Zhi Li didn’t change his posture and continued staring across at the other building. Exhausted, Ke Bu stood in the corner of the hospital room watching Su You Yan’s every movement. His worry, his guilt over dragging everyone into this, and all the negative emotions he still hadn’t completely shaken off seemed to fill the entire room.
“Grandma, let’s stop wasting time.”
“Oh? Then what are you planning to do?”
“We don’t need to wait until the end. I want the result now.” Zhi Li turned and walked behind the old woman, placed his hands on the handles of her wheelchair, and bent down slightly. “Call all the puppets out now. Otherwise, you might not get another chance.” He pushed the old woman forward and kicked open the door leading out.
“No more chances?” The old woman remained sitting calmly in the wheelchair.
Back in the hospital room, Bao Ji Lei was breathing heavily. Her abdomen and knees were both aching. Su You Yan’s legs were far too formidable. Bao Ji Lei cleared her throat, and two men entered from outside the room. The moment the door opened, Ke Bu thought they looked familiar. Once he remembered who they were, his heart tightened. He had seen photographs of both men before, displayed on Sheng Jie Academy’s wall of former student council presidents. One was already more than enough trouble. Now two more had shown up.
Su You Yan, who was also somewhat tired, frowned. Ke Bu decided he might as well throw caution to the wind and fight them to the death. One of the men grabbed him by the hair. At that moment, a wheelchair slowly rolled into the room. Just before it struck the bed, the old woman braced herself with one hand and stopped it. Zhi Li entered a few steps behind the wheelchair and stared at the man’s hand. “Let go.” He gave no one time to react. The moment he finished speaking, the man took a blow to the left side of his face and staggered backward. Zhi Li then grabbed Bao Ji Lei by the clothes and hurled her against the wall. “All of you, get out. This is my family business.” Another man was about to speak when Zhi Li pressed his palm against the man’s face and squeezed until his features began to distort.
“You can all leave.” A voice came from the doorway. It was the same woman’s voice from that night. Ke Bu turned his head and finally saw her clearly. No wonder the first time he had seen Zhi Li’s supposed grandmother at school, he had felt that the genetics didn’t add up. The woman before him had neat, shoulder-length hair. Although silver strands were mixed through it, they didn’t make her look old. If anything, they looked almost deliberately dyed. Her face still held traces of beauty. Dignified, sinister, plain, extravagant, all sorts of impressions somehow mixed together without leaning completely toward any one of them. Now the genetics matched. The woman standing before them was clearly the genuine Liu Qing. On the night Ke Bu fell into the river, the old woman had been extremely close to him. In the second before he dropped, Ke Bu had caught the faintest trace of something in the old woman’s eyes that resembled Bao Ji Lei. That was when he began to suspect that the old woman might also be a puppet. During his stay in the hospital, he had also been quietly observing the people around him to figure out which ones might be puppets, and he had identified a few.
Su You Yan didn’t look surprised. Ke Bu guessed that she had probably figured everything out too.
“You can leave too,” Liu Qing said to the old woman. The old woman nodded, but Zhi Li said, “Who are you? Why are you telling my grandma to leave? I still have things to say to her.” So… so was Zhi Li the only person in this room who didn’t know who his own biological grandmother was? Liu Qing gave him a reproachful look. “Whatever you have to say to her, say it to me.”
“Why would I say it to you?”
Ke Bu truly couldn’t understand how Zhi Li’s brain worked. Somehow, there were moments when he could be so slow that it defied belief.
“I’m telling you to say it to me, so say it to me. Is that how casually you speak to your own grandmother?”
“My grandma is that old, short, sickly person. Keep pretending to be my grandma and don’t blame me for being rude.”
Liu Qing raised her eyebrows. “You little bastard. Are you trying to anger me to death?” Zhi Li walked toward her. Bao Ji Lei and the others moved to block him, and Ke Bu hurriedly stepped in front of Zhi Li too, pressing both hands against his chest. No matter how insane things had become, he couldn’t possibly let Zhi Li attack his own grandmother. “Zhi Li, she really is your grandma!”
“She isn’t.”
“The grandma you thought was your grandma is a puppet.”
Confusion appeared on Zhi Li’s face. He looked at the old woman, then at Liu Qing, as though his brain were sorting through the information. A few seconds later, he looked at Liu Qing. “Then let’s continue settling the rest of this, Grandma.” You accepted that way too quickly! Ke Bu desperately wanted to say it out loud, but the situation really wasn’t appropriate.
“I’ll step out too,” Su You Yan said. Ke Bu wanted her to stay, but she seemed to have something she needed to do and insisted on leaving.
Now only three people remained in the room. Liu Qing sat on the hospital bed with both hands braced behind her. “What do you mean by ‘the rest’? Have you already found out what I did to those two friends of yours? What were their names again? Zhang something? Xin He something?” Her deliberate attitude made the heart Ke Bu had only just managed to settle rise again. It was only now that he realized something. Trying to fight Liu Qing head-on was completely useless. She could torment him endlessly through one thing after another, mentally or physically. All she had to do was move her mouth. She wouldn’t grow tired. She could keep going and going forever, until his body and mind were completely destroyed.
“So what exactly is it about Ke Bu that you dislike?”
“I already explained that to you at the beginning.”
“I forgot.”
Liu Qing looked Ke Bu up and down. “Tell me. Can you name five good qualities he has that would make me accept him?”
“No.” Zhi Li answered without even thinking. Liu Qing’s question was already damaging enough. Who could have guessed Zhi Li’s answer would be even worse?
“You expect me to agree to someone like this entering the Zhi family? The Zhi family isn’t a charity that accepts anyone with a pulse.”
“Does Yin have five good qualities?”
Liu Qing curled her lip and snorted. “At least she can have children.”
“Grandma, let me put it this way. Because I inherited the Zhi family bloodline, my taste is terrible.” The second layer of mockery in that statement made Liu Qing raise her eyebrows again. What he meant was that everyone surnamed Zhi had terrible taste. That was why Zhi Zuo Si chose someone like Lan Yin, and why Grandpa had chosen someone like Liu Qing.
“Stop playing word games with me.”
“I’ve always liked flaws. Ke Bu has a lot of flaws, so I like him way too much.”
What an incredibly complicated love confession!!
Leave a Reply