As soon as Cen Sen spoke, the atmosphere in the car suddenly became tense.

The driver seemed to finally realize at this moment that this was the group CEO from Beijing, not the old leader he usually drove around who loved to chat with employees.

He sensibly fell silent.

Zhou Jiaheng didn’t dare offer any consolation either, just continuously making phone calls to maintain contact with people in Star City.

Just then, even more sudden news arrived: due to landslides and road foundation collapses along the Cheng-Shuang section, the Star-Shuang Highway was immediately closed in its entirety.

—The highway they needed to take back to Star City was precisely this Star-Shuang Highway.

The situation in Star City was even less optimistic. The latest news was that civilian vehicles were prohibited from traveling, which meant there was no way to send someone to find Ji Mingshu.

Cen Sen’s thoughts were unreadable. After hearing Zhou Jiaheng’s report, he got out of the car directly and called Jiang Che.

Star City was Jiang Che’s home ground. Whether it was finding someone or getting special access, his involvement would be more direct and convenient.

The call was answered after just two rings.

Cen Sen got straight to the point, “I’m on the Cheng-Shuang road heading back to Star City. The Star-Shuang Highway is closed. Make arrangements for me, I need to get back immediately.”

His voice seemed infused with the night wind, cold, yet decisive.

Jiang Che was at the airport waiting for a connecting flight. He chuckled carelessly, “What’s this? You’re rushing back to Star City because you care about me? I’m not even there today.”

Cen Sen: “Don’t waste words.”

Jiang Che was about to tease him more when something suddenly occurred to him, “You didn’t leave Ji Mingshu in Star City and now can’t contact her, did you?”

He knew Cen Sen had come to Star City on business and vaguely remembered Cen Sen mentioning that Ji Mingshu had also come along this time.

The silence on the other end of the phone seemed to confirm his guess. He instantly shed his casual demeanor and, after a moment’s thought, calmly arranged: “Star City has had an earthquake. The surrounding satellite cities will send firefighters and rescue teams. Send me your location, I’ll find someone to take you back. Also, send me where Ji Mingshu might have gone. I’ll help you look for her.”

He paused, “As for the Star Normal University apartments, you don’t need to worry about that.”

After a brief silence, Cen Sen said only two words, “Thanks.”

Jiang Che: “Don’t waste words.”

Cen Sen and Jiang Che had an old friendship of ten to twenty years.

Jiang Che was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and didn’t need to please others, so his personality wasn’t particularly smooth. He always just did what he liked.

Cen Sen, relatively speaking, had experienced more and matured earlier mentally. His personality was steady and calm, and he was thorough and appropriate in dealing with people.

Over the years, Cen Sen had always been the one more capable of controlling the overall situation. When friends got into trouble and didn’t dare approach their families, they would basically all find him to help clean up the mess.

When Jiang Che and Chen Xingyu’s JiangXing Technology was just starting up, there were many competitors. Several times they were pushed into financial difficulties by competitors. The Jiang family wasn’t very supportive of Jiang Che at that time, and it was Cen Sen who was single-handedly investing and supporting them behind the scenes.

This current situation of Cen Sen asking Jiang Che for help seemed to be happening for the first time.

To be honest, Cen Sen disliked this feeling. Perhaps it was the deep psychological shadow left by his childhood experience of being arranged and chosen by others. Over the years, he had become accustomed to standing in the position of the leader, controlling everything in his own hands.

The night wind was sparse and cold. He turned back, gripping the car handle with one hand, the veins on the back of his hand standing out from the pressure.

But in the next second, he suddenly let go, just lightly tapped on the car window, and asked the driver for a cigarette.

The driver hurriedly handed out a cigarette, enthusiastically cupping his hands around it to light it for him.

He leaned against the car, his gaze calmly looking toward Star City, the smoke from his fingertips flickering and releasing wisps that drifted away.

Cen Sen arrived in Star City at one o’clock in the early morning. News related to the Star City earthquake was all over the internet, making it hard not to know about it.

The strongest main shock was at 8:15 in the evening, lasting nearly seventeen seconds, with several aftershocks occurring until midnight.

The epicenter was in Fengyang County in the suburbs of Star City, very close to the main urban area. The relevant data on casualties and economic losses were still being compiled, but from the information already publicly available, it didn’t seem particularly serious.

But for Cen Sen, the situation was very serious because he still couldn’t contact Ji Mingshu.

Ji Mingshu’s phone could be dialed for a long time, but no one answered.

But when he called again after midnight, all that remained was a mechanical female voice announcing: The number you have dialed is powered off.

The hotel’s surveillance footage had already been checked according to the period recalled by the staff. It showed that she had indeed gone out in the afternoon.

But after she went out, she never came back. No one was in the hotel room, and without an accurate time frame, it was difficult to investigate through surveillance.

When Cen Sen arrived at the Junyi Huazhang where they were staying, Jiang Che’s side finally sent accurate information. Ji Mingshu had gone out in the afternoon to check in at a popular café. After leaving the café, she seemed to have… directly returned to the hotel, and the location of the last call she received that afternoon was also at the hotel.

Standing in the hotel lobby, Cen Sen looked at the last location provided by Jiang Che’s side and suddenly understood something.

Last time in Star City, Ji Mingshu had been eager to check in at a certain popular café, but because they were in a hurry to return to Beijing for the showdown at Li Wenyin’s cocktail party, they hadn’t managed to go to this place.

This time, she had managed to go, but the café was far too different from what she had imagined. Whether it was the decoration style, the popular desserts, or the taste of the coffee beans selected by the owner, she didn’t like any of it. After drinking half a cup of coffee, she got up, not even taking a photo.

Perhaps because Cen Sen had been too rough the night before, she wasn’t in the mood for shopping either and quickly returned to the hotel, took two vitamin pills, and went to sleep.

For Ji Mingshu, this day was ordinary, so uneventful it was almost bland.

So when she woke up hazily, being kissed until she couldn’t breathe, she felt a bit dizzy.

“What are you doing? Won’t you let people sleep at night?”

She pushed Cen Sen’s face away, not forgetting to gather her silk camisole nightgown, her voice soft and coquettish.

But the only response she got was kisses that deepened and intensified, like a direct invasion.

The force of these kisses was so strong that she couldn’t even make a whimpering sound. She felt a chill on her body as the nightgown she had just gathered was pulled open.

This brought Ji Mingshu to full wakefulness.

Cen Sen was acting strange—he hadn’t even showered and was so urgent, and it was particularly forceful. Most importantly, he kept intimately calling her “baby” in her ear.

Had he been drinking fake alcohol?

But why wasn’t there any smell of alcohol?

Maybe fake alcohol doesn’t smell like alcohol…?

Ji Mingshu thought wildly while embracing Cen Sen and biting her lip to endure.

At this moment, she was like a salted fish pressed on a chopping board, unable to resist and powerless to resist; she could only allow Cen Sen to flip her over and over.

…

After everything ended, Ji Mingshu was held in Cen Sen’s arms, held very tightly. He kept asking if she was uncomfortable anywhere and kept kissing her, much more intimately than his usual post-coital attitude.

Ji Mingshu looked at Cen Sen suspiciously, her fingertips pinching the edge of the quilt, carefully asking: “If you’re possessed, just blink?”

Cen Sen: “…”

Perhaps to prove he wasn’t possessed, he quietly stared at Ji Mingshu for nearly half a minute. Ji Mingshu couldn’t help blinking, but he still hadn’t blinked.

Ji Mingshu took a breath and couldn’t help but ask in a small voice: “What’s wrong with you? You seem particularly abnormal today.”

“Nothing.” He didn’t say much, just suddenly got up and carried her horizontally to the bathroom to bathe.

No one could understand Cen Sen’s emotional journey during these five or six hours.

At the moment of seeing Ji Mingshu, it seemed only possession could prove that Ji Mingshu was truly, really still in his arms.

Sensing Cen Sen’s unusual silence tonight, Ji Mingshu didn’t ask much.

After bathing and returning to the master bedroom to play with her phone, she discovered her phone had run out of battery.

After charging it, her phone almost exploded with messages flooding in from all directions.

“…Earthquake?”

Ji Mingshu was completely stunned.

“When did this happen? How did I not feel anything at all?”

As she spoke, she seemed to have a feeling that the whole world had indeed shaken for a while in her dreams. But that wasn’t right—a 5.8 magnitude earthquake should have strong tremors, how could she have slept so deeply?

She picked up the vitamins beside the bed and looked at them.

It wasn’t vitamins at all, but sleeping pills.

She had taken the wrong medicine!

After a series of powerful information impacts, Ji Mingshu suddenly realized, “You didn’t think something had happened to me, did you?”

Cen Sen didn’t speak, just turned off the bedside lamp.

Ji Mingshu persisted and moved closer, using the light from her phone screen to illuminate him, her eyes bright and shining, “You did think something had happened to me, right? Were you particularly worried about me? Are you stupid? I hardly know anyone in Star City, where could I have gone? Couldn’t you have called someone to check the room?”

“I did call.”

But the staff who came to check the room had been newly hired and couldn’t even distinguish how many rooms their suite had in total. They mistook the second bedroom for the master bedroom and didn’t properly check three of the bedrooms. Moreover, they had called her name while searching the room, but there was no response. How could anyone have thought that the CEO’s wife had accidentally taken sleeping pills and was sleeping too deeply?

Ji Mingshu lay on the bed, cupping her face as she looked at Cen Sen, unable to help smiling, “You admit it.”

Cen Sen didn’t answer, just put her phone back on the bedside table and closed his eyes, saying: “Sleep.”

Ji Mingshu: “I slept too much in the afternoon, I can’t sleep now.”

Cen Sen: “Then I’ll sleep.”

Ji Mingshu reached out to pry open his eyelids, “No sleeping!”

Cen Sen: “I’m really tired.”

“You didn’t seem tired just now, weren’t you quite impressive just now? Tired right after finishing, are you in your seventies or eighties? Get up quickly and chat with me, tell me about how the earthquake was.”

Cen Sen remained unmoved.

“It’s okay if you don’t tell me, then just call me ‘baby’ once more and I’ll let you off.”

Ji Mingshu’s calves swung randomly in the air. Sometimes she would come close to pluck his eyelashes, sometimes she would tickle him.

Cen Sen really couldn’t take it anymore. After flipping over several times without escaping, he had to flip back and hug Ji Mingshu, pressing her head into the crook of his neck, and in a low, deep voice, called out, “Baby.”