Chapter Fourteen

After everyone had left, Dong Yue asked anxiously, "Dad really will be okay, won't he?"

The sort of plot where someone switched cars with his wife to throw off the people after him and make his escape was something she'd only ever seen in movies. Now that it had suddenly happened in her own family, she couldn't help feeling uneasy.

"Don't worry. He'll be fine," Liu Mumu replied with certainty.

"What about Mom?"

"She's just gone for a drive. What could happen?"

"But Mom said she was going to distract the bad guys for Dad. What if they start watching her?"

Thinking of Jiang Li's earlier declaration that she was willing to sacrifice herself for love, and the way her dad had been so moved before agreeing without hesitation, Liu Mumu sincerely felt that being his wife was a real skill.

"That bad guy isn't tracking him by keeping an eye on him."

"Huh?"

"So..." Liu Mumu went to the kitchen to get her fruit platter. When she came back, she continued, "Whether they switch cars or not doesn't really make a difference."

Dong Yue's mouth fell open in surprise. "Then why didn't you tell Dad just now?"

Liu Mumu popped a strawberry into her mouth. Dong Yue's eyes curved into a smile. Sweet!

"Oh, I saw how happy he was with his deduction, so I thought I'd play along a little."

Dong Yue felt a bit sorry for her parents, then went back to happily watching TV and eating fruit with her older sister.

As for Dong Qi, since he couldn't move one leg, the whole family had forgotten about him in his room.

It wasn't until evening that Jiang Li finally returned in Dong Zhenghao's car. Her nerves had probably been wound tight for hours, because her steps wavered a little as she came inside.

Meanwhile, the two girls at home were sitting close together on the sofa, watching a variety show and laughing.

A nameless anger flared inside Jiang Li. She even forgot to keep a safe distance from Liu Mumu. Walking into the living room, she scolded them, "Your father's in such danger, and you still have the heart to watch TV?"

Ever since Jiang Li walked in, the expression on Dong Yue's face had grown subdued. When she heard the accusation, she simply stayed silent.

"Why wouldn't we? Actually, Aunt Jiang, you don't need to be so nervous. If Dad really does die one day, won't you become a single rich woman? You could even buy seven villas and take turns living in them, with a boyfriend in each one. Doesn't that make you feel a little better?"

Jiang Li's lips curled upward, then quickly straightened. "All right, enough of that nonsense. Remember to answer when your dad calls later."

Then she went upstairs with a spring in her step, probably to go back to her room and sleep. After all, anything was possible in dreams.

"Mom seems to be in a better mood?" Dong Yue whispered.

"Mm," Liu Mumu said. "You have to understand: marriage is the grave of love, and a husband is the person in that grave who steals your spot in bed, and whom you're not allowed to kick out.

"Do you think it's more comfortable to sleep in a bed alone or to squeeze in with someone?"

Dong Yue thought about it. "Alone."

"Wrong." Liu Mumu wagged a finger. "What matters isn't whether there's one person or two. It's that when you're unhappy, you can kick him out of your bed whenever you want. That's the difference between a husband and a boyfriend."

Dong Yue understood a little.

The difference was that one could sleep with you for free, while the other had to take responsibility. No wonder her mom had been so happy just hearing about it.

A little after ten that night, Dong Zhenghao called. Liu Mumu waited until it had rung several times before answering.

"Why did you take so long to answer?" Dong Zhenghao complained.

"Late-night snack, TV, video games. Pick one."

None of the options was that she'd missed her father, who'd brought this on himself and had been forced to leave home.

"..." Dong Zhenghao stopped asking for trouble and said excitedly, "Those marks on my body are starting to fade, and I've stopped bleeding. So this really works!"

After the high-speed train left Qingcheng, the strange marks on his body had begun to fade at a speed visible to the naked eye. If he hadn't seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn't have believed it.

This time, he truly believed that there were things in this world that defied science, and that his daughter, who tossed coins every day like some kind of fortune-teller, wasn't a fraud.

"Oh." Liu Mumu sounded indifferent.

"When can I come home?" Dong Zhenghao asked, full of hope.

"Come home? You gave someone else your birth date and birth hour, which is like handing them the key to your house. Do you really think going away to hide for a couple of days will solve everything?" Liu Mumu almost laughed at his naïveté.

Harming someone through occult methods usually required a few things. A person's birth date and birth hour were the most common, or else blood, hair, fingernails, and the like.

As it happened, just a few days ago, Dong Zhenghao had openly given someone his birth details. She couldn't help suspecting that was the reason.

"Birth date and birth hour?" Dong Zhenghao exclaimed. Then he realized what she meant. "That bastard Zhan Hongye is trying to hurt me?"

"I don't know. He wasn't the only person there that day." Liu Mumu was a little troubled too. Dong Zhenghao being away for so long affected her as well. She'd never encountered anything like this before, and her grandfather had never told her how to deal with it.

Her first thought had been to call the police, but this was probably outside the police's jurisdiction.

"Am I going to have to keep drifting around out here?" Dong Zhenghao felt wronged.

"If you can somehow get his birth date and birth hour, maybe..."

"You could help me get revenge?"

Liu Mumu said irritably, "Don't dream. The most I can do is figure out when he'll have bad luck and when you can come home."

"I'll try to find out, but if he used this method to hurt someone, he'll definitely have taken precautions." Dong Zhenghao hesitated, then asked, "He knows your birth details too. He won't try anything against you, will he?"

Thinking back to what had happened that day, he regretted it so much his guts were twisting.

"No. My fate's too strong. If he uses my birth details to harm me, the only result will be that I overpower him and he dies." Liu Mumu yawned. "All right, I'm done talking. Bye."

Then she hung up quickly and went to bed to get her beauty sleep.

When Liu Mumu woke up the next morning, she saw a message Zhan Ni had sent her in the middle of the night.

Zhan Ni: I'm going to the hospital for a checkup tomorrow morning. I'm a little scared to go alone. Could you come with me?

Liu Mumu: Sure. Which hospital are you going to? How about we meet at the entrance at nine?

Five minutes later, Zhan Ni finally replied.

Zhan Ni: Renyuan Private Hospital. See you then.

At nine o'clock, the sunlight outside was already a little glaring. Liu Mumu stood by the fountain at the entrance to Renyuan Private Hospital, waiting for Zhan Ni with a baseball cap on.

She didn't arrive until nine twenty.

After getting out of the taxi, Zhan Ni hurried over to her. "Sorry. It took me ages to find a taxi."

"It's fine," Liu Mumu said casually.

They entered the hospital, and Zhan Ni took her straight to the deputy director's office on the seventh floor. The deputy director called over a young female doctor, who took Zhan Ni to have her checkup.

The first thing they did was draw blood. Zhan Ni seemed a little squeamish at the sight of blood and clung to Liu Mumu's clothes, so Liu Mumu had no choice but to stand beside her.

Seeing the nurse holding more than ten blood tubes, Liu Mumu couldn't help asking, "How many tests are you doing? Why are there so many tubes?"

The nurse glanced up at her, then said nothing.

Zhan Ni quietly explained, "Dad asked me to get as thorough a checkup as possible, so they need to draw this much blood."

That was what she said, but Liu Mumu noticed that the nurse filled almost every tube before switching to the next one.

She hadn't been to the hospital many times, but she didn't remember needing so much blood the last time she'd had a blood test.

Liu Mumu and Zhan Ni didn't have much in common to talk about. After a spell of silence, Liu Mumu spoke first. "What made you decide to get a checkup all of a sudden?"

Zhan Ni smiled. "Dad worries about me. He's afraid my mom's illness might be hereditary, so he told me to get a comprehensive checkup."

Before something happened to Dong Zhenghao, Liu Mumu hadn't thought much about Aunt Zhang's situation. She'd just felt it was a shame.

But now, she couldn't help having other thoughts.

"Uncle Zhan is so thoughtful."

"Yeah, he's always been so good to me. He was afraid my stepmother might bully me while he was away, so he even bought me an apartment near my school."

Because of what had happened at home, Zhan Ni's college entrance exam results hadn't been as good as Liu Mumu's. But in the end, she'd applied to universities in Qingcheng too, so she could reunite with her father. Her school wasn't far from Liu Mumu's.

"Oh, that's really nice," Liu Mumu said stiffly.

"Did Uncle Dong give you anything?"

"No."

Zhan Ni looked at her with a hint of sympathy.

"By the way, I've been meaning to ask you: how long had Aunt Zhang been sick before you told Uncle Zhan?"

"Why are you asking?" Zhan Ni remembered what Zhan Huitian had said. She also recalled that Liu Mumu had offered to look into things for her, but hadn't found anything in the end, so she didn't want to keep talking about it.

Liu Mumu could tell she was reluctant, so she softened her tone even more. "I just think it's a shame. If you'd told Uncle Zhan from the start, maybe you could've taken her to a hospital in the capital while her symptoms were still mild."

Zhan Ni didn't seem happy with what Liu Mumu said. "My mom had a comprehensive checkup not long before she got sick, and there hadn't been anything wrong at the time, so we didn't think much of it.

"Besides, Dad was always busy. I didn't want to bother him back then. Mom had gone to the hospital and been told she was fine, then suddenly got worse a month later. Who could've known it would turn out like this?"

A month after she'd gone to the hospital for a checkup?

Liu Mumu considered this. Aunt Zhang had already been showing symptoms before she went to the hospital. To be conservative, let's say she'd waited a month before going. That meant two months had passed between the start of the illness and the time Zhan Ni called Zhan Hongye over.

She wondered what Zhan Hongye had been doing during those two months. Had he stayed in Qingcheng the whole time, or had he gone somewhere else?

After all, some illnesses might not be illnesses at all. If someone wanted to make a person suddenly fall ill, they couldn't very well do it from several provinces away.