Chapter 90 (Minor Revision)
The train moved silently through the fields. Zhang Zongxie looked out the window at the village in the distance and suddenly said, "The day I received my admission letter from A University, President Yu transferred 50,000 yuan to my account. He knew I was leaving and was worried that my grandmother would be left without anyone to take care of her. He asked me to use this money to repair my grandmother's house and buy her some clothes."
Lilith listened quietly; her boss rarely had the desire to confide in her.
“Grandma was very happy those few days. She even said she would take me to Fengtan Railway Station, since she had never seen what a train looked like in her entire life. The night before I left, she suddenly said she was tired and wanted to go back to her room to lie down for a while. I was packing my luggage at the time and was very excited, so I didn’t notice her. When I went into the room, Grandma’s body was stiff…”
As he spoke, the train entered the tunnel, and the carriage was plunged into darkness. He paused briefly, a rare occurrence. "I cremated her and kept her ashes in the house until one year, when the village was being redeveloped and the house was to be demolished. That's when I brought my grandmother's ashes back to Beijing. But I knew she didn't like being in Beijing. She preferred that thatched hut that leaked wind in winter and rain in summer. Every night, she would appear in my dreams and curse me, asking where I had taken her, saying she couldn't find her way home."
Lilith was about to suggest that Zhang Zongxie buy a burial plot for his grandmother in Fengtan when Zhang quickly interrupted, "I did. The first year-end bonus I received after joining Convey was used to buy a burial plot for my grandmother in the village. Not long after she was buried, sure enough, I never dreamed of her again."
The old lady is heartless; once she returns to this land, she will never think of him again.
When the only person in the world who truly loves you becomes one with the dust, he realizes just how much he loves this land. That's why he recruited Li Yingqiao into Convey back then, because of the name Fengtan.
Lilith has a bit of PTSD from her boss's sudden bouts of melancholy. She can't quite grasp his true emotions. Zhang Zongxie, as Xu Junfei described him, is like a capricious, unpredictable dog. But there's no doubt that when a boss starts playing the victim, it's usually because he's unhappy with the high salaries his employees receive.
Lilith is Zhang Zongxie's personal assistant. Every assistant Convey found for him was fired by Zhang Zongxie. Lilith was someone he found himself, and surprisingly, he was able to withstand pressure. Of course, everything has two sides, and it's hard to sympathize with someone like him for his occasional vulnerability.
Sure enough, the hard-working Lilith said, "Boss, our next stop is the provincial capital. If you feel that taking the high-speed rail doesn't meet your expectations, I have another solution—we can get off at the provincial capital station and transfer to the airport to catch a flight. The airport in Nanlai City only has small passenger planes, and I was worried about your back, so I didn't book one. The provincial capital has Air China's Boeing 777 large passenger planes. I can contact them immediately and have the airline open a VIP channel for you in advance."
"..." Zhang Zongxie looked at her calmly and said, "If I asked you to find a way to stop this train right now, your solution would be—"
Lilith remained expressionless: "There are two."
Zhang Zongxie raised an eyebrow: "For example."
Lilith said, "Knock me out and call for emergency medical assistance."
"The second one?"
"I'll knock you out."
"Knock me out!" Wu Juan said weakly, lying on her workstation. "I hope I wake up to find New Year's Day is over. This overtime is too intense. No wonder General Manager Zhang couldn't wait to leave these past few days."
Pan Xiaoliang said, "He didn't leave because he was afraid of working overtime. He didn't want to be dragged into being an NPC. Li Yingqiao has been looking for handsome men everywhere these past two days, and he's become a bit obsessed with it."
Chai Na from the finance department next door joined the discussion: "Xiaoliang, which group were you assigned to?"
"Zombie Group".
Wu Juan slumped onto the table and burst into laughter. "There are at least twenty handsome guys in the security team, and even with your connections you can't get in? Is our boss Qiao's standards that high?"
"She's not just picky about eye spacing, she's picky about eye distance." Pan Xiaoliang still finds it absurd and sneers, "She said my eye distance wasn't enough, and she even threw a bunch of data at me: Daniel Wu's eye distance is 37mm, Takeshi Kaneshiro's is 36.5mm, and Yu Jinyang's is 36.8mm. She used these three examples to prove that my 32mm eye distance doesn't meet the standard for a handsome man. Don't you think she's just being biased?"
The office erupted in laughter. But the man himself was also very upset. He had been measuring leg length, arm length, and even the distance between his eyes lately, and he was getting worked up about it. "Li Yingqiao, are you ever going to stop? Measuring the distance between your eyes is one thing, but say it again, what are you measuring?"
Seeing that her tricks had failed, Li Yingqiao had no choice but to comfort her, saying, "Okay, if you don't want to, then forget it."
This is clearly a smuggled-in agenda; they want to measure the distance between his nipples. How insane!
Yu Jinyang was so angry he laughed, his voice cracking: "Who would be willing? Tell me, who would be willing to take your measurements?"
Li Yingqiao: "I haven't asked anyone else yet, have I?"
Yu Jinyang: "Say it again."
Li Yingqiao stopped teasing him: "Okay, okay, I was just kidding. I'm going to get back to work now."
Yu Jinyang said coldly, "Work? You're just obsessed with men, aren't you?"
"Yu Jinyang, stop being unreasonable. I've never been more immune to handsome guys than I am now."
"How many more are we missing? Isn't Pan Xiaoliang quite handsome?"
"Just the last one, Pan Xiaoliang? Don't be ridiculous, he and a corgi have the same eye spacing."
"..."
It would have been perfect to include Gao Dian, but he didn't come back.
“I have someone in mind,” Yu Jinyang said casually on the phone. “Didn’t you always think he was handsome?”
That evening, Yu Renjie received a phone call while taking a walk. Despite Li Yingqiao's insistence on big data, the person on the other end calmly asked, "Dad, how wide are your eyes?"
After all, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Daniel Wu are both proven figures by the market, so there's no way they'd make a mistake.
After listening, Yu Renjie hung up the phone without saying a word and said to Tang Xiang with a blank expression, "After your son got together with that brat, he became very presumptuous. He came up to me right away and asked if his father had any vision. I know what he's going to say without even waiting for the rest of the conversation. He wants to invest, start a business, and make something of himself. Here, Dad will give you some money."
Tang Xiang said, "That's impossible. Jin Yang has never done anything like that. When he was in Chicago, he didn't even ask you for money because he didn't have enough for tuition—"
"Once you have a wife, your thinking will definitely change—"
However, before he could finish speaking, Yu Jinyang called Tang Xiang again. Tang Xiang, with her sharp ears, immediately understood what had happened and grabbed him to apologize to his son.
“If you get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, remember to slap yourself twice,” Tang Xiang said.
Yu Renjie silently looked up at the sky: "I'm experiencing all the hardships I didn't have when I was young. I'm almost sixty, and I've been hired as a security guard. It's not because of connections, but because of the distance between my eyes."
Li Yingqiao stayed up all night on New Year's Day, overseeing the preparation of all items and finishing touches at the Xiaohua City venue.
Fengtan had another snowfall in the last two days of the year. There was a little snow on the ground, a drooping white, while the mountains were a deep, rich green, making the small town look even more serene and elegant, like a traditional Chinese ink painting of Jiangnan.
At eight o'clock in the morning, cars began to enter the scenic area one after another at the gate.
Yu Jinyang bought breakfast for Li Yingqiao downstairs, then took Gao Dian's card and went through the staff passage to the scenic area office, where he placed it in Li Yingqiao's office. It had been delivered for several days already. Since the early preparations for this park event, Li Yingqiao had rarely had time for breakfast, rushing to her office as soon as she got up.
So, almost everyone in the scenic area office already knew he was Li Yingqiao's boyfriend, not to mention Zheng Miaojia and the others. One night, Li Yingqiao called him solemnly, and Zheng Miaojia, still holding her drawing board on the other end of the phone, casually replied with a single syllable: "So?"
Zhao Pingnan simply said "oh" and continued to ask Sun Taihe what he wanted for dinner.
Zhong Su and Zheng Miaojia argued every day, and he waited for her call to make up. Hearing it only made him feel worse, and he replied curtly, "Thank you, it's so kind of you to call and tell me. This call is so important to me. Without it, I can't eat or sleep, and I'd be kept in the dark about the purest childhood sweetheart love in the world..."
Yu Jinyang hung up the phone expressionlessly, then turned to Li Yingqiao and said, "Zheng Miaojia still drove Zhong Su crazy."
Like a mischievous kitten, Li Yingqiao touched his face and asked, "So what should we do? Are you on Miaojia's side or Zhong Su's?"
Yu Jinyang leaned back on the sofa, naturally indicating that he wouldn't choose it.
Li Yingqiao said no, we have to choose one.
He suddenly laughed, reached out and covered her head as if picking out a ripe watermelon, patted it and listened: "I'll stand on your head, wherever you stand, I'll stand."
Li Yingqiao slapped him lightly on the back of the head: "I think you're the one who wants to rebel."
Yu Jinyang was stunned for a moment, his eyes wide open.
"Don't cry, meow. Do you miss my slap that much?"
"No, Li Yingqiao, I think I have a concussion." He collapsed, clutching his head, and buried himself in the sofa.
Li Yingqiao was even faster than him, slapping herself on the coffee table and pointing at the bottled water on it: "Oh no, Yu Jinyang, this water is poisoned. We agreed... I'll still be your girlfriend in the next life."
nerve.
He burst out laughing, muffled by the sofa cushions, while she laughed so hard her face twitched on the coffee table.
As they laughed, the room suddenly fell silent. At some point, their eyes met unexpectedly. Neither of them laughed, spoke, or moved. They stood at a distance that was neither too close nor too far, silently gazing at each other.
That night, they lay in the living room until dawn. Li Yingqiao fell asleep in the middle of the night, and Yu Jinyang wanted to carry her back to the room, but she said no. She could fall asleep in the living room, but couldn't sleep in the room. So Yu Jinyang stayed with her in the living room. He didn't say anything, but Li Yingqiao knew that he might know something, or that he might have seen her sleeping pills.
But he never mentioned it or asked about it.
Yu Jinyang knows her too well; he knows exactly what kind of person she is.
From childhood, she was competitive, simply because she didn't have a father and was afraid of being bullied by other children. She forced herself to eat more and sleep more.
She longed to grow up quickly so she could protect herself and her mother. Later, she discovered that what was even more terrifying than not having a father was the possibility that she might have a murderer as her father!
So she always had a dream that her father would be a policeman who, after completing a secret mission, would appear in Little Painting City from the sky and tell everyone that he was a hero.
Her father, of course, didn't appear. Day after day, he fought with the children who mocked her, turning into a tank. So, she began to change her mindset: if that was the case, then she would live her life as a hero praised by everyone.
So from a young age, she trained herself to be a protector.
He rescued Gao Dian, ventured into the mad port for Grandma Chunzhen, was terrified by a pack of stray dogs, yet still went back to hug Yu Jinyang without hesitation; in junior high, he cracked his code and saved the dying Yu Jinyang; he was selected for Liang Mei's seedling program, successfully entered a prestigious university, and knew that he was Liang Mei and Tan Xiuyun's gamble, but still forced himself to make a name for himself in Beijing, perhaps so that Liang Mei would be able to let go and be willing to return to Fengtan to teach again.
She hoped to be everyone's knight. Except for the time when Liang Mei tore up their letters and broke down in tears in her senior year of high school, she almost never showed her vulnerable side in front of her "protected ones".
Actually, looking back, she felt she hadn't put in much effort. Did she really give it her all in her senior year of high school? No, compared to Yu Jinyang's dedication and perseverance from childhood, she was too lax.
Perhaps it was this halo that gave her the illusion that she was omnipotent. It wasn't until she entered Convey that she understood why Liang Mei tore up their letters in their senior year of high school, and she also understood the question Liang Mei asked her: what are people powerless to change?
When she realized she was on her period and couldn't even refuse any drinking invitations;
When she discovered that there were only two women on the 38th floor, one of whom was embroiled in a scandal;
When she discovered that Xu Quyu had spent seventeen years traveling from Shanghai to Beijing;
When she discovered that when the Rainbow Yuri incident occurred, everyone had become unrecognizable due to the power struggle for profit.
She had her answer.
She couldn't hold onto what she was losing: the indomitable courage that once belonged to Li Yingqiao.
She then discovered that her former heroic aura had become shackles.
And when they reunited at the barbershop, Yu Jinyang, the young master they had teased and mocked since childhood, who usually let things slide, actually became serious and argued vehemently about his dog-chewed head—
She suddenly felt as if she had found her cure.
***
At this very moment, Gao Dian, far away in Shenzhen, opened the invitation to this park event on social media and stared wide-eyed at it:
He immediately forwarded it to the group:
"You guys are being so crazy?! What's going on? But I'm really interested in this project: the most bizarre blind date criteria—older than you? No. younger than you? No. Same age is considered close relative. Am I weird enough?"
"Little pastry, welcome home soon," Li Yingqiao replied.
"Little pastry, welcome home soon," Yu Jinyang replied.
Gao Dian: "………………What are you two doing?"
Unexpectedly, Gao Dian saw that Li Yingqiao replied with a "shy" emoji.
For Gao Dian, who had a stereotypical impression of Li Yingqiao since childhood, this was tantamount to seeing Guan Yu blush and suddenly punching Zhang Fei.
Gao Dian: "No, Yu Jinyang, you're my brother, you're my own brother. Come on. Tell me, it's not what I think."
D321: "Sorry, bro. I'm so sorry."
——————
To all players of Little Painting City:
When you can't refuse your boss's invitation to a drinking party; when you don't dare to complain about your badly cut hair; when everyone is silent, the sound of a bell becomes a declaration.
When the poor yearn for milk, when the rich vie for power, when people pray for happiness, when heroes long for ordinariness.
When I desire.
Welcome to the Wilderness Paradise.
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