Chapter 16 - Fear that they had looked for Xiaoxi six years ago

Hotel presidential suite, reception room.

As soon as Zhou Qi entered the room, she sensed that the atmosphere was somewhat strange.

"Brother, Zou Song."

Upon hearing her voice, Ji Jiali didn't even raise his head, simply letting out a cold snort through his nostrils.

Zou Song, as always, joked in his usual nonchalant manner: "Oh~ our Zhou Hongniang has arrived!"

Before Zhou Qi could speak, Ji Jiali exploded, grabbing a cushion from the side and throwing it at Zou Song: "Shut up!"

"Oh dear, young man, don't be so hot-tempered!"

Zou Songyang caught the cushion in mid-air, placed it beside him, and shook the string of beads in his hand, twisting it a couple of times with an air of importance. "You should learn from me how to play with these beads; it's good for cultivating your mind and body."

"Huh? When did you start playing with prayer beads too?"

Zhou Qi approached and noticed that the string of beads in his hand looked very familiar. "Isn't this my brother's white jade bodhi string? How come it's in your hands?"

Zou Song chuckled cheekily, "Your brother insisted on giving it to me, so I reluctantly accepted it."

"When did I give it to you?" Ji Jiali suddenly stood up and reached out to snatch it back. "Give it back to me!"

Zou Song quickly hid the skewers behind his back: "Hey, you threw these on me during the day, what else could it be but a gift?!"

"Of course, I'm very easy to talk to. You can go back, as long as you help me persuade Brother Fu to invest in that project together!"

Ji Jiali sat down again, irritably ruffling his hair: "Go and tell him yourself! Can't you see I've been blocked by Brother Fu?! Otherwise, why would I come here in the middle of the night?!"

Upon hearing this, Zhou Qi became interested: "Brother, you got blocked by Brother Fu? How did you offend him?"

Seeing her gossipy look, Ji Jiali was furious. He tapped her on the head with his finger, exasperated, "Zhou Qi! Aunt Zhou! How dare you ask? This is all your doing!"

"What did I do?" Zhou Qi asked, looking completely bewildered.

Zou Song chuckled from the side: "Zhou Hongniang is acting like an elder!"

The strange name gave Zhou Qi a sudden inspiration: "Because I introduced Lin Xi to you?"

Ji Jiali gave a cold laugh, crossed his arms, and completely ignored her.

Zhou Qi shrank back, immediately cowering, and with an embarrassed smile, she moved closer to Ji Jiali: "No, brother! Dear brother! Let me explain!"

"I only found out about Brother Fu's feelings for Lin Xi during dinner tonight! I wanted to tell you right away, but I couldn't get through to you on the phone. So I came here to apologize! Please forgive me this time!"

Ji Jiali remained unmoved.

"Brother, you can't blame me for all this! I always thought he only had eyes for Nanqing, his childhood sweetheart. I never expected him to fall for someone else..."

"Not sudden."

A cold voice rang out in the room. Zhou Qi froze, stiffly turning around to greet Fu Qingli: "Brother Fu... Brother Fu."

Fu Qingli nodded slightly, walked to the sofa opposite them and sat down, explaining patiently, "Lin Xi is my childhood sweetheart."

Zhou Qi's legs went weak, and she almost slipped off the sofa.

"Brother Fu, I was wrong. I really didn't know Lin Xi, no, sister-in-law... otherwise, I wouldn't have dared to do it even if you gave me a million lives!"

“I know.” Fu Qingli curled the corners of her lips. “I’ve always wanted her to avoid contact with people from Beichen. It’s normal that you don’t know.”

Ji Jiali couldn't sit still any longer. He tugged at his collar in frustration: "You knew that, yet you still blocked me! After all these years of being brothers, you don't really think I would lay a hand on your wife, do you?"

"No."

Fu Qingli took out a cigarette case from the coffee table, knocked out a cigarette, and lit it.

Amidst the swirling smoke, his smile was desolate, and his clear voice was tinged with a hoarseness: "I'm sorry, I'm just scared."

I'm afraid she'll actually start considering letting someone else into her heart.

Losing his composure, he broke his agreement with Dr. Han to proceed gradually and went to see her instead.

"By the way, how's the investigation into Su Yi'an going?"

"that……"

Zou Song scratched his nose guiltily. "Brother Fu, it's like this. Vivian, the designer Yaoshi signed at the end of last year, is actually Su Yi'an, but her identity wasn't made public. Only a few senior executives at Yaoshi knew about it. So when the marketing department did their background check, they didn't discover this relationship."

This morning, Su Yi'an appeared at the seminar and asked her sister-in-law to design the press conference as a marriage proposal venue, saying she wanted to propose to you there.

"..."

Fu Qingli's eyes suddenly turned piercing, her thick eyebrows furrowed, and the oppressive atmosphere around her was chilling.

Zou Song dared not say anything more, and directly projected the meeting's monitoring screen onto the TV, playing the conflicting parts at double speed.

As the video neared its end, Zhou Qi couldn't help but swear: "Is Su Yi'an delusional?! When has Brother Fu ever paid any attention to her advances since we were kids? How dare she show off her affection in front of my sister-in-law?"

"He has someone backing him up."

Ji Jiali sneered, his contempt obvious. "As soon as Brother Fu returned to the country, rumors started circulating in the industry that he and Su Yi'an were deeply in love and that their marriage was imminent. It was all orchestrated by them. She probably thought that with Fu Wenxun backing her up, the marriage was a done deal, and she wanted to use the press conference to publicly force him to marry her!"

Zou Song shook his head, not quite agreeing with his opinion: "I don't think so."

"I've had someone confirm it; there were no plans to reveal her identity beforehand, and this ring—"

He pointed to the ring sketch in the framed image. "It wasn't originally part of the new product launch plan for Qixi Festival. It was all a last-minute decision yesterday morning, and the ring was still just a draft. Ye Baichuan personally made the decision, overturning the previous launch plan and focusing the publicity on this ring and Su Yi'an's identity. The previous plan was for one team to be in charge, but Su Yi'an suggested that she admired her sister-in-law's art exhibition last year and hoped that her sister-in-law would be the chief planner."

He glanced at Fu Qingli's gloomy face and cautiously offered his guess, "Ye Baichuan probably heard about the marriage alliance and wants to use the influence of the Fu and Su families to create momentum, which is normal. But Su Yi'an knows Fu Ge's attitude, yet she still does this, which is more like she suddenly found out her sister-in-law is in Beicheng and is desperately trying to provoke her with these things..."

Everyone knows how much Fu Qingli cares about Lin Xi and would never let her go on his own!

Su Yi'an could only target Lin Xi, forcing her to leave again and extinguishing any hope Fu Qingli might have!

"But--"

Ji Jiali seemed thoughtful. "I'm not surprised that Su Yi'an knew my sister-in-law's identity. The Su family must have investigated the people around Brother Fu back then. What I find strange is that my sister-in-law didn't react much when Su Yi'an mentioned Brother Fu, whether intentionally or unintentionally. It seemed like she already knew her identity?"

"Oh, right!" Zhou Qi suddenly slapped his forehead and said excitedly, "Yesterday morning, I saw Su Yi'an in the exhibition area! She came down from upstairs, holding the giant panda doll from Kangyuan Company, and kept looking in our direction. My sister-in-law saw her too."

She frowned, thought for a moment, and added, "Thinking about it carefully, my sister-in-law's complexion was a bit bad at the time, but she was indeed quite calm."

That's very likely—

Ji Jiali was reluctant to continue.

Fu Qingli pressed one hand to her temple, her smile bitter and desolate: "They looked for Xiaoxi six years ago."

A note from the author:

----------------------