Chapter Sixteen: Old Friends and Dreams
A deep, familiar voice, with a hint of deliberate aloofness, suddenly rang out behind me.
Lin Tang froze, then suddenly turned around.
Chen Kan stood a few steps away, dressed in a well-fitting gray suit, his figure as upright as a pine tree. He didn't approach, but kept his gaze calmly fixed on her face from a distance, as if examining an old object.
The morning light cast shadows on his sharply defined profile, and the curve of his eyebrows and nose almost overlapped with the blood-stained face deep in his memory!
"Though the Huang Family Garden is dilapidated, it is most likely to evoke old memories, isn't it?" He stepped forward slowly, his leather shoes making a soft rustling sound on the fallen leaves. His face was calm, and his voice was steady. "I heard that Miss Lin's newly purchased land is strategically located at the mouth of the river, a superb location. In this day and age, a woman who dares to buy property in the eye of the storm has quite the courage... I just wonder, is it to avoid the limelight, or to uphold the legacy of an old friend?"
“Old friend…” Lin Tang’s heart stirred, and the words she had spoken with Bai Mu in the past came to mind. Back then, Bai Mu wanted to use his pen as a sword to awaken the Chinese people and save the country from peril, while she wanted to serve the country through industry and fight for the survival of the Chinese people. But how did Chen Kan know about these words?
Chen Kan took off his glasses as he spoke.
Lin Tang stared at his face, her throat tightening. The name that had been buried in her heart for five years almost slipped out. She stared intently into his eyes, trying to capture a trace of familiar warmth from that deep pool.
"You...are you really..." she finally asked, but tears welled up instantly again. "No, you can't be him, he's dead..."
The faint smile on Chen Kan's face vanished instantly.
He turned slightly to avoid Lin Tang's burning, probing gaze, and looked at the desolate pond: "Who am I? What do you think, Miss Lin?"
He paused, his fingertips unconsciously tracing the side seam of his trousers, as if wiping away dust. "As for why I'm here... in this chaotic world of war, where isn't a place where wandering souls roam? I'm just someone who happened to pass by and happened to recognize the former owner of this garden."
Lin Tang's slender figure swayed, her fingertips gripping the cold stone railing tightly, her knuckles turning white.
Chen Kan's tone suddenly rose, each word like a hailstorm: "Congratulations, Madam! The poor student who couldn't even afford tuition at the French Concession docks back then has now transformed into the powerful Mrs. Qiao of the Jiangcheng Chamber of Commerce! Immense wealth and power, stepping on the blood of old friends and resting on the favor of enemies, she has earned this splendid future of gold and jade for herself!"
She abruptly raised her head, the last trace of vulnerability in her eyes consumed by a raging inferno: "Shut up! Who are you? Why are you telling me all this?"
"You ask me why?" Chen Kan's eyes welled with unfathomable pain and mockery. "Madam Qiao, didn't you take a bullet for Chief Qiao? Weren't you deeply in love? You enjoyed everything he gave you. Yet here you are, in this old place, putting on a hypocritical act of deep affection and reminiscing about the past! Lin Jintang, your tears, your mourning, what are they worth? Who can you fool? Only yourself!!"
Chen Kan's Adam's apple bobbed.
Lin Tang's voice was as soft as a falling leaf, "Qiao Yuan got me out of prison and found a hospital for my father, I...I..."
Large, scalding tears fell onto his gray suit, leaving dark watermarks.
“Tell me…who are you…” Her voice was broken and fragmented. “Are you Bai Mu…you hate me…you hate Qiao Yuan…why…why are your eyes so similar to his…”
Chen Kan turned his face away. He hardened his heart and slowly and resolutely pried open Lin Tang's fingers, which were tightly gripping his clothes.
"Who am I?" His voice was hoarse, carrying a deliberate air of detachment and weariness. "I am not the person you are like. That person is long dead."
He gently pushed away Lin Tang's hands that had been pried open, took a step back, and increased the distance between them.
"Mrs. Qiao, save your tears for the wedding banquet at the International Hotel!" He said this last, his voice regaining its previous harshness and coldness, as if the momentary wavering had never happened. He straightened the front of his shirt, which Lin Tang had crumpled, still bearing traces of tears.
Then, without lingering, he turned and strode away along the desolate path he had come from. His figure quickly disappeared into the misty morning fog and the withered vegetation, leaving only a cold and blurry silhouette.
A cold wind swirled with withered leaves across the desolate pond, and also brushed against Lin Tang's tear-streaked, icy face. She was like a stone statue forgotten in the ruins, leaning against a mottled stone pillar for a long, long time.
The heart-wrenching questioning and cold denial just now, how could the pain and hatred surging deep in those eyes be contained by the word "old friend"? That was clearly Bai Mu's hatred! He hated her for betraying him, hated her for living a wretched life, hated her for marrying his enemy!
The fingertips dug deep into the palm, and the blood seeped out without the person noticing.
The sharp pain, ironically, brought a brief moment of clarity to her muddled mind.
It's too late for regrets now.
Ultimately, the path is one that you forge yourself step by step.
She forced herself to straighten her back, and with all her might, she walked heavily, step by step, across the desolate path toward the Chevrolet that was quietly waiting outside the door.
Ah Chen had already gotten out of the car and respectfully opened the door. When Lin Tang approached, he saw her pale face and her obviously red, swollen, and tearful eyes, and his heart sank.
He couldn't mistake Chen Kan's cold, hard profile as he left. The way Madam looked... it must be...
“Madam,” after Lin Tang settled in the back seat, Ah Chen closed the car door and returned to the driver’s seat. He didn’t start the car immediately, but carefully observed her distraught expression through the rearview mirror. “Just now… in the garden, I think I saw something in the distance… that looked like Mr. Chen?”
Lin Tang leaned back in the cold leather seat, closed her eyes, and her thick eyelashes trembled violently like injured butterfly wings. She neither denied nor explained, but a very soft and suppressed sob escaped from her throat.
Ah Chen's heart leaped into his throat. The lady's reaction was practically an admission.
But what could he say?
What happened back then was Qiao Yuan's fault!
The Chevrolet drove away from Huang Family Garden and merged into the morning traffic flow in the French Concession.
A suffocating silence filled the car, with only the hum of the engine and the occasional clamor of newsboys outside the window hawking "Master Qiao is taking a concubine," which pounded on Lin Tang's fragile nerves.
Looking in the rearview mirror, Ah Chen saw a tear silently sliding down Lin Tang's closed eyes, wetting her temples.
Ah Chen wondered: Were her tears for Master Qiao or for Chen Kan?
As the car crossed the iron bridge over the Suzhou Creek, the hustle and bustle of the concessions gradually faded into the distance. Ahead lay the area where Zhabei and Hongkou districts met, the air thick with industrial dust and the fishy smell of the river.
The road became bumpy, with low, dilapidated shacks on both sides of the muddy dirt road, and people in tattered clothes shivering in the cold wind.
Lin Tang's gaze swept over the numb and tired faces, especially those women holding children with empty eyes. Gradually, a faint light gathered in her unfocused eyes.
The Chevrolet finally came to a stop on a muddy clearing surrounded by barbed wire and piled with building materials and gravel. In the distance, the turbid Huangpu River flowed slowly under the gray sky, a biting wind whipping up dust from the ground.
"Madam, we've arrived," Ah Chen whispered, quickly getting out of the car and going around to the back seat to open the door for her.
Lin Tang held onto the car door to stop, stepped out of the car, and when her right foot landed, her slightly limping gait due to an old injury was particularly clear on the muddy ground.
Inside the makeshift wooden shed at the entrance to the construction site, several supervisors and engineers dressed in work clothes and wearing safety helmets had been waiting for some time.
"Mrs. Qiao." A middle-aged engineer at the head of the group handed her a safety helmet.
Lin Tang nodded slightly, took the hat, and put it on.
"Where are the blueprints? Take me to the actual site for piling."
The engineer readily agreed and led her deeper into the construction site.
The muddy ground beneath her feet was uneven and piled with steel bars, timber, and gravel. Lin Tang didn't walk fast; her injured leg made her steps slightly hesitant, and each step required more effort than usual to maintain her balance. However, her back was ramrod straight, and her sharp gaze swept over the surrounding boundaries, the material storage area, and the location where foundation piles were being driven in the distance, as if she were surveying her future territory.
The engineer unfolded a huge blueprint, and several people gathered around the freshly poured concrete foundation.
The river wind howled, making the blueprints flutter loudly.
Achen stood a little distance away, watching Lin Tang, who was surrounded by engineers and intently pointing out blueprints. She was slightly limping, but she stood like a tree rooted to the ground.
Sunlight struggled to pierce through the clouds, falling on her pale and focused profile. The pain and despair that had once surged in her eyes because of Chen Kan were now replaced by a calm yet powerful light that was almost burning.
Ah Chen sighed inwardly: Only when facing this land, facing this future that he had personally planned, would such a light ignite in the unfathomable pool in the lady's eyes, as if this cold steel and concrete and the desolate mudflats were her true battlefield and home.
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