From the moment he sent He Lin away, Chi Ye collapsed onto the bed, raising both arms over his head, facing flat up toward the sky, as if his entire person had been hollowed out.
It was too difficult; it was quite literally a brush with death.
Until the elder Butler came by in the evening, Chi Ye maintained this posture without moving a single bit.
The old man couldn’t help letting out a sigh, “Madam?”
Up and down the He family, there was probably only this person left who insisted on calling him Madam; Chi Ye was in low spirits and too lazy to correct him.
Actually, Butler Zhu had seen He Lin’s coldness and ruthlessness toward Chi Ye over the years with his own eyes, so his heart inevitably leaned a bit biased, always feeling that when a problem arose in a marriage, it couldn’t entirely be blamed on Chi Ye, especially since He Lin hadn’t treated him well after bringing him home either.
Butler Zhu fished a handcuff key out of his pocket, scolding him while unlocking the handcuffs for Chi Ye: “You could still fall asleep at a critical juncture like this; I’ve never seen you have such a good mindset before. I heard that this morning when Second Master gave you a chance to speak, you actually asked for a heater?”
“Yeah,” Chi Ye responded with a lack of strength.
He didn’t want to either, but the original owner had already dug the pit to this stage, and right now they couldn’t get out.
Watching Chi Ye’s appearance, Butler Zhu couldn’t help worrying on his behalf: “You’re really treating the basement like home, wanting to live there for a lifetime.”
Chi Ye covered his face in a long sigh: “What traps a person has never been iron windows and cages.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s ‘no signal’.”
Chi Ye rolled over: “So, Uncle Zhu, see when it’s appropriate for me to ask Sir for a WiFi password?”
The elder Butler felt that young Master Chi might have lost his mind.
Silently shutting his mouth, he concentrated on picking the lock.
But after all, it was his first time fumbling with this kind of controlled equipment, and the old man couldn’t quite find the trick to it, hooking the iron ring with two fingers and pulling hard.
The handcuffs opened.
Yet Chi Ye couldn’t help grimacing and letting out an “Ouch,” drawing in a sharp breath and impatiently shaking his hands a few times.
The red indicator light of the night-vision camera blinked a few times right on cue.
In the study, He Lin—who had just stopped the work in his hands—accidentally swept past the monitoring screen, his gaze lingering on a circle of red marks rising and falling with Chi Ye’s lazy, casual movements, his heart skipping a beat.
The wrists imprisoned by the refined steel metal for a whole day and night had almost worn away their skin, with tiny drops of blood oozing from beneath the fair, delicate epidermis, tinged with a seductive, vermilion red.
He Lin swallowed his saliva, coughed twice as if to cover it up, and looked away.
The two of them exited the basement one after the other.
Not knowing the way to the original owner’s room, Chi Ye had no choice but to follow closely behind Butler Zhu step by step.
The elder Butler stood sideways at the stairwell waiting for a few seconds, seeing that Chi Ye had also stopped and showed no intention of bypassing him to walk ahead, unable to help feeling baffled in his heart—the usually arrogant and overbearing young Master Chi was content to take a back seat?
Yet Chi Ye paid not the slightest attention to Butler Zhu’s subtle facial expression changes; his entire mind was attracted by the luxurious decorations around him.
The residence of a tycoon-level domineering CEO truly lived up to the literal impact bestowed by his loving author mother.
The spiral staircase inlaid with yellow pearwood handrails linked upward from the basement all the way to the top floor, running through dozens of rooms of unknown function; the purely handcrafted carpet possessed exquisite weaving patterns, and the European-style palace chandelier right in the middle of the living room was almost half the size of the Monument to the People’s Heroes.
Everywhere flashed the brilliance of money.
Everything was good, except that it was a bit cold.
Assistants, servants, and bodyguards bustled back and forth; clearly there were quite a few people, but somehow the room felt like it had less vital energy than a cup of iced cola.
The entire villa was quiet as a chicken, the atmosphere setting the tone like a morgue in a hospital, where if anyone happened to wake up as a zombie in the morgue, the commotion could be bigger than this.
For a split second, Chi Ye suddenly felt a trace of sympathy for the original owner; living in such a depressing home every day, if he cheated, maybe it was because he was freezing?
He Lin and the original owner had always lived apart; their two bedrooms were respectively located on the east and west sides of the fourth floor of the villa.
Butler Zhu skillfully pushed open the carved wooden door on the west side for Chi Ye. Then extending his right hand to make a gesture inviting him in, he stopped outside the door himself without following inside, presumably wanting to leave Chi Ye a bit of space to reminisce about the past.
Watching the elder Butler, who even deliberately avoided his gaze, Chi Ye felt all the more that the supervisor he had chosen was simply too outstanding.
The original owner’s bedroom didn’t differ much in decoration from the rest of the villa, primarily highlighting a single word: “expensive.”
Only the color scheme was somewhat blinding to the eyes.
To think there was actually someone narcissistic enough in this world to coat the entire wall surface of their own bedroom with sports-car baking-finish dazzling orange; either they were color-blind or lacked common sense.
Yet Chi Ye clearly lacked spare time right now to complain about the original owner’s taste; his objective was extremely clear, as he strode straight toward the most prominent spot in the room—the doghouse placed right in the middle of the balcony.
According to records in the original novel, a major reason the original owner seduced the bodyguard previously was to steal He Lin’s corporate trade secrets in exchange for bringing back his boyfriend and white moonlight, Mu Liang, only to be caught red-handed in bed by He Lin that very day. All materials—including bidding documents, patents, and core designs that hadn’t yet managed to be sent out—were hidden by the original owner right underneath the doghouse in his bedroom.
The purpose of Chi Ye’s trip was to find those materials and hand them back to He Lin as an admission ticket for his request to leave the basement.
Inside the doghouse, Bobo was listlessly leaning against the soft cushion, playing with a plush ball half-heartedly. The food bowl beside it had long since been empty, and the packaging boxes for imported milk and dog biscuits lay knocked over on the floor, evidently having been neglected by anyone for quite a long time.
Seeing Chi Ye approach, the two-month-old small milk puppy seemed to freeze for a moment, its glass-marble-like pupils widening a circle, and after locking gazes for half a minute, it rapidly grew excited, happily wagging its little tail and stretching out its little paws to continuously pounce onto Chi Ye.
Chi Ye had serious business to attend to and had no time to play around with it, patting the little puppy’s rear end to herd it off to the side.
Bobo barked loudly: “Woof woof woof!”
At a glance, it was clearly spoiled rotten.
Hearing the commotion, the elder Butler stuck half his head inside, his eyes full of inquiry.
Helpless, to maintain the dog-pampering persona he had established with his own mouth, Chi Ye had to scoop Bobo’s little belly into his arms in one sweep, symbolically soothing it with a sentence: “Be good, stop making a fuss.”
The Butler pulled his head back again.
Bobo wasn’t big in size, but the doghouse was exceptionally large, piled inside with all sorts of bizarre limited-edition toys, huge luxury brand logos stamped everywhere.
Like master, like dog, wealthy.
Hesitating for a moment, Chi Ye simply rolled up his sleeves and thrust his arm straight into the doghouse.
Fumbling around for a long time amidst a pile of chew toys, plush balls, and teething sticks without finding any clues, he took another breath and reached beneath the soft cushion to grope inch by inch.
After tossing and turning for over ten minutes, just when Chi Ye was almost about to suspect that he had remembered the original text incorrectly, his fingers finally brushed against two cold, hard-textured small metal objects.
A surge of joy filled Chi Ye’s heart.
Pulling them out to spread open on his palm for a look, they were indeed USB flash drives. At least the tossing and turning hadn’t been in vain.
Yet, why were there two? And identical ones at that?
Just how many secrets had this scumbag of an original owner stolen? One drive wasn’t even enough to hold them. Had He Lin not noticed a single thing beforehand?
Chi Ye “tisked” inwardly: Second Master, with this emotional intelligence of yours, not getting green-hatted would do a disservice to the spring that just passed.
Stretching his back.
Directly opposite the doghouse was a chaise lounge, luxurious and high-end.
Chi Ye hadn’t experienced a single second of comfort since transmigrating into this book, and finally bumping into a huge sofa here, he unconsciously released Bobo and sat right up onto it.
The original owner truly knew how to enjoy life; viewed from this sideways reclining angle, the scenery of the entire villa district was completely panoramic, as beautiful as it could get.
Bobo scrambled on its four short legs, running back and forth around its master.
Chi Ye curled his entire person into the comfortable cushions,
Simultaneously satisfied and regretful.
He couldn’t help starting to daydream about his happy life after divorce.
The original owner’s looks weren’t bad; making a living mixing in the entertainment circle shouldn’t be too difficult either. When the time came, he would work hard himself, earn money properly, and strive to save up enough over a few years to buy a not-too-expensive small courtyard, planted all over with flowers, plants, and trees, with a gentle breeze blowing past to kick up a fragrance of soil and green grass—oh right, and the scent of warm sunshine.
When free, he could also practice calligraphy and play the zither; Chi Ye liked the guzheng, but in his previous life he was too busy to fiddle with it at all.
Yet the premise for all of this was leaving this place, leaving He Lin.
…
When the elder Butler walked over to the chaise lounge, he happened to catch this distracted expression on Chi Ye’s face.
The young Master Chi quietly gazed outward through the floor-to-ceiling glass.
His entire person looked youthful, noble, and lingeringly gentle; the crimson sunset cast through the refraction of the glass onto this clean, pretty face, making even the tiny features within every pore appear tranquil and serene.
The elder Butler raised his hand to check his watch once more; exactly thirty minutes had passed from entering the door until now.
He had originally intended to remind Chi Ye that the time was about up, but opening his mouth, he swallowed the urging words back down, truly lacking the heart to disturb this hard-earned peace.
Sensing someone approaching, Chi Ye rolled over and stood up from the sofa.
The Butler intended to give leeway, but Chi Ye didn’t want to be picked on for any faults by He Lin at this juncture; since half an hour was stated, he couldn’t stay a single second longer.
Showing no expression of reluctance, Chi Ye patted the seams of his trousers and walked decisively toward the door, asking as he walked: “Uncle Zhu, should I be heading back to the little black room?”
Looking like a person ready to sacrifice their life for a cause.
Following behind was a tiny, palm-sized, full-of-spunk little milk puppy.
Butler Zhu’s tooth sockets ached watching this.
The old man had originally made up his mind not to manage him anymore when Chi Ye asked for WiFi, but after barely an hour had passed he had surrendered once more, biting his teeth and swallowing his grievances to play psychological counselor: “Sigh, how did things get to this stage now. You don’t even know to beg for mercy, soften your stance, or at least explain a few words.”
Chi Ye bent down to scoop up Bobo, puzzled: “Am I not soft enough?”
Accustomed to advising the original owner this way, Butler Zhu only recalled after being asked back by Chi Ye that these past two days Chi Ye had been different than before, lowering his head and drooping his eyes with unusual docility toward He Lin, like a completely changed person.
The Butler felt somewhat gratified, carrying the doghouse behind him and nodding hard: “Soft. This is extremely good, keep it up, and don’t be hard anymore in the future.”
Chi Ye: “…”
If this dialogue continued any further, it was going to hurt his kidneys.
Chi Ye decisively ended the topic, fished a flash drive out from his pocket, and handed it to the Butler.
Chi Ye had actually hesitated for a few seconds over whether to hand over all of the two flash drives the original owner had hidden or keep one privately. But ultimately, he cunningly decided to first throw a stone to test the waters and see He Lin’s reaction before talking.
Butler Zhu looked suspicious: “What is this?”
Chi Ye’s diction was earnest: “A life-saving thing.”
Then extending both hands to grip the Butler’s palms, shaking them hard: “I’m counting on you, Uncle Zhu, you must personally hand this to Second Master.”
Desperate for things to take a favorable turn and for the two of them to see the light at the end of the tunnel, the Butler simply stopped questioning the contents inside and agreed in one breath.
Nodding solemnly, it felt just like an underground organization passing down the sacred flame of revolution during the Anti-Japanese War era.