As if to prove he really had buried it, Sheriff crawled halfway out of the litter box and pawed at the air with his front paws right in front of him.
Li Yi went over to look. Despite all the commotion, Sheriff had not buried a single bit of his poop.
He picked up the litter scoop, scooped the poop into the toilet, and flushed it away. Otherwise, the whole room would stink of cat poop in a little while.
He had brought Sheriff home from the orphanage. Back then, Sheriff had single-handedly driven all the mice out of the orphanage, finally earning Grandpa Director's approval and becoming Li Yi's beloved pet.
He had come back at just the right time. The Lu family had not yet killed Sheriff.
In his previous life, Lu Junjia had been allergic to cat fur, and they had refused to let him keep Sheriff at home. Only after Li Yi fought hard for it had they allowed him to keep Sheriff in his room.
He had only dared take Sheriff out to play in the back garden when everyone else was away.
But even with all his care, he could not curb a black-and-white cat's natural restlessness. Once, he had failed to close his window properly, and Sheriff had escaped to play in the back garden he often visited.
He had happened upon Lu Xingluo having afternoon tea with her friends there. The little ornaments swaying on the hem of her dress had caught Sheriff's curiosity, and his claws had accidentally snagged and ruined her dress.
By the time Li Yi returned, even Sheriff's body was gone.
It was Grandpa Butler who had taken him to the trash cans outside the villa. They had searched for a long time before finding Sheriff's bloodied body.
That had been the first time he lost his temper at home, but no one cared. Lu Hongshen had berated him, Qiao Xinyue had slapped him, and Lu Xingluo had stood to the side mocking him disdainfully. She had even taken the opportunity to ask Qiao Xinyue to buy her another dress worth a million.
From then on, his feelings toward this family had gradually grown cold.
When Li Yi was first brought back, he had thought he had finally found his family. Every day, he had tried enthusiastically to please them like a little sun, yet they had never once given him a kind look.
Lu Hongshen's words had sounded high-minded, but in reality, he had often made Li Yi kneel on the little stone path in the garden as punishment without even asking what had happened.
The little stones had not been polished. Kneeling on them had felt like being pricked with needles, and he would kneel for hours at a time, barely able to walk steadily when he stood.
The next day, his knees would be red and swollen. It took several days of rest for them to recover.
Not one member of the Lu family had ever asked how he was. Only Grandpa Butler had brought him medicine and rubbed his knees with aching concern.
Qiao Xinyue, meanwhile, had played favorites. All she did each day was shop, get beauty treatments, and have afternoon tea. Often, all Lu Junjia had to do was whisper something in her ear, and she would believe him.
Then she would turn around and beat and curse Li Yi.
Deep down, she had believed that a child who came back from an orphanage simply had bad character. She had found fault with him in every way, yet felt that as his mother, she had a duty to educate him.
So she had struck hard every time.
In the Lu family's study was a disciplinary ruler sent by Old Master Lu, specifically for punishing disobedient children. Its original purpose had been to regulate the conduct of the Lu family's children and serve as a warning to them all.
Even after Old Master Lu died, the ruler had sat gathering dust in the study. Only when Li Yi returned to the Lu family had it been brought back into use, its handle gripped so often that it had been polished to a shine.
Li Yi had gone missing at five and been brought back by the Lu family at fifteen. During his three years living with them, his back had never been free of injuries.
Qiao Xinyue had taken the ruler to him over the smallest things, striking either his palms or his back.
She had also manipulated him verbally, saying that if he disobeyed, he had to be punished. Only punishment would make him remember his mistakes and keep him from repeating them.
He had still been young then and had only just been brought back into a wealthy family. Believing he really had been thoughtless and broken the rules of a wealthy household, he had obediently accepted his punishment.
In the days that followed, he had lived even more cautiously, not even daring to offend the household servants.
Even when the Lu family's longtime servants walked all over him, he had only endured it in silence.
He had thought things would get better once he got into university.
But after he finally managed to score 706 on the entrance exam, his fiancé, Zhou Xuanze, had tricked him into handing over his exam admission details and changed his university preferences to an agricultural university.
Only when the acceptance letter arrived had Zhou Xuanze told him with a grin that he had taken a fancy to a living wall and wanted him to learn to grow trees so he could personally design one like it in their future little home.
Then he had rented him a two-bedroom apartment with a living room near the agricultural university and placated him with empty promises there.
Li Yi had foolishly gone off to learn to grow trees, while Zhou Xuanze and Lu Junjia had carried on a romance openly in the Lu household behind his back.
Old Master Lu had already been dead for years before Li Yi was brought back, but his will had clearly stipulated one thing: he had left his missing biological grandson a 25% stake in Lu Group as a coming-of-age gift. If he was not found within ten years, those shares would be donated.
Fortunately, he had been brought back to the Lu family before the deadline.
But the bequest would only take effect on his eighteenth birthday, December 25. Only then would a lawyer come to help him complete the share transfer agreement, and only on that day would the shares truly belong to him.
The date on his current ID was the day he had arrived at the orphanage, June 18.
Even though he was now legally eighteen, Old Master Lu had specified December 25, so they could only follow that date.
Zhou Xuanze had exploited that gap, first getting him to sign a contract making him the legal representative. Taking advantage of his ignorance about the shares, he had laid a series of traps in the contract.
Then he had waited for Li Yi to fall for them.
Li Yi had never doubted this fiancé who had given him warmth. Without even reading the contract properly, he had signed his name.
Two years later, problems had begun cropping up frequently at the company. Li Yi had rushed back and forth between the company and university, missing so many classes that he was eventually expelled.
Zhou Xuanze had offered him false comfort, saying the company was the fruit of both their efforts and that he would find a way.
Behind his back, however, he had spent his days fooling around with Lu Junjia. The two had done everything couples should and should not do.
While Li Yi was overwhelmed with the company's problems, often forgetting to eat and ending up hospitalized with stomach spasms, the two of them had been having sex at a five-star hotel near the hospital.
When Li Yi was taken away by the police, the two of them had been having sex in Lu Junjia's room.
When Li Yi tearfully begged his lawyer to pass a message to Zhou Xuanze asking him to deal with the company's affairs, he and Lu Junjia had been getting wild in the office.
Even the message the lawyer later brought back to Li Yi had come from a call Lu Junjia made while lying in Zhou Xuanze's arms after being thoroughly satisfied.
The message was that if Li Yi gave up his shares, he would help him resolve the immediate crisis.
Even at that point, Li Yi had never suspected Zhou Xuanze. When he left the police station, he had still been thinking of letting him know he was safe.
Instead, he had seen those two scumbags embracing and kissing in the kitchen. He had never forgotten Lu Junjia's provocative look, even at the moment of his death.
The Lu family's attitude, as though this were nothing unusual, and their immediate announcement of the pair's engagement had made Li Yi, who had held the empty title of fiancé for two years, look like a joke.
He still remembered what vomiting had felt like then. His stomach had churned violently, forcing his abdominal muscles to contract. Food had surged repeatedly into his throat and flowed from his mouth and nose. His stomach, which had barely been fed to begin with, had expelled what little food remained. After that, only involuntary retching remained. He had dry-heaved until his throat burned and itched, his head spun, and his vision blurred, until he finally fainted.
After that bout of illness, he had been diagnosed with mania.
He had spent some time in a daze, until he was sent to the Shi family as a gift. Suddenly coming to his senses in the car, he had opened the door and jumped out, only to be struck and killed by a car.
His brief twenty years as cannon fodder had ended just like that.
In the novel, Zhou Xuanze and Lu Junjia had even argued out of jealousy at his funeral. Zhou Xuanze had only managed to soothe Lu Junjia by holding him, kissing him, and coaxing him.
Ptooey! Disgusting!
Even more disgusting than Sheriff's poop!
Tomorrow, I'll shove it into their mouths!
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