Chapter 27

Liang Xun heard rustling sounds in the darkness while he was sleeping. Although he was not yet conscious, an instinct of fear made him jump out of bed. With a "thump", his butt hit the ground, and the next second, a dull pain slowly came over him.

He blinked in the dark room. Accompanied by the sound of quick footsteps, the door was opened and the dazzling light behind Lin Shengwen appeared.

Lin Shengwen laughed when he saw him: "Did you fall asleep? How did you fall off the bed?"

Liang Xun took a while to react, and just in that moment, Lin Shengwen walked in from the bedroom door, came to him and half-hugged him to support him up.

The bedroom door was half open, and he could faintly hear the sound of someone sitting in the living room talking outside the door, which matched the noise he had just heard.

Liang Xun still felt a dull pain near his sciatic spine, mixed with an unspeakable swelling.

He grabbed Lin Shengwen's arm sheepishly, his face full of embarrassment: "Is someone here? I just fell asleep and heard it and thought it was... a cockroach."

Lin Shengwen couldn't suppress the smile on his face, but he didn't mock his idea. He just said, "Pei Ning is home. Do you want to get up and eat something? I baked pizza."

Liang Xun's eyes lit up. He was indeed a little hungry, and it had been a long time since he had eaten Lin Shengwen's cooking. But he had never expected that Lin Shengwen could actually make pizza. When he was a child, his mother would only take him out for pizza on his birthday.

His favorite pizza is the one with cheese sprinkled on it.

When it comes to his favorite food, Liang Xun will eat more than usual.

He nodded, then hesitated and said, "I'm wearing pajamas."

Lin Shengwen looked at his loose pajamas, and saw some suspicious red marks on the edge of the collar. In fact, Lin Shengwen did not leave any kiss marks on it. He heard in the hospital that there were many cases of adults suffering reflex cardiac arrest after kissing near the carotid sinus.

But Liang Xun's skin was probably sensitive, and the pressure from his fingers left some dark marks, making him look like he had been abused.

It was understandable that he didn't want to show his messy appearance to others. But the problem was that he was sleeping on Lin Shengwen's big bed, and his own clothes were in the second bedroom next door. If he walked out of the door, he would inevitably bump into Pei Ning sitting in the living room.

Lin Shengwen thought for a moment, then asked him to sit back on the bed. He opened the wardrobe and took out his tracksuit. The stretchy fabric was only slightly too big for Liang Xun, but not awkward at all. Lin Shengwen pinched the zipper and pulled it to the top, leaving a small gap for him.

Liang Xun said, "Okay." Then he got out of bed in his slippers and followed Lin Shengwen out of the bedroom.

"Oh my," Pei Ning howled as soon as he saw Liang Xun. Even though he had already heard all the speculations about Lin Shengwen and Pei Ning from Xu Yiming, he still couldn't help but tease, "Are you still sleeping at this hour? Lin Shengwen, what have you been doing?"

Liang Xun waved his hands repeatedly, unable to utter a word. He looked at Pei Ning, only to find that Xu Yiming was sitting next to him.

Xu Yiming still looked the same, as if he didn't care about anything and spoke little. One arm was across the back of the sofa behind Pei Ning, as if he was holding Pei Ning in his arms.

Pei Ning didn't notice the strangeness of this posture at all. He turned his head to look at Liang Xun and asked him to come and sit down.

He didn't refuse and sat down, but his attention was drawn to the pizza on the coffee table. Lin Shengwen hadn't made just one flavor: he'd made four, one of which had two or three different cheeses, though only one slice remained.

Liang Xun looked eagerly, swallowed his saliva, and turned back to look at Pei Ning: "Why did you come here suddenly?"

"Oh, I just came back from a trip to Iceland. Xu Yiming said she wanted to send some local specialties over. Besides, I haven't been here since Lin Shengwen moved, so I'm curious." Pei Ning leaned close to Liang Xun and whispered in his ear, "The food in Iceland is terrible, and the local specialties Xu Yiming bought are probably not that good either. You should be careful."

Liang Xun smiled and nodded, then looked at Xu Yiming. Xu Yiming pretended that he didn't hear Pei Ning's complaints. He held the teacup and took a sip of Dancong tea with a calm expression. He didn't know whether it was tea he brought with him or Lin Shengwen had found it by rummaging through boxes and cabinets.

Pizza with fir, how to eat it.

Although some questions popped up in Liang Xun's mind, he finally found a suitable moment. He reached out and grabbed a piece of pizza. He pinched the two sides with his thumb and middle finger, and placed his index finger in the middle to make the outside concave inward. Then he took a bite on the tip of the pizza.

It was delicious. The salty aroma of the cheese and the light sweetness did not conflict at all, and the mixing ratio was just right. If it wasn't for Lin Shengwen who made it, Liang Xun would have suspected that he could read his mind and made it just because he knew he liked it.

He was chewing when he suddenly noticed from the corner of his eye that Lin Shengwen's expression seemed to have undergone a subtle change. Liang Xun followed Lin Shengwen's gaze and found that he and Xu Yiming were staring at each other in the void for a few seconds.

It seems like they are having a conversation like this.

But eyes are not as good as words, and what they can convey is very limited. Liang Xun did not think that they were exchanging any meaningful information. If he had to say something, it was probably just an evaluation of the local specialties brought by Xu Yiming.

Liang Xun swallowed the last piece of pizza.

Pei Ning followed Xu Yiming into their Bentley Mulsanne, which was parked in the Dajiang Yuehua underground parking garage. He fastened his passenger seat belt and asked Xu Yiming, "Didn't you come here to say something to Lin Shengwen? Why haven't you said a word? Silence is golden, so why are you pretending?"

Xu Yiming glanced at him and said nothing, as if proving his saying that silence is golden. He started the engine, stepped on the accelerator and drove the car out of the garage steadily.

"Xu Yiming, I gave you face, didn't I?" After they were on the road, Pei Ning couldn't help but curse, "I didn't tell you not to talk, if you have anything to say, fart quickly."

"It's not appropriate," Xu Yiming pulled a cigarette from the pack, lit it, and took a drag before speaking slowly, "If I said directly to Liang Xun, 'Lin Shengwen, your parents might find out you secretly got married without a prenuptial agreement,' wouldn't that just cause trouble?"

"Ah..." Pei Ning blinked, his reaction a little dazed. After a while, as if things weren't chaotic enough, he sneered, deliberately trying to annoy Xu Yiming, "Then when you married Baosteel's daughter, did you sign a prenuptial agreement?"

Xu Yiming fell into a long silence.

The cicadas' chirping has reached its peak, spreading endless warmth.

The main structure of the sailing club was complete, but the interior was still a bare shell. Most of the construction team was used to the heat, and no one expected extended wires and large fans.

Liang Xun had contacted people a few days ago to get several large electric fans installed, and also pulled wires from two small generators to help the workers inside alleviate some of the discomfort caused by the high temperature.

When he was called out from the construction site by Mingsheng's employees, the bright sunlight almost made it difficult for him to open his eyes. He squinted his eyes, and before the sweat on his upper eyelids dripped into his eye sockets, he could clearly see the person waiting for him in a car on the street not far away.

A woman with delicate features and a sharp beauty, perhaps in her fifties, well-maintained, her face seemingly untouched by time. Her expression was that of someone accustomed to being looked up to. Her gaze fixed on Liang Xun for only half a second before she had already sized him up.

While she was observing Liang Xun, Liang Xun was also observing her. He noticed that the woman's eyebrows and eyes gave him an indescribable sense of familiarity. At a certain moment, he suddenly realized the source of this familiarity.

She looks very much like Lin Shengwen. No, it should be said that Lin Shengwen looks like her.

A driver in a suit and tie got out of the driver's seat, opened the back door and asked Liang Xun to get in. He did not refuse, and he knew he had no right to refuse, so he got in the car.

"I'm sorry, I'm all sweaty, so the smell might not be very pleasant," Liang Xun said, looking at Lin Shengwen's mother. "How should I address you, Madam?"

"My last name is Wang." Wang Wanling said this, not at all surprised by his attitude, and calmly asked the driver to drive to Qushui.

When they arrived, Liang Xun found that it was a private club. It was very large. They were led to a private room with excellent sound insulation by the waiter whose footsteps were silent.

Wang Wanling ordered an afternoon tea, and when the snacks and tea arrived, she let Liang Xun do as he pleased.

Liang Xun didn't move his hands, and didn't even glance at those things. He looked at Wang Wanling and said sincerely: "Ms. Wang, I still have work to do. If you have anything to say, you can speak frankly."

"Don't you work at Mingsheng?" Wang Wanling forced a smile, but there was no trace of laughter in her eyes. "I didn't even know my son actually married a man who works at Mingsheng."

She put emphasis on the word "man", and it was difficult for Liang Xun to pretend not to understand what she said.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Wang, that you learned about your son's sexual orientation in this way," he said.

Liang Xun's attention was always on Wang Wanling, and he could almost detect the changes in her eyes without any effort.

There was remorse, regret, and resentment in it, but in the end, all that was left was a hint of remorse.

Wang Wanling paused for a few seconds holding the teacup, then put the cup down. She looked back at Liang Xun, this time for a long time, staring at him up and down for a long time, as if she was trying to confirm what kind of person he was.

Liang Xun didn't know what she was trying to find out by looking at him like that, but when he was being stared at, he didn't feel any conditioned disgust at all. Instead, he silently waited for Wang Wanling's eyes to leave him.

But Wang Wanling looked into Liang Xun's eyes and her tone softened: "Liang Xun, I know you are a good child and you really love Sheng Wen, but his father used the excuse of settling this dispute he had at the hospital to ask Sheng Wen to divorce you."

"You know how much Shengwen loves his job. He's achieved everything on his own, from getting into medical school to working at the First Hospital of Ting University, all the way to where he is now, a fully capable neurosurgeon, without asking his family for any help."

"But this time is different, Liang Xun. You know, this time, it's not just a matter of public pressure," Wang Wanling said, choking up. "I heard that he encountered the same thing during his residency. Back then, a patient was also taken away for surgery by one of his colleagues."

Liang Xun's mind buzzed, and the deafening buzzing of his ears deprived him of his hearing. He opened his lips, but the few words that came out were inaudible to him: "That patient...what happened later?"

"Shengwen performed two operations on him. Although he was saved immediately, he died due to post-operative complications and multiple organ failure. Although his colleague, a doctor from the same period as him, was later dismissed and sued, he was not sentenced... But our Shengwen may still be in the shadow of that patient's death. If this accident makes Shengwen unable to practice medicine again, the person he will never be able to forgive the most must be himself." After Wang Wanling finished speaking, she couldn't help but cover her face and sob.

Such a decisive middle-aged woman shed tears when she was worried about her own flesh and blood.

Liang Xun stared at her blankly. After a while, his lips moved. He asked the question in a very soft voice. It was unclear whether he was talking to himself or to Wang Wanling in front of him.

"Ms. Wang, what can I do to help him?"