Things moved forward smoothly. The hacker took the money and did the work without a trace, creating a new identity for Du Lai:

A gardener employed by a professional domestic services company.

Five years of experience. Hardworking and dependable. Good conduct. Healthy. Available at short notice. Fluent in English.

As for Du Lai’s shifu and the others, they took on the roles of agency owner and staff.

The Fu family had a long-standing business relationship with this agency. Many of the staff working in the estate had been referred through them, so even if something went wrong down the line, the Fu family could only trace it back to the agency—and only by digging deeper would they discover that the agency’s system had been tampered with from the inside, all of it fabricated.

Whether Fu Lisheng would take that out on the real agency was not something Du Lai or his shifu had considered within their scope of concern.

Everything fell into place. They managed to place two people inside: one gardener, one dishwasher.

Neither was positioned anywhere near Fu Lisheng’s quarters.

The gardener had a slight advantage over the dishwasher. At least he could move around the garden freely. The dishwasher only had to stray too far from the kitchen to draw suspicion.

The servants who provided close personal service to the Fu family were all Fu family insiders, so even with two people planted inside the estate, there was no guarantee they could get what the others wanted to steal.

Ultimately, Du Lai would have to act on his own judgment.

Which suited him fine, since his purpose was never really about the job. He simply wanted to see how Fu Miaoxue was doing.

See her once. Then leave.

Right.

Just leave.

The Fu family’s garden was enormous. There were several gardeners, each assigned their own section—the fountains, the pavilions, the walkways, the rose garden, the lawn, and so on.

Du Lai was assigned to trim the trees. The supervisor told him the trees in the southeast corner were off-limits—that section had been arranged by the young mistress herself, and even a single extra leaf trimmed could set her off.

Du Lai thought: this madwoman actually has some refined taste. It seems she’s been living well enough since returning home. He’d worried for nothing.

He put on glasses and a mask, pressed his work cap low over his brow, then took hold of the equipment cart and moved along trimming branches, unhurried, making his way toward the southeast corner.

Almost every ten meters or so, he passed a patrolling guard. And this was only the garden. Once inside the building, who knew how many more there would be.

Du Lai quietly memorized the patrol routes as he moved forward. Then two guards stepped into his path and stopped him.

“No trimming needed up ahead.”

Du Lai paused and nodded cooperatively, then turned and made his way back.

He deliberately slowed his steps and caught the exchange between the two guards behind him:

“Lucky I got the early shift today. The mosquitoes on the night shift in this section would eat me alive.”

“Can’t help it. Our young mistress has been in her ‘back to nature’ phase lately…”

Du Lai pushed the cart further away, around a corner, and seeing no one nearby, nimbly pulled himself up into a tree. From the height, he finally had a clear view of the southeast corner.

He was stunned.

Fu Miaoxue must have lost her mind completely—she had somehow brought the bamboo hut from the island back with her.

The shock hit him first, and then came the sheer absurdity of it. The ridiculousness. The impossible, baffling nature of what he was seeing.

Their little bamboo hut had been built half against a large boulder on the island—and Fu Miaoxue hadn’t left that boulder behind either. It sat embedded in the garden, precisely positioned, with several tropical trees from the island transplanted around it.

Was all this really necessary?

He was thoroughly speechless.

Even now that he himself had assets in the hundreds of millions, he still could not fathom what possible reason there was to haul a rock and a bamboo hut halfway across the world on a crane and a cargo ship.

Thud!

Something landed heavily on his shoulder—and nearly scared him out of the tree.

He twisted to look—a monkey had leapt up and was sitting squarely on him, perfectly at ease.

Du Lai exhaled, half exasperated and half amused, and said to the monkey, “Alice—I dressed up like this and you still recognized me?”

The monkey chittered.

Du Lai sighed. “Well. I wonder if she’ll recognize me too…”