A black sports car with smooth lines slid into the gate of the Ye family villa like a ghost and stopped silently under the rain corridor in front of the main building.
The car door opened and Zhang Xuanhua stepped out. He was still wearing his iconic black pilot jacket with a simple white T-shirt underneath. His black wolf-tail hair was slightly blown by the night breeze.
The housekeeper had already been waiting at the door, bowing slightly: "Young Master Zhang, the young master is waiting for you in the piano room."
Zhang Xuanhua nodded and walked through the corridor covered with soft carpets and displayed with valuable works of art as if he were in the right place.
The door of the piano room was ajar, and out flowed a piano sound as clear as water, yet with a hint of cold texture - Debussy's "Moonlight".
Zhang Xuanhua pushed the door open and walked in.
Zhang Xuanhua didn't interrupt, but leaned against the door frame, his hands in his jacket pockets, admiring the scene with interest.
Until the last note disappeared into the air like a sigh, Ye Qingliu slowly withdrew his hand, lightly pressed the keys with his fingertips, and made a very light resonance.
"Are you here?" He didn't turn around. His voice was as clear as a cold mountain spring, without much emotion.
"Yeah." Zhang Xuanhua responded, walked in, and casually fell on the large and comfortable dark green velvet sofa on the side of the piano room, with his long legs crossed and a relaxed posture.
"Your piano playing sounds even colder than it did in high school. Are those old guys from the Ye family giving you trouble again?"
Ye Qingliu turned around, revealing his face, which was as delicate as a detailed painting.
The gray-blue eyes looked at Zhang Xuanhua through the lenses, calm and peaceful, like the surface of a lake covered with thin ice.
"It's just a routine." He took off his glasses and slowly wiped the lenses with a very soft velvet cloth. His movements were as elegant as some kind of ritual.
"It's you," he put on his glasses again, his eyes behind the lenses sharper, falling on the smile with a bit of bad taste on Zhang Xuanhua's face that had not completely faded.
"You seem to be in a good mood...? Have you found any new toys?"
Zhang Xuanhua laughed softly, his shoulders shrugging slightly, like a sated feline.
"Toys?" he repeated, his tone rising slightly with undisguised amusement.
"I guess so. A toy...who thinks he's a hunter, but ends up being so stupid it's laughable."
Ye Qingliu raised his eyebrows slightly, motioning him to continue.
"Ning Xiuyan, the idiot second young master of the Ning family." Zhang Xuanhua spoke lazily, his fingertips unconsciously tapping lightly on the armrest of the velvet sofa.
"You should remember him. He was the one who was kicked into the swimming pool by his sister Ning Xiwan at the Ning family dinner last fall, and couldn't even get out."
He added, "Oh, by the way, you were at that dinner party too, right? I think you might have seen me there."
Ye Qingliu paused while wiping the lenses, and a faint, understanding glimmer flashed across his gray-blue eyes.
"Him?" A barely perceptible sarcasm lingered in his clear voice. "I remember him so vividly. He fell into the water and tried to climb up by the pool wall, his fingers white from scratching. Then he slipped and fell back down. I can't forget the look of his utter disgrace."
He put down the velvet cloth, walked to the wine cabinet next to him, took out a bottle of amber whiskey and two crystal glasses, poured two glasses smoothly, and handed one of them to Zhang Xuanhua.
"It seems like he's forgotten the pain now that his wound has healed." Ye Qingliu took a sip of wine, the spicy and mellow liquid sliding down his throat. He narrowed his eyes slightly, his gray-blue eyes appearing even deeper behind the lenses. "Did it hit your hand again?"
"It wasn't just me who hit him." Zhang Xuanhua took the wine glass, shook the crystal liquid inside, and raised the corner of his lips in a malicious arc. "It was him. Like a fly smelling fishy smell, he has been buzzing around me for several days."
He imitated Ning Xiuyan's deliberately elegant tone, "'Mr. Zhang, why don't you find a place to sit down?' 'Mr. Zhang, if you have any trouble, feel free to come to me.'
Tsk..." He snorted in disdain.
"His acting is poor, and his intentions are obvious. He simply looked at my face and thought about his good sister Ning Xiwan, who now controls the Ning family. He has a lot of anger in his heart and nowhere to vent it. He wants to feel a sense of presence and control with me."
Ye Qingliu listened quietly, without any surprise in his gray-blue eyes.
In his eyes, people like Ning Xiuyan were not even an opponent worth taking seriously.
"So?" he asked, his voice still calm. "Did you play the 'Innocent Little White Rabbit' with him for a few days?"
"What else?" Zhang Xuanhua shrugged, a cunning and cold glint in his light blue eyes. "Seeing him so smug, thinking he has me under control, is quite relaxing. Especially..."
He paused, his smile widening with a hint of cruel amusement. "It was at that crucial moment when he thought he was 'the hero who saved the damsel in distress,' when his pitiful self-esteem was completely crushed."
He slowly described what happened in the back alley in the evening in an almost dramatic tone - Ning Xiuyan's "ferocious momentum" when he rushed in.
The ruthlessness and efficiency with which he instantly dispatched the two thugs, and Ning Xiuyan's expression of shock and speechlessness, as if he had seen a ghost.
"You didn't see how stupid he was at that time," Zhang Xuanhua laughed so hard that his shoulders were shaking, and his light blue eyes curved into crescents, but there was no warmth in them, only cold mockery.
"His eyes nearly popped out of his head, and his jaw dropped to the ground. One second he was basking in the self-admiration of being a 'protector,' and the next he discovered that the 'Bambi' he thought of was actually a venomous snake that could bite his neck off in one bite."
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