Chapter 165
Zhong Manhua’s pupils contracted violently and she didn’t look further down.
All emotions surged upwards in comprehension, and she collapsed onto the sofa with a straightforward blackness before her eyes.
The butler was taken aback and rushed forward, “Madam!”
“Don’t come over!” Zhong Manhua propped herself up on the arm of the sofa, barely able to sit herself down again, her eyes crimson, her voice stern, “Don’t come near me, just stand there.”
The butler was unsure.
But it was his master’s order, so he had to step back.
Only after retreating to Zhong Manhua’s designated position did the housekeeper speak tentatively, “Madam, has Second Miss caused some trouble again?”
“She is just like that, you must not get angry, instead you will hurt yourself.”
Zhong Manhua ignored the housekeeper.
Her head was dizzy, her ears were buzzing, she couldn’t hear anything, and the only thing left in front of her eyes was this one sentence.
If it had been before, she would have thought it was just a prank.
After all, in the year since Ying Zidian was taken back to the Ying family, both she and Ying Zhending had given up on discipline, and only Ying Luwei was still patient.
She let Ying Zidian into the Talent Cla*s, taught her piano, bought her lots of clothes and jewellery, and spoke up for her in front of them.
But today’s recital made Zhong Manhua realise that Ying Luwei’s attitude towards Ying Zidian was really odd.
She tried hard to calm down before she dared to read on.
After reading it, her whole body was frozen.
The letter was not long, it was more of a series of evidence.
The evidence proved that at the beginning of 2003, on the 28th of January, Ying Luwei had stolen a baby from the old Ying family home and thrown it into a cul-de-sac on the far side of the street.
Even after 16 years, Zhong Manhua could never forget this day.
It was just after the New Year and the Ying family had a big order from the Imperial City.
By taking this big order, the Ying Group would be able to go to the next level.
So she and Ying Chen-ting both went out in order to sign the contract.
As a result, she came back at 12 o’clock in the middle of the night and went to see her little girl as usual.
There was only one quilt left in the crib.
A baby that old could only crawl, there was no way she could have run away, but the servants had searched the old house and found no sign of the baby.
It was as if it had disappeared into thin air.
Afterwards, the Ying family went looking for it, but they couldn’t find it either.
Zhong Manhua squeezed the envelope tightly, as if she had thought of something, and shouted sternly again, “Housekeeper!”
The housekeeper shivered and answered, “Madam.”
“Sixteen years ago, the day Second Miss was lost, did you, did you ……” Zhong Manhua closed her eyes, gritting her teeth and spitting out the words with difficulty, “see Lu Wei go out?”
The housekeeper was stunned, how could he have expected Zhong Manhua to suddenly talk about this matter: “Madam?”
“Speak!” Zhong Manhua slapped the table in anger, “If you don’t tell me, get out of the Ying house today.”
The butler was desperately thinking, after a few minutes, he slapped his head and blurted out, “Madam, I saw it, Miss Lu Wei went out at eight o’clock in the evening and came back at eight thirty.”
“She said it was snowing outside and she went out to have a snowball fight with her playmates. I saw she was covered in snow and sent her to the bathroom.”
Old Lady Ying had rested by then, and Ying Luwei was her oldest child.
If he didn’t serve her well, he would definitely be sacked.
Zhong Manhua’s nails pinched into her palm and she took a deep breath, “Then when did you find out that Second Miss was missing?”
“That I will not forget.” The housekeeper, though confused, answered, “At eight fifty, I went to change the bottle for the second young miss.”
The timeline, it all matched up!
Zhong Manhua gritted her back teeth so hard she could taste the blood.
She and Ying Zhending had suspected anyone in the old mansion, just not Ying Luwei.
Although she was of the same generation, they both treated her as their junior.
When she had no daughter, she was always her little darling.
Zhong Manhua could not understand why she had to do this.
Besides, how old was she in 2003?
She was only 8 years old.
How could an 8 year old do such a vicious thing?
Zhong Manhua couldn’t accept it, so she picked up the landline with trembling fingers and dialed an international number.
Once connected, she choked out a sob: “Timothy, come back quickly, something big has happened ……”
**
In one night, Ying Luwei’s reputation was completely ruined.
Weibo was full of people cursing her.
Her fans all went offline, and not only would they not help her fight back, but they called her out even more fiercely.
How much they liked her at first, how much they dislike her now.
Ying Luwei hid in the flat she had bought, not daring to go out at all.
The more she looked at her Weibo account, the more aggrieved she became, and the more she was angry.
The comments at the bottom of her Weibo account were all ids with iron fan logos.
[White Lotus, your true colors are finally showing, it’s been fun playing with us these past few years, hasn’t it?
Look at all the things you said before, it’s obvious that you’re deliberately leading us to cyber-violence, right? You’ve abetted your fans, never disciplined them, and sent them to jail.
[Rubbish, I’ve sued you, wait for the flyers!
Seeing that the situation was not right, the media company that Ying Luwei was signed to issued a unilateral termination statement in the middle of the night, not long after the story broke.
The agent also terminated her contract and ran away overnight.
All the people around her who had supported her were stepping back on her.
Ying Luwei’s body was cold and her tears kept flowing.
She could be sure that someone was behind this, otherwise those expose numbers wouldn’t have put up Weibo to ignore her warnings.
It was a mistake for her to use Jiang Moyuan to bring Ying Zidian back from Qing Shui County.
If she hadn’t brought Ying Zidian back, the Ying family would never have found out in their lifetime.
What should she do now?
Ying Luwei was terrified and racked her brains, but finally she grabbed a straw to save her life.
Yes, she had to marry into the Jiang family as soon as possible.
As long as she became the head mother of the Jiang family, even if her reputation was lost, it would not matter.
Ying Luwei settled down, wiped away her tears, gathered herself and drove to Jiang Moyuan’s company.
**
Today is not a weekend, and Qingzhi still has cla*ses.
Ying Ziyi propped her head up with one hand and swiped on her phone with the other.
After entering the hidden section, rare herbs would not be a problem.
As long as one could come up with something that would make the big boys’ hearts flutter, high enough for a certain bounty, someone would take up the reward.
Although she hadn’t encountered any tricky symptoms recently, stocking up on a little more herbs was never a bad thing.
But when she hoarded them, she spent a lot of money.
Luckily, there was Ying Luwei’s 80 million.
There are many bounty posts in the hidden section of the nok forum every day, and the admins have categorised them in order to make it easier to post and find them.
There is an alchemy community in O Continent and an ancient medicine community in China, both of which have a great demand for medicinal herbs.
That’s why the herbs section is always a popular bounty area on the forum, and of course the prices are higher.
Ying scanned the new posts, and after posting another one himself, he retreated.
After coming to the home page to look at the new day’s gossip, Ying Ziji clicked refresh and saw a freshly posted thread.
[Title]: All of you bigwigs, you know about that recital in Shanghai, China, right?
[Content]; I’m not in Shanghai City, but I brought my goddess Vera Hall’s name with me so I bought a ticket on line.
Shocked me, all three of my goddess’s greatest hits were recreated for the first time, and I can guarantee that the player, was definitely Vera Hall!
Because she played ‘Sun and Moon’ and ‘Holy War’ differently from the ones I’ve heard before.
Also, the score for The Song of Fiddlesticks was so mangled as to be beyond repair, and she actually played it.
Ahhhhhhhh I’m mad, my goddess isn’t dead, she’s resurrected!!!
The three exclamation marks showed how excited the person who posted it was.
Ying Ziji looked at the post, her phoenix eyes narrowing slightly as she tapped her fingers on the table.
Vera Hall was the pinnacle of music history, but there wasn’t really any heat in the hidden section of the nok.
After all, the deepest secrets of the entire world were at stake here, and the world would blow up if just one leaked out.
Her identity is just an ordinary person in the eyes of these bigwigs who hang around here.
But bring in the word resurrection and it attracts a lot of attention.
Not a big problem, though.
She had originally known this would happen, so she made plans.
[1st floor]: I remember that the owner is a big fan of Vera Hall.
[2F]: Oh, I’ve heard, there is such a thing as coming back from the dead, but coming back to life after three hundred years is a bit of a stretch. Those alchemists in the alchemy world and the big poisoner guys on our list, the whole thing that comes out with those drugs that change the human body cells, they don’t live for very long.
……
The actual 12 floor]: It’s not impossible that the Loran family that …… forget to say, said my skin will have to be picked up.
The actual fact is that you can’t get a lot of money from the internet. The big boys of science have come up with this whole?
The heat of this post was rising rapidly, and more and more people were joining the discussion.
Naturally, Fu Yunshen had seen it.
Even if he didn’t see it, someone usually reported to him about the hidden section.
And he did take note of it.
Fu Yunshen’s eyelashes twitched as he took his phone out of the drawer and made a call.
After a long time, he let out a low laugh: “Do you think it’s possible for this person to take his memories with him and live again in a few hundred years?”
Chapter 166
“……”
The person on the other end of the phone did not expect to hear this sentence and was silent for a moment.
Fu Yunshen wasn’t in a hurry, he just leaned back in his chair and looked up at the window.
The sun was shining warmly, as if it had spanned many years.
There was a long, long period of silence before a voice came from the phone.
“Theoretically, it’s possible, but the likelihood is low to zero.” The other side said, “This world is not like what we see, it does have supernatural places.”
Fu Yunshen gave a faint hmph.
The other side continued, “Otherwise, there would be no alchemy and ancient medicine and martial arts, and the end of science is theology, which still has no answer to all the mysteries of life to this day.”
“So -” Fu Yunshen looked thoughtfully at the post that had been replied to for thousands of floors, “it exists.”
“As I said, the possibility is zero, no matter how supernatural, there has to be some science.
Fu Yunshen looked lazy as he swiped his mouse, refreshed the post, and pulled it up to the end again.
[Floor 1241]: I don’t blame the owner for thinking this way, the score for “The Song of Filippo” amounts to nothing, not Vera Hall herself, how did she know?
Fu Yunshen’s eyes twitched slightly.
Yes.
He had been thinking about it for a long time, from the moment he heard Ying play “Holy War”.
But everything needed a proof, and it didn’t help that he was just guessing out of thin air.
But this was not the kind of thing one could really ask in person.
Fu Yunshen pondered for a moment and prepared to post.
At this time, a new post appeared.
This post was automatically marked red, but it was not topped.
But all id users with an account level of ss or above have this privilege.
[@LoveOnlyMoney: retreat retreat retreat, what a bullsh*t to come back from the dead, you guys say there’s no songbook? Sorry, a while ago, we just sold the sheet music, there are people over in China who bought it, don’t believe me ask a few people in the forum, they bought it too.]
There is no user in the hidden section who does not know this id as long as they are not new to the forum.
This is the id of the person in charge of the Laurent family.
Of course, this post would not have been made by this person in power.
After all, he was only interested in money and would only leave everything else to his people.
The nok’s system would have alerted all other users.
The forum exploded straight away.
[1st floor]: Crap, surprised to see a big brother.
[2nd floor]: What? The Laurent family has a songbook?
……
The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you’re getting into. The first thing you need to do is to get a copy of the book.
[78th Floor]: …… I forgot who I heard say that the piano piece, “The Song of Filippo”, was written by Vera Hall specifically for the Laurent family.
[79th Floor]: So, that’s not surprising. I can only say that the player from China is a genius.
……
[109th Floor]: D*mn, not bad for your Laurent family, can this be sold for money too?
[110th Floor]: Selling people’s scores, I’m really afraid Vera will jump out of the dirt and hammer you guys to death.
The young servant who posted this saw this reply and secretly wiped a sweat.
How could they cover it up if they didn’t say so?
That’s how they’d get whacked.
The young servant retired his account with a sigh of relief.
Finally, he had finished what he had been told in the letter and could return with his master.
The group had guessed correctly that it was indeed Vera Hall.
Unfortunately, it was impossible for such things to really be known to the outside world.
**
Noon.
Jiang Mo Yuan hadn’t even finished his work when he received a call from the old Jiang family residence.
It was the old lady Jiang calling him.
Since the death of Master Jiang, Old Lady Jiang had moved into the Buddha Hall.
She was so intent on fasting and worshipping Buddha that no one else saw much of her.
This was the first time that Old Lady Jiang had called him in the past few years.
Jiang Mo Yuan frowned.
Old Lady Jiang’s tone was bad, but she didn’t say anything on the phone, only that he should go over there right now.
“Tell the others that I have something to do and that the afternoon meeting will be postponed for now.” Jiang Mo Yuan glanced at the watch on his wrist and called his secretary, “That list, be cautious.”
The secretary was busy nodding and paused before whispering, “Third Master, Miss Lu Wei has been waiting for you outside for a long time.”
Hearing these words, Jiang Mo Yuan’s movement of pushing the door paused.
The secretary put her head down and didn’t know what to say.
Yesterday’s incident was just too unexpected.
No one expected that an adopted daughter from the countryside would have a piano level that was straight out of those top pianists.
Ying Luwei became a joke straight away.
Not to mention that the internet was a stormy place, picking up on all the things she had done.
On the surface, she was a good girl, but inside she was vicious to the core.
Not worthy of Jiang Mo Yuan at all.
“I know.” Jiang Mo Yuan had little expression and walked straight out.
When she saw the man coming out, she wiped her tears and immediately rushed over to hug him, her voice tinged with tears: “Moyuan!”
The secretary who followed her out frowned straight away.
If it was in the past, this would not have mattered.
But now Ying Luwei’s reputation was so notorious, and her piano skills were also marketed, how could she still have the guts to stick to their third master?
The secretary spoke out unhappily, “Miss Lu Wei, you-”
The words that followed had not yet been spoken.
She saw Jiang Moyuan backing Ying Luwei away without the slightest pity and pulling his arm out of her embrace.
With her body suddenly empty, Ying Luwei froze for a moment, then looked at him incredulously, her voice trembling: “…… Moyuan?”
“Our engagement hasn’t been done yet, it’s only an engagement.” Jiang Moyuan looked at her without the usual warmth in his eyes, only a cold indifference remained, “The company is a public place, pay attention to it.”
After saying that, Jiang Mo Yuan didn’t even look at Ying Lu Wei’s expression, he took the suit jacket from his secretary and left with big steps.
The secretary walked Jiang Moyuan to the door, then turned back to Ying Luwei and smiled apologetically, “Miss Luwei, please understand your current situation, the Ying family will protect you, but not the Jiang family.”
The polite but contemptuous tone was no different from the way she had spoken to Ying Zidian before.
Ying Luwei’s face instantly turned white: “You …… what do you mean?”
The secretary didn’t say anything more and had someone ask Ying Luwei to leave.
**
When Jiang Moyuan arrived at the Buddha Hall, Old Lady Jiang was kneeling on the futon with her back to him, worshipping Buddha.
Only after a few minutes did Old Lady Jiang slowly get up: “Mo Yuan, there is something that Mum thinks it would be better for you to know.”
Jiang Mo Yuan’s eyebrows furrowed, “Mom, what’s wrong?”
Old Lady Jiang’s face was cold as she flung a letter in front of him, “This was delivered to the Buddha Hall early this morning, take a look at it yourself.”
Jiang Mo Yuan took it and took a full ten minutes to finish reading the matter in the envelope.
His body suddenly tensed up, and for the first time he had a feeling of stiffness.
How could such a thing ……
“The Jiang family doesn’t need such a mother-in-chief with corrupt morals.” Old Lady Jiang sat down and faintly took a sip of tea, “Originally I was not satisfied with her, there are so many famous women in Shanghai City, can’t we find one who is not sick?”
Saying that, she sighed, “But you can’t help but like her, if you still have to continue to like her, then-”
“This matter, it’s up to Ma to decide.” Jiang Mo Yuan interrupted Old Lady Jiang’s words, “I’ll listen to mum on everything.”
“Fine, fine.” Only then did Old Lady Jiang reveal a smile, “After all, this marriage contract was also set by your father, so it’s not good for you to back out in person, so mum will help you.”
Jiang Mo Yuan’s thin lips pursed slightly.
For some reason, he was relieved.
“I’ll pay a visit to the Ying family some day.” Mrs Jiang added, “Although I don’t know who sent this letter, they must know about it too.”
“The Ying family is also the injured party in this matter, poor little Xuan, to have this happen to her.”
Old Lady Jiang had seen a lot of people, but she hadn’t seen one as vicious as Ying Luwei had been since she was a child.
Jiang Mo Yuan’s lips twitched and he didn’t say anything.
He knew about the Ying family’s real and fake daughter, and he also knew that it was Ying Ziji who had been stolen and thrown away by Ying Luwei.
That was why he felt a sense of inexplicable anger and regret just now.
However, the Ying family had no intention of making this kind of thing public, so there was no need for him to tell Old Lady Jiang about it.
**
In the afternoon after school, all the way from Cla*s 19 went to Ying Zigui’s celebration banquet.
By the time they arrived at the restaurant they had booked, they were all shocked.
They thought it was just an ordinary luxury restaurant, but they didn’t think it would be Han Court.
The number of people who attended the celebration banquet today was 80, which was as many as the number of guests that Han Court entertained in a month.
Little Brother was excited, he lowered his voice, “Ying Dad, are you having an affair with the owner of Han Court?”
The Han Court doesn’t even take care of the gentry in the imperial capital, if the owner hadn’t asked, they would have come without a reservation.
She looked thoughtfully at the man who was talking to the waiter and said, “Not so much as an affair.”
The little brother was bewildered: “Huh?”
“A hand at most.”
“……”
Little Brother scratched his head and simply didn’t think about it, “Whatever, whatever, I’m not the one bleeding today anyway, I’m going to have enough.”
He swaggered in and bounced twice in delight.
“Tch, although I have little desire for food, Han Court is indeed one of the best in the catering industry.” Xiu Yu’s hand rested on Ying Ziji’s shoulder, “But you love food so much, do you have to find someone who can cook in the future?”
Ying Zidian gave her a look and peeled her hand off.
“……” Xiu Yu shifted her eyes and looked at Weibo, looking at it, suddenly she shouted, “Look at Weibo, Ying Lu Wei!”