Chapter 35 A Fury That Could Cause a Crown to Rage
That evening, Luo Heng and the others returned from picking mushrooms in the mountains, and Feng Chi handed the mushrooms over to the cook to prepare.
The mountains are at a high altitude, and the local area is rich in mountain goats. In the evening, we used local ingredients to make a mushroom and goat soup hot pot together.
As it turned out, the group was all just paying lip service to something they didn't truly love. When picking mushrooms, they were all more enthusiastic than anyone else, boasting about everything under the sun. But when the mutton soup was served, they pushed and shoved each other, afraid to eat it, fearing that the mushrooms in the mountains might be poisonous.
“No, my family has only had one son for nine generations, and I haven’t had any offspring yet. I can’t let my parents down.”
"I'm even less capable. Someone like me, a chosen beast of burden at the bottom of society, has to dedicate myself to society. I can only die on the battlefield, not die from poisoning."
"Pah! Your use of idioms is a complete mess. The world would be much better off without one illiterate person like you!"
...
These grown men didn't even dare to eat a mushroom, which Si Tian found utterly distasteful. She was just about to set an example for them and show them what a true heroine was when she saw Meng Yanxi serve herself a bowl of soup and calmly drink it.
The people immediately stopped arguing and all looked at him.
Meng Yanxi took a bite and commented, "It tastes good."
Jin Zhao admired him greatly, and Zhao Yu voiced her thoughts: "Is even a big shot this reckless?"
Luo Heng immediately changed his tune: "Since that's the case, then I'll accompany one!"
“That’s right, Meng Yanxi has already tested the poison on herself, what am I, a mere ox or horse, afraid of? I’ll go with her!”
Jin Zhao watched in disbelief. After all these years, how come these people are still like those immature teenagers from back then? It's just a meal, how come they're acting like they're facing certain death?
Those who know understand it as eating mushrooms, but those who don't might think it's an imperial edict bestowing poisoned wine.
Noticing her gaze, Meng Yanxi turned to look.
Warm light fell from above, casting shadows on his long eyelashes and making his peach blossom eyes appear even deeper.
Feeling guilty, Jin Zhao quickly offered a hasty, insincere compliment: "You're so brave."
Meng Yanxi was taken aback, then quickly raised an eyebrow. Without saying anything, she turned and finished the mushroom soup in her bowl.
Lu Jingyue, who witnessed the whole thing, was speechless.
He tricked me again.
The truth is, even if you gave Feng Chi ten times the courage, he wouldn't dare serve up the problematic mushrooms. Let's put it this way: if Meng Yanxi dies here tonight, the Feng family will be finished before dawn tomorrow.
It's highly likely that those mushrooms were selected by a specialist, and the head chef and Feng Chi took turns testing them for poison before they were served.
Modern people are energetic in the evening, and after dinner, this group of people get together to play UNO and mahjong.
Jin Zhao felt that, to some extent, Li Jin's stereotype of her wasn't entirely unfounded; her personality was indeed quite boring. She couldn't play games, and she couldn't play mahjong. It seemed these people were going crazy; she had only just said, "I don't know how to play UNO..."
Zhao Yu pulled her to the mahjong table: "Okay, then come and play mahjong!"
Jin Zhao: "?" Is this some kind of mutually exclusive option?
"I don't know how to play mahjong either," Jin Zhao quickly finished the sentence.
But on the mahjong side, Luo Heng, Lu Jingyue, and Zhao Yu were already seated at the table, and they were short one player who was eagerly waiting for a turn. No one intended to let her go.
Lu Jingyue: "It's very simple. You'll understand once I explain the rules."
Jin Zhao has absolutely no trust in Lu Jingyue.
She still remembers that night nine years ago when Lu Jingyue told her in the same sincere tone that playing Dou Dizhu was very simple, but then he turned around and defeated her. He even asked her mischievously, "If Meng Yanxi and 1 million yuan fell into the water at the same time, which one would you save first?"
"I still won't..." Jin Zhao got up and tried to run away.
Zhao Yu grabbed him and said, "No, wait a minute!"
Lu Jingyue looked at her with a half-smile, then added meaningfully, "Don't worry, we're not playing Truth or Dare today."
Jin Zhao: "..."
In the end, he was caught in a dilemma. After suffering a crushing defeat in Dou Dizhu nine years ago, Jin Zhao was forced to play mahjong again.
When Meng Yanxi turned away from the card game to look at her, she had already lost miserably, with almost no chips left in front of her, while Lu Jingyue had a mountain of chips in front of her.
Meng Yanxi stood behind Jin Zhao and glanced indifferently at Lu Jingyue across the street.
Now, Zhao, who had already given up and was completely indifferent, just wanted to finish the IV drip and go back to her room to sleep. Meng Yanxi suddenly came over and lingered behind her, causing Zhao to become flustered again.
Nobody wants to act like a fool in front of someone they like.
But Lu Jingyue showed no mercy; it seemed more like he was deliberately going against her, chasing after her and hitting her. Jin Zhao racked her brains and barely managed to draw a seven of bamboo, just about to play it.
"Don't move."
Meng Yanxi suddenly leaned down and pressed her hand down.
Suddenly, a body temperature that wasn't her own appeared on the back of her hand, and at the same time, the scent of cold mountain pine mist enveloped her from behind. Meng Yanxi stood to her left, her right hand reaching around behind her, and she leaned down to embrace her from behind.
Although he avoided touching her body in any way except with his hands, the position was still too intimate. Jin Zhao felt as if the thin layer of air between them suddenly ignited, and her mind went blank for a moment.
"Bang!"
The red dragon tile is played on the mahjong table.
"Send this one."
Meng Yanxi turned his head slightly, his voice piercing her ear. At the same time, he stood up, straightening his body again.
The whole process was smooth and quick, leaving only Jin Zhao in a state of chaos.
Unsurprisingly, Meng Yanxi played the rest of the game.
Later, he simply stopped getting up, maintaining a slightly bent-over posture, with one hand supporting himself on the table and the other hand drawing, playing, and touching cards in front of her.
Jin Zhao couldn't help but stare at his hand.
With his pale, cool skin and exceptionally long fingers with prominent knuckles, she couldn't help but stare at the sexy blue veins on the back of his hand.
I forget where I read the research, but it said that, in a sense, besides the Adam's apple, another secondary sexual characteristic in men is the prominent veins on the back of their hands. This is because men with prominent veins usually exhibit good physical activity, low body fat, and strong stamina. Or, to put it more bluntly, they have strong sexual ability.
The thumping sounds echoed in his ears, fast and heavy. Jin Zhao was in a daze, unable to distinguish whether it was his own heartbeat or the sound of mahjong tiles hitting the table.
Thanks to Meng Yanxi's help, Jin Zhao finally won this round, but there was no joy in her eyes about winning money; she felt completely soaked.
The air conditioner was clearly on.
As soon as the game ended, Jin Zhao immediately got up and let Meng Yanxi play.
Lu Jingyue is really outrageous; he's still stirring up trouble at this point. He asked with a troubled expression, "How should the money be calculated? Should it be yours or Meng Yanxi's?"
Luo Heng laughed and replied, "Brother Yue, do you think you're talking to me? Why are you making such a big deal out of it?"
Jin Zhao: "..." Why don't you two go and perform crosstalk?
Meng Yanxi looked at her and said, "If I lose, it's on me; if I win, it's on you."
Jin Zhao felt terrible about it. He quickly said, "No need, no need. I was almost done losing anyway. If I lose, it's on me; if I win, it's on you."
She felt her arrangements were quite generous. Although she wasn't wealthy, Meng Yanxi and the others had arranged everything for the trip, so her losing a little money was just a way of splitting the bill. Upon hearing this, Meng Yanxi raised an eyebrow and slowly retorted, "You think I'd lose?"
Jin Zhao: "..."
What a well-hidden Achilles' heel, catching you completely off guard!
She couldn't afford to offend any of these people, so she decisively decided to go back to her room to sleep. Naturally, she didn't see Meng Yanxi win three games in a row as soon as she sat down, severely dampening Lu Jingyue's arrogance.
Half of the chips in front of the three people were gone in the blink of an eye, and they were all piled up in Meng Yanxi's hands.
Zhao Yu was completely speechless. She hadn't even realized what was going on, and could only ask in shock and disbelief, "Boss, did you cheat?"
Luo Heng gave up on such wishful thinking and gave him a thumbs up in sincere admiration: "As expected of the God of Wealth, there's no situation you can't win when it comes to money!"
Only Lu Jingyue glanced in the direction Jin Zhao had left, and asked cheekily, "How did it feel? Wasn't it quite like hiding your wealth in the dark?"
Meng Yanxi glanced at him expressionlessly, then suddenly slammed a mahjong tile at him.
Lu Jingyue barely managed to catch it, almost getting slapped in the face. He wisely shut his mouth and didn't dare to provoke the tiger again.
After returning to his room, Jin Zhao went into the bathroom and took a shower.
Although everyone calls it a room, the rooms here are not standard hotel rooms; each one is an independent suite. For example, Meng Yanxi's is a mountain courtyard, and Jin Zhaohe Sitian's is also a suite, but it is built on the terrain of a natural cave, allowing you to see the sea of clouds and sunrise through floor-to-ceiling windows, as well as the rolling mountains.
When Jin Zhao came out after taking a shower, it was drizzling outside. Si Tian had also returned and was sitting cross-legged on the living room sofa, fiddling with her phone.
Seeing Jin Zhao come out, she excitedly waved her phone: "Zhao Zhao, come and see! I won 816 yuan tonight!"
Jin Zhao walked over with a smile.
Si Tian hugged her phone to her chest: "Although I know gambling is wrong, it really is the only happy thing that has happened to me all year!"
Jin Zhao chuckled: "It's not that exaggerated."
Si Tian took the opportunity to vent her frustrations about the hardships of being a working person.
Doctors are a typical profession that relies on guaranteed supplies; while others are resting, whether it's National Day or Spring Festival, they're always on duty. This seven-day holiday was only granted to Si Tian after she relentlessly pestered her department head under the pretext of going on a blind date.
"It's all Luo Heng's fault for jinxing me, always calling me 'bitter.' Well, now his words have come true." Si Tian summed it up in one sentence: "He committed murder and arson in his past life, and he's studying medicine in this one."
“You’re more level-headed, always aspiring to be a teacher.” Si Tian said, then changed the subject, “By the way, there are so many people today, I haven’t had a chance to ask you. Why did you suddenly go abroad in your senior year of high school? We hadn’t heard you mention it before, we all thought you would go to university in China, we weren’t prepared at all, especially Meng Yanxi. When you didn’t come to the start of senior year, he even asked Sister Shu, and she said you went abroad. You have no idea how bad Meng Yanxi’s temper was during that time. He’s usually cold and doesn’t like to talk to people, but during that period, he not only didn’t talk to people, he looked at people like he had knives in his eyes. I don’t know what Ji Haoxuan did to offend him, but he just beat him up in the classroom.”
"Meng Yanxi beat up Ji Haoxuan?" Jin Zhao's eyelids twitched.
"Yes, he was really ruthless. There were so many people in the classroom at the time, and we couldn't stop him at all. Luckily, Sister Shu appeared in time. Later, his parents were called in, and Uncle Meng even came to the school. I don't know how they talked about it, but in the end, Ji Haoxuan transferred schools, and Meng Yanxi was disqualified from being recommended for admission because he beat up a classmate and refused to make a self-criticism under the national flag."
Jin Zhao's vision went black: "You're saying that Meng Yanxi's guaranteed admission has been revoked?"
They all came from a mountain of books and a sea of problems. If Jin Zhao put herself in her shoes, she couldn't imagine what she would do.
"It was canceled. But it's okay, Meng Yanxi took the college entrance exam as usual and still ranked first in the city." Si Tian sighed, "Indeed, the strong never complain about their environment. But he doesn't seem to like leaving Suiyi. With such a high score, he didn't go to Tsinghua or Peking University, nor did he accept offers from prestigious foreign universities. He ended up studying at Suiyi University."
Jin Zhao felt a little better, although Meng Yanxi hitting Ji Haoxuan might not necessarily be related to that matter.
Si Tian looked at her and asked cautiously, "Zhao Zhao, was your sudden departure abroad back then related to Ji Haoxuan?"
The wind picked up outside the window. The wind and rain weren't strong, but the mountain wind always howled and wailed, causing inexplicable panic.
Jin Zhao sat under the lamp, the light soft and warm. Her almond-shaped eyes were lowered, concealing the sadness in them.
She remained silent for a while, and Si Tian, sensing the situation, was about to change the subject. Jin Zhao suddenly spoke up: "I didn't go abroad; I just transferred schools that year."
"Transfer schools?" Si Tian asked in surprise. "Transfer to where? If it's just transferring schools, why say you're going abroad?"
Yes, it's just a transfer school, why sneak around and say you went abroad?
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