"A helping hand?"
Yu Ci looked her up and down, a smile at the corner of his lips. "Using condensed smoke as a signal and paying a midnight visit—was all this merely to ask someone for 'a helping hand'? Or are Madam Xia's standards different from mine?"
He remembered that You Rui disliked being called "Madam Xia," yet he deliberately used the title. His somewhat stiff words choked her up for a moment, but a smile soon bloomed once more across her flower-pretty face. "Why does Brother Lu say that...?"
"It is right to avoid speaking too deeply with a new acquaintance, but when one intends to do business, it is even more taboo to leave half one's words unspoken."
Yu Ci gave her no chance to elaborate, putting on an expression of offended displeasure. "Madam Xia and I have met only once. If it truly were just a helping hand, that would be one thing—who would not wish to forge a good karmic bond? But in the present situation, Madam Xia speaks so lightly of it. Where is your sincerity?"
His words struck straight at the heart. Though he still did not fully understand the sequence of events, what he had seen through Kou Chu yesterday made it clear that You Rui had been pursued, to the point that even her guards had vanished. Given her close ties to Three Families Market, for her to have fallen into such a state while the market itself showed no abnormalities—the reason was practically written in plain sight.
Nine times out of ten, it was internal strife. How idle would Yu Ci have to be to stick his hand into such a rotten mess?
You Rui had not expected Yu Ci to spare her not a shred of face. She was accustomed