“What does he want the photograph for?”

Rong Qian accepted the camera with careful hands. This relic saturated with the feeling of another era made her feel as though one careless drop would send it scattering across the floor in pieces.

Zong Yutang shook his head. “I honestly don’t know. Perhaps he wants to see what this city looks like decades later — so he asked you to take a picture and bring it back to him.”

“Setting aside why he wants it — the camera is this old. Are you sure it still works?”

As she said it, Rong Qian aimed the lens at the doorway of the private room and pressed the shutter. A click rang out, followed by a flash of dazzling white light, and the photograph was taken.

She had moved so quickly that Zong Yutang didn’t have a chance to stop her.

The film slid out from the camera — entirely black at first. Rong Qian plucked it out and gave it a few shakes, looking on in genuine wonder. “This camera has been sitting around all this time, and it can still actually take photos?”

“I know, I find it remarkable too,” Yao Na murmured in a daze. She had taken very good care of it — but after all these decades, for it to still function normally was genuinely remarkable.

Before long, an image emerged from the film. It was the doorway of the private room she had photographed.

On the wall across the corridor hung a picture frame — inside it, a cluster of spider lilies, brilliant red as blood. But the photograph had come out in black and white, drained of all colour.

Because the door was open, the longer Rong Qian stared at the photograph, the more she was seized by a strange feeling — as if at any moment, someone might step out from behind that door.

She stared for a while longer before setting the camera down on the table. The instant she did, the camera came apart with a quiet collapse — all its components separating and scattering. Rong Qian stared, momentarily stunned.

She had entertained the thought that it might break apart — but she hadn’t expected it to actually happen, not like that, not right then.

With the helpless look of a child who had done something wrong, Rong Qian said, “Oh no. What do we do now?”

Yao Na and Zong Yutang were equally at a loss. After a long pause, Zong Yutang spoke: “It was probably just too old. There’s nothing to be done about it. At least the photograph was already taken.”

Rong Qian glanced at the photograph, then quickly tucked it into her bag. The camera was already broken — she could not afford to lose the photograph too.

Yao Na looked at her, and after a moment said quietly: “Miss Rong, Shen Yi was someone of the utmost importance to our Yao Family — you could even say he was the reason our family exists as it does today. Without him, we wouldn’t be where we are now.”

“I nearly forgot about that.” Rong Qian realised she still hadn’t asked: how had Shen Yi changed their future?

The memory of being abducted sent an involuntary shiver through Yao Na’s body. Zong Yutang, sensing the shift in his wife’s mood, reached to draw her close — but Yao Na shook her head and signalled that she was fine.

Yao Na told Rong Qian that she had once been kidnapped. The ransom demand at the time had been two hundred million.

Rong Qian already knew this much — from what she had gathered, Yao Zhengxing had agreed to pay, but Yao Na had been killed anyway. So how had Shen Yi changed that outcome?

“I remember it clearly — the kidnappers called my father. But the person who picked up the call was Shen Yi.” Thinking back, a smile rose unbidden to Yao Na’s face, and the tension eased from her body. “He told the kidnappers he could offer one billion in ransom.”

No one would ever know — but when she heard Shen Yi’s calm and steady voice in that moment, how overwhelmed she had been. The tears had come without warning, flooding her eyes, and Yao Na had felt for the first time what it meant to feel truly safe.

“Shen Yi actually gave it?” Rong Qian was stunned. One billion back then was nothing like one billion now.

Yao Na smiled. “In the end, he didn’t have to — but just to be safe, he really did have one billion prepared.”

“If he didn’t pay, how were you rescued?” Rong Qian was still curious about how it had all played out.

Yao Na explained: “Shen Yi was very clever. He told the kidnappers he could transfer the money to their private account — a sum that large was enough to set them up for life. He seemed to have calculated that they would agree. So he stalled for time, and once the transfer had been confirmed, the police tracked down where I was being held.”

Hearing Yao Na describe all of this, Rong Qian could see clearly — it really had been Shen Yi, through his own ability and effort alone, who had rewritten their future. Only he could have managed it.

The casino crisis that came later had also been weathered with Shen Yi’s help, and Yao Zhengxing had ever since said that Shen Yi was their family’s greatest benefactor.

As for He Jicheng — he had launched attack after attack against Shen Yi, but in the end had trapped himself in the very snare he’d set for others, and paid for it with his life.

From that point on, He Jicheng’s part in this whole affair drew to a close, and he left the stage.

That evening, Yao Na and Zong Yutang personally drove Rong Qian back and saw her to the hotel entrance. She waved goodbye to them, then returned to her room to rest.

After a bath, Rong Qian lay in bed, turning from side to side, unable to sleep no matter how she tried.

Her mind kept returning to the words Yao Na had spoken before they parted at the restaurant.

At the time, Yao Na had taken a leather briefcase from Zong Yutang and drawn out a thick sheaf of documents — property deeds and company shares, along with lawful ownership certificates for a considerable number of collectibles. Any single item could be auctioned off for a minimum of tens of millions.

She had said: “Miss Rong, all of this — Shen Yi asked us to give it to you.”

Rong Qian had been struck speechless. That man Shen Yi — he had left her all of this?

She absolutely refused to accept it.

“Please take it, Miss Rong. Shen Yi had more wealth than he could count. Beyond what he donated to charity, he left the greater portion to you.” There was visible grief on Yao Na’s face as she said it.

“He knew he could no longer be by your side. Even so, he still wanted to do everything within his ability to ensure you would have a life free from want.”

“So that even without him beside you, you could still live well…”

Yao Na’s words were still ringing in her ears. Rong Qian closed her eyes — yet the tears came anyway, spilling silently from the corners of her eyes. She pressed her face into the pillow.

At first she only wept silently. But slowly, she couldn’t hold it back any longer. The grief broke open.

Rong Qian had never cried this hard — sobbing until her throat locked, until the sadness was almost more than she could bear.

That fool. Why did he have to be such a fool? Why — why did he do so much for her?

“Rong Jie, why are you wearing sunglasses today?”

The next morning, the group gathered at the hotel’s tea restaurant for breakfast. When Rong Qian arrived — bag over one shoulder, sunglasses firmly in place — Zhang Hao couldn’t help asking.

“Can’t I wear them because they look good?” Rong Qian shot back. She wasn’t about to admit she’d cried through the entire night and her eyes had swollen up.

Zhang Hao pressed on: “Rong Jie, your voice sounds a bit strange too. Did you — did you actually cry last night?”

He said it almost as an offhand guess. After all, in all the time he’d known Rong Qian, he had never once seen her cry. She was, by his estimation, the most iron-hearted person he had ever met.

“You’re the one who cried. Can’t someone just have a bit of a cold?” The sharper Rong Qian’s tone, the more it betrayed how guilty she felt.

This was something Zhang Hao — despite having known her for quite some time — had never noticed. But if Shen Yi were present, he would have seen it at once: this was Rong Qian being stubborn and making excuses.

Zhang Hao assumed she was simply in a bad mood and decided not to push his luck any further.

Rong Qian settled into her seat and was just about to eat when the corner of her eye caught something — an elderly man in a traditional Chinese-style jacket, walking with a cane, making his way out of the hotel.

As he left, he glanced back to the left and right, as if checking that no one was following him, before walking away with relief.

Rong Qian’s pupils went wide in an instant. She shot to her feet and called out: “Mu Chaoxue!”

“What? What?” Lu Huayi nearly jumped out of his skin and looked around in confusion.

Without waiting for any of them to react, Rong Qian snatched up her bag and broke into a swift stride in pursuit.

But the moment she stepped out the hotel entrance, a cargo truck came bearing straight at her — its horn blaring and piercing. Rong Qian could easily have stepped aside. But she didn’t. She stood where she was and closed her eyes.

Because there was someone — someone she wanted to see so badly, she would have risked her life for it.