BDB Chapter 32

“You come back!”

Seeing that her anger had no effect, Old Madam Ma, in desperation, threw her slipper forward.

The slipper didn’t hit Li Jueyan, but he did stop.

Old Madam Ma sighed in relief, “Speak to your wife properly. Tell her that even if she really doesn’t want to be with you anymore…”

Li Jueyan turned and walked away.

Old Madam Ma’s voice rose again, “Tell her that even if she really doesn’t want to be with you, she is still the good granddaughter-in-law and daughter I recognized. Don’t return that bracelet to me. Otherwise, it’ll make me feel distressed.”

At this point, Li Jueyan had reached the door. Hearing this, he stopped once more, “What bracelet?”

“The diamond-studded gold bracelet that your Old Man Li, in his old age, gave me. It’s so securely fastened that no professional could ever remove it. I was planning to pass it down to the wives of the Li family as a family heirloom. I didn’t expect you to be so disappointing!”

“Which hand was it on?”

“On the right hand. Why?”

Li Jueyan’s heart began to race.

His mind involuntarily recalled the scene from that afternoon.

Even though he had paid a high price to access the public surveillance in City C, he had, by some strange twist of fate, chosen to take the subway instead of the private car for his business trip.

At that time, in a fast-food restaurant at the subway station, there was a girl with a profile strikingly similar to Jiang Rao.

However, she had a dark complexion and ate with her left hand.

If Jiang Rao’s right hand was adorned with such an eye-catching and impossible-to-remove gold bracelet, it would make sense for her to eat with her left hand.

He could no longer stay calm.

His only thought was:

Find her.

He had to find her.

…

Jiang Rao knew well that it was not easy to accumulate too many belongings while traveling, so her luggage was minimal.

Bedding and toiletries were trivial, and whether to keep them or not didn’t matter much.

However, with four months of rent still due, even after deducting the deposit, she could get back over a thousand yuan. Although this amount seemed small, in a time when a hundred yuan was a lot, she couldn’t afford to be careless.

Perhaps because of her good attitude, the landlord uncle, though somewhat displeased, didn’t make things difficult for her regarding her request to vacate.

But credit still needed to be given where it was due. “Little lady, if I weren’t such a good person, your rent would really be… well, sigh. In the future, when you’re out and about, don’t pay so much at once. There are plenty of apartments that only require a one-month deposit and pay monthly or quarterly. And don’t be tempted by cheap places in urban villages. It’s just that you’re a bit dark-skinned; if you were fairer, who knows how many wolves you would attract!”

Jiang Rao, though she never believed in the inherent goodness of human nature, found that good people were indeed more common in everyday life.

She sincerely said, “Thank you.”

The landlord scratched his head sheepishly, “No need to thank me. I’m telling you all this because I’m always eager to help and my daughter is about your age. But not to brag… you won’t find a landlord as good as me anywhere else!”

Jiang Rao smiled and nodded.

After completing the formalities, she didn’t linger. She shouldered the reference books she had purchased recently and belongings she had accumulated and headed for the train station.

The reason she left so quickly wasn’t because of any deadline imposed by the landlord, but because she suddenly realized that the male lead, capable of coming up with something like a “nationwide photo reward”—an idea that sounded absurd and was indeed a wasteful, melodramatic stunt—had clearly lost even the most basic level of patience.

After all, the money of a domineering president wasn’t earned by the wind. Capitalists often valued every penny spent and the results it produced even more than ordinary people.

It was May, and the thick masks were no longer suitable for the weather. Fortunately, the smog had been noticed, and people wearing disposable masks like her were not uncommon on the streets. Blending into the crowd at the train station, she was like an inconspicuous droplet of water; as long as she didn’t do anything overly conspicuous, no one would pay her special attention.

She leaned against a chair and took a short rest.

Unbeknownst to her, someone had found the house she had rented for over two months.

Looking at the clean and refined young man before him, who didn’t seem to fit the dilapidated environment of the urban village, the landlord didn’t ask his usual question about how large a house the person intended to rent.

Instead, he asked, “Who are you looking for?”

“I’m looking for my little sister.”

“Who’s your little sister?”

“Her name is Jiang Rao.”

The landlord, who had once firmly believed in the saying “dragons give birth to dragons and phoenixes give birth to phoenixes; a mouse’s child knows how to dig a hole”, began to doubt it.

The girl named Jiang Rao was indeed beautiful, but she was dark-skinned!

The young man before him had a similar demeanor to the girl, but he was fair-skinned!

How could such different skin tones come from the same parents?

When the man showed him a photo on his phone—one that was somewhat blurry but still clearly showed two faces side by side—and then pulled out his ID card to explain his name and ID number, the landlord finally understood the situation. He realized why the appearance and skin color of the girl named Jiang Rao had seemed incongruous.

It turned out that she was originally fair-skinned, and something had been done to her skin to make her look dark!

Such a beautiful face certainly couldn’t be kept safe in this place.

The landlord no longer hesitated but could only say, “She left, not long ago. She doesn’t live here anymore.”

Seeing the immediate look of urgency on the man’s face, he added, “But I think you should check the train station or bus station. The little lady doesn’t seem to want to stay in this city. Otherwise, if she just wanted to move to another place, she wouldn’t have left her bedding and things behind.”

Jiang Pei quickly thanked him and dashed out of the house.

He didn’t go to the bus station because he knew Jiang Rao was delicate.

Her delicateness wasn’t in her personality but in her physical constitution.

She would bruise from a slight bump on her arm, get blisters from hot water through a glass, or suffer a minor fracture from a fall while running…

She was too delicate to endure the pungent smell of diesel on public buses.

After buying a ticket from a random window, he thought for a moment and didn’t immediately enter the station.

Instead, he ran to an internet café he had passed earlier, connected his phone to the computer, and typed out code rapidly with his thumbs.

When the screen changed to a new interface, he pulled out his phone and dialed a number that had been deeply etched into his mind a few hours ago.

As the phone rang, Jiang Rao woke from her half-asleep state.

Remembering the two calls she had received on the train, she furrowed her brow and then removed the back cover of her phone, taking out both the battery and SIM card.

However, it was already too late.

The signal had already been detected and picked up by the program.

After disconnecting his phone from the computer, Jiang Pei looked at the two red dots on the screen and rushed toward the train station.

He followed the display on his phone screen, moving from one waiting room door to another. After a long while, he finally reached the entrance of the sixth waiting room, where the two red dots converged.

However, as soon as he stepped into the waiting room, two strong men in black suits clamped his arms from behind.

Without needing to turn around, he could see the two men standing on either side of him.

He struggled, but despite his good physical fitness, he was no match for the bodyguards trained for this kind of work.

Eventually, he stopped resisting.

At that moment, the two bodyguards suddenly lowered their heads slightly and said, “President Li.”

Jiang Pei turned to look.

He saw a man standing not far away, about the same height as him. Though he was also wearing a suit, its material was clearly different from that of the bodyguards’ suits.

The man wore gold-rimmed glasses, and his dark eyes were bottomless.

His thin, cool lips made it clear he was not an easy person to deal with.

Their eyes met, and the man spoke first, “Jiang Pei?”

Jiang Pei pressed his lips together and did not respond.

The man, however, didn’t let him off easily. “Since you didn’t deny it, it must be true.” With a smirk, he added, “Break his legs.”

Jiang Pei was not one to use foul language, but at that moment, he wanted to curse loudly!

He saw, as the man’s words ended, two bodyguards from the man’s entourage emerging with steel pipes.

The steel pipes glinted silver, and as the bodyguards moved, Jiang Pei even heard the whoosh of the pipes cutting through the air.

He threw a punch at the face of the bodyguard next to him.

Then he quickly ran into the crowd, deliberately knocking over suitcases and backpacks in his path.

Some people had leftover instant noodle bowls or trash bags on their suitcases, so the suitcases and backpacks got dirty.

Soon, people gathered and surrounded him, accusing him.

The man walked over.

Jiang Pei ignored the accusations and focused on the man, exited the search page on his phone and switched to the call interface.

While dialing 110, he heard the man speak again, “Break his legs.”

“You’re breaking the law!” Jiang Pei protested.

Li Jueyan snorted lightly, his voice still cold and commanding, “Break his legs, do you not hear me?”

He had no time to worry about laws.

He wanted to take her from him; he just wanted his life.

At that moment, he heard a voice from behind, “Li Jueyan.”

Li Jueyan’s heart skipped a beat.

He turned around and saw her standing in the crowd of onlookers. Half of her face was hidden by a mask, but the exposed part was dark, matching the color he had seen at the subway station.

She called his name and took a couple of steps forward, pulling down her mask.

It was May, and the flowers had long since bloomed and withered.

But the flowers in his heart seemed to have just begun to bud, rapidly drawing nourishment from his blood and emitting a fragrance.

Though her face, which had appeared in his dreams every day, was a bit darker now, he knew that beneath that darkness lay a beauty beyond imagination.

He suddenly felt lost, unsure of where to place his hands and feet. It seemed as though the vow he had made to himself was meant solely to slap his own face.

How could he dare to demand anything from her? How could he dare to bully her?

He could only smile at her, willing to give her the whole world.

——