Chapter 120: Did the squatters fight back?

When Zhu Yingning heard Zhou Tianqing say that Xu Sirui was not in the hospital, her heart sank slightly.

Zhou Tianqing on the other end of the phone seemed to realize something and asked, "He's missing? Do you need my help?"

Considering that her daily trips to the hospital were already exhausting enough, Zhu Yingning didn't want to burden her further, so she lied. "No, I misremembered. He seemed to have said he was visiting a friend. I'll call his friend and ask."

"Okay, call me if you need any help."

"Um."

The phone was hung up, leaving only a busy tone. Zhu Yingning held the receiver, wondering where Xu Sirui would have gone if he hadn't gone to the hospital.

Going to a friend's house? Not likely. If he was going to a friend's house, why would he lie to her? The only reason she could think of for him to lie to her was that he had gone to see Xu Zhengkang without telling anyone else.

Once this possibility emerged in her mind, it was constantly given weight by her subconscious mind. Zhu Yingning was overwhelmed and could almost imagine what the scene would be like after they met.

She hesitated for a moment, but still pressed the button and called Xu Zhengkang first.

The phone was connected, but no one answered.

She wanted to go directly to Xu Zhengkang's company to find someone, but then she remembered that she didn't know the address and company name of Xu Zhengkang's new company at all. In fact, she didn't even know what business Xu Zhengkang was running now.

When we called Sun Mingyuan to ask, he also said he didn't know: "Xu Sirui rarely mentions Xu Zhengkang to us, so I don't know him very well."

After hanging up the phone, she felt a little depressed. She couldn't believe that she couldn't find a living person. She sat cross-legged on the ground and thought for a long time. Then an idea came to her. She found Xu Sirui's home address book from the cabinet under the TV and looked up Zhang Haisheng's phone number in it.

She remembered Xu Sirui had mentioned to her that Zhang Haisheng was Xu Zhengkang's childhood friend, and that this man had been the one who helped Xu Zhengkang do business both before he became successful and after he fell into poverty.

After a while, she found Zhang Haisheng's number on the pages with surname Z.

Because the address book was very old and the pages had turned yellow, she had almost no hope when she dialed Zhang Haisheng's number, thinking that so much time had passed and he might have already changed his SIM card.

Unexpectedly, the phone rang four or five times before someone picked it up. It was a man's voice: "Hello?"

Zhu Yingning immediately stated her purpose: "Hello, are you Zhang Haisheng? I'm looking for Xu Zhengkang, but I can't reach him. Do you know where Xu Zhengkang is now?"

The other side asked suspiciously: "Who are you?"

She briefly introduced herself and said that she was a mountain student sponsored by Xu Zhengkang.

"Oh—it's you." Zhang Haisheng dragged out an "oh," "that's the poor student from the mountain who lives with his family, right? Are you looking for Xu Zhengkang? He should be at the company now. I'm not with him."

She ignored the word "poor student" and said, "Can you tell me the address of Uncle Xu's company?"

Zhang Haisheng did not hide anything and told her frankly.

Zhu Yingning thanked him and after hanging up the phone, she told the hourly worker that she didn't need to cook dinner anymore. She changed into going clothes, caught a taxi, and hurried to the CBD that Zhang Haisheng mentioned.

Xu Zhengkang rented an office building, the scale of which was incomparable to his previous company. Zhu Yingning took a lot of effort to find his office building.

There is a card swipe system at the gate downstairs of the office building. Zhu Yingning wandered around outside, not knowing how to get in.

As she wandered around, she found a person squatting under a tree at the entrance of the office building.

When she saw him, the first thing that came to her mind was, why does he like squatting under a tree or on a rock so much?

Fortunately, at least she found the person, and found him before he entered the company. Zhu Yingning walked towards the tree where Xu Sirui was squatting. He had his back to her, his chin supported by the back of his right hand, and it was unclear what he was thinking. When she patted his shoulder, his body stiffened. He turned his eyes slightly to look at her and frowned, "Why are you here?"

"...I was just about to ask you." She walked around to Xu Sirui, her hands on her hips unhappily, "Why did you lie to me that you went to the hospital? I just called your aunt, and she said you didn't go to the hospital at all. Why didn't you tell me you came to see Uncle Xu?"

It was quite sunny outside the shade of the tree. Zhu Yingning stood in front of him and muttered something. The whole process took less than half a minute, and her cheeks and neck were hot from the sun. She immediately understood why Xu Sirui insisted on squatting under the tree, so she stood in the shade and squatted next to him.

As soon as she squatted down, Xu Sirui seemed to dislike her. He raised his hand to block the two of them, turned his face away from her, and said unhappily, "Why do I have to tell you? Do I have to report to you before I go out to do something?"

Zhu Yingning was furious: "Yes, of course you don't need to report to me. I only came to you because I was bored."

After this angry remark, the two were speechless for a moment. She hugged her knees and watched the ants coming and going under her feet. After looking aimlessly for a while, she heard Xu Sirui say, "You go back."

"You come back with me."

"I have something else to do."

"What's the matter?"

Xu Sirui raised his voice: "...Zhu Yingning, are you annoying?"

"What's the matter?" She continued to act as an annoying parrot.

Xu Sirui was annoyed by her and finally changed from squatting to standing with a sigh. He didn't want to stay here and waste time with her.

He stood up, and Zhu Yingning stood up too. Only then did she realize that he stood up very slowly, like an eighty-year-old grandfather with rheumatism and difficulty walking. His left hand was unconsciously as if he was covering his stomach, and his right hand was stubbornly placed on his jaw. If she hadn't known that although he was narcissistic, he was not narcissistic to this extent, she would have suspected that his hand was placed there to measure his beautiful jaw angle.

Zhu Yingning narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

She reached out and, while he was not paying attention, pulled off his right hand.

Xu Sirui hissed: "What are you doing..."

"What happened?!" She interrupted him, her face as gloomy as water.

A bruise ran from under his right cheek to his jaw.

Seeing that he couldn't hide it, he looked aside and said stiffly: "Nothing, I accidentally fell."

Zhu Yingning sneered, "Really?"

This was the first time Xu Sirui witnessed her sneering. He was stunned by her smile. Before he could come to his senses, he felt a chill in his lower abdomen. She actually grabbed the hem of his clothes and lifted up his T-shirt without saying a word.

"Did you fall too?" she asked.

This broad-day hooligan behavior by a woman startled him, causing him to pull at his wound, causing him to turn pale in pain. He couldn't recover for a long time. While he was frozen in place, gasping for air, her hand had already reached his side without any obstruction. Her warm, dry fingertips gently pressed against his swollen ribs, and she looked up to observe his reaction.

"Does it hurt to breathe? What about coughing?"

Xu Sirui's face turned pale and red, both embarrassed and annoyed. He gritted his teeth, but his voice was weak due to the pain: "Don't do this..."

"Let go." He urged her. He wanted to reach out and stop it himself, but the pain was too great to make any big movements.

It was dinner time and there were quite a lot of people coming and going in the CBD. He was afraid that someone would see their current posture and then take a picture and upload it to the Internet with a title like "In a bright and clear world, morals are declining, hungry and carnivorous women molest weak men in the street."

The evening breeze brought heat and poured into his chest and abdomen, causing the muscles there to contract slightly.

Zhu Yingning looked up into his eyes, her expression unchanged, her fingers still pressing against the skin of his flank, and she repeated her previous words in a calm voice, "I'm asking if it hurts."

As she pressed the question so calmly and persistently, Xu Sirui felt a strange sense of dominance. This conversation was abysmal, and his mind was uncontrollably racing through a plethora of inappropriate material. To avoid further stalemate, he could only swallow his shame and utter a mosquito-like hum: "...a little."

"Can you even breathe normally like this?"

"……Um."

After asking the question, Zhu Yingning finally let go of his hand, pulled his clothes back, and made arrangements neatly: "Go to a nearby hospital for an X-ray. It seems that the ribs are broken."

"It's not that serious. I'll just go home and lie down." Xu Sirui wanted to argue, but when he lowered his eyes and saw her gaze, he stopped talking awkwardly.

Zhu Yingning walked to his uninjured side and lifted up his right arm without saying a word.

She was much shorter than him, so she was just the right size to be used as a crutch, saving him the trouble of even lifting his elbows. Xu Sirui wanted to laugh, but when he saw her face, he immediately suppressed the smile, fearing that he would bring bad luck to her.

Zhu Yingning supported him and moved him forward slowly. His ribs hurt, so he couldn't walk very fast. When they reached the intersection at a snail's pace, she looked around and decided to call a car and ask the driver to take them to the nearest hospital.

She glanced at the passing cars with a stern face, the corners of her mouth tilted downwards, and her cheeks were slightly puffed up with anger. Xu Sirui couldn't help but open his palms and pinched the left and right sides of her face with his right middle finger and thumb respectively. He pinched them and asked in a low voice: "Why are you so angry?"

His fingers were long and slender, and he did this action easily. He didn't let go immediately after pinching, and his palm blocked her mouth.

Zhu Yingning was slightly stunned by his question and denied it, "...I was mainly angry at Uncle Xu."

No matter what, Xu Sirui is his biological child. How much hatred could he have to beat him like this?

I was also angry that I came late. I thought he hadn't gone upstairs yet. It turned out that he had already finished the fight. What was going on?

Of course, she couldn't help but feel angry towards Xu Sirui himself. She couldn't help but glare at him and muttered, "And you, why do you have to fight with him?... Stop it!" This made her speak without any momentum.

Xu Sirui then withdrew his hand, lowered his arm, and placed the weight of his arm on her shoulder. He paused for a moment before saying, "I'm not here to fight him."

He just felt resentful and unwilling.

In his imagination, upon learning the news that Zhou Tianlan was ill, Xu Zhengkang should burst into tears, kneel down and beg him or his aunt to have mercy and allow him to visit Zhou Tianlan, and then he and Zhou Tianqing would reject him harshly.

Although the final result was that he was not allowed to visit, the process was important.

But Xu Sirui waited and waited for several days, until Zhou Tianlan's surgery was completed, but Xu Zhengkang still didn't take the initiative to mention that he wanted to visit Zhou Tianlan.

How could he not bring it up? How could he not feel remorse?

Because he was unwilling to give up, he came to him on a whim and asked him if he knew about Zhou Tianlan's illness.

Yes, what he asked was not even "Why don't you go to visit my mother", but "Do you know that my mother is sick?" Perhaps it was because there was still a ridiculous hope deep in his subconscious, hoping that Xu Zhengkang did not come because he did not know, not because he did not want to come.

But Xu Zhengkang said: "It's good as long as you take care of your mother."

Xu Sirui could not accept this answer and started arguing with him hysterically in his office.

The quarrel grew louder, attracting several employees outside to look in.

Xu Zhengkang probably felt that his dignity as a father and a superior was offended by Xu Sirui. In a rage, he grabbed a heavy wooden sculpture that someone had given him as a decoration on his desk and smashed it at Xu Sirui.

That's how it is.

Zhu Yingning's face flushed with anger when she heard this. She pursed her lips, frowned and looked at him for a moment before asking, "Did you fight back?"