The young man had a tall, slender physique that completely shielded the girl behind him. The woman yanked her own arm free and kicked at him, but Xiao She neatly sidestepped her blow.
The woman kicked the resting bench with full force, only to be thrown backward by her own momentum. She stumbled back several steps right into her husband’s arms. Once she regained her footing, she crouched down, wincing in pain as she rubbed her ankle. Seeing a shop assistant approach to help her, she shoved the assistant away in a fit of rage: “Are you trying to kill me?! What on earth are you placing around this store? And what kind of manners do your customers have?!”
The shop assistant’s lower leg slammed hard against the glass tea table. Xiao caught her just in time to steady her, letting her stand up while limping. She looked over with a complicated expression, which only incensed the woman even further: “What are you staring at?! Don’t you know how to call the police?!”
Upon hearing this, Chen Pengyu tightened her grip on Xiao She’s sleeve, her face turning pale. She had snuck out to play under the guise of being with Liang Yingying. If her family found out she had encountered something like this, she would never, ever be allowed to go out on her own again.
Xiao seemed completely unfazed by the young girl crumpling his sleeve. He merely raised his eyebrows slightly and repeated, “Call the police?”
The woman instantly raised her eyebrows and shrieked at the top of her lungs, “That’s right! I’m suing you for intentional assault! And your sister, her hands and feet are filthy, stealing things!”
Xiao examined the woman in front of him with a puzzled expression. “No way,” he muttered to himself. “Are idiots distributed equally across all worlds?”
The woman only understood the first part of his sentence, but that didn’t stop her from whipping out her phone. “Keep talking. Go ahead, keep talking! Let’s see what other filth your little brat mouth can spew.”
Xiao tilted his head, pulled out his own phone, and aimed it right back at her, offering a faint smile: “Right back at you.”
The woman spat in disgust and held her phone steady. She was in video recording mode; from the moment she was knocked back, she had swiftly pulled the phone from her pocket to record. Her actions were practiced and expert. The entire screen was now filled with the handsome, clear-cut profile of the young man.
The young man in the camera lens pointed his phone back at her for a moment before placing it aside as if bored, turning back to softly comfort the girl hiding behind him.
The woman clamored, “Call them! Why aren’t you calling them now? Weren’t you acting all tough when you pushed me just now?”
Hearing this, the young man conversing with the little girl merely cast a cold, indifferent glance at the camera before turning back to talk to Chen Pengyu.
“Tired after following me for so long? Want me to find a driver to take you back?”
Chen Pengyu shook her head, her lips barely moving as she spoke.
The System said anxiously: ‘Host, you have to send her back! Otherwise, when Liang Mu arrives later, the task will be forcefully triggered!’
Seeing Xiao She ignore it, the System turned up its volume: ‘HOST!!’
Xiao She mentally signaled a “hush,” leaned in close to the girl’s ear, listened for a moment, and then looked up to ask her: “You don’t want to call the police?”
“I don’t want my family to know,” Chen Pengyu said in a tiny voice. “If they find out, I won’t be able to sneak out next time.”
Xiao, she said, “Then you should communicate properly with your family, instead of sneaking out on your own.”
“I wasn’t by myself… Yingying came with me…”
“And where is she?” Xiao She’s voice remained very gentle, leaving Chen Pengyu speechless.
He let out a sigh, reached out, and began smoothing out the girl’s sleeve that had been wrinkled from being grabbed. He lowered his head and focused on the task at hand with meticulous care. Once the garment looked neat and presentable again, he continued, “You see, accidents happen, don’t they?”
Chen Pengyu kept her head down and let out a quiet “Mm.” Xiao turned his back to the woman and squatted down, looking up at the girl.
Chen Pengyu was only in middle school, looking remarkably like his sister from his original world, except this girl was far better behaved. Xiao, she pondered for a moment and said to her, “Go back and talk it over properly with your family. If that doesn’t work, have Liang Yingying come find me…”
The moment those words left his mouth, he suddenly recalled the original body owner’s reputation and family background. His expression froze, and he let out a light cough to correct himself: “Uh… on second thought, go to Liang Mu instead. He’s much more reliable.”
Chen Pengyu looked slightly puzzled: “Why can you make decisions for him? Are you and Brother Liang Mu on good terms?”
“No,” Xiao She denied flatly. “Didn’t Liang Yingying tell you? We despise each other.”
Chen Pengyu gave an “Oh.” She stared at Xiao She’s expression for a moment before suddenly asking, “Do you like Brother Liang Mu?”
Xiao She blurted out instinctively, “No, I appreciate him.”
Ever since reading the novel, he had greatly appreciated the character. He had never seen a male lead with so much charm, composure, forbearance, and outstanding qualities. After transmigrating into the book and meeting the real person, his interest in interacting with him only grew.
Xiao snapped back to reality, realizing what he had just answered, and awkwardly tried to pull the topic back:
“Anyway,” he said, “you can’t expect your family to fly all the way here to get justice for you, right?”
“Well… that’s not impossible.”
Xiao pointed to the woman behind him: “With a shrew like this, what can you do? Have your family suppress her, isolate her, and bankrupt her business?”
Chen Pengyu: “Would… wouldn’t that be a bit too much…”
Xiao said, “It wouldn’t, but suppressing them might be much harder than you imagine.”
Chen Pengyu opened her eyes wide in disbelief, refusing to believe that someone like this could be a secret billionaire. Xiao, she spread his hands: “After all, this kind of suppression requires tracking them all the way down to the bottom tier. But saying it like that feels a bit insulting to working-class people. Long story short, it’s time-consuming and laborious.”
“Who do you think you are?! You shameless little brat!” The woman screamed in rage upon hearing his words. “Let’s see if you can actually get me locked up! Try it if you dare!”
“So, let’s grant her wish.” Xiao treated her words like wind blowing past his ears. With his back to the woman, he lazily pulled out his phone, showing an active emergency call already in progress: “We’re going to let her stay in the detention center so she can properly reflect on her mistakes.”
By the time Liang Yingying made her way upstairs, the police car had already driven off with the people inside. Xiao stood lazily by the entrance. Seeing her approach in a furious rush, he finally lifted his eyelids: “You’re here?”
He added, “Chen Pengyu asked me to tell you that she went home first.”
Standing at the bottom of the steps, Liang Yingying practically screamed, “What did you do to her?!”
Her high pitch gave Xiao She a sharp pang in his head. Waking up from his slight drowsiness, his eyebrows twitched, and he covered his ears, unable to tolerate it: “How does your brother put up with you?”
“My brother dotes on me!” Liang Yingying snapped. “So what did you do to Pengyu?! If you don’t explain yourself right now, I’ll definitely have my brother teach you a lesson!”
Xiao, she burst out laughing. “Teach me a lesson how?”
“By throwing you back to the Xiao family!” Liang Yingying gritted her teeth. “I know you’re just an illegitimate child. Let me tell you, my brother hates illegitimate children too, especially self-unaware ones like you!”
Liang Yingying deliberately emphasized the words “hates the most.” Xiao kept his smile intact. Walking down the steps, he patted the wrinkled edge of his clothes and pressed on as if he hadn’t heard her insult: “What else?”
Liang Yingying choked on her words for a moment: “And… and! Have him suppress the Xiao family! And support your older brother right to your face!”
“Revoke all collaborations with you, and the invitations too! You won’t even get an invitation this time.”
Xiao tilted his head: “So he actually prepared an invitation for me.”
Liang Yingying blew her top: “That’s not the point!”
“The point is, you’re much fiercer than Chen Pengyu.” Xiao interrupted her, nodding as he listened. “Your family really raises tough people. Both you and your brother.”
Liang Yingying inexplicably felt like she was being mocked. Her face darkened even more, and just as she was about to speak again, Xiao She turned away, ignoring her. He said calmly, “Assistant Feng, don’t you need to take Miss Liang home?”
Assistant Feng gauged his expression and answered cautiously, “…Uh, yes.”
!!!
She had snuck out to play with great difficulty too!
Liang Yingying instantly widened her eyes and demanded, “Brother Feng, why are you listening to him!” She grabbed Assistant Feng’s arm. “Brother Feng receives his salary from the Liang family!”
Assistant Feng: …Thanks for the reminder, but I’d like to stay alive.
Xiao She turned to glance at her. His gaze made Liang Yingying instinctively shrink her neck behind Assistant Feng. Once she caught herself, she immediately thrust her head out again and demanded, “What? Did I say something wrong?”
“I didn’t expect you to act so recklessly, show zero responsibility toward your friend, and not even reflect on it,” Xiao She said, shaking his head. “You used her as an excuse to come out and play, but you didn’t take care of her. If something terrible had actually happened to her, causing a feud between the Liang and Chen families, could you take responsibility for that? What would happen to her?”
“Pfft, pfft, pfft!” Liang Yingying’s expression turned awful. “What are you talking about? How can you curse someone like that!”
Xiao She didn’t expect to reason with a spoiled young lady like her. Turning back to Assistant Feng, he added, “After you drop her off, please tell Liang Mu that I’ll be waiting for him at the coffee shop on this floor.”
“Understood.”
Liang Yingying shouted, “Did you even listen to a word I said?!”
“Oh, yes.” Xiao She turned around, looked down at the girl who barely reached his shoulders, and let out a smug, playful smirk: “Even if you’re lucky and none of what I said comes to pass…”
He enunciated every word clearly: “…your brother still has to listen to me.”
Liang Yingying yelled, “YOU’RE FULL OF SHIT!”
Inside the shop, Xiao She leaned back in his seat, scrolling through his phone, a newly purchased birthday gift resting by his feet. An unignorable gaze stared at him from the side.
Xiao She watched Liang Mu stride over from the opposite side. Seeing Xiao She, Liang Mu slowed his pace and, finally, without a shred of self-awareness, hid behind a pillar.
Helpless, Xiao She put down his phone and looked up. The two exchanged glances through the glass window, instantly awakening Liang Mu’s memory from a few hours prior.
Liang Mu’s expression darkened, his handsome brows slowly knitting together before he turned around to walk away.
Xiao She’s eyes followed the moving figure until Liang Mu vanished from his field of view. Propping his face up with a hand, Xiao She sighed: “What a terrible temper.”
Without any self-awareness, he complained to the Little Ball in his mind: “The original body owner offended him so thoroughly. What am I supposed to do?”
Little Ball: ‘?’ Do you have some kind of misunderstanding?
“Who are you calling bad-tempered?”
A cold question came from behind, interrupting the conversation between the human and the system ball.
Xiao was startled. Turning around, he saw the tall, imposing figure of Liang Mu standing behind him, his beautifully shaped eyes looking down at him from above: “Where did you pop out from?!”
Liang Mu placed one hand on the table, pushing aside the small pile of shopping bags cluttering half the surface. He leaned down and repeated, “Who did you say has a bad temper?”
Xiao She’s eyes flickered guiltily for a moment, and he shifted inward to make room: “Want to sit?”
Liang Mu pulled his hand back with a cold snort. He noticed that Xiao She had become remarkably lazy lately; he used to visit the gym four or five times a week, but now he seemed desperate to find a place to sit down wherever he went.
He rejected the offer: “No need. I don’t have that kind of leisure time.” Seeing Xiao She’s slightly bewildered eyes, he added, “The leisure time to scroll through a phone in a coffee shop.”
“Oh,” Xiao She said. “Yet you have the time to peek at me from the side.”
Liang Mu was choked up by his words. He simply pulled out a red invitation card, placed it on the table, and pushed it over to him.
The cover of the card was understated and elegant. Xiao didn’t touch it, his hand idly playing with the coaster in front of him: “What’s this?”
He didn’t realize how rogue-like his current posture was, carrying a hint of a spoiled young master’s temperament. Fortunately, Liang Mu was accustomed to his bossiness and even opened the card for him. Inside were Xiao She’s name along with the specific time and location of the evening banquet.
Xiao She paused. Remembering Liang Yingying’s words, his fidgeting stopped: “An invitation?”
“What else did you think it was?” Liang Mu replied. He tried to close it back up, but Xiao She stopped him.
The young man leaned his fluffy head close, carefully inspecting the invitation card from top to bottom before precisely tucking it away. He looked up and said, “This calligraphy is beautiful. Did your grandfather hire someone to write it?”
The inner pages of the invitation had a dark background, and the handwriting on it was smooth, powerful, elegant, and forceful, clearly the work of someone who had practiced the craft for many years.
How could grandfather bother writing an invitation intended for Liang Mu?
Liang Mu’s lowered long eyelashes fluttered twice: “You don’t know?”
Xiao She felt a strange sense of familiarity with that phrasing and tentatively asked, “…Should I know?”
Liang Mu didn’t take the bait, changing the subject instead: “Assistant Feng said you ran into Yingying.”
Xiao She dropped the topic as well, nodding honestly: “So bossy.”
He spoke bluntly, but Liang Mu didn’t think there was anything wrong with that; she was, after all, the spoiled young daughter of the family. Liang Mu merely said, “Don’t hold a grudge against her.”
Xiao paused mid-sip of his coffee. Those words sounded inexplicably familiar. He looked over: “What do you mean?”
Liang Mu didn’t look back at him, his gaze fixing on the floor-to-ceiling window directly opposite them instead. He seemed to search for his words for a moment before saying, “Yingying is indeed a bit senseless…”
Great.
Xiao She waved his hand to signal that he didn’t need to continue, a sour expression on his face. But he had nothing else to say; after all, the original body owner’s character was right there. He said, “Rest assured…”
As Xiao She spoke, his gaze followed Liang Mu’s eyes out the window, catching sight of the gloomy, overcast sky outside. His voice suddenly froze.
?
Wasn’t it sunny just a moment ago?
Xiao felt a sudden shudder in his heart. He hurriedly checked the name of the coffee shop printed on his cup. Upon reading it clearly, he was even more shocked.
Isn’t this… isn’t this the coffee shop where the cannon fodder drags the protagonist down with him in a final desperate attempt near the end of the story, making an appointment to meet Liang Mu??
Back then, the original owner used his final authority to request a new host assignment. After Liang Mu discovered this, a negotiation took place where Liang Mu agreed to give up half his authority if the original owner abandoned the idea.
And then neither of them kept their promise, both turning around, wishing to kill the other, playing the readers for fools.
This was clearly an easter egg plot released by the trash author on Weibo!
Xiao She whipped his head around to look at Liang Mu, only to find that Liang Mu had already turned back and was staring intently at him.
Outside the window, dark clouds churned and gathered, finally condensing into a loud clap of thunder followed by a pouring rainstorm. The dim lighting cast over Liang Mu’s almost still profile, as if he were waiting for Xiao She to finish his sentence.
Xiao She tentatively said, “…After all, you and I haven’t had enough fun yet. Why would I switch to someone else?”
Liang Mu’s expression remained unchanged, his side profile in the dim light looking like the glass ornament next to Xiao She’s hand, pretty and clean, just waiting to fall to the ground with a wave of Xiao She’s hand.
He didn’t look like he held any murderous intent toward the original owner at all.
“That’s good then.”
Xiao She heard Liang Mu’s voice turn hoarse:
“I hope you keep your word.”
??
Xiao She’s eyes gradually widened.
Bro, you really skipped chapters!