The executive assistant swiftly retrieved the floral arrangement and brought it directly to Gu Tuo.
Gu Tuo was far from an admirer of botany; he could recognize only a handful of the most common flora and possessed absolutely zero knowledge regarding the secret language of flowers. Staring at the vibrant, dew-kissed bouquet before him, he actually found himself temporarily unable to name a single variety.
Noticing his employer’s deep, contemplative gaze anchored to the flowers in his arms, the assistant quickly asked, “Should I arrange them in a vase for you, sir?”
Gu Tuo gave a slight nod.
The assistant scrambled to unearth a clear glass vase, filled it with water, and hastily shoved the stems inside. Once the task was complete, Gu Tuo slowly paced over to the shelf, leaning in to meticulously analyze the arrangement.
The assistant’s floristry skills were amateur at best. After being aggressively handled a few times, a couple of the delicate blossoms had already begun to wilt. Worse still, the stems had been jammed in so haphazardly that the bouquet resembled a clump of wildly tangled weeds, completely devoid of any aesthetic grace.
Gu Tuo’s brows knit together slightly, thoroughly dissatisfied with this chaotic brand of “decor.” Just as he prepared to summon the assistant back to discard the vase entirely, a sudden shift in his thoughts made him swallow his words.
Instead, he meticulously identified each distinct blossom and began looking up their underlying meanings one by one.
True to his fiercely rigorous nature, whenever he encountered an unfamiliar petal, he simply snapped a photo and launched a reverse image search online. Going back and forth in this tedious manner, he surprisingly ended up burning through a substantial chunk of time.
By the time he snapped out of his trance, nearly half an hour had quietly evaporated.
Gazing at the massive mountain of corporate dossiers waiting on his desk, Gu Tuo pinched the bridge of his nose with a minor headache, completely bewildered as to why he had allowed himself to get so bizarrely hyper-focused on such a distraction.
Gu Tuo had always maintained a razor-sharp division between his professional and private life. He detested managing personal affairs during business hours, and his executive desk had never once played host to an object untethered to his work.
Aware of his boss’s rigid temperament, the assistant had carefully tucked the glass vase onto a storage shelf a short distance away.
Though the radiant blossoms unfurled their petals in absolute silence, they continuously diffused a crisp, deep fragrance that subtly refreshed the senses.
When Gu Tuo finally emerged from his deep immersion in his work, he lifted his eyes only to find the customized bouquet quietly blooming in its corner, lending a striking flash of life to his otherwise sterile and tedious executive routine.
Beyond the expansive glass windows, the autumn light was spectacularly clear. The beautiful blossoms tilted naturally toward the sun, looking remarkably like the bright, vivid face of the youth who had sent them.
A sudden impulse stirred in Gu Tuo’s chest. Standing up, he strode back over to the storage shelf and hoisted the glass vase into his palms.
Walking back to his executive desk, he settled the arrangement down securely right beside his workspace. The surface of his desk was shielded from direct, harsh sunlight; keeping these delicate, high-maintenance blossoms right under his nose would ensure they remained vibrant for a significantly longer period.
It was purely an act of preserving a beautiful thing—unlinked to any stray thoughts.
He had barely completed reviewing another corporate file when a firm knock echoed against his office door. Before Gu Tuo could even utter a permission to enter, the visitor casually twisted the handle and pushed inside on his own authority.
Within the entire hierarchy of the Gu Group, not a single employee possessed the reckless audacity to bypass protocol in this manner. The singular exception was the bloodline left behind by his late sister—his nephew, Li Jin.
Gu Tuo’s brows knit together instantly as he lifted his head. Before the man could fully step into view, his voice filled the room:
“Uncle, after receiving your strict guidance the other day, I spent the last few days engaging in deep self-reflection and found your insights incredibly profound. You expended so much meticulous care on my behalf, yet I have absolutely nothing of equal value to offer in return. It just so happens that a few days ago, I managed to secure a limited-edition Rolex timepiece. I hope you won’t disdain it, Uncle.”
While speaking, Li Jin had already paced straight up to Gu Tuo’s executive desk. Slapping the square velvet watch box onto the surface, he smoothly slid it directly into Gu Tuo’s personal space.
Gu Tuo stared at the edge of the velvet box, which was aggressively wrinkling the corporate document resting beneath it. He remained dead silent.
Unaware of the shift in the room’s atmosphere, Li Jin prodded, “Uncle?”
Gu Tuo stated in a deep, chilling tone, “Remove it.”
“What?” Li Jin blanked, completely losing the thread.
“You are wrinkling my corporate files.”
Li Jin had been born into immense wealth and considered himself highly sophisticated, yet he had genuinely never encountered an individual as staggeringly rigid and mechanical as his maternal uncle. Could a highly coveted, limited-edition timepiece genuinely carry less weight than a single sheet of paper?
In his philosophy, the entire purpose of generating capital was to indulge in luxury; yet when it came to his uncle, the man appeared to love nothing but labor, displaying zero interest in the fruits of wealth. While Li Jin recognized it wasn’t his place to lecture a family elder, he couldn’t help but find his uncle a bit pitiful, living a life completely devoid of color or flavor.
He, on the other hand, was currently riding the absolute peak of his life—conquering both a blissful romance and a soaring career.
At this thought, he suddenly remembered the true objective of his visit today. Smoothly retrieving the watch box from the desk, he shifted gears: “Uncle, truth be told, my visit today actually involves a corporate matter where I desperately require your assistance.”
“Out with it,” Gu Tuo replied, his reaction perfectly flat, acting entirely as though he had been waiting for the other shoe to drop all along.
Li Jin felt a sudden, uncomfortable sensation of being completely seen through, but since he had already laid the groundwork, he could only push forward: “Shengting Conglomerate has been orchestrating some massive strategic moves lately. I was hoping you could step in to pull a few strings and bridge a connection for me.”
Gu Tuo shot him a single, piercing look before delivering a flat, absolute refusal: “Li Jin, that is an affair belonging strictly to Eastern Emperor Entertainment. It is highly inappropriate for the Gu Group to meddle in it.”
Gu Tuo’s stance was unyielding, yet Li Jin refused to abandon the chase. “I am acutely aware that this request places you in a highly difficult position, Uncle. If it were for any minor venture, I would never dare to impose upon your time.
The critical issue is that the project director over at Shengting is staggeringly difficult to negotiate with, and I happen to have offended him in the past due to some private, personal history. Now, he is actively abusing his corporate authority to execute a personal vendetta against me. If you refuse to stand behind me on this, I am completely out of options!”
Despite delivering a massive monologue, he received absolutely zero cognitive response from the tycoon. Growing anxious, Li Jin lifted his eyes. “Uncle?”
He met Gu Tuo’s dark, heavy gaze, the titan’s eyes radiating a subtle, freezing warning. “Li Jin, you are attempting to use reverse psychology on me.”
Li Jin’s heart skipped a violent beat, a sudden wave of intense irritation consuming him. He had actually possessed the sheer delusion to think he could play cheap mind games right in front of this thousand-year-old fox.
At this stage, scrambling to formulate a defense was entirely pointless; it was infinitely better to simply lay his cards on the table. “My apologies, Uncle. I am simply far too desperate to lock down this specific contract.”
Gu Tuo’s tone turned brutally cold and rigid: “If you covet an objective, you should rely on your own capabilities to conquer it, rather than constantly seeking to exploit external leverage.”
He had personally ushered this boy into the corporate arena, systematically equipping him with an arsenal of strategic mindsets. He had never anticipated that his brilliant nephew would fail to unleash those tactics against external competitors, choosing instead to test them right here on him.
Gu Tuo lowered his eyelids, a dark shadow settling over his features.
Completely oblivious to the shifting undercurrents, Li Jin stubbornly dug his heels into his perspective: “My seeking your intervention is a form of active pursuit. Since a significantly more streamlined pathway exists right before my eyes, why on earth should I intentionally subject myself to a grueling, circuitous route?”
Hearing this, Gu Tuo’s face turned incredibly solemn. “Li Jin, you need to understand that only through your own unyielding friction can you accumulate authentic leverage and forge genuine authority. Continually borrowing the shadow of my influence will only ensure that it remains precisely my influence. The next time, and the time after that, you will inevitably smash right into a brick wall the moment you are forced to stand on your own.”
The logic Gu Tuo was laying down wasn’t beyond Li Jin’s comprehension. It was simply that in his worldview, immediate, tangible profit reigned supreme above all else. Experiences and institutional authority were nothing more than a superficial coat of paint on a finished structure. As a pure capitalist, as long as he maintained an iron grip on liquidity and absolute wealth, he was the ultimate winner of the game.
Li Jin harbored massive, vaulting ambitions to expand Eastern Emperor Entertainment into an unstoppable empire. Yet his uncle was clearly incapable of aligning with his grand vision, and he lost all interest in expanding on the topic, eager to avoid another tedious lecture from the older man.
The atmosphere in the executive suite instantly ground to a rigid standstill.
Li Jin’s eyes darted around the room. Catching sight of the glass vase resting on Gu Tuo’s desk, he smoothly pivoted to an entirely separate subject: “Uncle, the floral arrangement on your desk is remarkably beautiful. This is genuinely the absolute first time I’ve ever seen fresh blossoms gracing your workspace. Did your assistant arrange them for you?”
Gu Tuo fell into a brief silence. Then, driven by a bizarre, unexplainable impulse, he dropped a sentence into the air: “No. It was a gift from someone.”
An utterance like this was entirely out of character for Gu Tuo. Typically, if he could resolve an interaction with fewer syllables, he would never offer an extra word.
Li Jin’s sharp social radar instantly detected a faint scent of romantic intrigue laced within the response. He instinctively pressed further, “Oh? And who exactly sent them?”
Gu Tuo, however, completely closed his mouth, refusing to offer another syllable.
Left to piece the clues together on his own, Li Jin felt the trajectory was painfully obvious. “Well, look at that. It seems I’m about to secure an aunt.”
Hearing the wild speculation, Gu Tuo’s brow twitched violently as he barked, “Cease your ridiculous nonsense!”
Li Jin flinched slightly, caught off guard by the massive scale of his uncle’s reaction. On second thought, he found it completely aligned with the man’s psychology. His uncle had always possessed an incredibly rigorous, private nature; when it came to matters of the heart, he would likely maintain absolute secrecy until the relationship was set in stone.
However, even if his uncle refused to talk, he possessed plenty of alternative pathways to extract the data.
Fueled by intense curiosity, the moment he stepped out of the executive suite, he marched straight into the corporate secretarial pool, targeting Gu Tuo’s personal assistant to dig for information regarding the sender of the flowers.
Hearing the inquiry, a highly complicated, strained expression crossed the assistant’s face. He hemmed and hawed for a long while before squeezing out a single line: “This, as for that matter, CEO Li, I’m afraid it’s highly inappropriate for me to comment.”
Li Jin’s brows knit together tightly. “Did my uncle order you to maintain absolute secrecy?”
He had no idea that the assistant was actually desperately trying to shield his personal emotions. Instead, he grumbled silently to himself, thinking that Gu Tuo was being a bit too underhanded and secretive regarding his love life.
But it didn’t matter. They were bound to cross paths sooner or later. On the day they finally met face-to-face, he was going to take a very close look to see exactly what kind of extraordinary entity this future “aunt” of his turned out to be!