Lu's mother had always been in poor health. A few years after giving birth to Lu Lin, she had difficulty even walking and had been recuperating at the villa halfway up the mountain.
Lu Lin finally turned around and calmly said, "Don't drag my mother into this. And give up on the idea of me going on blind dates. I want to get married, and I will get married naturally."
Lu Changcheng turned and left.
Lu Lin glanced at the bottle of bait on the table, then got up to pack his fishing gear for tomorrow.
*
On Tuesday morning, as usual, the secretary first organized the documents that needed to be processed and placed them on Lu Lin's desk, waiting for him to deal with them the next day.
The secretary put down a thick stack of documents and was about to leave when she suddenly stopped, staring in surprise at the corner where the ornament used to be. The ornament was gone? She couldn't tell if Lu Lin had taken it himself or if a thief had stolen it. She'd heard that Lu Lin's ornament was a custom-made piece, worth hundreds of thousands.
She rushed back to the secretary's desk and contacted her special assistant using her own mobile phone.
The assistant replied with a few words, and the secretary, quite surprised, nodded, "Understood."
She was puzzled as to why Lu Lin had suddenly been ordering coffee and cake so often. The reason turned out to be that handsome young man. The secretary tensed up; she was also hoping to woo Yan Heqing ... She wondered if the president had overheard her private chatter. Luckily, Yan Heqing hadn't given her his WeChat, otherwise she'd be competing with Lu Lin for his man...
The secretary patted her chest in relief.
At the same time, Yan Heqing entered the examination hall. As soon as he arrived at the school, he went to the main gate to check. Yan Shengbing was not there, but Zhao Huilin was still waiting there.
After receiving the exam papers, Yan Heqing regained his composure and focused on answering the questions.
The clean paper was quickly filled with neat handwriting. Yan Heqing answered quickly, checked it once after finishing, handed in his paper early, and left the examination room.
He ate a quick meal at the cafeteria first, then went to the library. Seeing that the exams were in the afternoon, he started his second exam. The papers weren't difficult for him, and he handed in his paper early again.
This time, he specifically chose to go through the school's main gate.
Perhaps because he had changed so much, he took the initiative to walk up to Zhao Huilin, and only then did Zhao Huilin recognize him.
Zhao Huilin truly dared not recognize Yan Heqing.
The boy before me, dressed in thick, warm clothes and with a clean face, seemed to be radiating light, completely unlike the taciturn, perpetually abused balcony orphan.
Zhao Huilin stammered, "You... you are Heqing?"
Yan Heqing replied, "Why are you alone?"
Zhao Huilin then confirmed that it was indeed Yan Heqing. Normally, she would have already started cursing, but today she leaned closer and asked, "I don't know if I'm mistaken, but you seem to have a younger brother who was adopted by a wealthy family, right?"
Yan Heqing said calmly, "Why are you alone?"
Zhao Huilin grinned, "Looks like you're not so heartless after all. Your dad's been busy lately." Yan Shengbing has been constantly away from home lately. Zhao Huilin said smugly, "Don't think you're safe just because you moved your household registration. I consulted a lawyer; given our family's situation, you have to support us in our old age."
Yan Heqing calmly said, "It seems the lawyer you consulted wasn't professional enough."
Zhao Huilin's smile froze. "What do you mean?"
"The lawyer I consulted told me that as long as parents have severely abused their children and there is no actual emotional connection between them, judicial practice determines that this is sufficient to constitute—" Yan Heqing waited until Zhao Huilin's expression changed drastically before finishing his sentence, "... the loss of the right to demand support."
Zhao Huilin didn't understand the law or know whether it was true or false, but Yan Heqing was clear-headed and upright, and she was so shocked that she couldn't speak for a long time.
Yan Heqing asked her a strange question, "Why are you in such a hurry to find me? Have you run out of money?"
Zhao Huilin finally snapped out of her daze, and in a fit of despair, she said, "Yeah, it's just a small amount of money. It's all your fault. You wouldn't take 5 million, and 100,000 wouldn't even be enough to fill your teeth!"
Yan Heqing nodded, "That's good."
He ignored Zhao Huilin and left.
Zhao Huilin wanted to chase after him, but remembering what Yan Heqing had just said about the judicial ruling, she became anxious, stamped her foot, and ran towards the bus stop instead, rushing home to find the young lawyer in the alley across the street.
In the private lake on the outskirts of the city, the bait that Lu Lin had put into the ice cave two hours ago had intoxicated a bunch of fish, and now the area beneath the ice was teeming with fish eager to bite.
Yan Heqing didn't come fishing today.
Lu Lin turned a page of "And Then There Were And Then There Were None," ignoring the violently shaking fishing rod.
After fishing until almost nine o'clock, Lu Lin packed up his things and returned to the parking lot. Just as he got into the car, his phone vibrated in his pocket.
Lu Lin got into the driver's seat and then took out his phone.
As soon as I turned it on, WeChat notification popped up.
The sender is 52 Hertz.
At the same time, Yan Heqing sent over the edited message.
[I'm sorry, Mr. Lu, I started my final exams today and only now have time to prepare a return gift. Thank you for the Cube of Light; I really like it, and I hope you will like this gift too.]
Chapter 32
This was the first time Yan Heqing had contacted Lu Lin after adding him as a friend.
The interior of the car was dimly lit, with the faint light from the parking lot shining through the windshield.
Lu Lin unlocked the app and went directly into the chat window.
There are two pieces of information.
The first one is a mini-program.
The second one is--
[I'm sorry, Mr. Lu, I started my final exams today and only now have time to prepare a return gift. Thank you for the Cube of Light; I really like it, and I hope you will like this gift too.]
Lu Lin's eyebrows twitched slightly. A gift?
I clicked on the mini-program.
The phone screen went black instantly, followed by the sound of waves and the cries of seagulls. Then a blue, star-like band of light appeared, gradually flowing into the sea.
Soon, a cry similar to that of a baby broke the silence, and a shimmering white dolphin suddenly leaped out of the starlit sea. It was a beluga whale, agile and ethereal, its tail fin stirring up waves as it came to a stop in mid-air.
This was followed by countless calls from different fish.
From the head of the beluga whale, it gradually transforms into golden fish—different kinds of fish: carp, grass carp, silver carp, snakehead, black carp, ribbonfish, sardines...
Crabs, conches, and countless fish even slowly fell from the sky, returning to the ocean and splashing up tiny golden sparks.
The process didn't take long, less than a minute, before it ended and I was returned to the WeChat interface.