Chapter 154 Gu Changhai's Anger

The Gu Group's public relations department was completely paralyzed. The phone was bombarded with calls, and the official Weibo comment section was completely flooded with angry shareholders, onlookers, and the enemy's troll army, causing the server to crash several times.

The urgently released statement with pale wording, which claimed that "Ms. Gu Qianqian was ill due to a sudden illness and her personal remarks do not represent the position of the group", was like a drop of water thrown into magma, which evaporated without a trace in an instant and only attracted a stronger wave of ridicule.

Haicheng Ren'ai Private Hospital, top floor VIP ward.

The strong smell of disinfectant could not cover up the strange scent of perfume and blood lingering in the air.

Gu Qianqian was lying on the large hospital bed, her face as pale as paper. The expensive silk sheets made her look lifeless. Only the slightly rising and falling chest proved that she was still alive.

The ward door was violently slammed open by a violent force!

Gu Changhai rushed in angrily. He was nearly sixty years old, and his well-maintained face was now twisted with muscles and veins bulging on his forehead. The elegant demeanor he usually maintained was gone, leaving only the raging rage of being pushed to the edge of a cliff.

He rushed to the bedside in a few steps, staring at his unconscious daughter with bloodshot eyes. It was not like he was looking at his own flesh and blood, but more like he was looking at a disaster that was about to drag the whole family into the abyss!

"Gu! Qian! Qian!" Gu Changhai squeezed out three words from between his teeth, each word icy. He suddenly reached out his hand, not to check her temperature or to comfort her, but to grab a strand of Gu Qianqian's hair that had fallen on the pillow like a pair of iron pliers!

The severe pain caused the unconscious Gu Qianqian to let out a vague groan of pain. Her eyelids trembled violently and she was forcibly woken up.

She opened her eyes dazedly, and her vision blurred for a long time before it focused. What she saw was her father's face distorted by extreme anger, and the undisguised hatred in his eyes that wanted to eat her alive!

"Dad...?" She spoke weakly, her voice hoarse and broken, carrying the bewilderment of surviving a catastrophe and a lingering sense of grievance. She tried to move, but the piercing pain in her scalp made her gasp.

"Dad?!" Gu Changhai roared suddenly, his saliva almost spraying on Gu Qianqian's face. The hand that was grabbing her hair suddenly exerted force and threw her down fiercely!

"Bang--!"

Gu Qianqian's head was smashed against the corner of the hard mahogany bedside table by an irresistible force! There was a dull sound that made one's teeth ache!

"Ah—!" A heart-wrenching scream instantly burst from her throat. Severe pain, dizziness, and nausea washed over her like a tidal wave. A warm, sticky sensation spread across her forehead, and a warm liquid flowed down her brow, blurring her vision. Stars flashed before her eyes, and her ears buzzed.

"Look! Look at what you have done!" Gu Changhai was like a madman. He grabbed her hair and forced her to lift up her blood-stained face. His other hand trembled as he pointed at the huge LCD TV hanging on the wall of the ward.

The TV screen was silently playing financial news.

The screen was split in two. One half was a chaotic recording of the Peninsula Hotel dinner, with a close-up of Gu Qianqian slumped to the ground, bleeding and fainting, played repeatedly in slow motion. The other half was a chart of the Gu Group's despairing stock price—a precipitous, almost vertical, green line, with a glaring number next to it: -45.3%!

"Gu Shipping! Our biggest source of cash flow!" Gu Changhai's voice was shrill and inflected with extreme anger and fear. "Just now! At the Port of Rotterdam! Our entire seven 10,000-ton cargo ships were detained by the local customs on the grounds of 'serious discrepancies in cargo manifests' and 'suspected of smuggling contraband'!

"Buckle!" He slammed Gu Qianqian's head against the bedside table again, making an even heavier muffled sound.

"Do you know what this means? Huh?! Massive demurrage fees! Exorbitant fines! Shipowners' claims! Contract penalties! Gu's Shipping's funding chain... is over! Completely broken! The bank just notified me that all credit lines are frozen! Demand letters are pouring in!"

Gu Qianqian's vision went black from the impact, and the intense tinnitus in her ears made it almost impossible for her to hear her father's subsequent words. But the words "Rotterdam," "ship seizure," "broken funding chain," and "bank collection" pierced her chaotic consciousness like icicles, bringing a crushing chill. She finally realized the enormity of the disaster she had caused!

"No... Impossible..." She struggled in vain, her voice weak as a moan, the blood from her forehead mixed with tears flowed into her mouth, a fishy and salty taste, "Dad... This... This must be a misunderstanding... It must be that bitch Yu Ling who did this..."

"Yu Ling?! Yu Ling?!" Gu Changhai seemed to have heard the most ridiculous joke in the world. He was so angry that his whole body was shaking. He increased the strength of the hand that was pulling her hair, almost tearing her scalp off.

"Open your dog eyes and look! Look at the TV! Look at the internet! Look at that 'Brother Chen' you've been thinking about so much! What is he doing?! He's in Haicheng! In that shabby apartment! Wearing a ridiculous apron! Frying! Eggs! For that 'bitch' you've been talking about!"

Gu Changhai pointed suddenly at the TV screen. Unbeknownst to him, the scrolling banner below the financial news had thoughtfully inserted a live surveillance video of the kitchen in Room 1601 of Genting Highlands, provided by an anonymous "enthusiastic netizen"!

In the picture, Zhao Chen seemed to have just carefully closed the Shiba Inu thermos containing a honey fried egg. He took off his apron, revealing a fine dark gray cashmere sweater underneath, and walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling window.

He turned his back to the camera, gazing out the window at the dazzling nightscape of Haicheng, a glass of water in his hand. In the eyes of the Gu family father and daughter, his silent figure exuded a suffocating, invisible pressure that controlled everything and disregarded the lives of ants!

"He's right there! Watch! Watch how our Gu family is dragged into hell by you!" Gu Changhai's voice was hoarse with despair, and he cried:

"Bankruptcy? Avoiding debt? Cayman Islands? Gu Qianqian! Is your head full of shit?! How on earth did you provoke him?! To make him do such a deadly thing! To kill our Gu family!"

"I...I didn't..." Gu Qianqian stared at Zhao Chen's cold back on the screen, a crushing fear finally overwhelming her. She remembered the photoshopped intimate photos she had sent to Yu Ling, the bribery she had used to frame her for stealing secrets, the hiring of online trolls to sling insults and doxx her online... A chill ran from the soles of her feet to the very top of her head.

"It's all for him... Dad... I'm doing this for Zhao Chen..." She stammered, trying to grasp at the last straw, "I want him to come back... Come back to me... That Yu Ling... She doesn't deserve it at all..."

"For him? Ha! Hahahaha!" Gu Changhai let out a shrill and crazy laugh. As he laughed, tears welled up in his eyes. He suddenly let go of the hand that was pulling Gu Qianqian's hair, like throwing away a dirty rag.

Gu Qianqian lost her support and collapsed softly on the bed. The blood from the injury on her forehead flowed even more violently, staining the snow-white pillow red.

Gu Changhai staggered back two steps, his tall body hunched over as if all the strength had been drained away in an instant.

He looked at his daughter lying on the bed like a rag doll, then looked at the miserable stock price of Gu Group and Zhao Chen's desperate back on the TV screen, and there was only dead despair on his face.

"The Gu family... is finished..." He muttered to himself, his voice hollow, filled with endless fatigue and resignation.

"It's all over... Decades of foundation... destroyed by a fool like you... destroyed by your ridiculous wishful thinking..."

He took one last look at Gu Qianqian. There was no anger in his eyes, only a bone-deep coldness and complete resignation. Without another word, he turned around and, dragging his heavy steps, walked out of the ward, step by step, like a zombie.

The ward was dead silent, with only the monotonous beeping of medical equipment and Gu Qianqian's suppressed sobs.

She curled up on the blood-stained hospital bed, her body cold. The throbbing pain in her forehead couldn't even compare to the despair in her heart. Her father's final, resigned look frightened her even more than Zhao Chen's coldness. For the first time, she realized with unwavering clarity that she had lost far more than just a man.

She lost everything.