The atmosphere instantly froze.
The casual smile on Jiang Haoze’s face stiffened the moment he clearly saw who had arrived.
…Why was it Yu Qinzhou? Why was he at the entrance of the eighth-floor emergency passage?
Countless questions scrambled in Jiang Haoze’s mind, colliding and forming a truth he refused to accept. His uncertain and probing gaze fell on Mingqi, who was half-hidden behind Yu Qinzhou, only revealing a pale forehead.
Mingqi’s slender fingers tightly gripped Yu Qinzhou’s shirt. Feeling the lingering warmth at his wrist and smelling the familiar woody scent on Yu Qinzhou’s body, the heart that had nearly jumped out of his throat finally began to settle back into place.
As if sensing his intense unease, the man lowered his brows. His gaze swept over the fingers that had turned white from force, and without a word, he raised his hand and held them. His fingers forcefully interlaced, using the warmth of his palm to give Mingqi more reassurance.
Jiang Haoze did not miss their small movements. His already stiff face now looked as if it had been covered in a thick layer of frost. At a glance, his expression was worse than a dead man who had been gone for three days.
He had never imagined that Mingqi would latch onto Yu Qinzhou.
Wasn’t it said that Yu Qinzhou was ruthless, completely uninterested in romantic affairs?
So now… he had become Mingqi’s backing?
Cold sweat soaked through Jiang Haoze’s clothes. He opened his mouth soundlessly, trying to speak, but after a long struggle only a few unintelligible syllables came out.
“Yu… Yu Dong—”
“Mr. Jiang still hasn’t answered my question.” Yu Qinzhou slightly lifted his eyelids. “Who do you want to stop?”
“Bodyguard, I said bodyguard!” The moment Yu Qinzhou’s low voice fell into his ears, Jiang Haoze’s forehead broke out in cold sweat. He was so panicked he didn’t know what to say, even his tone turning exaggerated and unstable. “It was the bodyguard trying to do something to Ming Qi. I… I saw it on account of Ming Qi and I grew up together with him, so I had another bodyguard stop him. Yes, that’s it.”
Yu Qinzhou let out a soft laugh upon hearing this, the sound very light, like a passing breeze.
But Jiang Haoze only felt a bone-chilling cold sweep through him as that breeze brushed past.
He knew his words were absurd to the extreme, but right now in front of Yu Qinzhou, if he told the truth, Yu Qinzhou definitely would not let him go—
Just as that thought formed, Yu Qinzhou spoke again:
“I also heard that Young Mr. Jiang likes to act like a dog, crawling at people’s feet and barking?”
“What… what?” Jiang Haoze’s mind went blank for a second before he belatedly remembered why this sentence sounded familiar. He suddenly turned to look at the person behind Yu Qinzhou, only to see Yu Qinzhou gently holding Ming Qi’s hand, pulling him back to his side. His tone was careless. “Since that’s the case, Young Mr. Jiang should crawl to Qi-qi’s feet and bark a couple times for me to hear.”
What a joke!
How could he crawl to Ming Qi’s feet and bark like a dog?!
Jiang Haoze stepped forward abruptly, forcing a smile onto his face, trying to plead: “Director Yu, I think about this matter—”
Yu Qinzhou calmly interrupted him: “Young Mr. Jiang doesn’t like it?”
“I…”
“If Young Mr. Jiang doesn’t like it, I wonder if Mr. Jiang would like it.”
The blunt threat made Jiang Haoze’s expression even uglier. He opened his mouth, his throat rolling for a long moment, before finally forcing out: “No, I… I like it very much.”
Jiang Haoze was not stupid. He understood the implied meaning in Yu Qinzhou’s words. Today, if he obeyed Yu Qinzhou and acted like a dog, barking a couple times at Ming Qi’s feet, then this matter would end. But if he didn’t, what would follow would not only be his downfall, but also the Jiang family.
His face turned green and white, white and green, as he clenched his back teeth. His gaze landed on Ming Qi’s face, meeting those ink-black eyes. Humiliation in his heart grew like a deeply rooted bush, wildly expanding. After a few seconds of hesitation, under Yu Qinzhou and Ming Qi’s gaze, he suddenly knelt down with a thud. His forehead pressed against the cold floor tiles, eyes staring fixedly at the white floor. Veins of blood slowly surfaced in his eyes, covering overwhelming hatred. He opened his mouth:
“Woof.”
When Meng She rushed out of the elevator in a hurry, this was the scene he saw. For some reason, he subconsciously took out his phone and turned on video recording—
Just, purely the normal mindset of a Chinese person: “don’t panic in any situation, first record a video and post it to Moments.”
After putting away his phone, he quickly ran to Ming Qi’s side. He didn’t dare to reach out, just circled around him anxiously. “Are you okay? I was locked in the bathroom, damn it—if I wasn’t good at climbing out, I’d still be stuck in the stall right now.”
When he heard strange noises outside earlier, he already sensed something was wrong. After finally resolving his stomach issues and pushing the door open, he found it couldn’t be opened no matter what. In those short seconds, many thoughts flashed through his mind, and when the name “Fang Qing” appeared, his expression changed drastically.
He couldn’t break the door, so he could only climb up using the stall’s handrails.
The moment he got out, he saw the door lock jammed shut. He didn’t dare delay, immediately called Ming Qi—but the call was always busy. Frustrated, he ran straight to the elevator.
When he reached the elevator entrance, he heard Kuju staff nearby muttering: “Finally moved, what are they doing on the eighth floor?”
The moment Meng She rushed into the elevator, he seemed to realize something and immediately pressed the button for the eighth floor.
Sure enough, when he came out, he saw Ming Qi and Yu Qinzhou.
Ming Qi noticed Meng She’s sweaty forehead and his habit of repeatedly wiping his palm against his clothes, and his heart softened slightly. He gently reassured him, “Brother Meng, I’m fine.”
Meng She guessed Yu Qinzhou must have arrived in time. He let out a breath of relief, finally calming his wildly beating heart.
Then he looked at the man lying on the ground, and felt an urge to step on him.
Damn it, scum.
…
West Scenic Bay.
When Meng She climbed out of the stall, he twisted his ankle. His ankle was now badly swollen, and a doctor from the Yu family was applying a cold compress. He hissed in pain while opening the recorded video, still unable to resist asking: “What exactly is going on with Jiang Haoze?”
Ming Qi was sitting in front of the sofa, his gaze drifting toward the second floor. After returning to West Scenic Bay, Yu Qinzhou had gone into the study not long after, seemingly busy with something. He came back to his senses and briefly explained his grievance with Jiang Haoze. Although there wasn’t much background detail, Meng She still understood what he meant.
“So Yu Deyu also had a problem when he came to you.”
Ming Qi paused, then quietly said, “Actually, it wasn’t only Yu Deyu. The director of The World Conquest was the same. He gave the same room card to Jiang Haoze and to me.”
Bang!
Meng She slammed his palm hard onto the glass table. The word “beast” hadn’t even come out before he cried out in pain from his own hand.
Ming Qi: “……”
Doctor: “……”
The doctor politely reminded him, “Mr. Meng, please hit more lightly. Your hand can also get fractured.”
Cold sweat started forming on Meng She’s forehead again. He opened his mouth and let out a weak breath, his face pale from pain. “Doctor, I think it might already be fractured.”
Doctor: “……” That’s not quite that dramatic.
Seeing this, Cen Jing placed the fruit tray on the table with a smile and asked gently, “Mr. Meng is not convenient with his legs and feet. How about staying at West Scenic Bay for a couple of days to recover? What do you think?”
Meng She looked at his own foot, somewhat hesitant. “Wouldn’t I be a third wheel here?”
Cen Jing was very calm: “You can sleep in the building next door.”
That was true.
Meng She followed along and calmed down.
After dealing with the problem on his ankle, his hand had also recovered. Meng She glanced at Ming Qi: “In just those ten minutes, you looked toward the second floor more than ten times. If you want to go up, then go up. It’s not like I’ve got anything serious going on here.”
Ming Qi felt embarrassed from being called out, even his ears turned a little red, and could only say softly, “He’s busy in the study.”
Meng She responded with an “oh,” then suddenly narrowed his eyes and hooked his finger at Ming Qi.
Ming Qi looked at his mysterious behavior with suspicion. It seemed like he had something important to say, so he leaned over obediently and tilted his ear closer.
Meng She glanced around. There was no one left in the living room, but he still lowered his voice very quietly: “When Mr. Yu showed up today, did that kind of glow around him dazzle you? Did your little heart that’s never dated at all shake even a tiny bit?”
Ming Qi: “……”
Was that something that could be said?
But even if he didn’t say it, it didn’t matter.
Meng She knew him too well. One look at his expression and he understood his real thoughts, patting his shoulder with a look of “I understand everything,” full of meaning: “I get it, I get it.”
Ming Qi thought, what exactly are you getting, and was about to argue back a couple of stubborn words when Meng She poked him in the waist.
Meng She lifted his chin: “Your man is looking at you.”
Ming Qi followed his gaze and looked over. Yu Qinzou was standing at the steps on the second floor. Ming Qi subconsciously wanted to stand up, then glanced at Meng She. Meng She caught his look and smiled, saying, “I’ll go rest in the next house first. Remember to have Butler Cen send my dinner over tonight.”
He wasn’t going to interfere with the two of them having dinner together.
Ming Qi nodded obediently. After asking Cen Jing to help support Meng She away, he ran up to the steps, then looked up at him.
The two of them just looked at each other for a long while.
Ming Qi curved his eyes: “Are you done being busy?”
“Mm.”
“I still haven’t said thank you yet.”
Ming Qi understood clearly in his heart that if Yu Qinzou had not appeared in time today, he and Jiang Haoze would probably only have had one outcome—mutual destruction.
He had once said harsh words to Jiang Haoze, saying his life was cheap and he didn’t mind dragging Jiang Haoze to death with him. He hadn’t been joking, and he would never regret it. But Yu Qinzou’s appearance was no different from pulling him back from the edge of a cliff he was walking on. Even now, he could still recall the sense of security Yu Qinzou brought the moment he appeared.
“Qi Ming, you shouldn’t say thank you to me. You should blame me for not protecting you well.”
The man’s dark eyes looked at him, his brows and eyes no longer carrying their usual relaxed smile, instead showing a hint of heaviness.
Ming Qi’s smile slowly faded. He stood there in a daze, as if he hadn’t expected to hear such an answer from Yu Qinzou. He had thought that with Yu Qinzou’s personality, he would definitely tease him a couple of times—say something like “then do you want to repay me with your body.”
But there wasn’t.
Instead, it was self-blame for not protecting him well.
Ming Qi’s heart felt a little sour. He rubbed his fingers, and after a long while, softly said, “If you think like that, then you should blame me for never telling you about my conflict with Jiang Haoze, so you didn’t have any defense. But that way of thinking is wrong too. The only mistake belongs to Jiang Haoze, isn’t that right?”
He raised his smile again, changing the topic: “Honestly, I was really panicking at that time, and I was worried Jiang Haoze would discover I was secretly calling you. I didn’t dare to say things too clearly. When I came to my senses, I realized I didn’t even tell you the floor number. Did you come up one floor at a time?”
“When I entered the company building, only one of the six passenger elevators had stopped at the eighth floor and wasn’t moving. The others were all going upward.”
So that’s why.
Ming Qi seriously praised him: “You’re so smart.”
Probably because the way he praised him was too cute, the irritability that had built up since receiving Ming Qi’s call was completely gone at this moment. Yu Qinzou’s slightly cool fingers gently touched the young man’s soft cheek as he smiled and said, “How did it turn into you comforting me?”
“Then how was my comfort? What score would you give it?” Ming Qi asked with bright eyes, even specifically reminding him, “Out of one hundred.”
Yu Qinzou rubbed Ming Qi’s head and answered, “Full score. One hundred.”