always crazy people in this world.
While living with Bellinda, Zhou Yushi used his savings and some money from his grandfather to buy nine houses, including suburban villas and urban apartments, mainly to balance the distance between him and Bell's workplace.
He had made some connections at the Ministry of Magic of Country F. In addition to the conditionally open Floo network, there were also some small one-way transmission mechanisms in the eight houses, leading to the ninth secret house. Only they knew the rules of the mechanism, and this design also allowed them to ensure maximum safety in the early stages of the riots.
During the last harassment of them, a man sneaked into their open house while Zhou Yushi was at work, and broke through the mechanism to go to the secret hut. This may be Zhou Yushi's fault, because he was engaged in alchemy and had set up several mechanisms related to alchemical equipment.
And at that time, Bellinda was the only one at home.
Zhou Yushi can say responsibly that if he had not asked Tang Xueji to set up a maze at home to prevent intruders, with Belinda's level of spellcasting, her personal safety would be in danger.
He rushed back after receiving the news and had a fight with the crazy man. Because he fought so fiercely, the man sued him after being sued. When the trial started, he found out that the man was his colleague, Olivier Langheim, who was also at the Beauxbatons Institute, and the admirer of an unknown Gadar.
The lawsuit was nothing special. At first, he was sentenced to excessive self-defense and sentenced to three months in Nurmengard. After the appeal, it was found that Zhou Yushi had never used a wand during the fight, while Langheim's wand had cast several offensive spells at the same time. In the end, the verdict was changed to not guilty.
It was this incident that made Belinda feel relieved. Her modeling career had just reached a bottleneck, and the chaos on the wizard's side would probably continue for a long time. She finally agreed to Zhou Yushi's suggestion that she go back to Country Z with him to avoid the limelight.
This promise came with additional conditions. After all, she was going to a foreign country, and Bellinda thought she couldn't leave with any regrets. And the only thing she was concerned about was the missing Della.
At the beginning, Zhou Yushi didn't put much effort into finding Della. He just made some efforts to join the "million-dollar reward" in between arranging the whereabouts of his grandparents. His idea was simple. The group of people who coveted the million-dollar prize must have used all the available methods, so why would they need him?
But never try to fool a woman.
After the situation developed from dissatisfaction to accusation, Zhou Yushi immediately made the greatest effort to find Della in front of Belinda, and even borrowed Tang Xueji's Poluan from afar, which was said to be a guiding device made of dragon tendons.
Then, he and Bellinda found Della in a cabin in the woods of Italy under the guidance of Powang who occasionally hit him.
"Oh! Della!" Almost the moment she saw Della, Belinda rushed over and hugged her in her arms. After hugging her for a while, she gave Della a passionate kiss on the cheek and said, "Why are you so cold? And you're so thin! Are you really taking good care of yourself when you're out there alone?!"
"Belinda - what are you doing..." Della obviously didn't expect that an acquaintance would find her, and she asked slowly after being hugged and kissed.
Zhou Yushi noticed that Della's eyes moved very slowly, and her tone of voice was questioning and her speech was too slow, but not so slow that she couldn't react in time. In his opinion, it sounded more like she was indifferent and nonchalant.
But this doesn't make sense, because Zhou Yushi knows that Della actually regards Bellinda as a close friend.
"Come in first," Della invited them. "It must have been difficult to find here. Let me make you a cup of tea."
Just as he was about to go in, Della turned around and asked, "Do you have a silver letter with you?"
"No," Zhou Yushi smiled knowingly, "Don't worry, our money is at home."
"So it's true?" Belinda asked, "Is the rumor that Yinxin is monitoring our information true?"
"No," Della shook her head, a false smile on her lips, "It's just that we buy into this conspiracy theory."
"I don't understand alchemy anymore," Belinda snorted, and she flirtatiously tossed her dazzling golden hair, "I also know that Silver Letter was your project at the time."
"The technology has been updated and iterated a lot," Zhou Yushi said skillfully, "We can't be sure."
Belinda snorted again and followed Della into the cabin.
From the outside, Della's cabin in the woods is a two-story wooden house built along a giant tree. It has a very retro style, with the exterior walls being completely the same brown as the bark, and even having the outline of gullies on them. The flat windows are small and numerous, and the only decoration is the same embellishment of emerald green as the leaves on the top of the tree.
While this cabin, which is completely adapted to the forest, gives people a sense of fantasy, it will inevitably bring dark speculations.
This makes perfect sense; those small windows obviously don't let in much light, and the dark brown color of the bark gives the impression that the walls are too thick to let in light, features that are definitely magnified to the point of being dull when a person lives alone.
After entering the house, I must admit that my first impression was the brightness.
Della had good taste, although not exquisite, but the furniture made from trees and only slightly polished created a simple and leisurely atmosphere. The overall temperament perfectly matched the exterior, but it was precisely in this perfect match that the problem arose.
The whole house, at least from the living room where he and Belinda were invited, had no bright light source from above. Only the wall lamps arranged at intervals cast light diagonally. The simple brass wall lamps were very atmospheric, and the yellow light they refracted also had a hazy beauty, but -
"Don't you think this light is too dim?" Zhou Yushi asked, pointing at the yellowish wall lamp beside his shoulder. He thought that this wall lamp was not only not bright enough, but the slanting light that created more shadows also made people feel depressed.
"I have a small lamp for reading in the study," Della continued to speak in her slow tone. She poured tea for the first guest in this room and expressed her attitude in advance. "I don't want to go back to the life over there. If you have any advice on this, you'd better go back early."
Yes, cold indifference.
Zhou Yushi, who was already surprised by Della's pale face, became more certain of his feeling and felt that this was totally unlike Della.