“What! He wants to go out to work?”
Lin Yishui’s hands froze mid-air as he was sorting through documents, his tone carrying the exact same shock He Lin had displayed several dozen minutes earlier.
He Lin dipped his pen to sign his name at the bottom of a document, lowering his chin slightly without even lifting his head.
Flabbergasted, Lin Yishui asked, “And he even rejected your offer to place him inside the group?”
Still no response.
Persistent, Lin Yishui pressed on, “You actually agreed?”
He Lin closed the folder and let out a cold “Mn.”
For two seconds, Lin Yishui held his breath as the two little voices in the depths of his soul—dubbed “Reason” and “Personal Affection”—brawled furiously, until his deep-seated loyalty to his master ultimately won out.
Clearing his throat, he offered a candid reminder, “Young Master Chi once colluded with outsiders to steal our group’s commercial secrets, nearly causing irrevocable losses to the company.”
He Lin extended a slender index finger and tapped the flash drive Chi Ye had sent over, which rested on his desk. “It balances out his merits and faults.”
Perhaps eager to demonstrate his fairness in rewarding and punishing, He Lin—who was normally as sparing with words as gold—rarely added an extra sentence: “Besides, he’s already taken his lumps during this period.”
Secretly, Lin Yishui let out a couple of huffs of disdain in his heart, thinking that the Second Master was truly, shamelessly biased.
Just a few days of confinement handled so casually? And eating and drinking well, at that.
Anyone else would have had at most one-tenth of their sins mitigated by such a contribution, so why did it completely cancel out in Chi Ye’s case?
Stirred by a sudden surge of competitive spirit, Lin Yishui bravely pulled a postcard from his breast pocket, recently mailed over by a branch company president.
On the small piece of hard cardstock, the green logo of China Post was striking.
Steeling his resolve, Lin Yishui plowed ahead. “That bodyguard still hasn’t admitted that he forced Young Master Chi…”
He Lin’s gaze instantly turned razor-sharp.
Panicking, Lin Yishui fished out the polymer clay he habitually carried in his briefcase and shoved it into He Lin’s hands.
Hesitating for half a second, He Lin slowly began kneading the clay. “Is he still alive?”
He was referring to the bodyguard, of course.
Lin Yishui: “…” The Second Master’s knack for zeroing in on the main point hasn’t been this skewed before.
Weakly, Lin Yishui replied, “Rest assured, it will be dealt with in a day or two. We submitted the evidence of his drug offenses long ago; the case is heading to the municipal bureau, so the interrogation is just a bit slow.”
He Lin closed his eyes for a moment, slowly shaping the soft clay into a sphere before rolling it into a smooth ball, as though he intended to sculpt a little doll’s head.
After a long pause, he finally said, “He went into the kitchen today.”
The train of thought skipped too fast; Lin Yishui failed to keep pace with his Second Master’s logic for a moment and tentatively responded, “Yes.”
Continuing to knead the clay, He Lin asked in an even tone, “Did you eat those cookies?”
Lin Yishui was startled.
Chi Ye had baked so many “defective pieces” that afternoon that even after the junior maid distributed a large circle around the villa, more than half a box remained. Lin Yishui had intercepted the rest, which was currently sitting safely on the passenger seat of his private car.
Could the Second Master possess such piercing insight that even this little snack theft was calculated?
Sudden anxiety spiked through Lin Yishui, leaving him to reply dryly, “I ate them.”
He Lin asked, “Were they good?”
Warily, Lin Yishui answered, “They were.”
With a sharp clap, He Lin brought the palms of both hands together, squishing the clay into a flat disc.
“He can play the zither.”
“His line delivery is also excellent.”
“And he says he wants to work.”
He Lin’s expression grew unfathomable. He leisurely raised his eyes to look at the assistant who had followed him for over a decade: “Do you think Chi Ye is still ‘Chi Ye’?”
Lin Yishui: “…” Clutching the documents in his hands, his cautious gaze fell upon the lump of clay whose original shape was no longer discernible, remaining silent for a long moment.
As an elite graduate from a top-tier global business school and He Lin’s most capable aide in both political and commercial spheres, there were truly very few problems in this world that could stump Lin Yishui.
Yet this genuinely counted as one.
In truth, over the past three-plus years, Lin Yishui had maintained an exceptionally high level of attention toward “Chi Ye” due to certain unspoken personal motives—far surpassing even He Lin’s level of concern for his legal spouse.
Consequently, he had suspected the authenticity of this current Chi Ye far earlier than He Lin had.
He had even secretly dispatched people to investigate the archival records from back then, attempting to find evidence that Madame Chi might have had an estranged twin brother wandering outside, but naturally, to no avail.
As a self-proclaimed materialist, the assistant simply could not mentally accept supernatural phenomena like soul transmigrations or body snatching, so his thoughts never wandered in that direction.
With a complex mood, Lin Yishui sucked on his teeth, shut his mouth, and played dead.
When He Lin received no answer after a long wait, he seemed to suddenly lose interest.
“Never mind,” he waved a hand, lifting his eyelids. “That missing person report you prepared…”
“It’s still here.” Lin Yishui answered quickly, eager to snatch this question.
Pondering the Second Master’s intentions, he decisively added, “The content of the report hasn’t been published or made public yet. The relevant departments have also been notified in advance; it can be withdrawn from the archives at any time.”
He Lin nodded. “Retrieve it and destroy it.”
As expected.
Lin Yishui let out a sigh of relief and replied, “Understood.”
He Lin shifted half a step backward, leaned down to pull open the lowest drawer on the left side of his desk, and retrieved a transparent file bag.
Inside lay an ID card, passport, and a series of other identification documents, two black cards, and a brand-new, tremendously expensive smartphone.
All of them belonged to Chi Ye.
“Deliver this to him.” He Lin tapped the desk, his tone level.
Observing everything without letting it show on his face, Lin Yishui knew the Second Master had made up his mind to let the person go, so he wisely stopped trying to dissuade him, uttering a simple “Understood” as he raised a hand to take the items.
Before his fingers could even brush the corner, the phone inside the file bag suddenly vibrated.
The screen lit up, displaying a real-time message notification. The sender’s name clearly read: Mu Liang.
Mu Liang was the original owner’s white moonlight, his first love, and the honorary president of the Second Master’s Cuckold Association.
He Lin swept a cold glance across the phone screen, his brow instantly furrowing.
As if scalded by boiling water, Lin Yishui snatched his hand back with a whoosh.
True to form, the file bag was pulled right back by He Lin.
Lin Yishui felt that Young Master Chi was truly out of luck; the duck meat delivered right to his mouth had been delayed by half a second in the biting, and now it was likely being repossessed.
Yet He Lin did not lock the file bag back away in the drawer.
He merely unzipped the plastic seal, pulled out the two bank cards, and threw them away. Then, reaching into his own wallet, he extracted one of his personal black cards, slid it into the pouch, and handed it back to Lin Yishui.
Not daring to take it immediately, Lin Yishui drew a massive question mark with his eyes.
He Lin said coldly, “Archive all spending records.”
Comprehending instantly, Lin Yishui replied, “Yes.”
He Lin: “Install real-time monitoring and positioning software on the phone.”
Lin Yishui: “Got it.”
He Lin: “Send people to follow him when necessary—protective surveillance.”
Lin Yishui: “…”
He was profoundly baffled by his master’s habit of stomping on the gas pedal while simultaneously pulling the handbrake.
Fortunately, He Lin ceased issuing commands right there.
Feeling that his hairline had suffered an excessive amount of wear and tear today, Lin Yishui decided to take the items and excuse himself to prevent early baldness.
“Wait a moment.” He Lin called him back precisely on the final second before Lin Yishui could pull the study door closed. “Go to the kitchen and ask if there are any cookies left.”
! Of course there weren’t; the rest were all sitting in his car.
Utterly bewildered, Lin Yishui asked, “What use could you possibly have for them?”
He Lin answered righteously, “To eat.”
Coughing, Lin Yishui offered an objective reminder, “You never eat sweets, sir. You said excessive free radicals accelerate cellular aging…”
Unfazed, He Lin replied, “I need to analyze Chi Ye’s identity through his culinary arts.”
Only a fool would believe that.
His heart was exhausted, but on the surface, he still had to nod in understanding.
Feeling somewhat guilty about his own behavior of pocketing and taking everything, he forced himself to endure the pain of parting with his stash. “There are some. I’ll go get them for you.”