Lin Qing followed Jiang Han into the car, and in the back seat the very first thing she did — without a moment’s delay — was hurl off her high heels!

After that, she removed the earrings that had nearly dragged her earlobes off, then her necklace, her bracelet, her rings — and finally, feeling it still wasn’t enough, she even pulled off the hairpiece she’d clipped in!

“Good heavens, I’m absolutely exhausted! One event like this is more draining than running a half-marathon,” Lin Qing gasped. “Now I understand why all those female celebrities are so thin — no food to eat, and constantly subjected to this kind of ‘heavy physical labour.’ Enough to run anyone ragged.”

Jiang Han gave a small smile and looked toward the road ahead: “Are you hungry?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” Lin Qing nodded her head like a woodpecker.

“There’s a noodle shop up ahead. Go in and eat. I’ll wait in the car,” Jiang Han said, eyes still on his phone. “And don’t eat garlic — I don’t want the car reeking of it when you get back.”

“Got it~!”

After demolishing a steaming-hot bowl of spicy pork noodles at the small shop, and wiping her mouth clean, Lin Qing felt genuinely happy.

On her way out, she thought for a moment, and asked the owner for a bowl of plain tossed noodles to bring back for Jiang Han.

Once they were back in the car, Jiang Han accepted the noodles from her — expressionless as ever — and set them to one side without a single word of thanks.

Right.

Twenty-eight yuan flung into the sea.

Lin Qing stared wearily out the window.

After a moment, she turned back to him: “President Jiang — you seem to have been in a rather bad mood since we left?”

In the dim light, Jiang Han glanced over at her.

“Is it because I spent too much tonight?!” Lin Qing sensibly began examining her own conscience. “Throwing out forty or fifty million in one evening really is going too far! If I were the boss, I’d be unhappy too. What are the people under me doing? A child you took in from outside can be disciplined when needed — but spending someone else’s money like it costs nothing. Hey! It’s all my fault! I should have been more restrained! Spent a bit less! Jiang Han, I think since I started ‘pretending to be your girlfriend,’ I’ve become a bit… inflated…”

Lin Qing rambled on to herself, and hearing no response from Jiang Han, she turned her head — and found Jiang Han eating his noodles.

He hadn’t been listening at all.

How on earth did Jiang Han manage to eat noodles without making a single slurping sound, and yet make it look so elegant?

Twenty-eight yuan worth of noodles instantly looked like fine dining.

Lin Qing stared, transfixed.

Even eating a bowl of plain tossed noodles, the overbearing president made it feel like a Michelin experience.

He should start a food vlog — he’d be the undisputed traffic king.

“That’s nothing,” Jiang Han said, closing the takeaway box. “If you want to make more of an impression, I could donate a building to your university.”

“That’s far too excessive,” Lin Qing waved her hands frantically.

After a quiet moment, she asked: “President Jiang, I genuinely don’t quite understand — why are we doing all of this?”

“If even you could figure it out, what would be the point of all my effort?” Jiang Han reached out and asked Lin Qing for the garlic.

“I thought you said not to eat garlic, so I forgot to ask the owner to add it!”

“Docked half a month’s pay.”

“I—” (omitting ten thousand words of profanity)

Back at the large apartment.

Jiang Han, as though nothing had happened, washed up and went to bed.

Lin Qing, unable to make sense of it all, shut herself in the study in front of the computer.

She went over Sansheng’s quarterly performance report and the balance in the corporate accounts again and again. If things continued at this rate for much longer, the finances would certainly fall short of expenses.

Once the evening market opened, she also had to continue systematically buying into stainless steel 2589, according to the model she’d revised during the day.

Did all wealthy people truly live this way — hollow bravado barely holding together a crumbling foundation?

For reasons still unknown, Sansheng’s bank loan had consistently failed to come through.

Ling Xue was hemorrhaging money with every passing second, in ways that were visibly apparent.

Looking at all these negative figures, Lin Qing was on the verge of a breakdown.

She didn’t want Jiang Han to go under.

So she forced herself to calm down.

Drawing on all the Sansheng materials she had access to, Lin Qing worked through the night on a restructuring proposal, intending to hand it to Jiang Han first thing in the morning.

……

Liang Meng and Lu Zhou returned to the apartment.

Lin Qing’s mother had already received their call on the way.

Two piping-hot bowls of egg and vegetable noodle soup were on the table the moment they walked in the door.

“Come, come, come — eat while it’s hot!”

Lin Qing’s mother bustled warmly, in and out of the kitchen, pouring tea for Liang Meng, cutting fruit, fetching yoghurt.

Once the three of them settled at the table, Lin Qing’s mother asked with concern: “You must be exhausted. Did you manage to get anything at that auction tonight?”

Liang Meng twirled up a chopstickful of noodles and said offhandedly: “We didn’t get anything. But Lin Qing and Jiang Han bought tens of millions worth of jewellery.”

“What?!”

Lin Qing’s mother shot to her feet in a single leap — as though launched by a spring hidden in her seat.

“Tens of millions?!”

If she hadn’t taken her medication that morning, this number alone might have been enough to trigger a cardiac episode.

Liang Meng nodded.

Lin Qing’s mother, in all her heartbroken fury at her daughter’s failings, paced back and forth across the living room!

“She’s ridden the high life for a day and already thinks she’s above the dust! Still not full yet? Already learning to live in extravagance and waste! What can’t you do with tens of millions? Buy a flat, buy a car! Even donating it to build a rural school would be something! The moment she gets a bit of money, look at her burning through it! Over a decade of schooling, and it all went straight down the drain! How did I manage to give birth to such a useless wretch!”

Lin Qing’s mother ranted at length, still unsatisfied, then sat back down at the table and, turning to Lu Zhou who was eating his noodles, launched into a new torrent.

“Lu Zhou! Auntie is genuinely happy for you! Really! Lin Qing is just no good! A gold-digger! Rotten character through and through! If she weren’t my own flesh and blood, someone like her should be taken out and shot! And if not shot, then life in prison! Thank goodness you two never got together back then — otherwise Auntie would have given birth to something like her and dragged you right down with her! Now she’s gone and taken up with that Jiang Han person… good! Fine! A rotten match for a rotten one — two dogs paired together! Let Lin Qing do as she pleases! If she manages to bankrupt that Jiang Han, all the better! A willing victim, a willing thrill-seeker — who needs to interfere! At least they’re not out there harming decent people!”

Lu Zhou, listening to all of this, was so mortified he looked ready to bury his face in his noodle bowl.

The few times he raised his head, it was to cast desperate, rescue-me glances at Liang Meng.

Liang Meng ate her noodles in serene contentment, listening as though to a stand-up comedy routine, perfectly content to let Lin Qing’s mother carry on.

“Lu Zhou, Auntie was actually quite fond of you, really! What a fine young man — accomplished, and a good person too! If you could have been my son-in-law, I tell you — not just our family, but my ancestors going back eighteen generations would have been grateful to you!”

“Ha!”

Liang Meng couldn’t contain herself and burst out laughing — nearly sending noodles shooting out her nose.

Lin Qing’s mother hurriedly passed her a napkin, still talking all the while: “Lin Qing doesn’t know what’s good for her! Good riddance! She released you! Auntie will say it plainly: I think you and Liang Meng would make a wonderful pair! Talented and handsome together with accomplished and beautiful — a match made in heaven! Liang Meng, for all that she’s a female company president, she’s completely without airs, and her upbringing is impeccable. And most importantly — she’s gorgeous! She has everything going for her — so much more than that flat-chested Lin Qing!”

“Ha!”

Now it was Lu Zhou’s turn to nearly send noodles through his nose.

Liang Meng had been bone-tired from the evening’s events, her head heavy and her feet unsteady — but Lin Qing’s mother’s extraordinary, unprompted, freewheeling declaration dispelled her exhaustion in an instant!

This was more entertaining than stand-up comedy.

Liang Meng said with a laugh: “Lin Qing’s mom, that’s enough. If you keep going, in your telling, Lin Qing barely even qualifies as a human being! However you feel about her, she’s still your own daughter…”

As she spoke, Liang Meng patted Lin Qing’s mother’s arm and reminded her: “Her blood runs in your veins too, you know!”

“The umbilical cord was cut long ago.” Lin Qing’s mother was having none of it.

“Hey — Lu Zhou, let Auntie ask you: do you like Liang Meng?”

Lin Qing’s mother, getting more animated by the moment, showed no signs of stopping.

At this question, both Liang Meng and Lu Zhou were equally mortified.

Even through her stockings, Liang Meng’s toes were curling hard enough to bore three rooms and a living room into the floor.

Lu Zhou focused intently on his last few strands of noodles and tried to sound composed: “Lin Qing’s mom, if you haven’t got anything else to say, you should turn in early. We’re both exhausted too.”

After the meal, Lin Qing’s mother gathered the dishes and headed into the kitchen.

Lu Zhou and Liang Meng made their way to the balcony.

The night was deep and dark, but the city’s lights still sparkled brilliantly.

“After everything that happened tonight — I don’t know if Wang Xiancheng will still agree to the brand licensing arrangement,” Liang Meng said, feeling uncertain.

“I think it’ll be fine!” Lu Zhou, by contrast, was entirely calm and unruffled. His fingers interlaced, he spoke with quiet confidence. “These two things are separate matters. Tonight you’ve also made a clean break with Wang Zaiwu — he’d be happy to deal with you on strictly professional terms going forward.”

“I hope so…” Liang Meng looked out into the distance.

“By the way — starting tomorrow, I’m heading to Sanya for closed-door training. The touring open competition is in a month, and I need to find my form,” Lu Zhou said.

“All right,” Liang Meng nodded, somewhat absently.

“Don’t worry — during that period, whatever difficulty you run into, all it takes is one call from you and I’ll come straight back. Fortunately, the competition is in Sanya, so at least there’s no visa trouble,” he said.

“Thank you, Lu Zhou.” Liang Meng was genuinely worn out by now. She turned to go back to her room. “It should be fine — nothing will come up.”

……

At the Jiujian Villa.

Wang Tai sat in the passenger car and couldn’t bring herself to get out.

She sat in the car, hesitating and turning things over in her mind, still not sure how to explain the evening’s events to Wang Xiancheng.

Wang Zaiwu, on the other hand — despite having suffered such a significant blow tonight, his “girlfriend” whisked away by another man right in front of him, his dignity ground into the pavement — appeared completely unperturbed.

The moment they were in the car, his phone pinged with the game music from Honor of Kings.

Wang Zaiwu was entirely unbothered.

Head on or backing down — either way, the blade would fall. There was nothing to be gained by cowering.

Wang Tai had failed to complete the task Wang Xiancheng had entrusted to her. There was no hiding from it. She would have to face him.

“You’re back?”

Wang Xiancheng had already bathed and changed into his sleeping clothes, and was sitting up in bed scrolling through his phone.

“Yes.”

Wang Tai dragged her aching legs toward the vanity table out of habit, intending to remove her makeup.

Looking at the empty corner, she remembered — a month ago, her husband had found her irritating and moved the vanity table into the dressing room.

Wang Tai sighed and had no choice but to stand in place as she removed her earrings and necklace.

“Did you get the piece?” Wang Xiancheng asked absently.

“Don’t even ask.” Wang Tai made a great effort to explain: “Tonight was just fated to go wrong. Liang Xing bought it.”

“Liang Xing?”

Wang Xiancheng looked up and set his phone to one side.

“That’s exactly what I said. Liang Xing was never one to spend lavishly — you never used to see her buying jewellery. Even her Birkins are all in plain leather…”

Before Wang Tai could finish, Wang Xiancheng’s voice cut through, sharp and quiet: “Who else was there tonight?”

“Jiang Han was there — brought a little secretary! In her early twenties, not a day over that, all coquettish and showing off — absolutely no class! These men are always so easily bewitched by the young…”

“Did he buy anything?” Wang Xiancheng asked.

Wang Tai: “Of course he did. He didn’t come empty-handed. He came with a woman, so he had to make a show of it, didn’t he? Spent several thousand, or something like that.”

“Several thousand?”

Wang Xiancheng heard this and his brow furrowed.

“What’s a few thousand worth?” Wang Tai rattled on. “Compared to what Liang Xing spent tonight, it’s a drop in the ocean. Wang, you should know—”

Wang Tai simply sat herself down on the edge of the bed facing him and lowered her voice in astonishment: “Ever since Liang Xing walked away with one billion from you, she seems to have lost all sense of reality — acting as though she’s genuinely in the top tier of the wealthy. Tonight she just kept raising her paddle without stopping, competing against me for Porta’s set of brooches! Every time I raised, she raised — as though she was deliberately going against me…”

Wang Xiancheng disliked talking to women. He simply found their manner of speaking — circuitous, trivial, indiscriminate — insufferable.

A perfectly good piece of information, passed through a woman’s lips, came out as though chewed to pieces — deflecting left and right, without a clear point anywhere.

“How much did the hammer fall at?” he asked.

Wang Xiancheng was already thoroughly displeased that Wang Tai had failed to bring the Porta brooch home. He didn’t need to conceal it.

“A little over three hundred million.”

Wang Tai knew she was in the wrong, and confessed it helplessly.

Wang Xiancheng sank into thought.