Mu Suizhou lowered the umbrella, shielding Fu Jinglan and Shen Lingxi together—one crouching and one kneeling.
Shen Lingxi looked at Fu Jinglan’s face.
What a modeling freak. If he wouldn’t carry her, then he wouldn’t.
Shen Lingxi continued kneeling, her temper quietly rising as well.
“Governor, what is your relationship with your fiancée?”
Faced with Shen Lingxi’s sudden interrogation, Fu Jinglan inexplicably felt a sense of pressure.
After all, from childhood to adulthood, he had never truly been afraid of anyone.
But was Shen Lingxi’s question even a valid one?
“No relationship.” That was Fu Jinglan’s answer.
Shen Lingxi had her own way of thinking. Fu Jinglan had said that he had no relationship with his fiancée.
“So you admit that she’s your fiancée.”
“?” Fu Jinglan slowly turned his neck.
“You’re being unreasonable and distorting the facts. Shen Lingxi, you might as well say that I took Li Hongzhang to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki.”
Behind them, Mu Suizhou let out a “pfft” of laughter, then quickly forced it back down.
At that moment, Jiang Qingyan came running over from a distance. She had put on thicker clothes and was covering her face, sobbing.
Pangpang tugged at her sleeve from the side. “Miss, you remember everything, right?”
Jiang Qingyan nodded, then cried even harder.
“Jinglan, you finally came back.”
Fu Jinglan found women’s sobbing and sniveling particularly irritating.
No one should try that sort of thing in front of him.
He crouched in front of Shen Lingxi and slowly turned his head back.
“Miss Jiang, I don’t like people I’m not familiar with calling me by my given name.”
“I like it even less when they call me by my full name without a title.”
Jiang Qingyan blinked and took a moment to react.
“Governor, I just arrived in Northern State. I don’t know anyone here, and this girl scratched my face.”
Fu Jinglan rose to his full height. Jiang Qingyan withdrew her hand, revealing several bloody marks across her face.
The wounds were deep and long.
And thin.
What kind of claws could have made scratches like that?
Shouldn’t they have been caused by the cat Jiang Qingyan had brought?
Fu Jinglan’s gaze fell on Shen Lingxi’s face.
The words that escaped his lips were cold as well. “You scratched her?”
He didn’t believe it.
Under his questioning, Shen Lingxi lifted her neck to look at Fu Jinglan, her eyes full of defiance.
“If I scratched her face, then I was the one who burned the Old Summer Palace.”
“Miss Jiang barged into the dining room, let the cat eat my yellow croaker, and then tried to poke me in the face with a cigarette butt. We got into an argument, and the cat was startled, so it scratched her face.”
Fu Jinglan’s brows suddenly drew together.
Beneath Shen Lingxi’s knees, the white snow was actually marked with spots of blood.
Someone had bullied his Little Bunny like this.
Very good.
Fu Jinglan turned his head. His profile was severe as he stared at Jiang Qingyan.
Snow was reflected in his dark eyes, and he was cold beyond words.
“Miss Jiang’s cat is very troublesome.”
The next sentence was directed at Mu Suizhou. “Secretary-General Mu, have someone kill that beast.”
“From now on, cats are forbidden at Lu Manor.”
Some people spoke in an even tone, yet their presence pressed down on others until they could barely breathe.
“It wasn’t like that.”
A pleased look appeared in Jiang Qingyan’s eyes, and she hurriedly tried to ingratiate herself by taking Fu Jinglan’s arm.
“Don’t touch me.”
Fu Jinglan raised his arm and casually brushed the snow from his shoulder.
“Secretary-General Mu, how are you holding that umbrella?”
“My mistake.”
Mu Suizhou moved the umbrella away.
But he covered Shen Lingxi completely instead, leaving Fu Jinglan out in the snow.
That way, there would be more snow on his shoulder for him to brush off.
Unable to take Fu Jinglan’s arm, Jiang Qingyan could only stand beside him.
Putting on an aggrieved expression, she said, “Governor, this girl is incredibly strong. She held me down and slapped me several times.”
Shen Lingxi naturally had to clear her name.
Her eyelashes trembled beneath the snow, and she reached out to tug at the leg of Fu Jinglan’s suit trousers.
“Governor, I swear I only slapped her twice. Otherwise, may I suffer divine retribution—may my husband be impotent for the rest of his life.”
Fu Jinglan’s expression grew even uglier.
What did her husband have to do with this?
“Shen Lingxi, if you have a point, make your point; if you have something to say, say it. Do not bring unrelated people into this.”
Pangpang nudged Jiang Qingyan’s arm again, and Jiang Qingyan quickly picked up the thread.
“Governor, you have to stand up for me. Sob, sob.”
Fu Jinglan acted as though he hadn’t heard her.
Instead, he bent down, the hem of his clothes slanting into the accumulated snow.
With a tenderness that seemed utterly out of place, his large hand brushed the white snow from the top of Shen Lingxi’s head.
“Jiang Qingyan, I’ll stand up for you.” Fu Jinglan turned his head. “But who will stand up for my little friend, hmm?”
Fu Jinglan’s voice seemed to grind against snow, carrying a husky quality.
It held a fatal kind of allure.
“The person kneeling on the ground is only twenty by nominal age—more precisely, she’s just nineteen.”
“Shen Lingxi is still young. I won’t allow anyone to bully or slander her.”
“Even if she had committed some unforgivable offense and needed to be punished, they would first have to ask whether I permitted it.”
“But—” Jiang Qingyan began to say something else, but a cat’s shrill, miserable cry tore through the open sky.
In an instant, the entire Lu Manor seemed to have heavier snow and colder wind.
Jiang Qingyan’s fingers trembled. Her expression froze, and she couldn’t utter another word.
Shen Lingxi was startled as well.
Fu Jinglan lowered his eyes again and patted the top of her head.
“If I don’t help you up, you won’t get up? Have you gotten comfortable kneeling?”
Then Fu Jinglan slipped both hands beneath Shen Lingxi’s armpits and tentatively helped her upward.
He lowered his head, his profile very close to Shen Lingxi’s ear.
His breath was hot when he spoke, mixed with a cool, clean fragrance.
“Shen Lingxi, from the moment you accepted your fate and bent your knees, you should have knelt.”
She needed to taste the bitterness of being bullied by others and being too afraid to resist with all her strength. Only then would she remember the lesson next time.
“But if you can’t endure kneeling for only this little while, then you’ll have a hard time in the future.”
Amid the biting frost and snow, Fu Jinglan’s voice was low and magnetic.
It carried a fatal temptation.
Shen Lingxi’s ears had probably been frozen numb. They suddenly grew hot and tingled.
Damn it.
That scene of turbulent mountains and rivers on the tablet suddenly leapt into her mind—it was kneeling.
Shen Lingxi bit her lip, her voice weak.
“Governor, you said I’m still young, and you won’t allow anyone to bully me. You—you can’t bully me either.”
Fu Jinglan gave a silent, mocking laugh beside her ear.
His thin lips seemed to brush against Shen Lingxi’s earlobe.
“Small? Apart from your age, there’s nothing small about you.”
“Shen Lingxi, I have no interest in providing free care for you.”
“You know better than anyone who you’re supposed to be to me, and what you’re supposed to do with me.”
Shen Lingxi knew that Fu Jinglan’s providing her with food for a year had not come without a price.
Sooner or later, he would sleep with her.
Just as Fu Jinglan was about to lift her into his arms, Shen Lingxi wrapped both arms around his neck. She pressed her snow-covered head against the crook of his neck and rubbed against it.
She would not neglect the thanks that were due.
In a tiny voice, Shen Lingxi said, “Thank you for protecting me… d—^^y.”
But the next second, both her feet touched the ground.
Fu Jinglan turned his neck and wiped away the melted snowwater on it with his long fingers. First, he said in a low voice:
“Little Bunny, don’t call me that in front of outsiders.”
Then he continued, “I said I wouldn’t carry you. You being injured has made me very unhappy. Walk yourself.”
Shen Lingxi’s expression went cold as she stared fixedly at Fu Jinglan’s lips.
They were handsome, yet heartless. Every word that came from those lips was below thirty-six degrees.
She wondered how painful it would be to suck him.
Fu Jinglan ignored Shen Lingxi and slowly walked over to stand in front of Pangpang.
He asked her seemingly calmly, “Do you like delicious food?”
Pangpang had never been addressed by someone so handsome and authoritative. The tips of her ears instantly flushed bright red, as though they were on fire.
She didn’t dare look directly into Fu Jinglan’s deep, mesmerizing eyes.
All she could do was furiously flutter her eyelashes while staring at his broad chest.
She nodded hard. “Mm! I like it!”
“Very good.” A cold, sharp fragrance emanated from Fu Jinglan, rushing toward Pangpang’s hurried breathing.
“From this moment on, you are not to eat a single bite of food or drink a single mouthful of water until you starve to death.”
With that, Fu Jinglan turned neatly around and strode toward the villa.