Chapter 23, written by Lu Jinzhi

It must be those two good-for-nothings, Lu Xuan and Lu Ning.

He said that Lu Ning's homework had such a high error rate that no ordinary person could tolerate it!

Qiao Wu chuckled and said, "I didn't say I was going."

"You said you needed to think about it."

"I won't consider it for the time being."

So that means we need to consider it later?

Lu Yingchi didn't say anything more until the car drove back to the Lu residence.

When Qiao Wu was about to let him get out of the car first and go park it himself, he suddenly turned his head and asked, "What does it mean to be ambitious?"

If attending classes properly every day and not fooling around doesn't count, then what does?

Qiao Wu was stunned for a moment.

When she said that to Lu Ning, she was half joking, but she didn't expect the words to have spread.

Since Lu Yingchi wanted to talk, she didn't mind taking this opportunity to have a proper chat with him.

"You want us to become like Lu Jinzhi?" Lu Yingchi asked.

In other people's eyes, Lu Jinzhi is the most promising one. The old man also hopes that they can shoulder the responsibilities of the group just like Lu Jinzhi.

Qiao Wu smiled and said, "No."

She felt she didn't have the power to decide everyone's future development, nor did she want to decide what anyone should do; she would do her best and leave the rest to fate.

She said, "If you can be responsible for yourself and your family, then you've done a great job."

What kind of nonsense is this?

"Isn't this simple?"

"Is it simple?" Qiao Wu raised an eyebrow. "Then I'll wait and see."

Lu Yingchi gave her a strange look, then slammed the door and left.

Qiao Wu was actually quite curious about what he would do. When she parked the car and came back, she found that Lu Yingchi hadn't come upstairs yet.

The servants surrounding him were at a loss, while he sat downstairs expressionlessly, cracking walnuts.

There was a huge pile of stuff, and they even put a basin next to it, making it look like they were going to smash the table too.

What are they trying to do?

Just then, Lu Ning, carrying her schoolbag, ran in from outside. The moment she saw Qiao Wu, she looked up and exclaimed, "I'm back..."

"Bang!"

The sound of a hammer striking the ground startled Lu Ning. Only then did she realize that someone was sitting behind the sofa. The blond hair was so conspicuous that it was impossible not to recognize him.

Lu Yingchi's hand fell swiftly and cleanly, carrying 80% personal grudges.

Lu Ning stepped forward, saw the table full of walnut shells, and her face darkened: "What are you doing? Trying to scare me?"

With a whoosh, Lu Yingchi pushed a half-basin of peeled walnuts in front of her: "Eat."

Lu Ning: "???"

You're insane!

“I hammered it myself, you can stuff it in your nose if you want.” Lu Yingchi held up a small hammer in his other hand, the veins on the back of his hand bulging, full of threat. “From today onwards, you will stay here and do your homework. You are not allowed to go upstairs until I have checked it.”

Lu Ning hadn't forgotten the sight of her homework book covered in red crosses. What's worse, Lu Yingchi got so impatient with her corrections that he even wrote "Are you a pig? You can't even do this?" after her wrong answers.

So in the next two days, when Lu Ning handed in her homework, the teacher would smile and ask, "Didn't your parents correct your homework this time?"

Her homework was surrounded by classmates, which was infuriating!

She rolled her eyes: "Are you sick?"

She has such a big study room, why doesn't she use it and come here to do her homework? Doesn't she have any pride?

Lu Yingchi pointed at her with a small hammer: "I won't say it twice, come sit over here."

Feeling as if the hammer was about to fall on her head, Lu Ning's scalp tightened, and she gripped her backpack strap tightly: "Qiao Wu, look at him!"

To be honest, Qiao Wu didn't know why Lu Yingchi suddenly did this, and she looked over with a puzzled gaze.

"Isn't this responsible enough?" Lu Yingchi frowned.

oh!

I see.

“I think this is a good idea.” Qiao Wu took two steps back, not intending to interfere any further. “Your uncle’s academic performance is more than enough to tutor you. After you finish your homework, you can have lunch. I’m going to get busy now.”

Lu Yingchi instantly became smug, waving his small hammer: "I'll count to three."

Lu Ning weighed the difference in combat strength between herself and Lu Yingchi for three seconds, noting that the latter still had a weapon.

Then I chickened out.

She slowly moved over with her schoolbag, her eyes spinning from the strong smell of the half-basin of walnuts, and for a moment she couldn't tell whose brain was the problem.

She sat down cautiously: "I'm not stupid, I just have a poor foundation. Don't be too fierce, or I really will fight you."

Lu Yingchi glared at her: "Shut up, write."

Lu Ning swallowed her anger, took out her homework, spread it out, and struggled to read the questions while biting her pen.

The scrawled handwriting made Lu Yingchi's eyes hurt: "I'll buy you a calligraphy practice book tomorrow, practice hard."

"..." Lu Ning's ears turned red, and she reached out a hand to cover half of her homework, but the next second a scene flashed through her mind.

She had left her homework at home. Besides Lu Yingchi's corrections, there was also Qiao Wu's, and their handwriting was very similar.

"Do you use the same calligraphy model as Qiao Wu?" she asked. "Or did you hire the same calligraphy teacher?"

If that's the case, then she wants it too.

Lu Yingchi paused in his walnut-peeling motion.

No, it's just that Qiao Wu's handwriting has always been beautiful. At first, Qiao Wu held his hand and taught him to write, and later he would subconsciously imitate Qiao Wu's handwriting.

In this house, only his handwriting resembles Qiao Wu's.

This is the part of Qiao Wu that belongs exclusively to him.

With this realization, Lu Yingchi's previously gloomy and difficult mood improved slightly.

He scoffed, "You're not good enough."

Lu Ning: "...Stop knocking! I'm not eating!"

"Why aren't you eating? How can you be competitive if you don't eat?" Lu Yingchi threw in another one. He glanced back and saw Qiao Wu engrossed in her computer, seemingly unaware of their presence. So he lowered his voice, "Do you know that someone is trying to poach her?"

"What?"

“You know Zhong Hejing… never mind, you probably don’t know her well.” Lu Yingchi muttered under his breath, “Anyway, all you need to know is that she’s a very ambitious woman, and she used to want to be your second aunt.”

"!!!"

Lu Ning was shocked.

That's really ambitious.

Lu Yingchi got angry when this was mentioned, and slammed his hammer again: "I heard her with my own ears that she used stock dividends as a condition to make Qiao Wu work for her. That broken-down Zhong family."

Although Lu Ning doesn't like Lu Yingchi, at least on this matter, the two are on the same side.

She frowned: "So you're going to play the part of 'harmony brings prosperity' with me now?"

"This walnut is so magical? It can even use idioms now."

Lu Yingchi felt that his hands were blessed; the walnuts he cracked could not only help people get into university, but also enlighten even the most foolish.

As expected of him, awesome!

He said in a gloomy tone, "Anyway, if you insult me ​​with shit-like homework again, next time this hammer won't be hitting a walnut, it'll be hitting your brain, understand?"

"snort!"

Lu Ning angrily lowered her head.

While Qiao Wu was working, he looked up and was surprised to see that the two of them had been sitting together peacefully for so long.

She smiled, then lowered her eyes again.

After receiving the document expressing her gratitude, she read it carefully. So after Xu Chao sent her the transcribed version, she checked it again to ensure that he was indeed capable. Then she asked him to send the document to Lu Jinzhi.

In fact, since her last conversation with Lu Jinzhi, she had not had any direct dialogue with him.

It was limited to her sending him occasional "daily reports" or "weekly reports" from home.

But Lu Jinzhi never replied. The last time they met was by chance at the company, when they had a brief interaction.

After thinking for a while, she sent over the details of the banquet as well.

I thought Lu Jinzhi would just read my message and not reply, just like before, but this time, a few minutes later, Lu Jinzhi sent me a message.

This is flight information.

Lu Jinzhi: "Pick me up from the airport."

The message sent to her phone meant she should pick her up at the airport.

Qiao Wu was somewhat surprised, but quickly replied, "Okay."

-

At this moment, Lu Jinzhi, who was abroad, turned his attention away from his phone and began to review the documents that Xu Chao had given him.

He had already learned most of it through various channels, and he just wanted to know what difference there would be between the examination conducted by Qiao Wu and the examination that would make her so confident in front of Xu Chao.

He opened each document and found nothing unusual in any of the places Xu Chao had marked, but he did find something different in the bottom right corner of each page.

It is a faint watermark—a sycamore leaf.

A corner of his memory was torn open, and Lu Jinzhi found the same trace as this leaf in his countless clear memories.

Having another child in the family is no big deal to him. Lu Xuan is already noisy enough, and having another child will at least keep Lu Xuan from bothering him.

Just as he wished, both Lu Xuan and later Lu Yingchi relied on Qiao Wu far more than anyone could have imagined.

Lu Jinzhi could not understand this emotion.

Just as he didn't know why they would cry when no one was with them, the books he had read reminded him that there are gains and losses. Between having no one to accompany him and having no money to spend, Lu Jinzhi always chose the former without hesitation.

However, it cannot be denied that compared to the not-so-bright Lu Xuan and Lu Yingchi, Qiao Wu does indeed make him feel more favorably toward them.

Because she is quiet, intelligent, and not clingy.

So sometimes when he couldn't stand seeing those two idiots bothering her, he would occasionally lend a helping hand.

He once thought that his choices would always be right, and that he would find the best solution in an instant after his elder brother's death, taking on the family responsibilities after his brother's passing.

When he realizes that he can no longer communicate normally with Lu Jiang, he will promptly withdraw and leave to give the two of them space.

A solution is always more direct and effective than pointless entanglement.

But when he looked back on the past twenty years, the few things that puzzled him were all related to Qiao Wu.

Qiao Wu is clearly not a genius, but why is she so smart and insightful?

Why is it that people he didn't dislike before suddenly become unbearable to him at a certain point?

And why, on the first day after making the best choice to take responsibility for the Lu family, did he feel sad when he returned home and saw Qiao Wu and the others from afar?

Those almost imperceptible emotions remain vivid in Lu Jinzhi's memory to this day, but he has not found the answer, nor will anyone tell him the answer, because everyone has changed, so there is no need for him to spend time looking for it.

Before those inexplicable changes, there was this maple leaf.

Qiao Wu has loved reading since he was a child, reading all kinds of books, and he also enjoys writing and drawing.

Coincidentally, so was he.

The Lu family had many children, so one of the houses in the Lu residence was converted into a library, containing books covering astronomy, geography, academic subjects, and entertainment.

The other children rarely went there; only he and Qiao Wu were regulars.

Qiao Wu doesn't like to write or draw on shared books. She prepares many sticky notes to leave her thoughts and traces in certain places while reading so that she can find them again later.

So he could always find many sticky notes in the same book that the two of them had read, and each sticky note had this leaf in the lower right corner. It was small and inconspicuous, but it had appeared in the corner of many books.

Lu Jinzhi found it hard to imagine that someone five years younger than him could have such ingenuity.

No one knew that whenever he walked into the library alone, opened a book, and saw a familiar mark, he would stare at it for a long time, trying to discern her emotions at that moment.

Later, he also developed a habit of carrying sticky notes with him and leaving a mark on a page whenever he turned to it.

The books he and Qiao Wu had read overlapped, and they unknowingly left many different colored sticky notes. So even though he had read the books, he would occasionally flip through them again.

In this way, he could suddenly find a new note on a book, which was a message from Qiao Wu to him from different times but in the same place, a conversation and response from afar.

In the years that followed, the library acquired many more books, but it never again acquired a single note with a sycamore leaf drawn on it.

He was the only one who flipped through the books, one after another, until gradually even he stopped leaving any traces on them. Now, it has been two years since he left the Lu residence.

But then the sycamore leaves appeared again.

Lu Jinzhi didn't understand, so he kept looking for a solution, and it was obvious that there was only one solution right now—Qiao Wu.

So he sent a screenshot of the watermark to Qiao Wu: "What is this?"

Qiao Wu replied quickly: "The documents that Xu Chao sent have passed through my hands. I marked them. If there is any accountability later, you can come to me."

That's perfectly reasonable.

But this was not the answer Lu Jinzhi wanted.

He scrolled up and found the "Traditional Domineering CEO Mine-Avoiding Guide," which had shocked him so much that he hadn't read to the end or even opened it again.

Without exception, leaves fell off at the very end of each one.

Lu Jinzhi suddenly realized that he might need to visit the library again after returning to China.

-

Lu Ning's school has a monthly reading assignment, so before Lu Yingchi came back to supervise her homework, she dragged Qiao Wu along to the family library and asked Qiao Wu to pick out a few suitable books for her.

She was self-aware enough to know that if she chose books herself, she could probably only understand fairy tales. Besides, having Qiao Wu come over was a way for her to express her determination to "make something of herself".

"Is this what it looks like inside?" she asked curiously, looking around. "It's bigger than the library at my old school."

There are five floors in total, with an open space in the middle. The first floor has a sofa and a desk in the center. The spiral staircase leads up to each floor, with small sofas on each floor. The books are arranged densely and neatly on the walls.

Lu Ning looked up, her heart suddenly filled with awe for knowledge.

Suddenly she gently moved closer to Qiao Wu and sniffed him.

Qiao Wu was amused by her actions: "Are you a puppy?"

"You smell like this!" Lu Ning exclaimed as if she had discovered a new continent.

She had always thought Qiao Wu smelled very scholarly, but she could never find a similar scent and didn't even know that such a perfume existed.

Suddenly I realized that this was where I was.

The library had a stronger smell, along with a faint fragrance left by the servants after cleaning.

But Qiao Wu's felt even more refreshing and comfortable.

Qiao Wu was unaware that she still had a scent on her. She looked down and sniffed, but couldn't smell anything. "Perhaps? I used to like coming here."

You haven't read all of these books, have you?

"No, there are many new books."

Because there were many books, the servants would update the data on the computer here every time a new book was released. However, Qiao Wu remembered a few books that were suitable for Lu Ning to read, so he didn't look them up. Instead, he pushed the wooden ladder in the corner and walked to the bookshelf he remembered.

The wooden escalator is heavy and stable. In the past, she would sit on it instead of going to the sofa to watch the stairs. Even now, she doesn't feel any danger or swaying while sitting on it.

Qiao Wu pulled out a book and handed it to Lu Ning: "This."

Lu Ning tiptoed to take it, and saw the title: "Sophie's World"

Fortunately, she can understand the name, so the content probably won't be too profound.

She flipped through it casually and found a note tucked inside. The handwriting was neat and beautiful, and the writer had even drawn a sycamore leaf.

This definitely wasn't done by Lu Yingchi.

"Did you write this?" she asked.

Qiao Wu was looking for a book when he heard this. He looked down and saw it, and his eyes showed a hint of surprise: "It's still here."

"I have a habit of leaving some notes and personal reflections when I read books. If you feel that this is inconvenient for you, you can return it to me first."

"I don't."

Since Lu Ning couldn't find out from Lu Yingchi about the calligraphy copybook and teacher Qiao Wu used, she had no choice but to start from there.

She carefully put the note away: "I'll read them together."

Although she glanced at it, she didn't really understand it.

But if these dull books contained traces of Qiao Wu, they would be more interesting.

She was reading the same books that Qiao Wu had read.

Will she think the same way as Qiao Wu when the time comes?

Hmph, then she and Qiao Wu are soulmates, unlike that idiot Lu Yingchi, who probably has never even been to the library, hahaha!

Lu Ning immediately perked up: "Find me the kind of book where you took notes!"

Qiao Wu didn't understand, but went along with her: "Okay."

Lu Ning continued flipping through the pages, wanting to see how many notes were left, but found that the last note had other people's handwriting besides Qiao Wu's.

What?! Who else in this family is so studious besides me?!

This handwriting... First, we can rule out Lu Yingchi, then we can rule out Lu Xuan.

She had seen Lu Xuan's signature before; it was ugly as duck skin.

That……

Lu Ning's eyes widened suddenly: "Did Second Uncle write this?"

"Hmm?" Qiao Wu was taken aback. "Let me see."

Lu Ning handed her another note.

Qiao Wu lowered her eyes. The notes on the paper were much more mature and vigorous than she remembered, indicating that they were written by Lu Jinzhi over the next ten years or so.

Only one sentence.

Where will Sophie's boat go?

Sophie is the protagonist of this book, a fictional character created by a father to teach his daughter philosophy. In the book's open ending, Sophie, who has developed self-awareness, unties the ship's mooring ropes, perhaps leaving the world of the book.

So he's asking about an ending that doesn't exist?

Qiao Wu looked for a few seconds, then suddenly climbed down the ladder.

"Aren't you going to look anymore?" Lu Ning followed closely behind her.

Then she saw Qiao Wu walk to the table, pick up a pen, and bend down to write her notes on Lu Jinzhi's notepad.

She asked in horror, "You dare to write this?"

Although Lu Jinzhi is not in the country, there is no guarantee that he will not come back to see it.

Qiao Wu closed the pen cap and smiled gently: "Why wouldn't you dare?"

“He hates it when people touch his things,” Lu Ning said fearfully. “He’ll get angry, and he won’t care who you are.”

Qiao Wu thought for a moment: "Probably not."

"Why?"

This time, Qiao Wu didn't answer. She put down her pen, took the book from Lu Ning's arms, carefully placed the note inside, and said gently, "Keep it safe."

Lu Ning took the book, completely bewildered, but Qiao Wu had already returned to the ladder to pick out more books.

She looked down and opened the book, seeing the reply whose ink was still wet.

"She will cross the sea of ​​freedom and go wherever she wants to go."

Lu Ning secretly made up her mind.

She absolutely has to finish reading this book! And then she'll see what kind of riddles these two are playing!

Sitting on the wooden ladder, Qiao Wu took out another book and opened it. Besides her notes, there were some notes left by Lu Jinzhi. Some of them she had seen before, while others were unfamiliar.

So even Lu Jinzhi now wouldn't be angry if she wrote that sentence.

Because she was the only one in the whole world who could give Lu Jinzhi an answer.

Although this answer came twelve years late.