Cen Lan's phone screen, which was on the coffee table, flickered.

She picked up her phone, glanced at it, replied to a few messages, and smiled happily.

On the sofa next to her, Cen Yu and Ai Cao lay on top of each other.

Cen Yu's eyes were dark and bluish-purple from exhaustion, as if she had just been thrown into hell and tortured repeatedly, rather than interrogated. She didn't even have the strength to lift a finger, let alone think. She just lay there with her eyes open, her mouth opening and closing without blinking.

Ai Cao was in slightly better condition than her. The exhaustion on her face was almost like a mask, completely enveloping her. She tried to take a deep breath, but her chest only rose and fell twice in response to her prayers before gradually calming down in her dazed gaze.

Feng An stood expressionless beside Cen Lan.

Unlike Cen Yu and Ai Cao, Cen Lan never asked her a single question. She, too, stood there like a silent tree.

Cen Lan smiled and said, "I have good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear?"

Cen Yu opened her mouth silently, and with her last remaining rationality, pushed her tongue to produce a slight bubbling sound.

"Looks like you want to hear good news," Cen Lan said. She continued with a smile, "The little rascal is in the hospital."

Cen Yu immediately jumped up from the sofa. She rushed to the coffee table, poured herself a cup of tea and gulped it down, barely regaining some of her senses. She asked, "Really in the hospital? What caused it?"

Cen Lan looked at her with a smile and said, "After hearing that his company didn't win the bid, he stepped on some wet tiles and slipped and fell straight into the hospital."

Cen Yu cheered softly, "Great!"

Cen Yu poured another cup of tea, pinched Ai Cao's chin, and tried to force a cup of tea into her mouth as well.

Unfortunately, the mugwort's mouth was tightly closed, and Cen Yu couldn't pry it open.

Cen Yu asked, "What's the bad news?"

Cen Lan smiled and said, "The bad news is that although I will give you so much money to build a hotel—" She finished saying something Cen Yu had already heard, and then added with a smile, "you can't just use all of this to build a hotel. You need to improve employee relations and the profit model."

Cen Yu put the teacup back on the coffee table, calmly lay back in the spot where she had been lying, crossed her arms in front of her chest, and closed her eyes peacefully.

Cen Lan smiled and called to Feng An, "Take good care of them, I'm going to the company."

She waved her hand in front of Cen Yu, and seeing that her dear daughter's eyes were still closed, she smiled and walked towards the dressing room, saying, "If Xiao Yu wakes up and wants to find me, just have her send me a message. I'll reply when I see it."

Feng An nodded in agreement.

Cen Lan wrapped herself in a shawl and walked away leisurely. She left behind two people sprawled awkwardly on the sofa, and a standing desk.

Ai Cao asked in a daze, "Is Cen Lan gone?"

Feng An said, "Yes."

She took another teacup, brewed a strong cup of tea for Ai Cao, and handed it to her: "Would you like some tea, or would you like to sleep here for a while? Would you like a blanket?"

Ai Cao tried to activate her sluggish brain. But she had truly exhausted all her energy during the interrogation just now.

She simply shook her head and let herself slide to the floor and lie down.

She closed her eyes and was enveloped in peaceful darkness and sleep.

Feng An went to fetch two thin blankets, one for each of them, and covered them both up. Although she was alone now, she still had her own duties to perform as Cen Yu's bodyguard.

She opened her phone's notes app and began reviewing her secretary's work.

Feng An, currently Cen Yu's only confidant, is finally about to become Cen Yu's secretary after serving as his bodyguard for over a decade.

For this reason, Cen Lan also gave her a separate instructional document on secretarial work.

The only time she could study was during the time Cen Yu was asleep.

Therefore, she had to race against time.

After studying the teaching document from Cen Lan, Feng An also looked up some information about hotel staff.

She already knew what she would be doing by Cen Yu's side, but she wasn't sure if she could quickly adapt to these rules and frameworks.

She was smart enough to choose to follow Cen Lan and Cen Yu, who were both women, when she was young; she was also persevering, strong, and courageous enough, but she was not academically inclined—this was evident when she went to school.

So for all these years, she has always been Cen Yu's bodyguard.

Even though Cen Yu only had one bodyguard, she was still just a bodyguard.

But if she remains a bodyguard... then Cen Yu will inevitably hire a new secretary someday. Then they'll discuss company matters that Feng An understands nothing about, leaving Feng An as nothing more than a pillar in the background.

Feng An didn't want it to be like that.

She wanted to repay Cen Lan's kindness, and for this reason, she didn't want Cen Yu to pay an extra salary—she used this reason to convince herself, trying to deepen her understanding of those profound words by repeatedly studying the documents.

She reviewed the case repeatedly. When she encountered parts she didn't understand, she would simply search for the relevant terms online to see how others interpreted it. She wasn't the most obtuse person, so surely others had encountered similar problems.

Her brain was like a sponge, growing larger and larger as it absorbed more knowledge; but the part that had become her knowledge would not disappear.

When Cen Yu woke up, Feng An was still hunched over the coffee table reading a book.

There were several books related to hotel management piled up next to her. When she saw that Cen Yu was awake, she quickly folded a corner of the book in her hand and put it aside.

Feng An stood up and asked softly, "Would you like dinner, Miss?"

Cen Yu rubbed her stomach and shook her head. She had just woken up and had eaten a full lunch, so she didn't feel hungry. She was more curious about what Feng was reading than about dinner.

She stepped over the mugwort lying on the ground and saw the covers of the books.

Feng An was a little flustered, but she couldn't stop Cen Yu, so she could only ask again in a low voice, "Miss?"

“I know I’m awake,” Cen Yu said. She picked up the book on top, flipped through a couple of pages, then put it down and asked, “Is this difficult?”

“It’s not difficult for the young lady,” Feng An said.

"And what about you?" Cen Yu asked lazily.

“…A little,” Feng replied.

“Then you don’t have to learn it,” Cen Yu said matter-of-factly. “Anyway, you’ve always been my bodyguard, why would you need to learn this?”

Feng An twitched the corner of his mouth.

Cen Yu continued, "Now that I'm opening a hotel, you'll need to learn hotel management; later, when I start brewing wine, will you need to learn that too?"

Cen Yu said, "If you want to learn, both my mom and I will support you. But if you want to stay with me all the time, and feel that you are not qualified to be a bodyguard..."

The case was startling.

Before she could even defend herself, she heard Cen Yu's voice, tinged with laughter:

"Then why don't you go and learn from my mom's secretary for a while?"