People's hospital, emergency treatment room.
“Quick, call someone from obstetrics for a consultation. A pregnant woman who attempted suicide is about to give birth!”
Su Jingsheng was hazily conscious but unable to wake up. Her ears were filled with a cacophony of noise. She vaguely remembered that she had been talking to Su Yuning. Before she could finish speaking, Su Yuning had shoved her hard. Behind her was the clear water of Misty Rain Lake. The icy water surged over her, and she was almost about to lose consciousness.
The next time she became somewhat conscious was when she heard that cry.
Su Jingsheng abruptly opened her eyes. A violent pain surged through her, and she let out a short scream.
“The baby’s out, the baby’s out. It’s a little girl.”
..The child was born?
..
At the president's office of the Tianfeng Consortium, the assistant pushed open the door and entered.
A tall, slender figure stood beside the window, wearing only a white shirt with his tie slightly loosened. It outlined the perfect lines of the man’s neck and made his handsome face even more captivating.
Lu Qingyu held a slender cigarette between his fingertips and stood there casually, as though he were an exquisite magazine illustration.
“President Lu, I heard that woman attempted suicide by jumping into the lake. She’s currently being treated at People's hospital.”
“Would you... like to go take a look?”
The assistant cautiously handed over the materials he had just organized and glanced up at the man’s expression.
Lu Qingyu’s slender fingers flipped through two pages of the documents. His tone was cold and distant, but what he asked was—
“Is everything ready for this afternoon’s acquisition council meeting?”
The assistant hurriedly nodded.
Lu Qingyu reached out and closed the documents, then picked up his suit from the office chair before walking toward the door.
The man’s voice was cold, but it held no discernible emotion.
“Confirm the contract once more. I’ll be back shortly.”
..
In the third floor hospital room, Su Jingsheng endured the pain and sat up, looking at the soft, chubby little child beside her.
She could not explain what she felt in her heart. She simply watched in silence.
The hospital room door sounded, and someone pushed it open.
Instinctively, she shielded the child in her arms. Then she saw the person who entered, dressed in an ink-black suit. His face was extraordinarily handsome, and his tall figure almost blocked the light from the hallway outside.
“Who are you?”
Su Jingsheng’s voice was slightly hoarse. Her fingers unconsciously tightened, and she looked like a little leopard ready to pounce.
Lu Qingyu’s gaze fell on the child’s face in the woman’s arms.
He narrowed his eyes and glanced at Su Jingsheng.
Who would have thought that someone with such a delicate and weak appearance would have the courage to jump into the lake while carrying his child?
He paused, then strode to the beside the bed.
He stopped only an arm’s length from Su Jingsheng.
“I’m your child’s father.”
The man spoke coldly. His voice was deep and husky, yet very pleasant to hear.
But it took Su Jingsheng several seconds to realize what he meant.
“It’s you!”
She abruptly tried to sit up, but suddenly pulled at her wound, making Su Jingsheng’s scalp prickle with pain.
She raised her eyes and stared coldly at the man before her.
To put it bluntly, although she had slept with the wrong person that night, she had only just heard it from Su Yuning not long ago.
This man had never appeared again after that night. Now that the child had been born, he had come looking for her. How was he any different from a rapist?
That night... she had originally booked a room at the hotel to celebrate the birthday of her boyfriend at the time, Shen Mingfeng.
Yet she had never expected to wake up the next morning feeling as though her entire body had been run over by a truck.
She had lost her virginity, yet she did not even know to whom.
Later, Shen Mingfeng had reluctantly admitted that the child was his, but his eyes had always held a strange evasiveness.
Su Jingsheng’s heart ached, and she involuntarily thought of what Su Yuning had said beside Misty Rain Lake not long ago.
“Give me a break, Su Jingsheng. The child in your belly isn’t Mingfeng’s at all. I just found some manual laborer at the labor market. What gives you the right to act so arrogantly in front of me?!”
Only then did the entire truth finally come to light.
So... the child really was not Shen Mingfeng’s. Su Yuning had tricked her!
Everyone except her had known that her child was not Shen Mingfeng’s. That was why the Shen Family had broken engagement with her, while Su Yuning and Shen Mingfeng ultimately ended up together. Everything had become perfectly logical.
For more than half a year, all the malice in the world seemed to have finally found its reason in that instant.
At this thought, Su Jingsheng’s gaze grew even colder as she looked at the man before her.
She unconsciously tightened her hold on the child in her arms.
“What are you here for? Get out!”
Lu Qingyu frowned slightly, his expression faint.
He raised his hand to check his watch, then slipped his slender fingers into his pocket.
“I’m here to claim child custody of the child.”
He spoke in the tone of someone discussing business, as though he were saying, I came to buy two pounds of cabbage from you.
Su Jingsheng’s anger burned even hotter.
If she had enough strength to pick up a knife, she might have stabbed the man in front of her right then!
“Don’t even think about it!”
The girl’s expression was resolute. Holding the little child in her arms, she had delicate, beautiful features in profile, and her entire body carried the gentle grace of a woman from Jiangnan.
That gentleness seemed utterly incompatible with the coldness in her eyes, yet it suddenly made Lu Qingyu’s heart tremble.
His thin lips pressed together, and he spoke indifferently.
“Death won’t solve any problem.”
Su Jingsheng froze, and her lips paled.
She did not know why he had suddenly said that.
She had vaguely heard something about an attempted suicide just now. Her mind was a tangled mess, and she could only remember Su Yuning pushing her beside Misty Rain Lake and the things she had said.
Just as she was about to say something, the man’s voice suddenly rang out.
“You’re not even twenty yet. I don’t believe you’re capable of raising my child on your own.”
What did he mean, his child?
“This is my child. It has nothing to do with you!”
Su Jingsheng unconsciously clenched her teeth.
She looked up at Lu Qingyu.
Although she was clearly furious, in the man’s eyes, she was merely a fierce little wildcat.
He paused, his face expressionless, then placed a business card on the corner of the table beside the bed.
“I have other matters to attend to. Think it over and contact me.”
He did not even look at the child. His cold, heavy gaze merely swept over Su Jingsheng’s face before he turned and walked out.
The man’s retreating figure was neat and slender, and he did not look as though he had deliberately dressed up.
The suit he wore fit his entire bearing perfectly, inexplicably giving off an intense sense of oppression.
Su Jingsheng narrowed her eyes and stared at that retreating figure for a long time.
She picked up the business card and examined it.
Lu Qingyu.
There was only one name, with a row of numbers beneath it.
His company and position were nowhere to be found.
It seemed that what Su Yuning had said back then... was true.
This man was probably nothing more than an embroidered pillow with an attractive exterior.