Li Shuhe smiled slightly, her gaze following the direction of Pei Shuchen’s departure for a brief moment before she turned her head to look at Si Jinnian.
“Shuchen just happens to have someone he likes, but he isn’t married yet. Since he isn’t married, you have plenty of opportunities.”
“As long as it’s the daughter-in-law I, Li Shuhe, have set my sights on, he will never escape the palm of my hand.”
Thinking of the plan she was about to execute, Li Shuhe could not help but smile.
Si Jinnian widened his eyes, staring at his mother’s rather eerie smile as his mouth twitched a few times.
“Then how do you plan to help me?”
Si Jinnian asked tentatively.
Li Shuhe snapped out of it, her sharp eyes acting like a scanner as she thoroughly appraised Si Jinnian from head to toe.
After a brief pause, a sinister smile slowly crept up the corner of her mouth.
“Starting from this moment, I am freezing all assets under your name until you successfully win over Shuchen!”
“Huh?!”
Hearing this, Si Jinnian dropped his jaw in shock, letting out a short gasp of disbelief. “What kind of help is this?”
“It’s settled then, Si Jinnian! From this second on, I won’t give you another single cent unless you successfully marry Shuchen.”
With that, Li Shuhe turned around decisively and walked away without looking back.
Si Jinnian was stunned for a moment before snapping back to reality and hurriedly turning to chase after her.
“Mom, did you get something wrong? What kind of help is this? You’re clearly trying to screw me over!”
Following behind Li Shuhe, Si Jinnian felt utterly speechless.
Li Shuhe acted as though she hadn’t heard a thing. As she reached the doorway, she raised a hand and instructed the security guards at the entrance, “Stop him.”
Upon hearing this, the two guards were momentarily startled before quickly stepping forward to block Si Jinnian, who was trailing right behind Li Shuhe.
“What are you doing? Get out of the way!”
Si Jinnian’s heart skipped a beat as an ominous premonition washed over him.
A moment later, he heard his mother issue a command to the two guards.
“From now on, without my permission, the young master is not allowed to set foot inside the house even half a step. Whoever dares let him in can pack up and get lost immediately.”
Li Shuhe spoke with the absolute authority of a queen, her voice stern and merciless.
“Understood, Madam.”
The two guards replied in unison, their bulky frames forming an indestructible wall that firmly blocked Si Jinnian’s path.
Si Jinnian widened his eyes in utter disbelief, utterly failing to comprehend how things had escalated to this point.
“No, Mom, didn’t you say you were going to help me? Is this supposed to be helping me?”
Separated by the guards, Si Jinnian looked at Li Shuhe in burning anxiety, his face a mask of distress and confusion.
Li Shuhe curled the corners of her lips into a meaningful smile, staring straight into Si Jinnian’s eyes as she said, “Do you even have to ask? Of course I’m helping you.”
“Oh, right, there’s one more thing I need to tell you. I’ll be going to warn your group of fair-weather friends as well, absolutely forbidding any of them from providing you with even a single cent of financial aid. If I find out anyone dared to defy my orders and helped you behind my back, humph!”
Li Shuhe let out a cold snort. “Then their family businesses can forget about continuing to survive in Beijing.”
Upon hearing this, Si Jinnian stared at his mother in absolute shock. “Mom, you can’t do this! If you do this, I’m going to starve to death.”
Faced with her son’s plea, Li Shuhe remained completely unfoved. A smile lingered on her face, but the words she uttered were ice-cold.
“Don’t worry, I trust that my son won’t let himself starve to death.”
“If all else fails, you can go find Shuchen and see if he’s willing to take in a down-and-out young master like you.”
Before her voice had even faded, Li Shuhe gave her son a wink, then resolutely turned around and walked back toward the house with graceful strides, leaving Si Jinnian standing alone at the entrance, frozen in place as if struck by lightning.
Regaining his senses, a frantic Si Jinnian tried to rush inside to negotiate with his mother once more, but the guards at the door stood like an unyielding wall blocking his way. No matter how much he cajoled or pleaded, the guards remained completely unmoved and firmly refused to let him pass.
Five minutes later, the butler walked out carrying a suitcase. “Young Master, Madam instructed me to hand this over to you.”
Passing the suitcase to Si Jinnian, the butler looked at him with a mixture of sympathy and sternness. “Madam said that if you don’t leave right now, in another five minutes she will call the police to report you for disturbing the peace.”
“What?”
“It’s true. Madam said that starting from now, you are no longer a member of the Si family. Unless you can win over Young Master Shuchen soon, don’t even think about coming back.”
Si Jinnian was speechless. He honestly never dreamed that his mother would help him in such a manner.
Had he known this would be the outcome, even if it killed him, he never would have lied to his mother and claimed he liked Pei Shuchen.
Talk about lifting a rock only to drop it on one’s own feet!
“No, tell my mom that I don’t actually like Pei Shuchen. I was just joking with her.”
Si Jinnian forced an awkward smile.
It seemed Li Shuhe had anticipated that Si Jinnian would say this, as she had already given instructions to the butler in advance.
“Madam said that anything you say now is too late. Whether you actually like him or not, she only wants Young Master Shuchen to be her daughter-in-law. If you don’t win Young Master Shuchen back to be her daughter-in-law, you can forget about ever coming home for the rest of your life.”
Hearing the butler’s relay, Si Jinnian was completely at a loss for words.
“Fine! This is what she said, right? Tell her I’m leaving right now, and she needn’t ever beg me to come back.”
Si Jinnian turned around. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. He refused to believe he couldn’t win Pei Shuchen back, or that his own mother would truly abandon him.
He was the only son of the Si family, after all!
Tugging his suitcase along, Si Jinnian decided to check into a hotel for the night.
However, once he arrived at the hotel, he discovered that all of his bank cards and credit cards had indeed been frozen by his mother to the point where not a single cent could be swiped.
Even his own family’s hotel refused him entry.
With no other options left, Si Jinnian had no choice but to call Gu Ming, hoping to crash at Gu Ming’s place for the night.
“I’m sorry, Nian-ge. It’s not that I don’t want to take you in. It’s just that your mom specifically warned me that if I dare shelter you, she’ll bankrupt my family by tomorrow. She means what she says, so I really don’t dare take you in! Why don’t you try calling someone else?”
Before Si Jinnian could even react, Gu Ming hung up the phone immediately.
Furious and helpless, Si Jinnian refused to give up and dialed the numbers of his other fair-weather friends.
To his utter speechlessness and irritation, the so-called brothers who usually came at his beck and call and swarmed around him like loyal dogs all suddenly dared not take him in. Some of them didn’t even dare to answer his calls.
Penniless and rejected by everyone, Si Jinnian experienced helplessness and the true nature of human relationships for the very first time. In the past, he had always felt invincible and believed his friends were entirely loyal to him.
Yet right now, when faced with threats and compromised interests, their brotherhood looked like an absolute joke.
With a deafening rumble, misfortunes never came singly.
The sky, which had been clear just a moment ago, suddenly poured down in a torrential rainstorm. Standing on the street corner, Si Jinnian was drenched into a drowned rat in mere seconds.
When the doorbell rang, Pei Shuchen had just finished taking a shower and was preparing to go to bed. He glanced at the clock: eleven-forty.
Who would come looking for him this late?
He had just returned to the country and practically had no friends here. Lin Jiayi had gone back to his hometown and wouldn’t be in Beijing for the next few days. Could it be a neighbor needing something?
Filled with curiosity, Pei Shuchen opened the door.