Chapter 72 Her Anxiety
In the early morning, the air still had a faint scent of spicy ginger soup and antipyretic medicine, and last night's raging storm seemed like a distant nightmare.
Yu Ling curled up on the large sofa, covered in a soft wool blanket. Zhao Chen rested his head on her legs, breathing evenly and slowly. His fever had subsided, and the sickly fragility between his brows had faded, leaving only the peaceful sleep.
The fatigue from a sleepless night swept over her like a tide, but her cerebral cortex was unusually active, like an overloaded machine, replaying several scenes uncontrollably.
Zhao Chen's special assistant Lin Feng's cold report: [Ms. Gu's flight will arrive at Haicheng International Airport at 3:15 this afternoon. A pick-up vehicle has been arranged.]
And last night, when Zhao Chen was in a coma with a high fever, he murmured in agony and struggle: "Qianqian... stop making trouble..." and the redemptive mumbling that followed: "...still Lingling's...strawberry mark...is the sweetest..."
These two completely different fragments, like fragments of ice and fire, collided violently in Yu Ling's chaotic thoughts, creating disturbing sparks.
Gu Qianqian is coming back.
This name, like a ghost, never truly left. It lurked in the inscriptions on Zhao Chen's old photos, in her late-night dreams, behind the property manager's earth-shattering "Mr. Zhao," and even more so in Zhao Chen's vast, hidden past, a past she could never truly reach.
The girl standing beside Zhao Chen at Stanford Lake, smiling sweetly. The girl who could make him smile, a smile unlike any he had now. The girl who could... penetrate the depths of his subconscious when he was feverish.
An overwhelming urge, like a vine, wrapped tightly around Yu Ling's heart, nearly choking her breath. She needed to know! She needed to see the true face of this shadow! Even if it was just through a cold screen.
Her fingertips trembled slightly beneath the blanket. Carefully, trying not to disturb the man sleeping on her lap, she reached out and touched the phone that had slipped into the crack of the sofa. The faint light from the unlocked screen was a bit dazzling in the dim living room.
She took a deep breath, as if she was about to step into a forbidden area, and opened the mobile browser with a desperate determination.
Her fingertips hovered over the search box for a few seconds. Finally, with an almost masochistic courage, she forcefully typed three words:
Gu Qianqian.
The page refreshes instantly!
At the top of the list is an Instagram account with a blue check mark.
【@qianqian_gu】
The profile picture was a meticulously composed silhouette. Gu Qianqian sat on the edge of a modern villa's terrace, wearing a simple white silk slip dress. The sea breeze ruffled her slightly curly chestnut hair, revealing her graceful swan neck and delicate jawline. The sun framed her perfect profile, her eyes lazily gazing out at the distant sea, a carefree yet captivating beauty. The backdrop was azure sea, blue sky, and an endless private beach.
Number of fans: 11.3M.
11.3 million fans!
This number hit Yu Ling like a hammer, hammering down on her heart! A top socialite and international influencer, Gu Qianqian's aura far exceeded her imagination.
With slight tremors in his fingertips, he clicked on the account.
The page was instantly overwhelmed by overwhelming luxury and sophistication.
The pinned nine-square grid captured a private yacht trip in the Mediterranean. The turquoise waters, the white hull, the champagne tower shimmering in the sunlight. Gu Qianqian was always the star of the photo.
She might be sunbathing on the deck, wearing a bikini, with a body so hot it takes your breath away; or she might be raising a glass in the top-floor salon, chatting and laughing with several blond, blue-eyed, and elegant men and women; or she might be wearing a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, leaning on the railing, with the sea breeze blowing up her skirt, and the background being the boundless blue.
Each photo is perfectly composed, with exquisite lighting and shadow, revealing a sense of luxury amassed through sheer luxury. The caption, a mix of French and English, reads: "La vie est belle avec le soleil et la mer." (Life is beautiful because of the sun and the sea.)
Yu Ling's fingers slid mechanically downwards, and more photos flooded into her view.
Watching the Paris Fashion Week show from the front row, she took a head-to-head selfie with an international supermodel. Caption: [My girl crush!]
A skier in the Swiss Alps, fully equipped with top-tier ski gear, is captured gliding down the powder snow, a truly impressive sight. Caption: [Chasing powder dreams.]
A photo with the gray-haired chef at Tokyo's three-Michelin-starred omakase sushi restaurant. Caption: [True craftsmanship, a tribute.]
On the red carpet of a charity dinner, she wore a haute couture gown and a sparkling diamond necklace, arm in arm with an older, distinguished man (labeled as a member of a European royal family). The caption read: [For love and peace.]
Glamorous and glamorous, the center of attention. Gu Qianqian's life is like a never-ending, top-tier reality show, each frame brimming with brilliance, each detail revealing a class and wealth unattainable for ordinary people. Beautiful, confident, and active at the center of the world's top fame and fortune, she is truly a child of destiny.
As Yu Ling looked at the photos, an invisible, overwhelming pressure surged from all sides like an icy tide, enveloping her tightly. She instinctively curled up, and the wool blanket covering her seemed to lose its warmth. Her fingertips were icy cold.
Was this Zhao Chen's past? Was this the world he once lived in? Compared to Gu Qianqian, he, an ordinary office worker working from nine to five and still anxious about the expiration of his contract, felt as insignificant as a speck of dust.
The bitterness in my heart and a deep sense of inferiority weighed heavily on me.
Almost masochistically, she continued to scroll, her fingertips tracing over the carefully embellished smiling faces, trying to catch a trace of Zhao Chen behind these flashy images.
Finally, her fingers stopped.
It was a photo from a yacht party, posted about three years ago. It was clearly a candid shot, the lighting somewhat dim, and it had the hazy feel of a nighttime party. Gu Qianqian stood by the second-floor railing of the yacht, wearing a sequined slip dress, a bright and flamboyant smile, a glass of champagne in hand, and blew a kiss to the camera.
What attracted Yu Ling's full attention was not Gu Qianqian, but the background behind her.
Behind her, near the shadow of the ship's side, a man in a dark casual suit leaned slightly to one side, seemingly conversing with someone nearby. The camera captured only his defined jawline, his high nose bridge, and his thin, tightly pursed lips. Light and shadow cast a sharp demarcation between light and dark across his deep features, exuding a cold, aloof aura that kept strangers at bay.
It’s Zhao Chen!
Even if only half of her face was visible from the side, Yu Ling would never mistake her! Those lines, that aura, were already etched into her bones!
What made her heart stop even more was that the man was wearing a watch on his left wrist, which was casually resting on the railing! Under the ambiguous light of the yacht, the deep blue dial reflected a cold and familiar light!
Horizon "Deep Space Gaze"! Exactly the same watch she gritted her teeth to give to Zhao Chen! No! Yu Ling's pupils suddenly contracted! She stared at the blurry details on the screen—the watch strap was dark brown crocodile leather! And the one she gave Zhao Chen was dark blue!
Couple's piece! Is this... the couple's piece that Gu Qianqian said Zhao Chen "gave her"?!
The immense shock made Yu Ling's vision go black! Her fingertips gripped the edge of her phone, her knuckles whitening! The photo by Stanford Lake, the feverish mumbling in her sleep, and this photo before her... the evidence was irrefutable! They had once owned matching watches! They had appeared together at such a lavish yacht party! Gu Qianqian's glamorous, star-studded life was filled with traces of Zhao Chen!
An icy chill shot up from the soles of her feet to the top of her head, freezing her to the point where she lost all feeling in her limbs.
She continued to scroll down almost instinctively, as if looking for more evidence of torture.
Soon, her eyes fixed on another photo.
The photo was posted earlier, seemingly on Gu Qianqian's eighteenth birthday. She looked a bit immature in the photo, but had already blossomed into a graceful young lady. She wore a luxurious pink couture dress and sat in a magnificent hall adorned with countless flowers and crystals, flashing a sweet and proud smile to the camera.
Around her neck, she wore an incredibly eye-catching necklace. The main body of the necklace was shaped like a rose, inlaid with countless evenly sized, extremely pure pink diamonds. The center of the rose was a large, rich pigeon-blood ruby. The necklace's design was intricate and exquisite, exuding an air of antiquity and nobility.
The accompanying text was only short in English, but it was like a poisoned needle, piercing Yu Ling's heart:
【18th. From C.】
【“It suits your collarbone perfectly,” he said. 】
(18 years old. From C.)
(“He said it frames your collarbone perfectly.”)
“C.” Who else could it be?! Chen!
"He said it perfectly complements your collarbone." - These words, like a magic spell, echoed in Yu Ling's ears over and over again!
She suddenly raised her hand, her fingertips trembling as she touched her smooth yet empty neck. There, she felt only the warmth of her skin, not the coldness of any jewelry. What had Zhao Chen given her? A custom necklace he'd claimed was "on sale at a friend's jewelry store"? A "Deep Space Gaze" watch she'd gritted her teeth to buy? Nothing else.
And what about Gu Qianqian? For her eighteenth-year-old coming-of-age gift, she received priceless antique jewelry, worthy of being featured in an auction catalog! It even came with his own personal compliments about her collarbone!
The stark contrast, like the sharpest knife, shattered Yu Ling's pitiful pride and self-deception to pieces! What was she? A fool who gloated over a "million" she'd made with a hundred thousand yuan in stock trading? A sensitive, fragile dependent who needed him to feign illness to test and comfort her?
The immense shame and cold despair washed over her like a black tide. She felt like a complete joke! The marriage she cherished, the love she had invested in it, seemed so pale and ridiculous in front of Gu Qianqian's screen-full of luxurious past, marked by Zhao Chen's mark!
Just when she was immersed in great self-denial and pain, her fingertips were cold and she could hardly hold the phone,
A warm, dry hand with distinct joints reached out from behind her without warning and naturally covered the back of her slightly trembling hand holding the phone.
Then, a voice, raspy and lazy, yet still deep and pleasant, accompanied by a warm breath, brushed against Yu Ling's sensitive earlobes:
"What are you looking at so intently? Huh?"
Zhao Chen was awake! He had sat up without her noticing, and now he was hugging her from behind, his chin resting affectionately on her shoulder. His tall body, with its lingering warmth and the faint scent of shower gel, enclosed Yu Ling in his arms.
Yu Ling's body instantly stiffened like a rock! Her heart was pounding wildly in her chest, almost bursting out! The shock made her hands tremble, and her phone almost slipped out of her hand!
Almost as a reflex, she suddenly pressed the lock button on her phone! The screen instantly fell into darkness!
"Nothing... nothing!" Her voice was noticeably trembling and sharp from excessive nervousness. Her eyes avoided him in panic, not daring to look back. "Just... just browsing! Celebrity gossip! Killing time!"
She tried to break free from his arms and hide the cell phone that contained the terrible secret, but Zhao Chen held her even tighter.
Zhao Chen didn't seem to notice her abnormality, or rather, he did, but chose to remain silent. He chuckled softly, the vibration of his chest clearly transmitting to Yu Ling's tense back. The laughter was low and pleasant, with the laziness of waking up in the morning and a hint of doting indulgence.
He tilted his head, and with his warm lips, he gently kissed Yu Ling's earlobe, which had grown slightly cold from her nervousness, and then the top of her head. His movements were so gentle that they could have dripped water.
"Celebrity gossip?" he repeated, his tone a touch of casual teasing, but a deep glint flashed across his amber eyes, too quick to be captured. He tightened his arms, completely enveloping her in his embrace. His chin nuzzled the top of her head. His voice was low and clear, carrying an undeniable declaration, and every word struck a chord with Yu Ling's troubled heart:
"What's so good about it?"
He paused, the doting and preference in his tone so strong that it almost overflowed:
"How can a vulgar woman be even one ten-thousandth as pretty as my wife?"
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