After Lu Jingheng finished showering, he changed into comfortable home clothes. His hair was still dripping wet as he plopped down at the dining table and started eating ravenously, as if he hadn’t eaten in eight hundred years.
Qin Lan pushed a plate of freshly stir-fried greens toward him and kept nagging, “Eat slower, no one’s stealing your food. Look at how dark you are—you look like you just crawled out of a coal mine.”
Lu Jingheng mumbled in response with his mouth full, but his eyes kept sneaking toward Ruan Wen.
Ruan Wen was slowly wiping down a Xuan De incense burner with a soft cloth.
She cleaned it very carefully, not even missing the inner sides of the handles. Her expression was focused, as if she were handling some priceless treasure.
After finishing two bowls of rice, Lu Jingheng finally felt full and refreshed. He scooted over to Ruan Wen, crouched down beside her, and looked up at her.
“While I was away these past few days, nothing happened at home, right?”
“What could possibly happen?” Ruan Wen didn’t even look up.
“Uh… did Wang Li and the others keep gossiping?”
Her hand paused slightly as she wiped. She glanced at him.
His face was very close. Freshly washed hair carried a clean soap scent, and his eyes were bright, clearly filled with concern.
Something in her heart was gently stirred again.
“No.” She looked away again, her tone still calm. “Mom handled it.”
“My mom?” Lu Jingheng was stunned for a moment, then reacted and smiled knowingly. “Good, good.”
He knew exactly how capable his mother was. With her taking action, someone like Wang Li wouldn’t be able to stir up any trouble.
Just then, a guard at the gate of the compound jogged into the courtyard holding a bulging postal parcel.
“Commander Lu, you have a package!”
Lu Jingheng took it and glanced at the return address—Shanghai.
He frowned in confusion. He didn’t have any relatives or friends in Shanghai. Who would send him something?
He quickly tore it open. Out fell several items: a few carefully packaged pastries, two high-quality dacron handkerchiefs, and a letter.
He opened the letter and scanned it quickly. His brows first furrowed in confusion, then gradually tightened, his expression turning unpleasant.
“Who sent it?” Qin Lan asked as she leaned over.
“Huo Guoan.” Lu Jingheng slammed the letter onto the table, anger barely restrained in his voice.
“Huo Guoan?” Qin Lan frowned and took the letter to read it herself.
As she read, her expression became even more interesting—first disdain, then anger, and finally a mocking laugh.
“Oh my goodness, I’ve truly seen it all! There really are people this shameless in the world!” Qin Lan slapped the letter back onto the table and pointed at the gifts.
“Wenwen, look at what this Huo Guoan is trying to do! On the surface he’s thanking us, but every line is actually about his wife Sun Lanlan. He says she visited you a few days ago and got sick afterward—vomiting and having diarrhea, taking days off work, spending all his allowance on medicine, living miserably. Between the lines, isn’t he just saying we bullied his wife and made her sick, and now he’s coming to demand favors and benefits!”
The more she spoke, the angrier she became. She picked up the two dacron handkerchiefs and shook them in disgust.
“Just these two cheap handkerchiefs and a bag of lousy pastries, and he thinks he can silence us? Dream on! He’s trying to blackmail the Lu family!”
Lu Jingheng’s face had already darkened completely.
He hated this kind of scheming, indirect manipulation the most. Huo Guoan’s letter had stepped perfectly on his trigger point.
“I’m going to find him right now!” Lu Jingheng stood up abruptly and headed for the door.
“Stop right there!” Ruan Wen’s cold voice rang out.
He froze mid-step, turned back to look at her, still burning with anger but now also a bit at a loss. “He’s already pushed this to our doorstep. We can’t just let it go!”
“And then what?” Ruan Wen stood up and walked to him, looking at him calmly. “Fight him? Yell at him? That’s exactly what he wants. He’d get to say the Lu family is using their power to bully others, and he’d play the victim instead.”
Lu Jingheng was left speechless. His anger had nowhere to go, his face flushed red.
“Then what do you suggest? Just let him disgust us like this?”
“Of course not.” A faint, cold curve appeared at the corner of Ruan Wen’s lips. She walked back to the table, picked up the letter again, and glanced at the items, already forming a plan.
Huo Guoan’s move was actually a bit smarter than in her previous life.
He was clearly eyeing the Lu family’s power and trying to climb up using Sun Lanlan as a bridge.
This letter was both a test, a gesture of goodwill, and a hook.
He had calculated that Lu Jingheng had a straightforward temper and couldn’t stand such grievances. As long as he lost his temper, Huo Guoan would gain leverage over them.
Unfortunately, he got one thing wrong.
She was no longer the soft target she had been in her previous life.
“Auntie,” Ruan Wen turned to Qin Lan. “Do we still have any tins of malted milk?”
“Yes, some were sent by comrades of Jingheng’s father. We still have quite a few,” Qin Lan replied, confused.
“Also, pack ten jin of rice and ten jin of flour into a clean cloth bag,” Ruan Wen continued.
Although Qin Lan didn’t understand what she was planning, she immediately went to the storage room without another word.
Lu Jingheng stood there, completely confused. “Ruan Wen, what are you—”
“He’s pretending to be poor, so we’ll show him what real generosity looks like.” Ruan Wen wrapped up the handkerchiefs and pastries on the table, her voice cool. “He wants to borrow the Lu family’s influence—then we’ll see if he can handle the gift we send him.”
Soon, Qin Lan came out carrying a heavy cloth bag and placed two tins of malted milk on the table.
Ruan Wen packed everything together—the items Huo Guoan had sent, along with the rice, flour, and malted milk—into a large net bag, then handed it to Lu Jingheng.
“Let’s go, Commander Lu,” she said, a hint of mischief flashing in her eyes. “Let’s go pay a visit to the sick.”