Yan Hui drew in a deep breath from his dantian and let loose a string of furious curses. The moment he finished chewing him out, he whirled around and sprinted toward the master bedroom. Before Yu Xiang could even react, the man had already vanished.
Yu Xiang stood frozen for two whole seconds, wondering whether he should step forward and knock on the door to apologize or simply slip away quietly, when Yan Sheng poked his head out from his room, looking at him with a mix of curiosity and bewilderment.
“What is wrong with Dad?”
Yu Xiang hurried over to smooth things over. “Nothing. He is a little unwell and wants to rest for a bit.”
Yan Sheng did not believe him. The sideways glance he shot Yu Xiang was a carbon copy of Yan Hui’s expression.
“You are lying! I heard Dad call you a total idiot! Did you bully my dad?”
“I really did bully him a long time ago, which is why I was just apologizing to him,” Yu Xiang admitted honestly, his face bitter with regret. “Your dad refused to accept it, though, and he is still very angry.”
“Shouldn’t he be angry?! Who told you to bully people!”
Yan Sheng frowned and put his hands on his hips. The gesture was childish, but the seriousness on his face made him look a few years more mature, a look that strangely reminded Yu Xiang of someone.
“And why didn’t you apologize back then instead of waiting until now?”
Yu Xiang fell silent for a moment. “Because I am a total idiot.”
Yan Sheng blinked in surprise, then sheepishly dropped his hands. “There is really no need to be that hard on yourself. You are actually pretty good at Mario Kart. Did you apologize properly to Dad?”
Yu Xiang nodded, then shook his head. “An apology is not enough to fix things. I will do my best to make up for it through my actions.”
“Oh.” Yan Sheng looked like he only half understood. He glanced at the closed bedroom door across the hall, then walked over and gave it a soft knock. “Dad, are you okay?”
After a long while, Yan Hui’s muffled, indistinct voice drifted out from inside.
“I am fine. Sheng Sheng, go finish your homework on your own, okay?”
He made no mention of Yu Xiang whatsoever.
Yan Sheng threw a glance at Yu Xiang, obediently answered that he would, and turned back to his room.
Watching the boy’s retreating back, Yu Xiang had a sudden flash of inspiration and followed right after him.
“Sheng Sheng, how about Uncle helps tutor you with your homework?”
Yan Sheng turned around with a suspicious look. “Can you handle it?”
Yu Xiang: “Elementary school homework should be fine.”
Yan Sheng tilted his head to think. “I only have my English homework left. Is your English any good?”
Yu Xiang forced out a confident smile. “No problem at all. I studied abroad for four years.”
“Fine.” Yan Sheng finally granted his gracious consent, walked over to the desk, sat down, and patted the small stool beside him. “Sit here.”
“Alright.”
A few minutes later.
“Sheng Sheng, when someone says Happy Birthday to you, how should you reply in English?”
“Happy Birthday!”
“With pronunciation like that. Never mind, you should say Thank you.”
“Why? Aren’t we celebrating the birthday together?”
“Yes, but you have to look at the prompt. How can the answer be the exact same as the question?”
“Why not? The teacher said we have to consider the context!”
Inside the master bedroom, Yan Hui lay face down across the bed, burying his face in the pillow without moving an inch.
After a long while, he finally stirred, grabbed a pillow, wobbled up to his feet, and then slammed the pillow down viciously onto the bed!
The pillow emitted a muffled thud, and the compressed down instantly fluffed back up from the impact, looking round and obnoxious enough to infuriate anyone.
Yan Hui’s expression remained dark and gloomy. Seeming to hate how plump the pillow looked, he raised his foot and stomped down hard. The down pillow instantly folded into a V-shape, its ends poking up even higher.
This was clearly not the outcome Yan Hui wanted.
He stomped on it several times in succession. Finding that still insufficient to vent his spleen, he dropped to his knees on the bed and attacked it from both sides like a pair of class enemies, beating it furiously until he heard the sound of fabric tearing, at which point he finally stopped, breathing heavily.
Fortunately, the down pillow had a double lining, so none of the filling escaped; only the pillowcase had split.
Sacrificing a pillowcase managed to vent Yan Hui’s emotions. His brain cleared up, cooling down and resuming normal operation.
Yu Xiang likes. Bang!
Unable to resist punching the pillow one more time, Yan Hui held up his fist as if it were still smoking, his expression pitch-black and terrifying.
Even if Yu Xiang was one of their own, he could never let him know about Yan Sheng’s true origins.
In fact, that only made it even more vital to guard this secret with his life.
Because Yu Xiang was still the heir apparent of the Zhengshuo Group, and the responsibilities resting on his shoulders had not changed simply because his stance had shifted. Once Yan Sheng’s identity was exposed, the only outcome awaiting them would be losing custody of Yan Sheng.
Though Yu Xiang claimed he had no desire to inherit Zhengshuo, the problem was that the third generation of the Yu family consisted solely of him now; responsibility like that wasn’t something you could just brush off whenever you felt like it.
Yan Hui used to belong to that upper-crust circle himself, and he knew very well that pitting an individual’s strength against a powerful family was like throwing an egg against a rock.
Unless Yu Xiang was truly willing to give up everything.
That meant far more than simply abandoning his status as heir. A complete break with the family also meant cutting off all access to family resources. Knowing Old Master Yu’s ruthless methods, he might even block off all of Yu Xiang’s paths to survival, driving him into a dead end.
He would be forced to bow his head and surrender the moment he could no longer endure, crawling back obediently to take over the family business and carry on the family line.
Yet Yu Xiang was not entirely without an exit strategy, depending entirely on how he chose to play his hand.
After deep contemplation, Yan Hui took out his phone and dialed Bai Shaoyu.
“Hello, Shaoyu, there is something I would like to trouble you with.”
A few dozen minutes earlier, at the Zhengshuo Group corporate building in Yunjing, inside the Executive President’s office.
Yu Zhongnan lowered his phone and looked at Old Master Yu sitting across from the desk.
“It is settled. He is coming back on the seventeenth.”
Old Master Yu was seventy-seven this year, his white hair unkempt and his eye sockets deeply sunken. Loose skin hung over the exceptional bone structure characteristic of the Yu family, revealing traces of the handsome man he had been in his youth while failing to conceal his withered vitality and spirit.
Hunched over in his wheelchair, his once-imposing frame reduced to a mere bundle of withered bones, his stooped back kept his face perpetually half-hidden in shadow, making him look like an unpredictable, mummified corpse.
“Very well. After the annual meeting, have them get married.”
Old Master Yu twitched his fingers, and the caregiver standing beside him in a light green uniform stepped forward immediately, gripping the wheelchair handles to push him toward the door.
“Try to let me see a great-grandson before the end of the year.”
“Alright, take your time, Dad.”
Yu Zhongnan stood up and escorted the old man to the elevator lobby. It was not until the elevator doors slid shut that the gentle, deferential smile on his face slowly faded, replaced by a long, heavy sigh.