Five minutes later, driven by some inexplicable impulse, He Lin walked over to Chi Ye’s bedroom door.
Raising a hand to knock, he suddenly froze, his fingers half-curled and suspended in mid-air.
He Lin heard someone playing the guzheng inside the room. The music drifted out intermittently through the closed door.
It was Chi Ye.
Chi Ye had mastered the guzheng from a very young age.
In his previous life, his family was considered part of the literary elite; his maternal grandfather was well-versed in painting, calligraphy, and all four arts, radiating refinement. While other children were still digging in the mud, Chi Ye had already been pinned to a piano bench to practice fingering. Later on, when applying to film academies, this talent scored him plenty of bonus points as an artistic specialty. Then, during his sophomore year in college, his family fortunes declined, and Chi Ye began running from set to set to make a living, buried under grueling schedules from dawn till dusk, losing all leisure to play the instrument.
The piece being played was Fishing Boat Song at Dusk.
Though his performance technique could hardly be called peerless, it was infused with genuine emotion, rendering the melody graceful, elegant, poignant, and lingering. It felt as though one had been placed amidst boundless, sun-drenched blue waves, drawing spiritual nourishment from heaven and earth—tranquil and distant, yet carrying an irrepressible undercurrent of melancholy.
He Lin was not well-versed in music theory, but he knew how to appreciate it. Unable to bear interrupting, he stood with his hands clasped behind his back outside the threshold.
The music inside had reached the third movement; the plucking speed grew faster and the force intensifies, building rapidly toward a climax before abruptly cutting short. Immediately following, a lingering, melodious cadence slowly ebbed away…
He Lin slowly closed his eyes.
A young maid responsible for cleaning the third-floor corridor came trudging forward blindly with her mop, accidentally ramming the mop head straight into a pair of gleaming leather shoes. She couldn’t help letting out a small gasp.
Who could have guessed that right outside Young Master Chi’s room—a place where footsteps were normally as rare as hen’s teeth—a towering man would be planted like a post?
When the young girl looked up and recognized the Second Master’s face, she instinctively clamped a hand over her mouth.
Yet she was still a fraction of a second too slow. The zither player inside was startled, and the melody was cut short before it could reach its proper conclusion.
He Lin frowned.
Half a minute later, the bedroom door was yanked open with a swish, and Chi Ye poked his upper body out.
He Lin’s pupils flashed with sudden brightness.
Chi Ye hadn’t yet changed out of the outfit he meticulously prepared that morning; his hair was blown dry down to every single strand, and his naturally expressive peach-blossom eyes were opened wide and round. He tilted the outer corners of his eyes upward, staring fixedly at He Lin’s face for a long moment without looking away.
You couldn’t really blame Chi Ye. For the Second Master to suddenly materialize outside his door unannounced—anyone seeing that would find it utterly bizarre.
And he hadn’t even knocked?
After all, the Second Master’s image and temperament simply did not align with the behavior of an eavesdropper.
He Lin felt somewhat awkward under that gaze. In a rare display of hesitation, he cleared his throat, raised a fist to his lips, and coughed: “Cough, cough…”
Chi Ye snapped back to attention, taking a mere 0.5 seconds to flash his standard business smile.
Four little teeth gleamed white and bright, his voice clean and utterly harmless. “Why are you here?”
He Lin’s expression darkened. “I can’t come here?”
Chi Ye scrambled sideways, clearing the doorway, and smiled with textbook reverence: “Of course you can.”
“The entire villa belongs to you; Sir can go wherever he pleases.”
He Lin drew in a deep breath, too lazy to untangle the ambiguous phrasing, and pushed past him into the room.
Bubba sprang forward like an arrow, wagging its tail furiously at He Lin. Forcing himself to endure it, He Lin extended two fingers and crouched down to give the dog a quick scratch.
He had never set foot inside Chi Ye’s room since their wedding day, and the wall-to-wall eye-searing neon orange made him instinctively rub his nose.
By the wide French windows leading to the balcony sat a chaise longue and a massive doghouse, quite conspicuous. Looking further left, a guzheng stood in the corner—positioned with tactical precision so that whoever played it could catch a glimpse of the setting sun’s glow with just a slight turn of the head.
He Lin’s gaze landed upon the instrument, his voice deep and cool. “Who was playing?”
Chi Ye answered honestly, “It was me.”
He Lin remained silent, his eyes narrowing slowly as he made no effort to conceal his skepticism.
He walked straight over and seated himself squarely in the center of the European-style double sofa directly facing the bed. His long legs occupied the space entirely, leaving no room for Chi Ye.
Left with no choice, Chi Ye remained standing.
The Second Master was above personally digging through wardrobes for clandestine lovers, and besides, nobody dared smuggle anyone into Chi Ye’s room right under his nose.
Yet for the good-for-nothing “Chi Ye” to display such a refined pastime as playing the zither—and playing it quite well at that—was genuinely mind-boggling.
The two of them, one standing and one sitting, stared at each other with hidden agendas.
The already spacious and luxurious bedroom felt suddenly vast, breeding a suffocating sense of oppression.
He Lin finally moved, raising a hand to roll back his cuffs to make himself more comfortable.
Damn, there he goes again, looking like a judge interrogating a criminal.
Chi Ye desperately wanted to talk back, but valuing his life above all else, he didn’t dare.
With no other options, he quietly retreated to the zither bench, his ten fingers flying across the strings to finish the movement he had been forced to interrupt.
The music soared, effortless and transcendent.
Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth; surely you believe me now?
He Lin stared fixedly at Chi Ye.
He was so shocked that his habitual poker face nearly cracked.
Clearly, the revelation that Chi Ye “knew how to play music” hit He Lin with far greater impact than if Chi Ye had “snuck out with another man.”
The atmosphere plunged back into an eerie silence.
Chi Ye couldn’t help once again breaking into a cold sweat over He Lin’s emotional intelligence. Was the Second Master’s secret weapon for conquering the business world really just freezing his competitors to death with aura?
“You went to the kitchen this afternoon?” He Lin finally showed mercy and broke the silence, remaining as sparing with his words as ever.
“Ah, yes.” Terrified of inadvertently stepping on the great man’s toes again, Chi Ye hurried to explain, “I honestly intended to report beforehand, but Uncle Zhu said you were busy working and there was no need to bother you with such trivial matters…”
He Lin interrupted his rambling. “What did you make?”
“Cookies,” Chi Ye replied, hesitating on the bench whether he should stand up to speak.
He Lin raised his eyelids. “Where are they?”
Deciding standing was safer, Chi Ye answered, “Uncle Zhu said he handed them out to everyone just now.”
He Lin pressed on, “Everyone got some?”
Chi Ye calculated carefully. “Seems so.”
He Lin paused slightly, then articulated each word with deliberate slowness: “Where is mine?”
!
After drawing the dot beneath the third exclamation point in his mind with a surge of hot blood, Chi Ye barely managed to steady his breathing rhythm.
Had the Second Master been possessed by the male lead of a romance novel?
Chi Ye wore a slightly dazed expression, which on anyone else might have looked clumsy.
Yet his features were simply too striking, especially with his deliberate grooming. The youthful, clean, and innocent aura radiating from his bones made his moment of bewilderment all the more endearing.
He Lin couldn’t tear his eyes away.
Chi Ye weighed his words with difficulty: “There was originally a portion set aside for you… No, wait, technically they were all supposed to be yours. But they turned out too ugly to presentable.”
He Lin pressed relentlessly, “How ugly?”
Chi Ye stated the facts: “Without molds, several of the characters ended up completely unrecognizable.”
He Lin looked somewhat surprised. “You even wrote words using cookies?”
Chi Ye nodded. “Yes.”
He Lin fell silent for a few seconds.
He was calculating how he ought to respond if Chi Ye had written phrases like “I love you,” “I like you,” or “I’m sorry, please forgive me.”
He felt a trace of apprehension, a flutter of suspense, and even a hint of excitement.
Suppressing his lingering anticipation, He Lin flattened his tone as much as possible. “What did you write?”
Chi Ye began counting on his fingers to complete a 24-character sequence: “Prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, the rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendliness.”
He Lin: “…”
A surge of blood rushed straight to his head.